Description
Louis ARAGON (1897-1982). Autograph poem signed, D'une petite fille massacrée, [1944]; half-page in-fol. Moving poem from La Diane française (Seghers, "Poésie 44", 1945, completed December 30, 1944); one of six unpublished poems in the collection, without prepublication. "The poem was written in memory of Jeannie Chancel, daughter of Jean and Mady Chancel, resistance fighters from Saint-Donat and friends of the Aragon couple. The day after a parachute drop on the night of June 14-15, 1944, supervised by Jean Chancel and in which Aragon and Elsa had taken part on June 15, the Germans organized a punitive operation in Saint-Donat. They looted and massacred. The sick thirteen-year-old girl had stayed with friends when most of the inhabitants had fled. She was raped and died of meningitis on August 24, 1944. In the background is Rimbaud's poem Le Dormeur du val" (Marie-Thérèse Eychart, in Aragon, Œuvres poétiques complètes, Pléiade, t.I, p.1569). The poem comprises four quatrains; the manuscript shows two erasures and corrections. "Vous pourrez revenir ce sera vainainement To outbid hell and the fierce beast You can break down the door with your clubs Germans"...
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Louis ARAGON (1897-1982). Autograph poem signed, D'une petite fille massacrée, [1944]; half-page in-fol. Moving poem from La Diane française (Seghers, "Poésie 44", 1945, completed December 30, 1944); one of six unpublished poems in the collection, without prepublication. "The poem was written in memory of Jeannie Chancel, daughter of Jean and Mady Chancel, resistance fighters from Saint-Donat and friends of the Aragon couple. The day after a parachute drop on the night of June 14-15, 1944, supervised by Jean Chancel and in which Aragon and Elsa had taken part on June 15, the Germans organized a punitive operation in Saint-Donat. They looted and massacred. The sick thirteen-year-old girl had stayed with friends when most of the inhabitants had fled. She was raped and died of meningitis on August 24, 1944. In the background is Rimbaud's poem Le Dormeur du val" (Marie-Thérèse Eychart, in Aragon, Œuvres poétiques complètes, Pléiade, t.I, p.1569). The poem comprises four quatrains; the manuscript shows two erasures and corrections. "Vous pourrez revenir ce sera vainainement To outbid hell and the fierce beast You can break down the door with your clubs Germans"...
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