Duino Elegies

First edition. 8vo. 160pp. Publisher's tan cloth, lettered in gilt to spine. Appendices and Additional Notes with b/w frontis. of Picasso's 'Les Saltimbanques'. The German text, with an English translation, introduction and commentary by J.B. Leishman and Stephen Spender. Preceded by Edward and Vita Sackville-West's translation of 1931, also published by the Hogarth Press. Originally published by Insel-Verlag, Leipzig, 1923.

Frayed to crown and tail of spine, foxing to prelims, some minor rubs and bumps, else Very Good.

Author's deeply philosophical and mystical ten-poem sequence, begun in the winter of 1911–12 at Duino Castle on the Adriatic Sea, and interspersed with bouts of depression brought on by the onset of World War I. The poems were completed in a burst of creativity a decade later at Muzot Castle near Sierre, Switzerland, and are regarded along with the "Sonnets to Orpheus," as the highlights of his oeuvre. Parallel German/English text. "The deepest mysteries of existence embodied in the most delicate and precise images. For me, the greatest poetry of the 20th century." –Philip Pullman

[Woolmer 457]