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P.P. L. P. E.O 1er Tirage 1943 Colophon
A.S.P A. de
Le P.P.
R. & H., New-York 1943, 18,5x23cm, reliure de l'editeur sous chemise etui.
Third printing, produced a few weeks after the first and the same as the first edition ("marque au corbeau", price, publisher's address), but in a blue-grey binding and with the notice "third printing" on the front free endpaper.
The only copy known to date of the L. P. in French inscribed by A.S.P.
Publisher's blue-grey cloth with illustrated dust jacket (two small repairs to foot of spine).
Drawings by the author.
This copy has a protective chemise by Julie Nadot, featuring the illustrations from the dust jacket on the covers.
"Fairytales are like that. One morning you wake up, and you say to yourself: 'it's nothing but a fairytale...' You smile at your foolishness. But deep down, you're not convinced. We all know that fairytales are the only really true things in life" (A.S.P, Lettres à l'inconnue, May 1943).
It is generally known that A.S.P, who left for combat before the French version of the L. P. appeared could only inscribe - before his departure from New York - a few rare copies of the English version. During the 16 months he spent in North Africa, where his books were banned, he had only one copy, which he "never len[t]...and ma[de] people read it at [his] home, in [his room]" - even his closest friends. Nonetheless, two children from Algiers, unknown to A.S.P's biographers, had the honor of owning this extraordinary inscribed copy of what Martin Heidegger called "one of the great Existentialist books of the century."
A universal fairytale if ever there was one (the L. P. is, after the Bible, the most-translated book in the world), this hymn to travel, friendship and childhood was considered a masterpiece right from the start. It took - in the guise of a children's story - a profound look at the tragic present, revealing a more complex philosophy on the author's part than that for which his critics gave him credit at the time.
Though we don't know precisely the genesis of the character - Annabella, the actress', reading of Andersen, the gift of a box of watercolors by Rene Clair, an idea from his publisher Elisabeth R., or simply the memory of his late brother - the actual writing of this tale was heavily marked by the war, by exile, and by A.S.P's difficult relationship with the authorities of the French Resistance.
Demobbed in 1940, the writer celebrated for Terre des Hommes [Wind, Sand and Stars] in 1939, sought refuge in New York where he wrote and published (in February 1942) Pilote de Guerre [Flight to Arras] in an effort to convince American public opinion of the courage of French soldiers despite their inevitable defeat. Too Philo-Semitic for some and too defeatist for others, this story, quickly banned in France, earned him the ire of both the Petainists and the Gaullists, who forced him into inaction despite the fact that North Africa had been retaken by the Allies, opening the way for renewed armed combat.
Despite an intense social and emotional life, it was with a feeling of profound solitude and being misunderstood that A.S.P wrote, in 1942, the L. P. for his publisher in New York, who had just published Mary Poppins, Eugene R. & Curtice H..
At the end of 1942, A.S.P added fuel to the fire by broadcasting on the radio and then publishing his Lettre aux Francais [Letter to the French People] which called on Frenchmen abroad and the French in France to unite against Nazism. His call for a reconciliation and a united front without exceptions against the common enemy, his refusal to judge the choices made by a people oppressed and his implied criticism of the power struggles between the combatant parties earned him the inimitable dislike of the followers of De Gaulle, who were at the time competing for power with those of General Giraud.
Accused of being overly tolerant, this radio message drew some very sharp criticism, including from a writer dear to A.S.P, the philosopher and theologian Jacques Maritain. These violent attacks on the writer obscured, for his contemporaries, the profound intimacy shared by this call to arms for adults and the tale for children which appeared a few months later.
The forced exile from his country "lost somewhere in the night, all its lights extinguished, like a ship," the France that "must be saved...both in the spirit and in the flesh," the absurdity of people who drew apart even to the point of fighting among themselves and the two questions "what is a spiritual inheritance worth when there are no more heirs?" and "What good is an heir if the Spirit is dead?" of his Lettre aux Francais are all themes developed in what would be the last and most important of all his books, the L. P.; that "L. book [written] only for friends, those who understand it".
The latter did not fail to read the tale in light of the manifesto and would have recognized in the wisdom of the Fox warning the L. P., "language is a source of misunderstanding," the almost perfect echo of the fighter addressing his fellow-countrymen: "language is an imperfect instrument."
Inspired by a childlike character that A.S.P doodled in the margins of his letters and notebooks and which was originally a self-portrait, the L. P. is just as much poetic fable as philosophical testimony. In that sense, the death of the child hero of the tale, which A.S.P refused to cut to the great chagrin of his publishers, would not have been alien to his stubborn nature, which sent him hurtling to his heroic and absurd death.
In essence, A.S.P had had only one preoccupation since his arrival in the United States, which was to obtain a commission in his former unit, Group 2-33, which he had immortalized in Flight to Arras. In February 1943, despite his age, despite the enmity of the Gaullists, and despite his failing health, A.S.P was finally mobilized in the "Free French Air Force", formed after the liberation of North Africa by the Americans. At the start of April, on the 12th or the 13th, he left for Algiers, never to see America again.
It was at that point that the fate of the work and the fate of its author took permanent leave of each other. The L. P., which was meant to appear simultaneously in French and English in a translation by the publishers, was in the end published first in English on the 6th April 1943.
Was A.S.P there to take part at the publication? Contemporary accounts vary. Nonetheless, we know that he signed 785 large paper copies (possibly only the justification sheets before they were bound) and, above all, inscribed a few precious copies of the L. P., of which only three are known:
- The first, to the French actress Annabella, is in a speech bubble on the cover of an incomplete set of proofs: "I wrote this book only for friends, who would understand it, like Annabella, and if it does not please her, I will be even sadder than I am on this photograph...And I send her all my deepest and oldest love, St Ex," (the "photograph" in question is the drawing of the L. P. on the cover) [in the Jean Bonna collection].
- The second was to Dorothy Barclay, Helene Lazareff's secretary, to thank her for her research on the number of stars in the heavens: "he'd been absolutely mad to choose this planet! It was only nice at night when its inhabitants were sleeping... / The L. P. was wrong. There are on the earth some inhabitants, whose bearing, kindness and generosity of heart make up for the avarice and egotism of the rest. For example, Dorothy Barclay...In friendly remembrance A. de A.S.P" [in a private collection].
- We have found no trance of the third known copy, which belonged to Nelly de Vogue.
The few more or less complete typescripts were left by A.S.P in the days before his departure to his friend Nadia Boulanger, his translator Lewis Galantiere, and two others we've been unable to identify.
The original manuscript, given to his lover Sylvia Hamilton, is now in the Morgan Library, while the final drawings which served to provide the printed versions were taken by Consuelo de A.S.P and are now in private hands.
All these gifts and inscriptions were made in New York before A.S.P left, and - aside from the manuscript and the typescripts - were all copies of the English translation.
But for A.S.P, who was absolutely uninterested in the translation of his book and whose English was so poor that he could not even understand the radio transmissions from control towers (the only phrase he knew, memorized by rote for the benefit of American Military Headquarters, was "I want to die for France"), the only edition that mattered was the one in French.
If he only inscribed copies of The L. P. in English, that was because, no matter the precise date he embarked on the Stirling Castle, his leaving predated the printing and publication of the original French version, which was only put on sale 15 days after the English.
Thus, it was not until he wrote to his publisher from Oudjda on the 8th June 1943 that A.S.P could ask how his book was doing: "I know nothing of the L. P. (I don't even know if it's come out [in French]!)...I know nothing at all; write me!"
Published in a far smaller number of copies than the English version, the first edition in French, his editor replied, had already sold almost 7,000 copies by mid-summer 1943 (and 30,000 for the English version). Sales continued at almost a 1,000 copies a week.
Nonetheless, despite this success (the book ran to at least three printings before the end of the summer of 1943), the French version of the L. P. did not manage to cross the Atlantic before the death of its author.
Thus A.S.P could take with him only one copy of the true "P.P." specially printed for him in a hurry before his departure (as Henry Elkin, who made the crossing with him, recalled).
He did not receive any more copies in Algeria where, because of his disagreements with De Gaulle, his books were simply banned, as they were by the Vichy government in France. He complained of this in his correspondence, especially to Nelly de Vogue: "all these books coming in from America. Except mine. BANNED IN NORTH AFRICA" (December 1943); "a huge shipment of books arrived here from the States. Mine are the only ones not for sale. I am a leper..." (January 1944).
We know, thanks to some precious inscriptions made after his departure from the United States that A.S.P took a few rare copies of his other works to Algeria. Thus he gave his own copy of Pilote de Guerre to Henri Laugier (perhaps the only trace of a friendship - fleeting - with a Gaulliste), and another copy to the Chabberts, who hosted their friend at their house in Casablanca in 1943. But there is no trace, even in these collections, of an inscribed copy of the L. P. in French.
An episode in A.S.P's life in Algiers seems to confirm that he was not able to get hold of another copy of his precious fable.
Living during the whole of his stay in Algeria with his friend Doctor Georges Pelissier, in an uncomfortable room which he did not - however - want to leave for fear of offending his host - for whom he bore a profound affection - A.S.P mentioned, in an argument with the former, the unique nature of his precious copy: writing to his host, he accuses him, in essence, of having lent his copy just when he wanted to give it to an English film producer. "I never lent it to anyone, knowing that I would need it today and why." In the absence of this sole copy, the producer left and A.S.P bitterly reproached Pelissier: "If I lose 50,000 dollars in 5 minutes, I think it's worth 30 seconds to discuss it. Where is my book?"
Pelissier having confided that he'd borrowed the L. P. in order to re-read it, A.S.P calmed down and then apologized profoundly:
"Old man, don't think I'm angry at you. If you'd lent my book to someone (given that I never lend it to anyone, it being my only copy, and make people read it at home, in my room), I would have been livid. But the fact that you took it for yourself moves me deeply." Then, in a letter written "ten minutes later": "friends can't be bought even with billions. If you enjoy reading my book and Mr Korda has to wait and leave without it, I don't care...Korda's money is worth what it's worth, which is to say...: nothing. But I would not have lost the advantages Korda had to offer so that some no-name passerby for whom I care nothing and to whom I would not have lent my book, could read it. Which was the source of a reflex reaction that I would never have entertained if I had thought you were "enjoying" re-reading my L. book."
That this close friend did not have his own copy of the most important work by his guest and that the latter indicated the importance of his book never being lent out so virulently are also proof of the extreme rarity of this work in Algiers.
How is it then that the only inscription on a French language copy of the L. P. should be to a family completely absent from biographies of A.S.P?
Grounded a short time after his arrival in Algiers for having destroyed a P38 on landing because of a lack of due attention (which was becoming habitual for him), A.S.P was at the time going through a period of profound despair.
What's more, he was subject to humiliations by the Gaullists, who intercepted his mail, refused to publish him, prevented him from getting his commission again and accused him of Petainist sympathies, all the while spreading the rumor in the cafes of Algiers that De Gaulle - who had already left him out of his homage to the exiled French writers - had personally rejected his request for a new commission in the fighting forces, saying: "leave him in Algiers - he's only good for card tricks, anyway."
It was perhaps in this context that Commandant A.S.P was chosen "at random" to look after the children of Marcel Sturm, who had lost his wife and two of his four children during a typhoid epidemic in 1941.
Head of the Protestant Chaplaincy to the armies, Marcel Sturm undertook field visits to operational sites in Algeria and Tunisia. Also the head of a Resistance network specializing in false papers, this widowed pastor had frequent "missions", which took him away from his children Malou and Jean-Michel. Sturm and his family were to leave Algeria in 1944 to go back to France and take part in the Liberation. The pastor was then named Chaplain in Chief of the occupying French troops in Germany and charged with establishing links between the French and German Churches, which earned him an honorary doctorate from the University of Gottingen.
A.S.P's biography makes no mention of this foray by the pilot into "babysitting". Only the memories of the Sturm family and the inscription on this copy bear witness to this moving episode in the life of the writer.
But no matter how close the obvious affection that the precious and unique inscription on this copy represents, this third printing of the L. P. in French cannot be A.S.P's personal copy. It may have belonged to the Sturm children, without our being able to determine exactly how they themselves got hold of it. A manuscript ex libris on the first page of text with the name "Madeleine Picinbono" may, however, give us a clue. There was, in fact, a young woman of that name and the same age as Malou, living in Algiers in 1943. Did she have the tale in her possession and did she happen to give it to her schoolmate when she found out he knew A.S.P? Or, did the Sturms make a present to this friend of this tale of hope, not to be had in Algeria, when they left to rejoin the front?
The final moments of A.S.P's life are largely swathed in obscurity; and though the received wisdom has been for some time that he could not have signed any copies of the French version of the L. P. aside from the justification leaves of the de luxe copies and a few extremely rare copies of the English version before he left New York, the existence of this improbable copy underlines the lacunae in our documentation of the last eight months of the life of the pilot.
Thus, no one knows what became of his personal copy, from which he was never apart, after his disappearance on the 31st July 1944 at the controls of his Lightning plane.
This third printing of the first edition in French is today the only known inscribed copy of "Le P.P.".
But even more than a unique inscription on a major work of world literature, this mark of affection addressed to some children who had lost their mother and sisters as "the former child" A.S.P had lost his father and brother, serves to safeguard the intimate relationship of the writer and his P.. And it is thus not far from the L. P.'s dunes of sand that the pilot, once more grounded, "tames" by a stroke of his pen this L. girl and this "L. boy, just like a hundred thousand other boys" and girls.
The departure of his "L. pal" left the writer "terribly sad." His flying ban plunged the patriotic pilot into despair. In this final year of his life, it was with the children of another man fighting for freedom, inspired by the same faith in mankind and the desire to repair the broken links between peoples, that A.S.P wove again a "single [link] to the world" before a hit from a Luftwaffe Focke-Wulf took him in his turn.
Just like his P., we can only suppose that "he went back to his planet, since when the sun came up [they] did not find his body."
