Draft of a poem written by Michel Butor (ca. 1950). Michel Butor (born 1926) is a French novelist and essayist, one of the leading exponents of the nouveau roman (“new novel”), the avant-garde French novel that emerged in the 1950s. Butor, who regarded the novel as a blend of philosophy and poetry, owed much in his fiction to the influence of James Joyce. This document seems to have been written in collaboration with Bernard Dufour. Bernard Dufour (born 1922) is a French painter. He was notable for abstract painting after the Second World War, and later for portraits and human figures.