Jacques PRÉVERT – Autograph manuscript – “Pater Noster”. 1945.

Jacques Prévert (1900.1977).

Autograph manuscript – Lord's Prayer

Two large quarto pages on graph paper.

No place or date [1945]

Superb working manuscript of the poet, composed of nearly fifty verses and marginal notes.

This original text presents a much enriched version of the poem that would be published in his collection Paroles in 1946.

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Our Father who art in Heaven

Stay here
and we'll stay on Earth.

which is sometimes so lovely
with its New York mysteries
that are just as good as those of the Trinity

with its small Ourcq canal
and its Great Wall of China

its Morlaix river

his Cambrai nonsense
with his Pacific Ocean

and its two basins in the Tuileries Gardens
, with its good children

and its bad subjects
with the wonders of the world

which are there offered to everyone

scattered
and amazed themselves to be such wonders

and who dare not admit it to themselves,
like a pretty naked girl who dares not show herself

with the appalling misfortunes of the world

with the crooked

….