Stevens, Wallace; Rothchild, Judith (Artist); Noel, Bernard (Translator)

Study of Two Pears / Etude de deux poires [ARTIST BOOK - Judith Rothchild]; A Poem by Wallace Stevens with a translation into French by Bernard Noel and mezzotints by Judith Rothchild

Octon: Verdigris Press, 2003. Rothchild, Judith. Limited Edition. Folio in a case. Number 10 of 50 copies, quarto size, [20] pp., signed by Judith Rothchild and the printer Mark Lintott. Fine. Item #CNJL1250

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) was "one of America's most respected poets. He was a master stylist, employing an extraordinary vocabulary and a rigorous precision in crafting his poems. But he was also a philosopher of aesthetics, vigorously exploring the notion of poetry as the supreme fusion of the creative imagination and objective reality." (N.B., from the web site of the Poetry Foundation.)

"Study of Two Pears" was first published in 1954 in The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, and is here translated into French by Bernard Noel. The title asserts itself as being concerned with visual arts, and each stanza tugs at the tension between reality that is observed and imaginative reality, the observer sees the pears but not as he wills, language fails to adequately describe them as they are without the use of metaphor. There might be no more appropriate poem to illustrate than this, as the speaker's desire to describe the pears without relating them to anything else is an act of reduction which ultimately expands the image by showing us the many things they do resemble.

Illustrated by Rothchild's velvety, hyper-realistic mezzotints which follow the progress of the stanzas, each print gradually growing brighter, the pears illustrated from every possible angle, becoming more definite and resolved along with the poem.

___DESCRIPTION: Original wrappers screen-printed with a design of green, brown and orange, with the title letterpress printed to the backstrip and upper wrapper in dark green, loose leporello, deckled fore-edge, nine mezzotints, two blind-stamped sets of pears to fly-leaves, text in English and French; handset type, Hahnemuhle paper, quarto size (11" by 11.75"), unpaginated with [20] pp., limited edition, this number 10 of 50 copies, signed by printer Mark Lintott and Judith Rothchild. Housed in a heavy cardboard slipcase covered in green paper and similarly screen-printed in shades of green, lined with plain green paper.

___CONDITION: Fine; crisp, clean; other than a hint of rubbing to the top corners and a small rubbed spot on the spine of the backstrip, as new, and free of prior owner markings; in a like case.

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Price: $1,200.00