Le mur du son

In 1953, publisher/poet Pierre Seghers published a remarkable poem, Le mur du son (The sound barrier): a nicely produced 'concertina book' on Auvergne paper, printed in red, green and black in an edition of 500 copies.

But this poem is not just a poem; it is above all a political statement, a manifesto. Seghers, who played a central role in the poetry of the French resistance, made his strong reservations about the utopian communist ideals clear in four strophes:

'Nous avons pris la lunette des guillotines

Pour un soleil et le regard en couperet

N’est pas une image'

('We had mistaken the mouth of the guillotine / For a sun and the view of the falling blade / Is not an image')

His good friends, the decidedly communist writer couple Louis Aragon and Elsa Triolet, reacted in shock to the venomous publication, in which he observed that the world was considered coherent and that the brain contained electronics ('Nous avons appelé l'univers coherent / Mais nos cervelles devenaient électroniques'). Seghers realised what kind of reactions he was causing. In this copy, he wrote a dedication in the back (to painter couple Philippe and Liliane Morisson): 'ce tract qui m'a valu bien des misères'. His friendship with Aragon and Triolet survived, but Seghers would remain suspicious towards politics and its destructive influence on relationships. The text would never be reprinted, with the exception of a Bulgarian edition from 1976.