RILKE, Rainer Maria.
Les Fenêtres. Dix poèmes de Rainer Maria Rilke illustrés de dix eaux-fortes par Baladine.
Paris, Officina Sanctandreana, 1927.
4to, title printed in red and black, ff. [24], with 10 etched plates by Baladine (see below); title printed in red and black with woodcut Sanctandreana device; some light offsetting but a good copy, uncut in the original printed wrappers, spine renewed, edges of covers marked from an earlier repair.
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Les Fenêtres. Dix poèmes de Rainer Maria Rilke illustrés de dix eaux-fortes par Baladine.
First edition, numbered 146 of 500 copies on pur fil, of a total edition of 515. A series of ten poems in French addressed by Rilke to his lover ‘Mouky’ or ‘Baladine’ Klossowska, who herself provided the illustrations. Elisabeth Dorothea Klossowska née Spiro (1886–1969) met Rilke in 1919, and became his companion until his death in 1926. Rilke addressed her by the pet name ‘Merline’ in their correspondence, which was published after his death.
‘The evenings spent with Baladine in quiet talk looking out of windows in Geneva and Bern first inspired Rilke to begin a series of French poems he was to entitle Les Fenêtres [Windows], a collection that grew over the next four years and was published posthumously in 1927 with drawings by Baladine. At this moment, knowing of her growing love of his verse, [he sought] to serenade her in the language closest to her’ (Ralph Freedman, Life of a poet: Rainer Maria Rilke, p. 457).
Ritzer E72; Wilpert/Gühring 45.