World Food Books

Fool's Mate Vol. 18 October 1981

1981, Japanese
Softcover, 112 pages, 25.5 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Fool's Mate / Tokyo

$90.00 - In stock -

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Rare early issue of the world's finest "Euro Rock Magazine", Fool's Mate, from Japan. Fool's Mate Vol. 18 October 1981. In the 1970's—1980's, Fool's Mate (named after the 1971 Peter Hammill LP), edited by Masashi Kitamura with regular contributions by Masami Akita (Merzbow) and many other heads, was a vital conduit between emerging and metamorphosing avant-garde music cultures in Europe (Progressive Rock, Art Rock, Free Music, Electronic, Cosmic, Psychedelic Folk, Avant Pop, Rock in Opposition, Post Punk, Industrial, etc.) and Japan. No doubt responsible for the resonance of experimental contemporary music there during that period through to today, each issue of Fool's Mate during these early years was packed cover-to-cover with exclusive interviews with the artists, rare photographs and graphics, thematic genre/artist/label/artistic movement features, in-depth profiles/discographies/family-trees, catalogues, lyrics, letters, collage art, record, book, and live reviews, columns and an endless stream of concert and import/record store/label/venue/cafe adverts, all presented in a perfectly obsessive fanzine aesthetic manner, cut 'n' pasted across many paper stocks. The Americas and other realms, including new directions in Japanese alternative music, are all covered alongside their European counterparts, with many issues exploring key artistic and theoretical influences, such as Symbolism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Eros, Futurism, etc.

This incredible issue with cover feature on Fred Frith and Recommended Records, plus Vini Reilly/Durutti Column, The Flying Lizards, David Cunningham, Steve Beresford, Piano Records, Phew, David Toop, Michael Nyman, Aksak Maboul, Crammed Discs, Family Fodder, Video Aventures, Band Apart, Robert Wyatt, Lidsay Cooper, Tim Hodgkinson, Nord, Ken Lockie, Landscape, Alan Gowen, Electroacoustic music, medieval heresy and satanism, and much more. Highly recommended to any fan of such things.

Very Good copy. General wear/age.

File under: David Cunningham Steve Beresford Piano Records Phew David Toop Michael Nyman Aksak Maboul Crammed Discs Family Fodder Band Apart Robert Wyatt Lidsay Cooper Tim Hodgkinson Nord Ken Lockie Landscape Alan Gowen Henry Cow Art Bears The Residents Lemon Kittens Gloria Mundi Fred Frith Recommended Records The Flying Lizards Vini Reilly Durutti Column Video Aventures Masami Akita (Merzbow) Masashi Kitamura Fool's Mate / Tokyo Periodicals Out-of-print / Rare Art Sound / Music Ancient / Medieval / Gothic Occult / Esoterica Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle Surrealism Theory / Essay Counterculture

Vulturnus
by Léon-Paul Fargue

2024, English
Softcover, 88 pages, 17.8 x 11.4 cm
Published by Wakefield Press / Cambridge

$32.00 - In stock -

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Foreword by René Daumal
Translated by Terry Bradford

When published in 1928, Vulturnus represented a new direction in Léon-Paul Fargue’s writing: a shift from the lyrical post-Symbolist melancholy of his early poetry to something more grandiose, dynamic, and cosmic. A long prose poem, for lack of a better term, but one that weaves together philosophical dialogue, metaphysical meditation, and mournful reminiscence delivered in a language that spirals into scientific terminology and Rabelaisian neologism.

Jolted into a nightmare aboard a long-distance train journey, the author finds himself alone yet not alone, his mind pinned like an insect, as he sets off on a journey that takes him from his hometown to other existences, accompanied by the fanfare of the planets and two companions—Pierre Pellegrin and Joseph Aussudre—who guide him as Virgil did Dante, though not through hell, but to a sketched-out terrestrial paradise in quest of a moment of eternity: a syphilis of the ether, “one foot godward, two steps brute.”

This first English translation finally introduces an essential yet underrecognized twentieth-century voice and includes an essay on the text by René Daumal, who declares that “Vulturnus suffocates me with its obviousness … I see behind Fargue the great frame of Doctor Faustroll.”

“Vulturnus is an astonishing book.”—Paul Valéry

“A rollicking interplanetary poem.”—Eugene Jolas

Léon-Paul Fargue (1876–1947) was the archetypal poet of Paris, with ties to everyone from Alfred Jarry and Erik Satie to Colette and Maurice Ravel. His work was admired by Rilke, Joyce, and Walter Benjamin. Though his work spanned and was sometimes associated with various literary movements, a bridge of sorts from symbolism to surrealism (though he was opposed to the latter), he kept to his own path throughout his life: a night wanderer who turned his perambulations through Paris into a unique poetry and prose.

“The greatest living poet in France.”—Walter Benjamin

“One of our greatest poets.”—Rainer Maria Rilke

“Fargue taught us to sublimate the life of everyday and make the highest poetry out of it.”—Max Jacob

File under: Rene Daumal Léon-Paul Fargue Wakefield Press / Cambridge Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle Weird / Speculative / Science Fiction Fiction / Poetry

The Princess of Darkness
by Rachilde

2023, English
Softcover, 266 pages, 21.6 x 13.8 cm
Published by Snuggly Books / UK

$46.00 - Out of stock

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Translated by Brian Stableford

Rachilde, the writer whose formal name was Marguerite Vallette-Eymery (1860-1853), is primarily remembered today for her sensational decadent novel Monsieur Vénus (1884), which was prosecuted as pornography in Belgium, where it was initially published, resulting in a conviction and a sentence of two years’ imprisonment imposed in absentia. She was, however, the author of numerous other works which, though less well-known, are of equal and sometimes even greater excellence.

One of the best and most striking of these is The Princess of Darkness (1895), here presented for the first time in English, in a superb translation by Brian Stableford. The novel, unquestionably one of the most daring works to come out of the Symbolist and Decadent movements, was written under Rachilde’ s other pseudonym, Jean de Chilra, and is at once a profound psychological study and a neo-Gothic masterpiece, featuring a haunted house and a family curse and other much more unusual motifs that are calculated to alienate readers as well as to challenge them, in a frightening treasure that any connoisseur of perversity is bound to savor and to think precious.

Rachilde was the pen name and preferred identity of novelist and playwright Marguerite Vallette-Eymery (11 February 1860 – 4 April 1953). Born near Périgueux, Dordogne, Aquitaine, France during the Second French Empire, Rachilde went on to become a symbolist author and the most prominent women in literature associated with the Decadent Movement of fin de siècle France.

A diverse and challenging author, Rachilde's most famous work includes the darkly erotic novels Monsieur Vénus (1884), La Marquise de Sade (1887), and La Jongleuse (1900). She also wrote a 1928 monograph on gender identity, Pourquoi je ne suis pas féministe ("Why I am not a Feminist"). Her work was noted for being frank, fantastical, and always with a suggestion of autobiography underlying questions of gender, sexuality, and identity.

She said of herself, "I always acted as an individual, not thinking to found a society or to upset the present one."

File under: Rachilde Brian Stableford Snuggly Books / UK Weird / Speculative / Science Fiction Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle Fiction / Poetry

Edvard Munch
1863—1944

2013, English
Hardcover (in slipcase), 420 pages, 28.5 x 25.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by Skira / Milan Rizzoli / New York Munchmuseet / Oslo

$390.00 - In stock -

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First hardcover, slipcased edition of this now very rare, beautifully illustrated comprehensive book published on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the birth of Edvard Munch (1863-1944) in 2013, for which a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition was organized by the Munch Museum and the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo.

This major new book is the most comprehensive and ambitious full-scale retrospective of Munch's artistic oeuvre ever presented. It includes an exceptional number of renowned masterpieces as well as many lesser-known works from public and private collections worldwide. With some 350 illustrations, the volume beautifully illustrates the entire development of Munch's art from the 1880s to his death in 1944, including paintings, prints, and drawings. Texts by important scholars cover various aspects of the artist's work: self-presentation and self-portraiture, places and perception, visual rhetoric, The Frieze of Life series as a lifelong project, Munch and public life, narration and abstraction, figure and representation, and the staging of gender. With texts reflecting the most recent Munch scholarship as well as a timeline, a biography, and an index of names and places, this comprehensive book provides a new understanding of Munch's groundbreaking contribution to modernist painting.

Edvard Munch was one of Modernism's most significant artists. His tenacious experimentation within painting, graphic art, drawing, sculpture, photo and film has given him a unique position in Norwegian as well as international art history.

Fine copy in Near Fine illustrated slipcase with some light shelf wear.

File under: Edvard Munch Jon-Ove Steihaug Mai Britt Guleng Birgitte Sauge Skira / Milan Rizzoli / New York Munchmuseet / Oslo Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle Painting Out-of-print / Rare Art

The Other Side
by Alfred Kubin

2015, English
Softcover, 249 pages, 15 x 22 cm
Published by Dedalus / Cambs

$34.00 - Out of stock

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The Other Side, Alfred Kubin's only work of fiction, tells of a dream kingdom which becomes a nightmare, of a journey to Pearl, a mysterious city created deep in Asia, which is also a journey to the depths of the subconcious, or as Kubin himself called it, 'a sort of Baedeker for those lands which are half known to us'.

Written in 1908, and more or less half way between Meyrink and Kafka, it was greeted with wild enthusiasm by the artists and writers of the Expressionist generation. Franz Marc called it 'a magnificent reckoning with the 19th century' and Kandinsky said it was 'almost a vision of evil', while Lyonel Feininger wrote to Kubin : 'I live much in Pearl, you must have written it and drawn it for me'.

The Other Side will appeal to fans of Mervyn Peake and readers who like the darkly decadent, the fantastic and the grotesque in their reading.

Alfred Kubin (1877-1959) was one of the major graphic artists of the 20th century who was widely known for his illustrations of writers of the fantastic such as Balzac, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Gustav Meyrink and Edgar Allan Poe, of whom he illustrated at least 50 books. In his combination of the darkly decadent, the fantastic and the grotesque, in his evocations of dream and nightmare, his creation of an atmosphere of mystery and fear he resembles Mervyn Peake. The Other Side (1908) is his only work of fiction.

Translated by Mike Mitchell

File under: Alfred Kubin Alfred Kubin Dedalus / Cambs Fiction / Poetry Weird / Speculative / Science Fiction Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle

Alfred Kubin
Confessions of a Tortured Soul

2022, English
Hardcover, 288 pages, 23.5 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by Walther König / Köln

$105.00 - Out of stock

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The first overview in a decade on Kubin’s gothic pageant of dreamworld menace. The quickly out-of-print English edition.

The art of the great Austrian draftsman, illustrator and author Alfred Kubin (1877–1959) appears more current today than ever before: for it was violence, wartime destruction, pandemics, natural disasters, the manipulation of the masses and other abysses of human existence that pervaded his highly narrational works. The oeuvre of this fantastical creator confronts us with pessimistic visions which – to quote Schopenhauer – delineate “the worst of all possible worlds”. Kubin’s nightmarish oeuvre extends Symbolism and the fantastical art of the 19th century and may be considered a precursor to French Surrealism, with its syntheses of actual and imaginary reality, its bleak realms that Kubin often seasoned with humor, irony and exaggeration.

Published for an exhibition at the Leopold Museum in Vienna, Alfred Kubin: Confessions of a Tortured Soul offers an exploration of Kubin’s oneiric worlds in terms of their relation to the unconscious. Through this lens, psychoanalyst and psychiatrist August Ruhs addresses pieces by Kubin selected by curator Hans-Peter Wipplinger. In addition, Kubin’s works are placed into a dialogue with works by artists of the 19th century and of the classical modernism from which Kubin derived inspiration. Artists such as Francisco de Goya, Félicien Rops, James Ensor, Max Klinger, Odilon Redon, Gustav Klimt and Edvard Munch shaped Kubin’s vocabulary of motifs and formal aesthetics, as did authors such as ETA Hoffmann, Edgar Allan Poe, Gérard de Nerval, August Strindberg and Gustav Meyrink his literary sources of inspiration.

File under: Hans-Peter Wipplinger August Ruhs Burghart Schmidt Annegret Hoberg Lena Scholz Walther König / Köln Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle Surrealism Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic Art Drawing Painting Weird / Speculative / Science Fiction Out-of-print / Rare

Max Ernst
Una settimana di bonta oi sette elementi capitali

1978, Italian / French
Softcover, 230 pages, 27 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Mazzotta / Milan

$50.00 - Out of stock

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First 1978 Mazzotta edition of this absolute classic of Surrealist collage by Max Ernst, first published in 1934. If the collage technique has become an art, it owes it to a work like this book and of course to Max Ernst, one of the masters of collage and incomparable Surrealist painter. Western art has always tried to tear apart the straitjackets of the imprisoned body with one hand: but no one has succeeded in this insurrection like Max Ernst in the novel-collages he invented and brought to climax between 1929 and 1934. These are images accompanied by rapturous captions and cropped from the illustrations of serial novels from the 19th and early 20th centuries, full of sensual and innocent girls undermined by dark pupils of Sade, and messieurs in black suits and spats who hide shameful foibles, while in the background "the city full of dreams" by Baudelaire trembles and again "the specter lures the passer-by in broad daylight". A dreamlike staging inherited from the feuilletons, therefore, but which Ernst, with his montage made up of mysterious juxtapositions and obscure cuts, the exaltation of chance and the thrill of analogy, with his slow-motion cinema and his comic strip for adults only, has been able to transform into the banner of the perennial revolt of desire.

Bi-lingual texts (French/Italian) by Jarry, Schwob, Breton, Eluard...
A masterpiece.

Very Good copy some edge wear, ageing.

File under: Max Ernst Marcel Schwob Alfred Jarry Paul Eluard André Breton Mazzotta / Milan Surrealism Drawing Painting Art Out-of-print / Rare Fiction / Poetry Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle Collage / Mail Art / Xerox Art Dada

The Food of Death : Fifty-one Tales
by Lord Dunsany

1974, English
Softcover, 138 pages, 21.5 x 13.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Newcastle Publishing / Hollywood

$25.00 - Out of stock

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First edition of this 1974 anthology of stories by Lord Dunsany, published by Newcastle Publishing in Hollywood, with cover illustration by Sidney Sime.

"LORD DUNSANY (1878-1957) was born in London with the family name of Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett. A man of action and courage, the 18th Baron Dunsany loved to hunt and roam the outdoors, and travelled extensively around the world. He first became famous through his plays, produced by W. B. Yeats at Dublin's Abbey Theatre, but is his early tales of a wondrous, dreamlike world of his own invention that have made many consider him the greatest fantasy writer of all time. Just as William Morris and H. Rider Haggard shaped the course of the fantasy novel, so Dunsany altered the course of the fantastic short story with such collections as TIME AND THE GODS (1906) and THE BOOK OF WONDER (1912). His influence can be traced throughout the works of such fantasists as James Branch Cabell, H. P. Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton Smith. And nowhere is the jewel-like quality of Dunsany's prose distilled into such glittering essence as in the delightful and eerie short stories and parables in his 1915 collection, FIFTY-ONE TALES, out of print for many years. We are happy to bring you this new edition of a neglected classic by a true Master of Fantasy."—from back cover.

Very Good copy.

File under: Sidney Sime Lord Dunsany Newcastle Publishing / Hollywood Weird / Speculative / Science Fiction Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle Out-of-print / Rare Fiction / Poetry

Le Sang et La Rose No. 1, 1968

1968, Japanese / French
Softcover, 228 pages, 23 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Tensei Shuppan / Tokyo

$110.00 - Out of stock

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Revue de Érotologie, Homosexualité, Sadisme, Masochisme, Fétischisme, Narcissime, Infantilisme, Magie, Occultisme, Humour Noir, Complexe Psychisme. What more could you ask for? Le Sang Et La Rose is a masterpiece of the Japanese underground. A groundbreaking, powerful, yet short-lived Japanese arts and literary journal published in Tokyo from late 1968—mid 1969, published in a total of four luxurious, now collectible, volumes. The first three issues were edited by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), a legendary, controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade, and specialist in medieval demonology. The importance of this magazine to the Japanese avant-garde and radical culture cannot be overstated.

Born from a period of political, social and economical turmoil in Japan, Le Sang Et La Rose may be understood as a emblematic distillation and product of the late ‘60s student rebellion and anti-authoritarian underground culture. Wilfully politically subversive, the publication drew upon a vast range of perspectives - from criticism, literature, obscure esoteric sciences, art, eroticism, radical avant-garde and a historical-rooted Japanese counterculture; featuring literature, theory, art, photography, illustration and graphic design from the most innovative and subversive Japanese and international (predominately French) artists, authors and critics, spanning the themes above. As instigator, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa in effect formulated the magazine’s design to be a spiritual and political operative that would weaponize its readers minds. This stance was made clear in the 1969 manifesto text — "My 1969" — in which Shibusawa discuss' how he perceived the ‘60s as being the age of ideas, ideas as weapons, and outlined a distain towards systems of power, moralism, State oppression, sanitised and harmless liberalism, dogmatic academic sciences and an outright distrust for ideological, progressive literary scholars who advocate "freedom of expression", but have never caused friction with the judicial power. The magazine sketched out an aim to push towards a new kind of personal freedom, intellect, autonomy and moral compass. Here, the concept of ‘erotism’ — as discussed by Georges Bataille in his highly influential 1957 book "Erotism: Death and Sensuality" — acts as a critical force. 

Issue no. 1 (1968) sets the scene perfectly, opening with Japanese author Yukio Mishima depicted as Saint Sebastian by photographer Kishin Shinoyama in a pictorial feature "Les Morts Masculines", a photographic homage to Georges Bataille that also features the photography of Eikoh Hosoe, Ikkō Narahara, Masahisa Fukase, and Osamu Hayasaki, with models including Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata, actor Akira Mita, author Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, actor Jin Nakayama, playwright Jūrō Kara, and others. Other features include " All Japanese are Perverse" — stories by Japanese writers including Yukio Mishima, Taruho Inagaki, Yutaka Haniya, Shinji Sōya; Henry Miller's letters to Anais Nin; a colour gallery of artwork by Belgian painter Paul Delvaux; articles on Vampire fantasy in the arts (including many original illustrations; Witches (illustrated by James Ensor); Oriental Eros, Ancient Indian poetry; Kama Sutra; female bi-sexuality; the history of gay (Danshoku) theatre in Japan; the full-colour art gallery "Masturbation Machine", featuring avant-garde artists Natsuyuki Nakanishi, Masuo Ikeda, Setsu Nagasawa, Carlos Marchioli, Kuniyoshi Kaneko, Masakazu Horiuchi, Tadanori Yokoo, Koji Suzuki, Tommy Ungerer; the fully illustrated museum supplement "Pain and Pleasure : On Torture" by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa with artworks throughout history; pornographic stories by Guillaume Apollinaire and Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne (who coined the term "Pornographer"); fiction by Pierre Morion (pseudo. André Pieyre de Mandiargues); critic Jin'ichi Uekusa on the controversial writings of Roger Peyrefitte, illustrations by Ernst, Bellmer, Labisse, Fini, Lam, and much more.

Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), was a well-known and controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, and translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade. In 1960 he and his publisher, Kyōji Ishii, were trialled for public obscenity over the publishing of Shibusawa's translation of de Sade's Juliette into the Japanese language. What was to be known as the "Sade Trial" took 9 years and although many of Japan's leading authors testified for the defense, in 1969 the Japanese Supreme Court ruled them guilty and charged. This did not deter Shibusawa, whose essays on black magic, demonology and eroticism were popular reading in Japan, and in 1981 he was awarded the 9th Izumi Kyoka Literature Prize.

Good copy with some spine damage and tanning/wear.

File under: Max Ernst Léonor Fini Felix Labisse Wilfredo Lam Hans Bellmer Paul Delvaux Natsuyuki Nakanishi Masuo Ikeda Setsu Nagasawa Carlos Marchioli Kuniyoshi Kaneko Masakazu Horiuchi Tadanori Yokoo Koji Suzuki Tommy Ungerer Tatsumi Hijikata Tatsuhiko Shibusawa Eikoh Hosoe Ikkō Narahara Masahisa Fukase Osamu Hayasaki Kishin Shinoyama James Ensor Tatsuhiko Shibusawa Jin'ichi Uekusa Roger Peyrefitte Yukio Mishima Taruho Inagaki Yutaka Haniya Shinji Sōya Henry Miller Suehiro Tanemura Guillaume Apollinaire Andre Pieyre De Mandiargues Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne Jūrō Kara Tensei Shuppan / Tokyo Fiction / Poetry Japanese Photography Occult / Esoterica Philosophy Photography Art Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées Fetishism / BDSM LGBTQ+ Eros Ero Guro / Erotic / Grotesque Out-of-print / Rare Periodicals Counterculture Surrealism Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle Transgressive / Visceral / Abject Ancient / Medieval / Gothic

Le Sang et La Rose No. 4, 1969

1969, Japanese
Softcover, 286 pages, 23 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Tensei Shuppan / Tokyo

$140.00 - Out of stock

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Revue de Érotologie, Homosexualité, Sadisme, Masochisme, Fétischisme, Narcissime, Infantilisme, Magie, Occultisme, Humour Noir, Complexe Psychisme. What more could you ask for? Le Sang Et La Rose was a groundbreaking, powerful, yet short-lived Japanese arts and literary journal published in Tokyo from late 1968—mid 1969, in a total of four luxurious, now collectible, volumes. The first three issues were edited by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa (1928—1987), a well-known and controversial Japanese novelist, art critic, and translator of French writers such as Jean Cocteau, Georges Bataille and Marquis de Sade, and this, the fourth final issue, and rarest of the four, edited by critic Masaaki Hiraoka and especially designed by self-taught painter, graphic designer and political activist, Kiyoshi Awazu (!)

Born from a period of political, social and economical turmoil in Japan, Le Sang Et La Rose may be understood as a emblematic distillation and product of the late ‘60s student rebellion and anti-authoritarian underground culture. Wilfully politically subversive, the publication drew upon a vast range of perspectives - from criticism, literature, obscure esoteric sciences, art, eroticism, radical avant garde and a historical-rooted Japanese counterculture; featuring literature, theory, art, photography, illustration and graphic design from the most innovative Japanese and international (predominately French) artists, authors and critics, spanning the themes above. Much like an instigator, Tatsuhiko Shibusawa in effect formulated the magazine’s design as principally to be a spiritual and political operative that would weaponize its readers minds. This stance was made clear in the 1969 manifesto text — "My 1969" — in which Shibusawa discuss' how he perceived the ‘60s as being the age of ideas, ideas as weapons, and outlined a distain towards systems of power, moralism, State oppression, sanitised and harmless liberalism, dogmatic academic sciences and an outright distrust for ideological, progressive literary scholars who advocate "freedom of expression", but have never caused friction with the judicial power. The magazine sketched out an aim to push towards a new kind of personal freedom, intellect, autonomy and moral compass. Here, the concept of ‘erotism’ — as discussed by Georges Bataille in his highly influential 1957 book "Erotism: Death and Sensuality" — acts as a critical force. 

Issue no. 4 includes photographic features by cinematographer Yasuhiro Yoshioka (Woman in the Dunes, Kwaidan, The Face of Another, Diary of a Shinjuku Thief), work by pioneering, self-taught visual artist and designer, Kiyoshi Awazu, Hans Bellmer, illustrations by the incredible Hiroshi Nakamura, sadomasochism in cinema, Ukiyo-e and Shunga art (erotic Japanese prints), writings by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, Yukio Mishima, Taruho Inagaki, Jun’nosuke Yoshiyuki, Kôichi Iijima, Jûrô Kara, Ikuya Kato, Minoru Yoshioka, Masaaki Hiraoka, Tadanori Yokoo, and Ryûichi Tamura.   Much more....

Very Good copy.

File under: Yasuhiro Yoshioka Kiyoshi Awazu Hans Bellmer Hiroshi Nakamura Tatsuhiko Shibusawa Yukio Mishima Taruho Inagaki Jun’nosuke Yoshiyuki Kôichi Iijima Jûrô Kara Ikuya Kato Minoru Yoshioka Ryûichi Tamura Masaaki Hiraoka Tadanori Yokoo Tensei Shuppan / Tokyo Periodicals Art Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées Surrealism Ero Guro / Erotic / Grotesque Eros Photography Japanese Photography Out-of-print / Rare Philosophy Theory / Essay Fiction / Poetry Counterculture Fetishism / BDSM Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle Occult / Esoterica Ancient / Medieval / Gothic

Sweating Blood
By Léon Bloy

2016, English
Softcover, 232 pages, 23 x 15 cm
Published by Wakefield Press / Cambridge

$35.00 - In stock -

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Translated, with an introduction, by Erik Butler

First published in French in 1893, Sweating Blood describes the atrocities of war in thirty tales of horror and inhumanity from the pen of the “Pilgrim of the Absolute,” Léon Bloy. Writing with blood, sweat, tears, and moral outrage, Bloy drew from anecdotes, news reports, and his own experiences as a franc-tireur to compose a fragmented depiction of the 1870 Franco-Prussian war, told with equal measures of hatred and pathos, and alternating between cutting detail and muted anguish. From heaps of corpses, monstrous butchers, cowardly bourgeois, bloody massacres, seas of mud, drunken desperation, frightful disfigurement, grotesque hallucinations, and ghoulish means of personal revenge, a generalized portrait of suffering is revealed that ultimately requires a religious lens: for through Bloy’s maniacal nationalism and frenetic Catholicism, it is a hell that emerges here, a nineteenth-century apocalypse that tore a country apart and set the stage for a century of atrocities that were yet to come.

A close friend to Joris-Karl Huysmans, and later admired by the likes of Kafka and Borges, Léon Bloy (1846–1917) is among the best known but least translated of the French Decadent writers. Nourishing antireligious sentiments in his youth, his outlook changed radically when he moved to Paris and came under the influence of Barbey d’Aurevilly, the unconventionally religious novelist best known for Les Diaboliques. He earned his dual nickname of “The Pilgrim of the Absolute” through his unorthodox devotion to the Catholic Church and “The Ungrateful Beggar” through his endless reliance on the charity of friends to support him and his family.

“Monsieur Bloy is a prophet. He took care, in his writings, to certify himself as such for us: ‘I am a prophet.’ He was able to add: and a pamphleteer as well… The prophet makes hearts bleed; the pamphleteer flays skins; Bloy is a flayer of skins.”—Remy de Gourmont

“Bloy is a twin crystal of diamond and dung.”—Ernst Junger

File under: Erik Butler Léon Bloy Wakefield Press / Cambridge Fiction / Poetry Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle

The Dark Arts : Aleksandra Waliszewska and Symbolism

2023, English
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 220 pages, 29.5 x 18.5 cm
Published by Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw / Warsaw

$95.00 - Out of stock

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A look at the dark, symbolic work of Polish painter Aleksandra Waliszewska alongside historical artworks that influence her.

Painter Aleksandra Waliszewska creates densely narrative, art historically saturated oil and gouache paintings. Waliszewska’s pictorial universe is populated by supernatural characters and dark themes: devils, vampires, satanic creatures, possessed girls, apocalyptic scenes, bloodthirsty zombies, and other incarnations of the living dead. These characters are situated in dystopian urban landscapes, lost highways, deserted suburbs, gloomy housing estates, swamps, and other sites associated with the Eastern European landscape. Drawing from the specifically Slavic histories of the Upiór (the living dead), Waliszewska claims her artistic and conceptual descendance from premodern art and Symbolist works of the late 19th and early 20th century from Nordic, Baltic, and Eastern European regions.

The Dark Arts presents a dense visual narrative, reproducing over a hundred images of Waliszewska’s in juxtaposition with dozens of historical paintings and sculptures. Shifting away from the dominant figures of French and Austrian artists, this revisionist look at Symbolism through an Eastern and Baltic lens will introduce a wider audience to a rich and relatively understudied field of visual culture.

File under: Aleksandra Waliszewska Alison M. Gingeras Natalia Sielewicz Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw / Warsaw Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle Art Painting Ero Guro / Erotic / Grotesque

Venus in Tullamarine: Art, Sex, Politics and Norman Lindsay
Edited by Cameron Hurst and Jeremy George

2023, English
Softcover, 152 pages, 17.5 x 11 cm
Published by Index Journal / Melbourne

$30.00 - Out of stock

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Norman Lindsay (1879–1969) was a prolific, popular and controversial Australian artist. He is best known for his children’s book The Magic Pudding and his skilled prints, which mostly draw on Greek and Roman mythology and nineteenth century literature and philosophy. The Australian cultural consciousness is indelibly marked by Lindsay’s output, his prominence in the Sydney bohemian intellectual scene and by The Magic Pudding, which entrances the imagination of generation after generation of Australian children. This consciousness is marked too by the paradoxical conjunctions of Lindsay’s life: artistic bohemia and fascistic tendencies, avant-gardism and a fervour for the rule of law, libertinism and conservatism, worship and denigration.

This collection of essays examines Lindsay’s current position in Australian art history. The authors’ opinions are erudite, varied and often incendiary; few figures are as divisive as Lindsay.

Film critic Adrian Martin writes alongside Ian McLean, the Hugh Ramsay Chair of Australian Art History at the University of Melbourne, art historian Cameron Hurst, and literary critic Jeremy George. Art historian Soo-Min Shim responds to a video work by artist James Nguyen.

The project develops research conducted during an exhibition of the University of Melbourne’s Norman Lindsay collection, also titled Venus in Tullamarine, held at the George Paton Gallery in 2022.

File under: Norman Lindsay James Nguyen Adrian Martin Ian McLean Cameron Hurst Jeremy George Soo-Min Shim Index Journal / Melbourne Australian Art Painting Drawing Illustration / Graphic Art / Bandes Dessinées Eros LGBTQ+ Art Theory / Essay Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle

Symbolism
by Robert Goldwater

1979, English
Softcover, 300 pages, 15.24 x 22.86 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by Harper and Row / New York

$30.00 - Out of stock

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First edition of Symbolism, published by Routledge in 1979, the last major study by Robert Goldwater who passed away suddenly prior to its completion. Goldwater (1907—1973) was an art historian, African arts scholar and the first director of the Museum of Primitive Art, New York, from 1957 to 1973. He was married to the French-born American artist and sculptor Louise Bourgeois.

Of all the European artistic movements of the nineteenth century, Symbolism is perhaps the one with most resonance today. A major but short-lived style, it set the foundations of modern art in the first decade of the twentieth century. Art Nouveau, in France and Britain, and Jugendstil in Germany are two major movements associated with Symbolism that together can be seen as the foundation of Cubism, Expressionism, Futurism, and Abstract Art. Beginning in the 1880s, it can be described as a reaction against Naturalism and Impressionism. In broader terms, Symbolism could be defined as a philosophical idealism in revolt against a positivist and materialistic attitude that affected not only painting and literature, but life altogether. For the Symbolists the importance of art lay precisely in its ability to reach beyond realism. Their search for the mysterious reality behind appearances resulted in an art that aimed at representing inner states through generalized figures and congruent, "emotionalized" settings. The viewer was asked to re-experience the emotions that the artist had felt in front of his motif. In this way the artists hoped their subjectivity would become meaningful for humanity at large. These aesthetics anticipate certain ideas at the base of Abstract Art, which is one of the reasons for the appeal of Symbolism today. Another is the Symbolists' concern with refined, even morbid sensibility, with subli-mated sexuality, with the reality of evil, and with love and death as the two poles of human experience.

With singular erudition and insight, Robert Goldwater traces the history and evolution of the movement beginning with Gauguin's revolutionary paintings of the 1880s and ending with the last outposts in Vienna, Holland, and Scotland. Among the artists discussed are Gauguin, Redon, Van Gogh, Munch, Rodin, Klimt, Seurat, Klinger, and Ensor. Profusely illustrated throughout.

Good copy with light wear and marginalia in pen.

File under: Paul Gauguin Odilon Redon Edvard Munch Auguste Rodin Max Klinger James Ensor Félicien Rops Aubrey Beardsley Arnold Böcklin James Abbott McNeill Whistler Vincent van Gogh Georges Seurat Claude Monet Gustave Moreau Édouard Vuillard Ferdinand Hodler Gustav Klimt Robert Goldwater Harper and Row / New York Art Brut / Folk / Visionary / Fantastic Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle Painting Art Drawing Theory / Essay Fiction / Poetry Out-of-print / Rare

The Great God Pan
by Arthur Machen

1991, English
Softcover, 88 pages, 23.5 x 15.5 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Creation Books / London

$65.00 - Out of stock

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Scarce Creation Classics 1991 illustrated edition of Arthur Machen's first book, "The Great God Pan", once described by The Westminster Gazette as "An incoherent nightmare of sex..." upon its publication in 1894. An unwittingly complimentary description for one of the greatest works of weird horror and decadence, in which Machen unfurls with his singular eye for the bizarre and macabre the tale of a young girl cursed by her unnatural parentage to become a creature of shape-shifting polysexual demi-human evil. This special paperback edition with illustrations throughout by the great Austin Osman Spare. Includes bibliography and introduction by Iain S. Smith.

Good copy. Some light cover corner wear, tiny touch of foxing to edge.

File under: Austin Osman Spare Arthur Machen Iain S. Smith Creation Books / London Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle Out-of-print / Rare Fiction / Poetry Weird / Speculative / Science Fiction

Francisco de Goya and the Art of Critique
by Anthony J. Cascardi

2022, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 376 Pages, 22.8 x 15.2 cm
Published by Zone Books / New York

$72.00 - Out of stock

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Francisco de Goya and the Art of Critique probes the relationship between the enormous, extraordinary, and sometimes baffling body of Goya’s work and the interconnected issues of modernity, Enlightenment, and critique. Taking exception to conventional views that rely mainly on Goya’s darkest images to establish his relevance for modernity, Cascardi argues that the entirety of Goya’s work is engaged in a thoroughgoing critique of the modern social and historical worlds, of which it nonetheless remains an integral part. The book reckons with the apparent gulf assumed to divide the Disasters of War and the so-called Black Paintings from Goya’s scenes of bourgeois life or from the well-mannered portraits of aristocrats, military men, and intellectuals. It shows how these apparent contradictions offer us a gateway into Goya’s critical practice vis-à-vis a European modernity typically associated with the Enlightenment values dominant in France, England, and Germany. In demonstrating Goya’s commitment to the project of critique, Cascardi provides an alternative to established readings of Goya’s work, which generally acknowledge the explicit social criticism evident in works such as the Caprichos but which have little to say about those works that do not openly take up social or political themes. In Francisco de Goya and the Art of Critique, Cascardi shows how Goya was consistently engaged in a critical response to—and not just a representation of—the many different factors that are often invoked to explain his work, including history, politics, popular culture, religion, and the history of art itself.

“This is a landmark study that will change the terms in which Goya’s art will henceforth be understood.”—Peter de Bolla

“One doesn’t need to be a Frankfurt School buff to acknowledge that Anthony Cascardi has written the most convincing account of Goya’s work—all of Goya, the religious frescoes, the court paintings, and the tapestry cartoons as well as the Caprichos, the Disasters of War, and the black paintings in the Quinta del Sordo—using the lens of Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of the Enlightenment. An enlightening study indeed, which stops short of wanting to illuminate what in Goya should remain steeped in darkness.” —Thierry de Duve, Evelyn Kranes Kossak Professor of Art History, Hunter College

“In this deeply reflective and thorough study, Cascardi blows the lid off standard accounts of Goya’s extraordinary art, demonstrating that both the ‘painter of light’ and the ‘painter of darkness’ theses fall way short of the artist’s immersion in the culture of his time. In chapter after chapter, Cascardi argues that Goya was involved in a critique of the world he lived in—its politics, religious belief, ethics, history—and, at the same time, of the means of representation at his disposal. This is a landmark study that will change the terms in which Goya’s art will henceforth be understood.” —Peter de Bolla, Professor of Cultural History and Aesthetics, University of Cambridge

File under: Francisco de Goya Anthony J. Cascardi Zone Books / New York Theory / Essay Painting Drawing Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle

Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka : Drawings and Watercolors

1981, English
Softcover, 174 pages, 23 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by Thames and Hudson / London

$45.00 $20.00 - In stock -

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First 1981 edition of this catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition at the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, April 4—May 17, 1981. Heavily illustrated with many works by all artists featured, accompanied by texts by Otto Brecha and Christian Nebehay, this volume explores the radical, shocking and ground-breaking artistic expression of Vienna's "grand three" avant-garde artists at the dawn of the twentieth century. A city bursting with intellectual and sensual energy, Vienna's burgeoning society was constantly at odds with the conservative and often disapproving nineteenth-century culture — Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka often at the center of this controversy. Beautiful examples of their drawings and watercolours in b/w/ and colour throughout.

Good copy with wear to delicate spine and small tear to top of spine cover edge. General age and wear.

File under: Gustav Klimt Egon Schiele Oskar Kokoschka Otto Brecha Christian Nebehay Thames and Hudson / London Art Painting Drawing Out-of-print / Rare Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle Eros SALE

The Dice Cup
by Max Jacob

2022, English
Softcover, 264 pages, 14 x 20.3 cm
Published by Wakefield Press / Cambridge

$42.00 - In stock -

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The most important prose-poem collection of the 20th century, available in a trade publication for the first time.

Max Jacob's role in French modernity was essential, and with this second volume of his work from Wakefield Press, it can now be fully and properly assessed. First published in 1917, The Dice Cup stands alongside Baudelaire's Paris Spleen, Rimbaud's Illuminations and Pierre Reverdy's Prose Poems as one of the most important and foundational books of prose poetry. Jacob has been identified as a "cubist poet," but this collection and its shifting style escape any such easy definition: dream accounts are rendered in playful prose that thumbs its nose at the fabular tradition of Baudelaire and Mallarmé and the Romantic disorder of Rimbaud, and subverts both poetic and narrative expectations in favor of dream logic, allusion, transformed autobiography and nonsensical parody. At once mystical and burlesque, the prose poems of Dice Cup are consciously constructed, yet as unstable and unfixed as both Jacob's personality and our own.

Max Jacob (1876-1944) was a French poet, painter, writer and critic. A key figure of bohemian Montmartre and the Cubist era, he rubbed shoulders with Apollinaire and Modigliani and was a lifelong friend to Picasso, Gris and Cocteau. Jacob converted from Judaism to Christianity in 1915. Arrested by the Gestapo in 1944, he died in a deportation camp of pneumonia. Rosanna Warren's critically acclaimed biography of Jacob was published in 2020.

Translated by Ian Seed

File under: Max Jacob Ian Seed Wakefield Press / Cambridge Dada Fiction / Poetry Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle

Edvard Munch : Symbols & Images

1978, English
Softcover, 268 pages, 28 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by National Gallery of Art / Washington

$45.00 - In stock -

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First edition of Edvard Munch : Symbols & Images, published by National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1978, on the occasion of a major American exhibition of Munch held at the National Gallery of Art, November 11, 1978—February 19, 1979, "providing viewers an opportunity to experience the full range of Munch's genius, both in painting and also in graphic work, in which he was one of the virtuosos of his age. The catalogue essays examine the emergence of Expressionism in northern Europe and explore the relationships that recent scholarship has shown to exist between Expressionism and the stylistic imperatives of Impressionism and the School of Paris. The catalog reexamines Munch as not only an artist who created a new tradition but also as an heir to existing 19th-century traditions. Many of the works included on loan from 20 collections had never before left Norway, where over 90 percent of Munch's art remains." — Publisher. Profusely illustrated throughout. Texts by Arne Eggum, Reinhold Heller, Trygve Nergaard, Ragna Thiis Stang, Gerd Woll, and more.

Edvard Munch (1863—1944) was a Norwegian painter and printmaker and one of Modernism's most significant artists. His best known work, The Scream, has become one of Western art's most iconic images. His childhood was overshadowed by illness, bereavement and the dread of inheriting a mental condition that ran in the family. Unable to attend school, Munch's poor health also gave him the freedom to pursue his passion – drawing. His tenacious experimentation and intensely evocative treatment of psychological themes built upon some of the main tenets of late 19th-century Symbolism and greatly influenced German Expressionism in the early 20th century.

Very Good copy, light wear to covers.

File under: Edvard Munch Arne Eggum Reinhold Heller Trygve Nergaard Ragna Thiis Stang Gerd Woll National Gallery of Art / Washington Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle Out-of-print / Rare Painting Drawing Art

Edvard Munch : The Frieze of Life

2004, English
Softcover, 184 pages, 28.4 x 24.7
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria

$30.00 - Out of stock

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First edition of this now scarce Edvard Munch catalogue published by National Gallery of Victoria on the occasion of the major exhibition, Edvard Munch : The Frieze of Life, 13 October 2004—12 January 2005. The first comprehensive exhibition of Edvard Munch’s art in Australia, the exhibition assembled more than 80 works from across the artist’s entire oeuvre – including paintings, prints, drawings, and watercolours. Lavishly illustrated throughout in colour and b/w including texts by Elizabeth Cross, Ted Gott, Gerd Woll, Knut Ormhaug, Marit Lange, Gerard Vaughan, Rose Stone, Gunnar Sorensen, Munch Museet and more, plus a chronology, exhibition list and bibliography.

Edvard Munch (1863—1944) was a Norwegian painter and printmaker and one of Modernism's most significant artists. His best known work, The Scream, has become one of Western art's most iconic images. His childhood was overshadowed by illness, bereavement and the dread of inheriting a mental condition that ran in the family. Unable to attend school, Munch's poor health also gave him the freedom to pursue his passion – drawing. His tenacious experimentation and intensely evocative treatment of psychological themes built upon some of the main tenets of late 19th-century Symbolism and greatly influenced German Expressionism in the early 20th century.

Very Good copy.

File under: Edvard Munch Elizabeth Cross Ted Gott Gerd Woll Knut Ormhaug Marit Lange Gerard Vaughan Rose Stone Gunnar Sorensen NGV (National Gallery of Victoria) / Victoria Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle Out-of-print / Rare Painting Drawing Art

Edvard Munch : The Man and His Art
by Ragna Thiis Stang

1979, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 320 pages, 29.5 x 23.8 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Abbeville Press / New York

$50.00 - Out of stock

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First edition, second print from 1979 of this major hardcover monograph on the work of Edvard Munch, published by Abbeville Press, New York. extensively illustrated in lush colour and b/w throughout, Norwegian historian Ragna Thiis Stang studies in detail the life and art of one of the founders of modern expressionism, treating his preoccupation with the themes of love and death and the feelings of anxiety, loneliness, and despair which they engender. Translated from Norwegian to English by Geoffrey Culverwell.

Edvard Munch (1863—1944) was a Norwegian painter and printmaker and one of Modernism's most significant artists. His best known work, The Scream, has become one of Western art's most iconic images. His childhood was overshadowed by illness, bereavement and the dread of inheriting a mental condition that ran in the family. Unable to attend school, Munch's poor health also gave him the freedom to pursue his passion – drawing. His tenacious experimentation and intensely evocative treatment of psychological themes built upon some of the main tenets of late 19th-century Symbolism and greatly influenced German Expressionism in the early 20th century.

Very Good copy in VG dust jacket.

File under: Edvard Munch Ragna Thiis Stang Abbeville Press / New York Drawing Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle Painting Out-of-print / Rare Art

Spicilege
By Marcel Schwob

2022, English
Softcover, 224 pages, 13.5 x 20.3 cm
Published by Wakefield Press / Cambridge

$36.00 - In stock -

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Exquisitely crafted essays on medieval criminal slang, ancient Greek prostitution, laughter, anarchy and more from the endlessly influential Marcel Schwob.

"All over the world," wrote Jorge Luis Borges, "there are devotees of the writer Marcel Schwob who constitute little secret societies." Spicilege, Schwob's last book published under his name, constitutes the handbook to these societies--to Schwob's work, to himself as erudite scholar and author, and to the twilight of the era of French Symbolism. Schwob was, as Paul Léautaud described him, a "living library," and the critical biographies gathered in the essays of Spicilege display a few of the volumes in that library: his groundbreaking research on François Villon (work that remains a cornerstone to our knowledge of Villon), his passion for Robert Louis Stevenson and his encounters with such less-remembered writers as George Meredith. But it is the carefully developed ideas in these essays and the eccentric yet thorough scholarship that draws them together that are of particular interest today: the understanding of criminal slang in the Middle Ages; the study of prostitution in ancient Greece; the folklore inspired by a Flaubert story; a complex critique of individuality that effectively laid the groundwork for Jarry's "pataphysics"; as well as ruminations on perversity, laughter, biography, love, terror and pity, and art and anarchy.

Marcel Schwob (1867-1905) was a scholar of startling breadth, an incomparable storyteller and a secret influence on generations of writers, from Apollinaire and Borges to Roberto Bolaño and J. Rodolfo Wilcock.

Translated by Alex Andriesse.

File under: Marcel Schwob Alex Andriesse Wakefield Press / Cambridge Fiction / Poetry Weird / Speculative / Science Fiction Theory / Essay Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle

Bruges-La-Morte
by Georges Rodenbach

2022, English
Softcover, 160 pages, 11.4 x 17.8 cm
Published by Wakefield Press / Cambridge

$32.00 - In stock -

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The archetypal Symbolist novel, and a gorgeous tapestry of death and melancholy, Bruges-la-Morte was also the first work of fiction to employ photographs in the style of Breton, Drndic and Sebald.

A widower, Hugues Viane, takes refuge in the decay of Bruges, living among the relics of his dead wife as he transforms his home and the very city he inhabits into her spatial embalmment. Spinning out his existence in a mournful, silent labyrinth of entombed streets and the cold arteries of canals, Viane takes comfort in his narcissistic delirium, until his world is shaken by the appearance of his wife's doppelganger: a young dancer encountered in the street, whose appearance conjures a sequence of events that will introduce the specter of reality into his ritualist dream-state to disastrous effect.

The archetype of the Symbolist novel, Bruges-la-Morte, first published in 1892, remains Georges Rodenbach's most famous work; it has seen numerous cinematic and operatic adaptations, and inspired the source material for Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo. It was also a precursor to such authors as André Breton and W.G. Sebald in being the first novel to employ photographs as illustrations--to allow readers, as Rodenbach put it, to "be subject to the presence of the town, feel the contagion of the neighboring waters, sense in their turn the shadow of the high towers reaching across the text."

Georges Rodenbach (1855-98) was one of the major figures of Belgian Symbolism, an essential bridge between the Belgian and Parisian literary scenes, and a friend and colleague of Verhaeren, Maeterlinck, Mallarmé and Huysmans. He was the author of four novels, eight collections of verse and numerous short stories, plays and critical works.

File under: Georges Rodenbach Wakefield Press / Cambridge Weird / Speculative / Science Fiction Fiction / Poetry Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle

Surrealist Drawings
by František Šmejkal

1978, English
Hardcover (clothbound w. dust jacket), 160 pages, 24.5 x 32 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by Octopus / London

$65.00 - Out of stock

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English edition of the great "Surrealist Drawings", edited by František Šmejkal, designed and printed in Czechoslovakia. A beautiful clothbound hardcover folio of drawings by artists affiliated with Surrealism. What makes this lovely collection special is the inclusion of many of the Czech Surrealists, and a generally broad European scope of artists. Czech art historian František Šmejkal has collated a wonderful selection of works on paper by Toyen, Jindřich Štyrský, Wolfgang Paalen, Giorgio de Chirico, Hans Bellmer, Alfred Kubin, Francis Picabia, Jacques Hérold, Yves Tanguy, Man Ray, Josef Istler, Max Ernst, André Breton, František Muzika, Paul Delvaux, Wilfredo Lam, Richard Oelze, Mikuláš Medek, Joan Miró, Josef Sima, Kurt Seligmann, Odilon Redon, Andre Masson, Max Walter Svanberg, Salvador Dali, Arshile Gorky, Victor Brauner, Rene Magritte, and many more.

Highly recommended.
Very Good copy with light edge wear. Very Good dust jacket.

File under: Toyen Jindřich Štyrský André Masson Hans Bellmer Arshile Gorky Victor Brauner Salvador Dalí Paul Delvaux Wilfredo Lam Max Ernst Yves Tanguy Wolfgang Paalen Giorgio de Chirico Alfred Kubin Max-Walter Svanberg Odilon Redon Joan Miró Josef Sima René Magritte Jacques Hérold Francis Picabia Man Ray Richard Oelze Kurt Seligmann František Muzika Mikuláš Medek Josef Istler František Šmejkal Octopus / London Surrealism Out-of-print / Rare Drawing Painting Symbolism / Decadence / Fin de siècle