MANCIET (Bernard): ode to Luis Migeul Dominguin. No date (19 - Lot 230

MANCIET (Bernard): ode to Luis Migeul Dominguin. No date (1947). Leaflet in gray folder illustrated with an original woodcut. Very rare edition of only 42 copies (n°28). Original woodcut illustrations by Rudolf SCHARPF. Some light foxing. It was in the "black" Gascon of his Landes origins that Bernard Manciet (1923-2005) published his first poetic essays in 1945 in the Félibréenne journal Reclams de Biarn e Gascougne. After graduating in Political Science in Paris (1947), he spent several years in Germany as part of the French occupation administration. In a country devastated by war, he abandoned the light-hearted tone of his early texts ("un cert dandysme risolier" [a certain smiling dandyism], as Robert Lafont put it) for the solemn tone, oscillating between lyrical and epic, of the Odes: À Luis Miguel Dominguin (1948), A Noste-Dame de le Pou [À Notre-Dame de la Peur] (1950). The latter poem develops the vision of a Virgin "mother of fear", amputated by torture and machine-gun fire, and opening her arms to "trens de desportats dont lairan après la lua" [trains of deportees barking at the moon]. (Guy Latry)