Les mamelles de Tirésias drame surréaliste en deux actes et un prologue avec la musique de Germaine Albert-Birot et sept dessins hors texte de Serge Férat.

7 plates by Serge Ferat.

8vo (205 x 150mm. ) 108, [4]p. Pictorial covers, with glassine jacket, unopened, acheve d’imprimer on recto of final leaf (wrappers almost detached, wear at foot of spine and wrapper edges, discoloration of spine and wrapper edges).

Paris [la Société d’imprimerie Levé]: Éditions SIC, 1918. 

First edition, ordinary paper issue, after 17 numbered grande papier copies, of this seminal work of surrealism.

The preface to this work features the second use of the word ‘surrealism’ – coined by Apollinaire - in print, the first being in the programme note by the same writer for the Cocteau-Massine-Satie-Picasso ballet Parade. ‘Combining widely disparate elements in a cubist mosaic’ (Bohn) to address the issue of falling birthrates in France, and with strongly anti-war and feminist overtones, the play was first staged as a production by SIC – Pierre Albert-Birot’s modernist review – on 24 June 1917 to ‘tumultuous reception’ (Bohn) although critical failure (Rentzou). 

The text is accompanied by the musical score, composed by Birot’s wife Germaine, along with seven cubist compositions by Serge Férat, who designed the costumes and staging for the performance.

Bohn, ‘Selected Apollinaire Letters 1908-1918’, French Forum 4.2 (1979), 99-113. E. Rentzou, ‘”Partout et Nulle Part”: Apollinaire’s Body after the War’, Criticism 57.4 (2015), 557-579.  Talvart & Place I, 80.     

Stock Code: 228486