(Henri Cartier-Bresson) Rimbaud, Arthur.

Vowels.

New York. Limited Editions Club. 1996. This Edition Limited to 300 numbered copies, of which this is #142. Signed by Cartier-Bresson to Colophon. Illustrated with three watercolours painted especially for this Edition by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Printed by woodblock by Kenji Shinohara at Wesleyan University upon hand-milled textured Japanese paper. Folio. 12.5" x 15.25". Bound in gilt-titled, half terracotta grain morocco and linen covered boards. Encased in an ultra-suede lined, matching Solander box with gilt-titled grain morocco label to spine.

Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891), French poet of the symbolist school. He was born and educated in Charleville, Ardennes Department. He exhibited great intellectual precocity and wrote verse at the age of ten. When he was 17, he composed the strikingly original poem, “The Drunken Boat” (1871; trans. 1941), which he submitted to the older poet Paul Verlaine. This work, which set the tone of the entire symbolist, or decadent, movement, so impressed Verlaine that he entreated the author to move to Paris. Later, accompanied by Verlaine, he went to England and then to Belgium. In Belgium, Verlaine, with whom Rimbaud had a stormy relationship, tried twice to take the life of the younger poet, wounding him seriously in the second attempt. Rimbaud wrote an allegorical account of the matter in A Season in Hell (1873; trans. 1932).

In 1880 Rimbaud became a trader in North Africa, with headquarters at Ha-rer and Shoa, central Abyssinia. Verlaine, under the impression that Rimbaud was no longer alive, published the latter's poems in Illuminations (1886; trans. 1932). This work contains the famous Sonnet des voyelles (Sonnet of the Vowels), in which each of the five vowels is associated with a different color. In 1891 Rimbaud returned to France for medical treatment of a tumor on his knee; he died in a hospital at Marseille. On the strength of a few poems that he wrote between the ages of 10 and 20, Rimbaud ranks as one of the most original of all French poets.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

From: The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition | Date: 2008 | The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright 2008 Columbia University Press. (Hide copyright information) Copyright information

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004). Cartier-Bresson is renowned for his countless memorable images of 20th-century individuals and events. After studying painting and being influenced by surrealism , he began (1931) a career in photography. Achieved with the simplest of techniques, his works are remarkable for their flawless composition, for their capture of what has been called "the decisive moment" in a situation, and for the sense they convey of the rush of time arrested. His photographs, characteristically taken with a 35-mm camera, are uncropped and unmanipulated. Cartier-Bresson witnessed and photographed many of his era's most historic events, from the Spanish Civil War, to the partition of India, the Chinese revolution, and France's 1968 student rebellion. He made numerous photographs of the German occupation of France and in 1944, after escaping from a Nazi prison camp, organized underground photography units. He was the author of many photographic books including The Decisive Moment (1952), People of Moscow (1955), China in Transition (1956), The World of Henri Cartier-Bresson (1968), The Face of Asia (1972), About Russia (1974), and the retrospective Henri Cartier-Bresson: Photographer (1992). A founder (1947) of the Magnum photo agency, he virtually retired from photography in the early 1970s and thenceforth largely devoted himself to drawing.

A Very Fine, Pristine, apparently unread copy. LEC Letter laid-in. A Very Rare copy.

Item #8584