Conversation in a Limousine, from Montbrison to Saint-Étienne

After the early death of the little-known but extraordinarily promising French poet Henry J.-M. Levet, Valery Larbaud and Léon-Paul Fargue visited with Levet’s parents in the city of Montbrison. In a recorded conversation, they describe their visit, and in a subsequent drive of about thirty miles’ length they describe their own youth in Paris, what Levet and his poetry meant to them, and their plans to publish what they could assemble of his work. Their account is notable in that subsequently both of these poets would become significant figures in French literary culture, and their memory of Levet is one of very few on record. Levet’s poetry appeared in a book, Cartes Postales, that Larbaud and Fargue assembled; first appearing in 1921, the book was republished by Gallimard in 1942 and has never since been out of print. This translation is the first into English of a potentially important literary document revealing the characters and biographical backgrounds of three exceptional talents during the watershed of early French modernism

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