Le Sabbat, édition originale

FIRST EDITION. One of 35 numbered copies on alfax Navarre, the second largest paper after 6 copies on Johannot vellum.

A life lived in complete ambiguity - right down to the title of this work - the autobiography of a man of all unsuccessful attempts and all debacles: moral, spiritual and material. Jewish by birth, homosexual, literate (friend of Gide, Max Jacob, Cocteau), twice converted: first to Catholicism by Jacques Maritain (he was expelled from the seminary for homosexuality), then to Protestantism - this time out of interest - Maurice Sachs oscillated throughout his life, constant only in inconstancy and flight.

Prevented from publication in 1939 due to the declaration of war, Le Sabbat was not finally released until 1946, when the conflict was over and the reputation of its author - who died in 1945, shot by an SS officer after 3 years' service in the Gestapo - was permanently tarnished: resistant-collabo, collabo-résistant, proof that labels never stick to this character for very long.

"Could this little work escape my fate? Will I, myself, escape the misfortune? Perhaps I'm only leaving to try once again to tear myself away from the infernal round of the Sabbath. For this Sabbath is my past."