Guillame Apollinaire (1880–1918)
L'année républicaine,"Zone".
Autographed manuscript

Georges Bataille (1897–1962)
Notebooks from 1942–1947.

Poet, novelist, sociologist and philosopher,
Georges Bataille places at the centre of his study
the themes of eroticism and violence, as the tools
of a ‘godless’ mystic experience. The years of this
notebook correspond to the period of greatest dedication
to the work of Nietzsche, and marked the founding
of the magazine Critique, of which
he was later to become editor.

Photo: Bibliothèque Nationale de France

Paul Bowles (1910–1999)
Thai notes, 1966.

Untiring traveller, composer and writer, Paul Bowles
is the perfect incarnation of some of the most widespread
myths of the 20th Century - the quest for elsewhere,
the transverseness of interests and languages,
and existential transgression and unrest.
Bernardo Bertolucci’s film Tea in the Desert was taken
from one of Bowles’ African novels, The Sheltering Sky.

Photo: University Of Delaware Library -
Special Collections Department.

James P. Chapin (1889–1964)
Notebook 4, 8 - 18 April 1910

Naturalist, ornithologist and scientific illustrator,
Chapin has taken part in numerous expeditions in Africa,
especially the Congo, on behalf of the
American Museum of Natural History.

Date: 14 April, 1910

Location: Bafwaboka.

“… and we saw another come to land on a tree not
far away. They probably had a nest…”

Photo: American Museum of Natural History

James P. Chapin (1889–1964)
Taccuino 5, 21 luglio–28 novembre 1912

Data: 21 July 1912
Location: Garamba

“…spears with heavy stick handles and long, thin blades
(40-50 centimetres), and common long, thin spears with shorter
heads. They plunged into the durra without hesitating, moving
back and forth in twos and threes until they reached
the leopards, of which there turned out to be two. One of these,
slightly wounded by a spear, leapt up, roaring angrily, and then
ran off towards another …”

Photo: American Museum of Natural History

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980)
Nausea
Autographed manuscript, 1932–1938

Written in different periods, as can be seen from the
different inks used and the different styles of writing, which
have been corrected and erased a number of times, this is
the only known manuscript of the novel (inspired by the
famous engraving by Dürer, Melancholy) and helps us to
imagine its origin and follow its laborious drafting.

“… that explodes into dust whenever it is touched. He touches
always other papers, hands coming and going. This does not
appear to be either a game or a ritual or a habit, this does not
appear to be anything but a way of filling time. Yet time is too
broad, time does not let itself be filled …as soon as we plunge
into it …something that withdraws, in a ridiculous manner that
pales… this way of collating papers, for example, is very weak
…..it should be unstitched and cut …”

Photo: Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)
Cahier No. 40
Approx. 1906 - 1907

71 pages of pencil and ink drawings.
Even the cover of a simple notebook becomes a space
for expression and statement – to identify with one’s own
cahier, to perceive oneself as a blank page, to merge with
one’s own sketches and notes: “I am the notebook” -
revolutionary poetics in just four words.
Printed front cover with handwriting:
Je Suis Le Cahier appartenant à Monsieur Picasso,
peintre, 12 Rue Ravignant, Paris XVIIIe.


Photo and caption: "Je Suis Le Cahier",
The Sketchbooks of Picasso,
The Atlantic Monthly Press New York, 1986.

Sfar / Chabrol őil pour őil
Sketchpad, 2004

The artist Joann Sfar, creator of very popular French comic
strips, was sent by the magazine ‘l’Express’ to the set of
the film by Claude Chabrol, The braidesmaid, in Nantes.
Sfar used his sketchpad as an illustrated
documentary of this unusual day.




“It is very relaxing to be in a troupe where everyone seems to
have known each other for a long time; you can feel that they
are at ease, like the gypsies of an amusement park that every
year, all together, carry with them their ferris wheel.”

“DJ. Pierre, sound engineer, presses on the buttons for a while
and mumbles: “Some idiot hasn’t switched off his mobile
phone”. I tell myself that it can’t be mine because I have turned
off the sound. “I said, some idiot hasn’t switched off his mobile
phone – it’s vibrating”. Hmm…discreetly
I move away to switch off the phone”.

Emily Sowden,
Travel notebook, approx. 1936

The notebooks of American Emily Sowden are travel
itineraries commented by written pieces, postcards,
photographs, maps, botanic specimens, etc. This 1936
example is the notebook of her trip to Brittany
and Normandy, on board of the elegant French
steamship Normandie.

"Magnificent ship - a glorious and splendid steam machine!"

Photo: University of Delaware Library

Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
Notebooks 1925

The writer Gertrude Stein, who was born in America but
quickly settled in Europe, is one of the intellectual figures
that made Paris the cultural capital in the period between
the two wars. Her celebrated salon was a place of invention,
exchange and experimentation of different languages. In
the Stein home the representatives of the ‘lost generation’
(Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Copland, etc.) met together with
the leaders of the European avant-garde (Matisse, Picasso,
Braque, Léger, etc.), giving life to one of the greatest
creative periods of the 20th Century.

Immagine: Beinecke Library, Yale University