One of 20 réimposé copies in-4 tellière on vélin d'Arches (no. 16).
The volume brings together nine poems from The Unknown Eros: L'Hiver, L'Azalée, Le Départ, Les Joujoux, Vesica Piscis, Arbor Vitae, Magna est Veritas, Legem Tuam Dilexi and Eros et Psyché.
Paul Claudel's translation is preceded by an important essay by Valery Larbaud.
A remarkable meeting of three writers around Coventry Patmore, a major figure of Victorian poetry whose work, deeply marked by Catholicism, treats human and conjugal love as a path to spiritual experience. This mystical conception of love found in Claudel a particularly attentive reader and translator.
Larbaud’s essay was originally intended as a short preface, requested by André Gide, who was eager to associate the still-young venture of the NRF with this man of letters and outstanding connoisseur of English-language literature: “I am aware,” he wrote to him, “that no one could acquit himself of this task as well as you” (letter of early February 1911). Larbaud went far beyond the preface that had been asked of him, so genuine was his admiration for Patmore.
This collaboration marked an important stage in Larbaud’s relationship with the NRF: he would soon become a regular contributor there, writing the “Lettres anglaises” column, and would publish A.O. Barnabooth with the house in 1913. The essay on Patmore was never published separately; it was reprinted in 1925 in Ce vice impuni, la lecture, where Larbaud gathered his major essays on English literature.
A fine copy on deluxe paper.
Vignes, 20, “a particularly rare book.”