126 - FALLET, René. Signed autograph letter addressed to André Breton, followed by three autograph poems.

FALLET, René. Signed autograph letter addressed to André Breton, followed by three autograph poems. A long and poignant letter written by René Fallet in his youth, in which he confesses his deep despair. 2 pages, in-4 format, written on letterhead from the newspaper *Libération*, “Paris, June 27, 1946,” with an envelope bearing the printed address of the newspaper *Libération*. Small paper losses in the top margin and the lower left corner. In this letter, written on the spur of the moment from the editorial office of the newspaper *Libération*, René Fallet (1927–1983), then 19 years old, sends a solemn message to the “pope” of Surrealism. “You have to be André Breton to understand what I have to say. If there were a Surrealist headquarters these days, I would have gone there to get it off my chest. It doesn’t matter, after all, since you’re here. In a nutshell, here’s my situation: I am EMPTY”… The young man recounts a chaotic life: no formal education, odd jobs, his father’s imprisonment for singing “La Marseillaise” (from which he secured his father’s release by writing to Marshal Pétain), his enlistment as a volunteer at age 16 and a half, “a year in uniform filled with festering boredom and oppression, 40 days in prison for insulting a superior”… Hired at age 18 and a half by *Libération* thanks to Blaise Cendrars, who spotted his early poems, the young man built himself “a dam of facile optimism to keep going without tiring,” becoming a “little joker.” Until: … “nothing left, the void […] appeared all at once like a dead fly falling from the ceiling.” He turned to alcohol, to no avail, and took drastic action: “So, I wanted to take the big leap—that big leap that had just failed three or four hours ago.” After alluding to a romantic disappointment, he analyzes his distress with frightening lucidity: … “It is not heartbreak, nor even disappointment, but quite simply the pain of living [...] Where am I going, to what dead end? What possible remedy? And I refuse, with all my soul and all the strength of my youth, to utter the word: suicide. Answer me. [...] rest assured of my gratitude, my immense turmoil, and my love for your sublime genius.” The letter concludes with three unpublished autograph poems, a triptych offered as a gift: “Let’s take a stroll, my Old One / on the masts of Cocagne / of the morning alarm clock / God may well line them / with razor blades / we’ll spin upon them / phenomenal ellipses / do you fear vertigo, you sickly one? / I see nothing in it / I let myself be carried along / Life of emptiness, the greedy one / will my skin have the aura or not / by drawing straws / or by flipping a coin”… A superb document.