Book of the Week — Colours of Persia

26 Monday Dec 2016

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airbrush, Barcham Green, Baskerville, Bembo, calligraphy, carborundum, collages, color, crayon, Curzon, cut-outs, drypoint, English, etchings, Farsi, foldouts, Garamond Italic, goatskin, gold foil, Hafez, inlaid leather, Isfahan, Ker Porter, letterpress, linocuts, London, Mashad, onlays, Persia, Prix de Rome, Richard de Bas, Saadi, Shiraz, silver foil, Susan Allix, Tehran, tilework, University of Utah, watercolor, Yazd

Although I have no beauty, colour & perfume
Am I not after all the grass of His garden?”
— Saadi

COLOURS OF PERSIA: PERCEPTIONS, ACCOUNTS…
Susan Allix (b. 1943)
London, 2007
N7433.4 A57 C65 2007

From the artist: “The text is arranged around the headings of five cities – Tehran, Mashad, Yazd, Shiraz and Isfahan. These names are printed in English in 48pt. Garamond Italic and Farsi, which was cast in Tehran. Different typefaces have been used for the different voices of the authors: Ker Porter speaks in Bembo, Curzon in Baskerville, Hafez in varying sizes of Garamond.
Handset and letterpress printed on handmade Barcham Green. The paper for the prints is handmade Richard de Bas. Twenty-six prints, of which seventeen are etchings with drypoint, carborundum and other methods, seven are linocuts, and two are a combination of two or more of these processes. Four prints in black and white, the rest in color, including hand coloring by watercolor, crayon and airbrush, and gold and silver foil.
Additionally illustrated with some foldouts of varying sizes, including some with cut-out shapes. A variety of colored sheets act as interleaving or free colored collages.
Bound in goatskin, some of which has been dyed cobalt blue and yellow. The inlaid leather is also inlaid with waxed paper printed in a style similar to tilework, its semi-transparent quality allowing the title to show through in shadow. The design, based on architectural shapes, has onlays of black, freely-cut leather reminiscent of calligraphy. Within the edition, each binding differs slightly.”
This is the forty-fifth publication of Susan Allix, who has received the Prix de Rome for her book work. Edition of twenty-five copies, signed by the producer. University of Utah copy is no. 9.

A Christmas Mystery

25 Sunday Dec 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Uncategorized

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angels, Christmas, Elston Press, faith, gilt, handmade paper, Helen Marguerite O'Kane, leather inlays, marbled endpapers, New Rochelle, New York, Sir Galahad, William Morris

“Enter Two Angels in white, with scarlet wings;
aso, Four Ladies in gowns of red and green; also
an Angel, bearing in his hands a surcoat of white,
with a red cross.”

SIR GALAHAD, A CHRISTMAS MYSTERY
William Morris (1834-1896)
New Rochelle, NY: The Elston Press, 1902

Originally published in 1859, this was William Morris’s first published poem in book form. The poem, about the reaffirmation of a doubted faith, was illustrated by Helen Marguerite O’Kane (1879-1927) and printed in black and red by her husband, Clarke Conwell. Decorated borders and two full-page pictures illustrate the text. The typesetting of this book is somewhat controversial. Early critics called it ostentatious. Later, others argued that the page size carries the bold, striking type well. Printed on handmade paper. This copy is bound in full green crushed morocco. The spine is gilt with raised bands decorated with gilt borders with floral designs. Leather inlays are on the front and back covers. Gilt also borders the inside covers over marbled endpapers. Edition of one hundred and eighty copies.

We recommend — Saints at Devil’s Gate: Landscapes along the Mormon Trail

21 Wednesday Dec 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Recommended Exhibition, Recommended Reading

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Angelina Hawkins, Ann Agatha Walker Pratt, art, artist, book, Brigham Young, Byron C. Andreasen, catalog, Church History Museum, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, drawings, editor, emigrant, England, English, engravings, exhibition, France, Frederick Hawkins Piercy, Hampshire, James Linforth, Jersey, John Burton, journals, landscapes, Laura Allred Hurtado, Liverpool, London, Mary Pugh Scott, Millenial Star, Mormon, Mormon Trail, New Orleans, newspaper, Orson Pratt, paintings, Paris, portraiture, Portsea, proselytizing, Royal Academy of Arts, Saints at Devil's Gate, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake Valley, ship, Suffolk Street Gallery of the Society of British Artists, The Church Historian's Office Press, Utah, Wallace Stegner, woodcuts

“For aren’t we all on a journey that tries our faith, tests our courage, makes us vulnerable, and at times defeats us and blisters our soul?”
— Laura Allred Hurtado

Saints at Devil’s Gate: Landscapes along the Mormon Trail
Laura Allred Hurtado and Byron C. Andreasen
Salt Lake City, UT: The Church Historian’s Office Press, 2016

Catalog to accompany an exhibition of the same name at the Church History Museum in Salt Lake City. The exhibition is free and open to the public and runs through August 2017. An online exhibit is also available at history.lds.org.

“…if courage and endurance make a story, if human kindness and helpfulness and brotherly love in the midst of raw horror are worth recording, this…is one of the great tales of the West and of America.”
— Wallace Stegner, quoted in the Curator’s Essay.

Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake Valley Illustrated with Steel Engravings and Wood Cuts from Sketches…
Frederick Hawkins Piercy (1839-1891)
Liverpool: F. D. Richards; London: Latter-Day Saints’ Book Depot, 1854
First edition
E166 P65

“Frederick Piercy was the eighth of nine children born in Portsea, Hampshire, England. He joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on March 23, 1848, and a year later, he married Angelina Hawkins, also a convert. When Piercy was twenty and his wife was expecting their first child, he left for a short mission to Paris, France. In addition to proselytizing, he produced artwork and can be considered a predecessor to the Paris art missionaries who came years later.

“Piercy was an artist know for portraiture and landscapes, and he exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts and at the Suffolk Street Gallery of the Society of British Artists in London prior to leaving for the Salt Lake Valley. In 1853, then twenty-three years old, Piercy left England aboard the emigrant ship Jersey, which was headed for New Orleans. He and James Linforth, an editor for the Mormon newspaper Millennial Star, published a collection of engravings and woodcuts made from Piercy’s drawings, paintings, and journals in the book Route from Liverpool to Great Salt Lake Valley. Instead of remaining in Utah like many others, Piercy returned to England shortly after his trip. By April 1857, after refusing to return to the Salt Lake Valley at the behest of both Brigham Young and Orson Pratt, Piercy and his wife left the Mormon faith.”
— Laura Allred Hurtado

— New Beginnings, John Burton, 2016 oil on canvas, from Saints at Devil’s Gate

“I never shall forget the last day we traveled, and arrived in the Valley… When my eyes rested on the beautiful entrancing sight — the Valley; Oh! how my heart swelled within me, I could have laughed and cried, such a comingling [sic] of emotions I cannot describe…No doubt our valley looks astonishingly beautiful to the strangers who come here now, but it cannot evoke the same emotions as it did to us, poor weary tired, worn out, ragged travelers.” — Ann Agatha Walker Pratt

“Behind us now are the heart aches and many thousands of silent tears that fell on the long unknown trail.” — Mary Pugh Scott
–from Saints at Devil’s Gate

A fine piece of early Americana and a very fine gift

20 Tuesday Dec 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Donations

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almanac, American, American Antiquarian Society, American Revolution, Americana, battles, Benjamin Franklin, bibles, bindery, books, bookstores, Boston, broadsides, Caleb Alexander, Charles River, collector, Concord, dictionaries, Dr. Ronald Rubin, English, Greek, Greek New Testament, history, independence, Isaiah Thomas, John Mill, Lexington, literature, London, Maryland, Massachusetts, medicine, music, Newburyport, newspaper, Nova Scotia, Oxford, pamphlets, paper mill, printer, printing history, rare books, Ronald Rubin, sedition, Vermont, Virgil, war, Worcester, Yale University

HE KAINE DIATHEKE, NOVUM TESTAMENTUM
Wigorniae, Massachusettensi: excudebat Isaias Thomas, Jun, 1800
Editio Prima Americana

This is the first American printing of the Greek New Testament, considered a milestone in American printing history.

Isaiah Thomas’ printing shop was dubbed “the sedition factory,” during the American Revolution. Thomas moved his press from Boston across the Charles River to Worcester in order to avoid confiscation by British troupes. His press reassembled, Thomas remained in Worcester for the rest of his life, printing the first reports of the battles of Lexington and Concord (“Americans! – – – Liberty or Death! – – – Join or Die!”) and continuing to print until he sold his business in 1802.

Isaiah Thomas was born in Boston in 1749. Thomas was apprenticed to a printer, at the age of six, after the death of his father. He stayed for ten years, then broke his bond and headed to London, much as Benjamin Franklin had done earlier. Thomas got as far as Nova Scotia, where he stayed to print a newspaper. After six months, he was sent packing because of his anti-Stamp Act actions. After another foray, this time to the south, Thomas returned to Boston to set up his own newspaper, The Massachusetts Spy. At the same time, he began what would become a lucrative printing business, which included an almanac and the Royal American Magazine, in 1774.

After the war for independence was won, Thomas built his press into an enterprise that included a bindery, a paper mill and bookstores from Vermont to Maryland. In 1773, he established the first press in Newburyport, Massachusetts, at the request of some of its citizens. He printed books on medicine, music, history, and literature; and printed spellers, dictionaries, and bibles. Caleb Alexander (1755-1828), a graduate of Yale University, worked with Thomas as editor for his first American editions of Virgil and other works in Greek, including He kaine diatheke. Alexander based his edition on a 1707 Oxford edition by English scholar John Mill (1645-1707).

Thomas retired around 1802, about two years after his printing of He kaine diatheke. He spent the rest of his life collecting printed American works – books, pamphlets, broadsides, almanacs, and newspapers. He used these as primary sources for his History of Printing in America, published in 1810. He donated his collection to the American Antiquarian Society, an institution he organized in order to provide a home for print material from early American history.

This is the most recent of numerous gifts throughout the years from Dr. Ronald Rubin, a collector, like Isaiah Thomas, of early Americana and a very fine friend of Rare Books. Thank you, Dr. Rubin!

Book of the Week — Color for the Letterpress

19 Monday Dec 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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color, Colorado Springs, James Trissel, letterpress, The Press at Colorado College, University of Utah

“The simplest color relationship…still requires understanding of the color characteristics…that is, hue, value, intensity and temperature, etc.”
–James Trissel

COLOR FOR THE LETTERPRESS
James Trissel
Colorado Springs: The Press at Colorado College, 1987
NE1850 T75 1987

Twenty unnumbered, unbound folded leaves issued in plastic and wooden cases. Edition of seventy-five copies, signed by the author. University of Utah copy is no. 11.

On this day, 1798 Independent Chronicle

17 Saturday Dec 2016

Posted by scott beadles in Donations

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America, Boston, Britain, Burgoyne, Cupid, Egypt, England, France, Independent Chronicle and Universal Advertiser, India, Italy, Mars, Massachusetts, Napoleon Buonaparte, Nathaniel Willis, Philenia, Powars and Willis, Ronald Rubin, Saratoga, Venus

“In every country whatever, he who violates a woman is a monster.”

The Independent Chronicle and Universal Advertiser
Nathaniel Willis, publisher
Boston, MA: Powars and Willis, 1776
v. 30: no. 1852 (1798: Dec. 17-20)
AN2 A2 I49

Miscellany

—————–

For The Chronicle

To the virtuous Females in the United States

“In every country whatever, he who violates a woman is a monster”

-Buonaparte to his soldiers

This exalted sentiment must endear the immortal Buonaparte to every female throughout the world – more particularly to the virtuous part of that sex in America, whose accomplishments have exalted them to the highest elevation, in every circle wherein delicacy and refinement are estimated.—While this Hero is engaged in the arduous services of the Camp, he is not unmindful of those duties, which as a man and a citizen he is bound to discharge. With what indignation must this amiable sex in America, hear the invectives heaped on the Armies of France, and the praises bestowed on those of Britain? In what instance, did a British General guard his Soldiery against such horrid practices?—While a Burgoyne was spreading the alarm of havoc, and destruction through every cottage in the interior; while he was painting the distressing scene of savages let loose upon our frontiers; While the frantic mother, was clasping her disconsolate daughter to her bosom, and the bloody tomahawk was anticipated as uplifted to fever them in their affectionate embrace. While the premeditated carnage was promulgated in the sanguinary proclamation of this British commander—at this important period, my fair countrywoman, how did your bosoms throb with convulsions at the dreadful issue of his progress! Your Habitations destroyed! Your Parents massacred, and yourselves the Victims of the brutal lust of an unprincipled Soldiery.— These were your fears while the Army of Burgoyne were making inroads into your country.—These were your apprehensions while the troops of England were moving with hostile menaces towards the Cottages of Saratoga.

How different was the conduct of the British Generals in America, to that of Buonaparte in Egypt! Instead of exciting the Soldiery to burn Towns and Cities—instead inflaming their passions to trespass on the sanctity of female virtue—instead of alarming the anxious feelings of the tender mother, or, causing the timid bosom of a virtuous daughter to palpitate with terrific apprehensions: The magnanimous Buonaparte, no less displays the martial energy of a Soldier, than the tender sensibility of a guardian. Amid his anxious cares as a general, he is not inattentive to the kind of pattronage of a protector. Amid the shouts of a victorious Army, he proclaims in accents more sonorous than their huzzas, “that WHOEVER VIOLATES A WOMAN IS A MONSTER.”—In this noble and generous sentiment he unites the Camp of Mars, with the Temple of Venus. His cannon became the bow and his shot the arrows of Cupid.

While contemplating the highly esteemed reputation of Buonaparte, as it respects his honor, fidelity and attachment to the fair sex, we cannot but contrast it with the character of one, whose military appointment has led to many eulogiums in case a War should commence between France and America. While Buonaparte is anxious for the tranquility of the Egyptian Women, the American Hero has even blasted the happiness of a virtuous Wife and Children, by publicly revealing his detestable deeds.—Compare my fair Citizens the two characters—and in every circle where you hear of Bounaparte, remember the man, who wickedly committed the Crime, and then sacrificed the tender feelings of his Family, by furnishing a document of the fact, which the sensibility of a Husband and a Parent ought ever to revolt at!—Can this man, at the head of his Army, ever use the language of Buonaparte? If he should, his own blushes, would penetrate with that firey pungency, as to occasion an explosion of the whole magazines within his camp. For the man who is capable of violating the confidence of a woman, must be destitute of every principle which secures her protection.

The generous sentiment of Buonaparte must even assure him the affectional attachment of the Ladies:– And they must reprobate those, who, in their hearing should speak disrespectfully of the conqueror of Tyrants, and the protector of Women.

Let the delicate pen of Philenia resound the praises of a Buonaparte: On this topic may her poetic sublimity become equally as immortalized as the fame of the Conqueror of Italy. While contemplating the exalted theme, every female breast must beat with rapturous transports, and every voice join in reiterated plaudits, in celebrating the Virtues of the Man, who declares amid the ravage of a Camp, that “WHOEVER VIOLATES A WOMAN IS A MONSTER.”

These are thy trophies immortal Buonaparte! Should you even fail in the conquest of India, your declaration on the borders of Egypt, will enrich your memory beyond the most sumptuous acquisitions of the Earth.

A REPUBLICAN.

Rare Books issues of the Independent Chronicle and Universal Advertiser gift of Dr. Ronald Rubin.

On Jon’s Desk: Snow and Snow Flowers, poetry for a snowy winter’s day

13 Tuesday Dec 2016

Posted by Jonathan Bingham in On Jon's Desk

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Canticle Press, Jarmila and Ian Milner, Lorraine Ferra, poetry, Sandra Hoben, Snow, Snow Flowers, The Snow Fort, The Westigan Review, Vladimir Holan

“It’s warm there, you cook yourself something, drink wine
and look out of the window at your friend eternity.”
– Vladimir Holan, Snow

Title: Snow

Author: Vladimir Holan

Printed: Canticle Press, with permission from Penguin Books Ltd., 1971

Edition of 100 copies

Translation: Jarmila and Ian Milner, 1971

Call Number: Z232.5 C3 H65

Title: Snow Flowers

Author: Sandra Hoben

Printed: Canticle Press, for the Westigan Review, 1979

Printer: Lorraine Ferra

Edition of 75; University of Utah’s copy is number 50.

Call Number: Z232.5 C3 H63

“Under the cloud cover,
sky and snow swirl together
without shadow,
I give into the speed.”
– Sandra Hoben, Snow Flowers

“I build a snow fort
under the apple tree,
with bridges and canopies.”
– Sandra Hoben, The Snow Fort

Snow has finally fallen at the University of Utah, kicking off the ’16-17 winter season. With temperatures in the teens and twenties, we need something to warm our hearts. Which is why we went in search of these amazing poems. So grab a blanket and let these poems, beautifully printed by Canticle Press, warm you up while you look out the window as the snow falls.

For more information about Vladimir Holan, visit this page:

http://mypoeticside.com/poets/vladimir-holan-poems#block-gallery-poet

Sandra Hoben’s poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies, including Alaska Quarterly Review, Antioch Review, Estero, Field, How Much Earth: The Fresno Poets, Ironwood, Partisan Review, Quarterly West, Tangled Vines, Three Rivers Poetry Journal, and Western Humanities Review, and in a chapbook, Snow Flowers from Westigan Press. She has taught at World College West, University of Utah, and in California and Utah Poets-in-the-Schools programs. Born in Waterbury, Connecticut, she inherited her wanderlust from her great-grandmother, Mary Murphy, who had traveled from Dublin to New England, but who was never able to make it all the way to Los Angeles.

http://www.speechlessthemagazine.org/take4.htm

Lorraine Ferra was born and raised in Vallejo, California, a seaport on the east side of the San Francisco Bay. At the age of nineteen, Lorraine’s mother died of cancer. This loss left her directionless, overturning her desire to become a newspaper columnist and leading her to the decision to enter the convent. She was a nun for seven years, majoring in theology and education and eventually teaching in Catholic schools. After leaving the convent, she was offered a position as curriculum director in the Salt Lake City Diocese. While living in Salt Lake, she pursued seminars in modern and contemporary poetry and creative writing under the directorship of the poet, Robert Mezey, at the University of Utah. She was accepted to the Utah Arts Council’s Poets-in-the-Schools program and was awarded a Utah Arts Council Award in Literature.

-Contributed by Jon Bingham, Rare Books Curator

Book of the Week — A Grammar of Color

12 Monday Dec 2016

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advertising, Alfred H. Munsell, Arthur S. Allen, balance, behaviour, color, color system, dimension, Fortune Magazine, grammar, Massachusetts, mathematics, Mittineague, Munsell System of Color, paper trade, printing, proportion, quality, Rudolph Ruzicka, Strathmore Paper Company, Thomas M. Cleland

“The sense of comfort is the outcome of balance, while marked unbalance immediately urges a corrective. That this approximate balance is desirable may be shown by reference to our behavior, as to temperatures, quality of smoothness and roughness, degrees of light and dark, proportion of work and rest. One special application of this quality is balance which underlies beautiful color.”
— A. H. Munsell

“The three dimensions of color are not involved in the mysteries of higher mathematics. There is nothing about them which should not be as readily comprehended by the average reader as the three dimensions of a box, or any other form which can be felt or seen. We have been unaccustomed to regarding color with any sense of order and it is this fact, rather than any complexity inherent in the idea itself, which will be the source of whatever difficulty may be encountered by the reader, who faces this conception of color for the first time.”
— T. M. Cleland

A GRAMMAR OF COLOR. ARRANGEMENTS OF…
Thomas Maitland Cleland (1880-1964)
Mittineague, MA: The Strathmore Paper Co., 1921
QC495 C7 1921

Thomas Cleland wrote and designed this manual of color, funded by the Strathmore Paper Company. He suggested nearly endless options, good and bad, for printing various colored inks onto colored papers. Twenty-six paper samples from Strathmore were provided in a separate envelope at the back of the book for experimentation. Soon after publication of this book Cleland became the art director for Fortune Magazine. Cleland’s text, with diagrams, explains the dynamics of the color system developed by theorist Alfred H. Munsell, who introduces Cleland’s essay. Munsell died just before the publication of the book.

A. H. Munsell devoted his life perfecting his Munsell System of Color. This is the first presentation of his system to the printing, advertising and paper trade. Nineteen folding color-printed specimens demonstrate color combinations.

Arthur S. Allen selected and arranged the color sheets.

Two plates engraved by artist and type designer Rudolph Ruzicka (1883-1978) depict balanced and unbalanced color schemes. Born in the Czech Republic, Ruzicka worked as a consultant to Mergenthaler Linotype Company for fifty years. He contributed illustrations to books published by the Grolier Club, Lakeside Press, and Overbrook Press. He collaborated with D. B. Updike on the design of several books for Merrymount Press.

Book of the Week — De coloribus libellus

05 Monday Dec 2016

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animals, color, color theory, Empedocles, Florence, Florentinae, Isaac Newton, Laurentii Torrentini, Loeb Classical Library, medicine, Neapolitan, philosopher, Piza, plants, Pseudo Aristotle, scientist, Simone Porzio (1497-1554), soul, vellum

“Those colours are simple which belong to the elements, fire, air, water and earth. For air and water are naturally white in themselves, while fire and the sun are golden. The earth is also naturally white, but seems coloured because it is dyed. This becomes clear when we consider ashes; for they become white when the moisture which caused their dyeing is burned out of them; but not completely so, for they are also dyed by smoke, which is black. In the same way sand becomes golden, because the fiery red and black tints the water. The colour black belongs to the elements of things while they are undergoing a transformation of their nature. But the other colours are evidently due to mixture, when they are blended with each other. For darkness follows when light fails. — Loeb Classical Library translation

DE COLORIBUS LIBELLVS A SIMONE PORTIO…
Pseudo Aristotele (384 BC – 322 BC)
Florentinae: ex officina Laurentii Torrentini, 1548
Editio princips

This is perhaps the earliest work on color theory, attributed to Aristotle, who took his ideas from Empedocles and went a step further, creating a base line occupied by seven colors. Aristotle’s base line was applied to all color-systems up to the time of Isaac Newton. His assumption was to represent colors as actual characteristics of the surface of bodies and not as subjective phenomena produced by the eye or in the brain as a result of the properties of light. Aristotle observed colors very accurately, as well as their contrasts. He noted, for instance, that the violet appearing on white wool appeared different when on black wool and that colors appeared different in daylight than in candlelight. Only much later were these phenomena systematically examined and explained.

This edition was translated and edited with extensive scholarly commentary by Simone Porzio (1497-1554), a Neapolitan philosopher and scientist who was a fanatical disciple of Pomponazzi. Porzio eventually gave up lecturing on medicine at Piza and his scientific studies to focus on studying philosophy. Porzio denied immortality in all forms and taught that the human soul is homogeneous with the soul of animals and plants.

Binding is old vellum with a red leather lettering piece.

A Fulbright Scholar Returns Bearing Gifts

01 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Donations

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Adolfo Bioy Casares, Argentina, bookstores, Bueno Aires, culture, English, Fulbright Scholar, H. Bustos Domecq, history, Jorge Luis Borges, language, Latin America, literature, Lyuba Basin, Magic Realism, milongas, Para Las Seis Cuerdas, short stories, solidarity, Sur, tango, The Invention of Morel

Rich in imagery and fantastical in nature, La Trama Celeste by Adolfo Bioy Casares and Para Las Seis Cuerdas by Jorge Luis Borges are the two newest additions to the Rare Books Latin American collection.

Every country has a history – that is certain. If we are too young to know our history through life and experience, textbooks can only try to educate us a little further. Unfortunately, the academic rhetoric of such books distances us from the very roots of history, the emotional and personal connections between a country and its citizens where the story of a culture is revealed. This story can only be found within the language of literature.

Recently, I was looking for the story of Argentina. As I walked along the sidewalks of the capital city in the interior province of Córdoba, the modern roads and upscale storefronts clashed with the colonial architecture of the popular Jesuit churches. It was the Jesuit Order which founded the oldest university in the country, and gave Córdoba city the nickname, “The Learned One.”

In order for me to learn more about this country, I had to explore the hidden nooks and crannies which veered off main roads. These quiet alleyways acted as a personal time machine and led me even further into the history of Argentina, into old bookstores covered in dust and filled with the smell of lingering memories and dreams.

My presence in the small bookstore on Avenida 9 de Julio was initially ignored, much like many of the old photographs and postcards that had been lost or forgotten. I lingered quietly in between the stacks of books for a while, before I decided to formally introduce myself to the two old men drinking mate at the counter.

“Hola, soy de los Estados Unidos y trabajo con la biblioteca de la Universidad de Utah, en el departmento de los libros raros. Me interesa encontrar primeras ediciones de Borges y Bioy Casares. Pueden ayudarme?”

My newly acquired Argentine accent complimented my foreign mystique, and led the owner to realize that I wasn’t merely a tourist passing by. His eyes opened wide and he smiled, directing me to sit in a dusty chair and wait. Espera. I settled in to the soft, velvet cushions, excited by the all the fragile pages of the venerable books around me. That excitement I felt was elevated to extremes when the owner returned with a dozen or more first edition books and set them in front of the chair. Para vos, he said, for you.

One such book was La Trama Celeste by Buenos Aires writer, Adolfo Bioy Casares.

La Trama Celeste
Adolfo Bioy Casares
Buenos Aires: Sur, 1948
First Edition

In Memory of Paulina:
I always wanted Paulina. In one of my first memories, Paulina and I are hidden in a dark gazebo of laurels, in a garden with two stone lions. Paulina said to me: I like the blue, I like the grapes, I like the ice, I like the roses, I like the white horses. I understood that my happiness had begun, because in these preferences I could identify myself with Paulina. It seemed so miraculous to us that in a book about the final meeting of the souls in the soul of the world, my friend wrote in the margin: Ours already met. “Ours” at that time, meant hers and mine.

Translated into English as The Celestial Plot, this collection of short stories was first published in December 1948. By this time, Bioy Casares had already made a name for himself with the release of his novella The Invention of Morel (1940). In addition to his renowned literary works, his fame was elevated by his longstanding friendship with the Argentina’s literary hero, Jorge Luis Borges.

While both working with Sur magazine in the early 1930’s, the two writers met and before long transformed their friendship into a series of collaborative works, often published under the name of H. Bustos Domecq. Over the years, Bioy Casares and Borges, among others, worked to develop the growing genre of philosophical literature in Latin America, sometimes vaguely defined as Magic Realism, connecting dreams and reality through mazes, mirrors and memories, while consistently begging the question of identity.

Within an elite circle of intellectuals, the famous fantastical writers might have seemed impervious to the desolate reality of political, economic and social decline outside the walls of the publishing house. However, it was never too far from reach. Between the lines of their collected literary works the influence of their country’s politics can easily be seen.

In Borges’ collection of poetry Para Las Seis Cuerdas (For the Six Strings) the history of Argentina is depicted in a series of 11 milongas, folkloric songs written in the style of the famous Argentine tango.

Para Las Seis Cuerdas
Jorge Luis Borges
Illustrated by Héctor Basaldúa
Buenos Aires, Emecé Editores, 1965
First Edition
Edition of 3,000

Someone Speaks of the Tango
Tango that I have seen dancing
Against a yellow sunset
By those who were able
Of another dance, that of the knife.

Tango from that Maldonado
With less water than mud;
Tango whistling in passing
From the side of the car.

Carefree and loose,
You always looked straight ahead,
Tango you were the one
To be a man and to be brave.

Tango you were happy,
Like I have been as well,
According to my memory,
Which is a little forgetful.

Since that yesterday, how many things
Have happened to us both;
The games and the regret
To love and not be loved.

I will have died and you will continue
Bordering our life;
Buenos Aires does not forget you
Tango that you were and will be

The tango is just one of the cultural phenomena written within Argentina’s diverse history, a history which asks all those who are part of it, or wish to study it, to participate in a continuous conversation. This conversation must include many countries, cultures and languages. Unlike common textbooks, the language of literature provides us with the key to get the very core of history and culture. Unlike textbooks, literature helps define solidarity and shows us how similar we truly are.

Contributed by Lyuba Basin, Rare Books Assistant and graduate student in World Languages and Culture at the University of Utah, who also provided the translations.

Editor’s note: Welcome home, Lyuba and thank you for your gifts!

OPEN BOOK

~ News from the Rare Books Department of Special Collections at the J. Willard Marriott Library, The University of Utah

Monthly Archives: December 2016

Book of the Week — Colours of Persia

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A Christmas Mystery

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We recommend — Saints at Devil’s Gate: Landscapes along the Mormon Trail

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A fine piece of early Americana and a very fine gift

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Book of the Week — Color for the Letterpress

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On this day, 1798 Independent Chronicle

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On Jon’s Desk: Snow and Snow Flowers, poetry for a snowy winter’s day

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Book of the Week — A Grammar of Color

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Book of the Week — De coloribus libellus

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A Fulbright Scholar Returns Bearing Gifts

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