Stèles

GENUINE ORIGINAL out-of-trade edition limited to 81 numbered copies on Imperial Korean paper (no. 26). Author's presentation copy from Victor Ségalen to Pierre Bons d'Anty "for his friendship that one would gladly seek as far as Lhasa" (Nov. 1912).

Copy bearing the 3 usual red seals of the 1912 original edition.

Segalen's originality is already evident in the presentation of the volume. Free to give his book the appearance he desired, since he bore the entire cost of this first out-of-trade edition, Segalen had the idea of drawing inspiration from Chinese bibliophily to better emphasize the color he intended to give his work. This was not a mere concern for easy exoticism but the sign of a research akin to Mallarméan research. [...]

The first edition of Stèles was printed in eighty-one copies, a carefully premeditated number since it corresponds to the sacred number (9 x 9) of the flagstones of the third terrace at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. Victor Segalen, a Breton, naval doctor, poet, and archaeologist, travelled through northern China for several years around 1904. He died young accidentally.

Provenance: Copy from Doctor Poupelain, which was given to him by Pierre Rémy Bons d'Anty, former Consul General in Chongqing (who accompanied him to Tibet) in memory of their months of trials lived at 4 and 5000 meters altitude for several months.