ALEIXANDRE, Vicente.
Historia del Corazón.
Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 1954.
8vo, pp. 207; some off-setting to title; contemporary ownership note to title dated Manila 1954; uncut in the original illustrated wrappers by Manuel Benet and Manuel Mampaso, spine worn and chipped at foot, front hinge cracking.
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Historia del Corazón.
First edition of this important work by the Nobel prize-winning poet.
‘Aleixandre is one of the few poets of this century who managed to rise and find something above the emptiness. The shift was fairly dramatic. It came with The Story of the Heart (1954). Aleixandre does not lose his gloominess in this book, but despair becomes only one of the tones his voice can take, a part of the register, not the whole song. The bulk of the book affirms human fellowship, a spiritual unity, friendliness. He has written that it “was begun as a work of love in the strict sense”. From there it opens outward to a world of people. It makes his early books seem almost reticent’ (Lewis Hyde, in the introduction to A Longing for the light, selected poems of Vicente Aleixandre, 1979).
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Izbrannye stikhi russkikh poetov. Seriia sbornikov po temam. Rossiia [Selections of verse by Russian poets. A series of collections by theme. Russia].
First edition of a patriotic anthology of poems on the theme of ‘Russia’, organised chronologically from Odoevsky to Kliuev. The theme is religiously adhered to, with contributions from both dead and living authors, including, as well as those listed above, Aksakov, Bely, Soloviev, Fofanov, Sologub, Briusov, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Sasha Cherny, etc. Ehrenburg was then in exile in Paris, and the two poems by him here (written 1912-3) appear for the first time in Russia.
JABÈS, Edmond.
Les Pieds en l’Air. Poèmes précedés d’une lettre de Max Jacob. Couverture et dessins de Mayo.
First edition. One of 200 unnumbered copies on papier bouffant, part of a total edition of 373 copies. ‘… The Cairo/Alexandria journal La Semaine Égyptienne became Jabès’s publisher with Maman in 1932 and Les Pieds en l’air and Arches poétiques in 1934 and 1935. These are taller and slimmer than the Figuière books with their flat spines. All are illustrated, and rules, both single and double, abound on covers and pages. Each carries a full, French tirage showing that it was possible for Jabès to offer and inscribe copies on special papers (Antique White Laid, Antique Blue Laid) to family, friends, fellow poets, and critics. Les Pieds en l’air is the most advanced of the three. Illustrated with nightmare line drawings by the surrealist artist Mayo, each page of the book is bracketed with double rules at head and foot, and the poem titles are printed in bold face within rule boxes’ (Stoddard, p. 6).