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Tag Archives: English

Book of the Week — The Song of Roland

26 Monday Jun 2017

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Battle of Roncevaux, Bruce Rogers, Cambridge, Cathedral de Chartres, chanson de geste, Charlemagne, chivalry, English, EPIC, French, gilt, Isabel Butler, medieval, Old French, printer's device, Roland, roundels, Song of Roland, stained glass, The Riverside Press, Turoldus, vignette

PQ1521-E5-B8-1906-XXX
“Mult ad apris ki bien conuist ahan.” (He has learned much who knows the pain of struggle.) — stanza CLXXXIV, line 2425, Song of Roland

The Song of Roland
Cambridge, MA: The Riverside Press, 1906
PQ1521 E5 B8 1906

The Song of Roland is a French epic dating from about 1040 to 1115CE. It recounts the chivalric and heroic deeds of Charlemagne, based on the historical but minor eighth century battle of Roncevaux. Roland was a nephew of Charlemagne. The author of the legend is unknown, although his name may have been Turoldus. The epic is considered the first masterpiece of literature in the French vernacular, written as a medieval chanson de geste (song of deeds) in four thousand lines. In spite of, or perhaps because of, its status in French literature, it was not translated into English until the late 19th century.

This edition was translated from Old French by Isabel Butler.

This edition was designed by Bruce Rogers, one of the great book designers of the twentieth century.  Seven illustrations derived from the compartments of the window of Charlemagne in the Cathedral de Chartres depict events in the legend of Roland. These have been drawn and printed and then colored by hand in  blues, reds, greens and yellows after the stained glass of the window. Five roundels are placed throughout the text. A large arched head-piece vignette tops the opening text as if a dome. The text is printed in double columns with marginal notes in brown and rubricated in gilt as page headings. The title-page is printed in red and black with a printer’s device in color.

PQ1521-E5-B8-1906-i

PQ1521-E5-B8-1906-XX-XXI

Typefaces are French bâtarde and civilité. Bâtarde was a blackletter script used in France, the Burgundian Netherlands and Germany in the 14th and 15th centuries. The script was a decorative chancery or legal hand dating from the 13th century. Civilité is a type designed by Robert Granjon as a response to the Italian italic. Granjon based the font on a cursive Gothic script. The typeface was first used in 1559 for a book on manners written for children by Desiderius Erasmus.

PQ1521-E5-B8-1906-XXXIV

Printed on American handmade paper. Bound in quarter vellum over printed boards in a fleurs-de-lys pattern taken from paintings in the crypt at Chartres. To achieve an antiqued effect, Rogers rubbed a red paste wash over the printed paper.

PQ1521-E5-B8-1906-Cover

Bruce Rogers (1870-1957) was born in Indiana. As a young man, he moved to Boston, where, in 1895, he began working at the Riverside Press, a printing department of the Houghton, Mifflin publishing company. Rogers began designing trade books. In 1900, a Department of Special Bookmaking was created for the production of fine press editions, with Rogers in charge. He designed more than four hundred books during his career. Of those, he chose thirty (Roger’s Thirty), at the request of an interviewer,  that he considered successful book works. The Song of Roland was one of his choices.

George Mifflin, the head of Houghton, Mifflin was so proud of Roland that he sent a copy to then-President Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt was so impressed he visited the press to look at other of Rogers’ works. He wrote, “…it seemed to me far ahead, and almost like some of the very beautiful printing[s]…at the end of the Fifteenth Century.”

Edition of two hundred and twenty copies.

 

 

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Book of the Week — Cilantro, sage, rosemary and thyme

10 Monday Apr 2017

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Africa, America, Asia, barrister, C. J. Phipps, California, Capul, Cavendish, Columbian Encounter, Comte de Buffon, Daines Barrington, Don Francisco Antonio Mourelle, English, Europe, French, Georges-Louis Leclerc, Greenland, Labrador, London, Lord Mulgrave, Magna Carta, Manilla, Mozart, natural history, naturalist, New Guinea, New World, Nichols, potatotes, Schouten, science, Spanish, tobacco, Turkey, Wales, White

AC7-B34-1781-Map
“What we saw of the country leaves us no doubt of its fertility, and that it is capable of producing all the plants of Europe. In most of the gullies of the hills there are rills of clear and cool water, the sides of which are covered with herbs (as in the meadows of Europe) of both agreeable verdure and smell. Amongst these were Castilian roses, smallage, lilies, plantain, thistles, camomile, and many others. We likewise found strawberries, rasberries, blackberries, sweet onions, and potatoes, all which grew in considerable abundance, and particularly near the rills. Amongst other plants we observed one which much resembled percely (though not in its smell), which the Indians bruised and eat, after mixing it with onions.”
— Daines Barrington translating Don Francisco Antonio Mourelle’s Journal of a Voyage, in 1775, to Explore the Coast of America, northward of California

Miscellanies
Daines Barrington (1727-1800)
London: Printed by J. Nichols, sold by B. White, 1781
First edition
AC7 B34 1781

Daines Barrington was an English barrister and naturalist. After filling various posts, he was appointed a judge in 1757, in Wales. He was noted for his observations on the Statutes, chiefly the more ancient, from Magna Carta to 21st James I (1766). Many of Barrington’s writings were published by the Royal and Antiquarian Societies, of which he was a member. Some of these papers were collected by Barrington in this volume.

Miscellanies contains the first publication of Don Francisco Antonio Mourelle’s Journal of a Voyage, in 1775, to Explore the Coast of America, Northward of California… translated from a Spanish manuscript. This is the only contemporary source in English of the voyage exploring the northwest coast of America.

Also in this volume is “The Probability of Reaching the North Pole” (1775), a tract reporting on the results of the northern voyage of discovery undertaken by Captain C. J. Phipps, who later became Lord Mulgrave. The report discussed the floating ice found in high northern and southern latitudes. For this and other reasons, it was especially helpful to whaling captains who frequented the coasts of Greenland and Labrador.

Included in Miscellanies is a biography of Mozart, various essays on natural history, and a discussion on whether the turkey was known in Europe before the Columbian Encounter. Barrington concluded that it was, as were tobacco and potatoes, contradicting the great French naturalist and encyclopedist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (1707-1788).

“If M. de Buffon had not thus excluded Asia and Africa, the controversy would have turned out, as if the point to be discussed was, whether tobacco and potatoes were not peculiar to the New World. Now it is certan that both these plants are of American growth, but not exclusively so, for in 1584, Cavendish received potatoes from the inhabitants of Capul, which is an island not far from Manilla; and in 1616, Schouten was supplied with tobacco from the coast of New Guiney.”

Science was and is as political as war — England was at war with France during this time. And it never occurred to either de Buffon or Barrington that indigenous peoples might have crossed oceans long before the Europeans did.

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AC7-B34-1781-title

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Book of the Week — Mrs. Delany Meets Herr Haeckel

06 Monday Mar 2017

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Arches, Arches MBM Ingres, artist, Barbara Hodgson, biologist, botanical, Canada, Claudia Cohen, cut-paper, decorations, English, Ernst Haeckel, Europe, German, Gifu, gilt, Hahnemuhle Ingres, hand-colored, handmade, HM Editions, Ingres, initials, Japan, Kiraku kozo, Kitikata, Kozuke, marbling, Mary Delany, microscopic organism, morocco, mulberry, paper, papermaker, Reg Lissel, single-cell, Suminigashi, Turkish, Vancouver, wove, Yatsuo

MreD&HerrHTitle

“Mrs. Delany’s was an age when genteel women, whether amateur or professional, were occupied with crafts, decorative works, design and fine arts. Embroidery, quilling, shellwork, japanning, silhouette making, drawing, painting in oils and watercolours, knitting, sewing, flower making, modelling in wax and clay, miniature painting, and horticulture were among the arts practiced.”

MRS. DELANY MEETS HERR HAECKEL
Barbara Hodgson
Vancouver: HM Editions, 2015
N7433.4 H63 M77 2015

From the publisher’s website: [Mrs. Delany] is an “imagined collaboration between Mrs. Mary Delany (1700-1788), an English widow, woman of accomplishment, and creator of imaginative botanical ‘paper mosaics’ and Herr Ernst Haeckel (1852-1911), a distinguished and controversial German biologist and artist who devoted much of his time to the study and rendering of single-celled creatures.”

MreD&HerrHPlateVIII

Cut paper image of a microscopic organism affixed to frontispiece with another cut-paper image affixed to the recto of the same sheet; eleven cut-paper interpretations of microscopic organisms tipped on to captioned plates; tipped-in cut-paper initials, numerous smaller cut-paper decorations. The paper cuttings are adapted from Ernst Haeckel’s Die Radiolarien (1862) and Kunstformen der Natur (1899-1904). They are cut from a variety of papers, including Yatsuo, Kozuke, mulberry, Gifu, Kitikata, and Kiraku kozo from Japan; Ingres and unidentified wove from Europe; and Reg Lissel handmade papers from Canada. Some were cut from papers previously marbled in the Turkish or Suminigashi styles. Some were dyed by the papermaker; some were dyed or otherwise hand-colored for this book. The cuttings are mounted on one of Arches text wove (white), Arches MBM Ingres (black) or Hahnemuhle Ingres (black).

Bound in full polished morocco, ruled and stamped decoratively in red and gilt with a gilt-lettered spine by Claudia Cohen. Marbled endpapers. Issued in orange clamshell case with a gilt-lettered spine label.

MrsD&HerrHCover2

MrsD&HerrHMarble

Edition of twenty-five copies plus six hors de commerce, each signed by the author, printer, and binder. Rare Books copy is XXII.

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Book of the Week — The Architextures 1-7: The Man of Music

13 Monday Feb 2017

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abaca, Anthropology, Belgium, bookbinding, brass, California, Cambridge, Carolee Campbell, clamshell, English, Felix Titling, Fuji Paper Mills Cooperative, Fulbright, Guatemala, history, Ian Robinson, initials, Japan, Jonathan Cape, Katie MacGregor, King's College, kyosei-shi, letterpress, London, London School of Economics, MacGregor/Vinzani, Maine, Meridien, Nathaniel Tarn, Ninja Press, Pablo Neruda, papermaking, Paris, poetry, Princeton University, Rutgers University, Sherman Oaks, Tokuschi-ma, United States, University of Chicago, Vandercook Universal I, Whiting, wood blocks, Yale University

PS3570-A635-A7-1999-cover

“Who are we that fled the thousand lives we did not lead in order to escape the very one life that we were destined for?”

The Architextures 1-7: The Man of Music
Nathaniel Tarn (b. 1928)
Sherman Oaks, CA: Ninja Press, 1999
PS3570 A635 A7 1999

Nathaniel Tarn was born in Paris and lived in Belgium until he was eleven. He studied history and English at King’s College, Cambridge. After returning to Paris he studied anthropology and received a Fulbright grant. He studied at Yale University and the University of Chicago and did his doctoral fieldwork in Guatemala. He then completed his graduate studies at the London School of Economics. Tarn published his first volume of poetry, Old Savage/Young City, in 1964. His next published work was a translation of Pablo Neruda’s The Heights of Macchu Pichhu, published by Jonathan Cape, in London. He joined Jonathan Cape as General Editor of its international series.

In 1970, he immigrated to the United States, became a citizen, and taught as Visiting Professor of Romance Languages at Princeton University, and later, at Rutgers and other universities.

Of his poetry, Ian Robinson wrote in 1982, “Landscape, geography, and the history and culture of that landscape, that geography, of the societies living there now and that lived there once, all of the present in its present, are the key factors for Tarn.”

The Architextures 1-7 are the first seven from a collection of seventy prose poems.

The book was handset and letterpress printed on a Vandercook Universal I with Meridien type in six colors and 72pt Felix Titling for display and opening initials. Paper is dove-gray abaca, made by Katie MacGregor at the MacGregor/Vinzani papermaking studio in Whiting, Maine. Six-color wood blocks illustrate the text throughout.

PS3570-A635-A7-1999-Title

Ninja Press was begun in 1984 by Carolee Campbell, whose main publishing focus is contemporary poetry. Carolee began her book work as a photographer working with nineteenth and twentieth-century photographic processes. Binding her photograph sequences introduced her to bookbinding and experimental book structures. She then expanded her book work with letterpress printing. Bookmaking opened “the way into contemporary poetry — confronting it for the first time with a directness and penetration she seldom experienced as a reader.” (Ninja Press) All book work from Ninja Press is by Carolee Campbell.

Bound in torched and patinated thin brass boards, with a spine of brass and stainless steel hinges. Issued in a clamshell box covered in black kyosei-shi, a handmade paper from the Fuji Paper Mills Cooperative in Tokushi-ma, Japan. Edition of sixty-five numbered copies, signed by the poet and the bookmaker.

PS3570-A635-A7-1999-quote

PS3570-A635-A7-1999-Spread1

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Book of the Week — Researches: Concerning the Institutions & Monuments of the Ancient Inhabitants of America, with Descriptions and…

23 Monday Jan 2017

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week, Recommended Reading

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Alexander von Humboldt, archaeology, Aztec, drawings, English, Helen Maria Williams, hieroglyphics, history, Inca, London, Mexico, mythology, Peru, Vues des Cordillères

F1219-H91-v.1-title

“The Mexican paintings, a very small number of which has reached our times, excite a double interest, both from the light they throw on the mythology and history of the first inhabitants of America, and the apparent connexion with the hieroglyphical writing of certain nations of the Old Continent. We shall bring together in this work whatever can afford information with respect to the communication which at the most distant periods seem to have taken place between groups of nations separated by deserts, by mountains, or by seas…”

RESEARCHES, CONCERNING THE INSTITUTIONS AND…
Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859)
London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, J. Murray & H. Colburn, 1814
First Edition in English

Translation by Helen Maria Williams of Vues des Cordillères.…, first published in 1810.

Alexander Humboldt’s description of the geography and ruins he observed in Mexico and Peru is one of the earliest archaeological works on the Aztec and Inca civilizations. The work contains plates in black and white, some of which are hand-colored.

Humboldt was no artist, but, like most educated men of his day, he did have drawing skills. He recorded, during his travels, his views of particular places and their natural environment. His drawings became the basis for illustrations for his many publications. Humboldt’s work influenced scientists, but also artists, who traveled the country Humboldt wrote about and illustrated.

Published in two volumes, Rare Books lacks volume 2.

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Recommended reading:
Measuring the World: A Novel, Daniel Kehlmann, New York: Pantheon Books, 2006
PT2671 E32 V4713 2006
General Collection, Level 2

The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World, Andrea Wulf, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015
Q143 H9 W85 2015
Browsing Collection, Level 1

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Book of the Week — Colours of Persia

26 Monday Dec 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

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

n7433-4-a57-c65-2007-cover

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.

n7433-4-a57-c65-2007-i-saw

n7433-4-a57-c65-2007-carpet

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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

siantscover

“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.

ps3537-t316-g36-1964-cover

“…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.

e166-p65-titlee166-p65-kanesville

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

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moon
— 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

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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

title

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!

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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.”

jesuitchurch

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.

nooksandcrannies

“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.

bioycasarescover

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.

bioycasaresspread

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.

borgescover

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

borgesspread

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!

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Book of the Week — Petri Gassendi Institutio Astronomica…

07 Monday Nov 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

astronomy, Copernicus, crystalline, England, English, Galileo, Jacobi Flesher, Johannes Kepler, Jupiter, light, moon, moons, mountains, Pierre Gassendi, sphere, stars, telescope, textbook, Tycho Brahe, university, valleys, woodcuts

qb41-g2-1653-orbits

“…senseless atoms, playing and toying up and down, without any care or thought, and from eternity trying all manner of tricks, conclusions and experiments, were at length (they know not how) taught, and by the necessity of things themselves, as it were, driven…so that though their motions were at first all casual and fortuitous, yet in length of time they became orderly and artificial, and governed by a certain law, they contracting as it were upon themselves, by long practice and experience, a kind of habit of moving regularly; or else being, by the mere necessity of things, at length forced so to move, as they should have done, had art and wisdom directed them.”

PETRI GASSENDI INSTITUTIO ASTRONOMICA, JUXTA…
Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655), etc.
Londini, typis Jacobi Flesher, 1653
QB41 G2 1653

qb41-g2-1653-title

French polymath Pierre Gassendi worked on atomic theory, physics, and the philosophical implications of the work of Greek philosopher Epicurus (ca. 330 BCE), which he used as support for his opposition to an Aristotelean world view. Gassendi was one of the first to coin the term “molecule,” defined as two or more atoms joined together. Much of his published work was written to counter the philosophical views of Rene Descartes.

Using telescope lenses provided to him by Galileo Galilei, Gassendi made numerous astronomical observations that helped establish the validity of Kepler’s laws of planetary motion. In 1631, he observed Mercury transit in front of the sun, thus providing strong evidence for the Copernican model. Gassendi denounced astrology as having no empirical support.

This is the first edition of this collection and the first publication in England of all three works contained within.

Institutio astronomica was first published in 1647. It was divided into three sections: the first discussed the “theory of the spheres,” the second described astronomical theory, and the third discussed the conflicting ideas of Tycho Brahe and Copernicus. The work was used as a textbook, particularly in English universities, for years. That the second edition, here, includes Galileo’s Sidereus nuncius and Johannes Kepler’s Dioptrice makes the publication historically significant.

Sidereus nuncius (first published in 1610 – this is the third edition, the first English edition of any of Galileo’s works) announced Galileo’s discovery of Jupiter’s moons. Sidereus nuncius was Galileo’s publication of his first observations through a telescope he developed in 1609. Galileo observed the moon as a spherical, solid body complete with mountains and valleys, contradicting the tradition of the moon as a crystalline sphere. He observed thousands of stars hidden from the naked eye. He discovered four moons surrounding Jupiter, in different positions at different times. With these observations Galileo accepted the Copernican theory.

qb41-g2-1653-shadowsurface

qb41-g2-1653-constellation

Dioptrice (first published in 1611 – this is the second edition) explained the manufacture and workings of the telescope, a necessary component in the acceptance of what the telescope revealed. Kepler discussed the laws governing the passage of light through lenses.

Contains four woodcut plates and woodcut diagrams throughout the text. Each work has its own title-page. The main title-page is printed in red and black. University of Utah copy binding contemporary calf, ruled in blind.

qb41-g2-1653-globe

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