If literary practices away from the book do not completely succeed in marginalizing the book object, they nevertheless invite us to look critically on the latter, through making the gap between book and text more perceptible, in confering, in opposition to all the virtual dimensions of literature, a greater importance to its material dimension. Deprived of the evidence of its status, the book becomes a rather strange object the medium of which triggers questions. This study is devoted to Le Devoir, the first collection signed by Paul Eluard, a leaflet which was printed under a no-title beige cover in 1916.