ONE OF 8 FIRST EDITIONS ON OLD WHITE JAPON, this one of 6 containing a suite of full-page drawings on white japan, numbered II to VII (no. II)

Copy complete with the author's note on a flyleaf beginning: "A sudden weariness made us abandon 'Querelle', which was already unraveling."

"Let's see, my dear Clergue. Maybe I'm crazy, but what you're asking me for isn't a few cries - you're asking me for specific things and never in any of your letters do you say what they are. "Help me" - that's understood. I'll help you. But you have to understand the exact situation: I don't have any texts from you. Nothing, except huge packets of beautiful, moving photographs. You know how much it costs to publish a book of photographs - that all photographers break their noses at it, and that in any case it would require a choice in this block that only you can afford. I have the idea that I'm missing an element that you believe is in my hands (probably a text). This is probably the source of our disagreement. If I could see you, everything would become very simple. The best thing would be to wait until I'm in St Jean and arrange a meeting. I wouldn't want to appear deaf or vague-eyed for the world. But let's be precise! One day I received the considerable package from the Harlequins - (with nothing to tell me what you wanted from me other than an admiration that is yours at first sight). Then letters in which you spoke of Picasso's enthusiasm - without underlining to me "what he had never seen analogous" either in the image or in the spirit that directs them. I'd like you to write to me as if to a donkey (and I am a donkey): "That's what I want! - you speak: (what I would write about myself) and what the exhibition would consist of, for which it might be possible for me to find a solution to the ignoble problem of our time: money

Beautiful poem of 10 lines, in brown ink, with erasures and corrections, evoking Lucien Clergue's photographs of nudes in the waves

Beautiful text on Lucien Clergue's photographs

Original drawing

Large profile in blue ballpoint pen

Profile in blue pen enhanced in pencil

Black pencil drawing of a poster showing a Provençal woman in profile, with fish-shaped eyes