Folio 57 of the manuscript of Tombeau pour cinq cent mille soldats (Tomb for Five Hundred Thousand Soldiers)

“I wrote the first canto once I finished the book at the end of December 1965. I was certain of having “given it all”, but, as far as my literary survival was concerned, and the survival of my manuscripts, I did not pay that much attention to it. I have a deep rejection of suppression: one could think that I wanted to keep the crossed text readable. For any human work, we are to keep a trace, a shadow: that is the palimpsest. I also find that restful to write on something already written, to write on the old version; but without any notion of conserving the manuscript.” Pierre Guyotat