Cover of The Book of Kells]]> ___]]> ___]]> Das Narrenschiff (The Ship of Fools), the poem was illustrated with woodcuts designed by several artists including the young Albrecht Dürer. The immensely popular images whimsically depict a range of foolish and sinful behaviours. The figures in them wear fools’ caps shaped like an ass’s ears with bells on their tips. In this image, the fools are crowded together in small boats steered by fools and headed for Narragonia, the Land of Fools.]]> ___]]> The Book of Kells (ca. 800 AD) is a magnificent and vibrantly coloured illuminated manuscript of the Gospels. Its ornate pages combine Celtic knots and interlacing with intricate figures of animals, humans, and mythical beasts. Joyce was familiar with this particular edition; it is likely the one he carried with him around Europe. He wrote to Arthur Power: ‘In all the places I have been to, Rome, Zurich, Trieste, I have taken it about with me, and have pored over its workmanship for hours … some of the big initial letters which swing right across a page have the essential quality of a chapter of Ulysses. Indeed, you can compare much of my work to the intricate illuminations.’]]> ___]]> The Book of Kells often involve traditional Christian iconography. The illuminations here portray the symbols of the Four Evangelists: a man (Matthew), a lion (Mark), an eagle (John), and an ox (Luke), each of the figures is winged. Curiously, in Joyce’s Ulysses, these symbols appear on the citizen’s ‘muchtreasured and intricately embroidered ancient Irish’ handkerchief. In his description, Joyce playfully gives Matthew ‘a bogoak sceptre’ instead of a lance, replaces the (British) lion with ‘a North American puma’ and the ox with ‘a Kerry calf,’ and says that the eagle is from Carrantuohill.]]> ___]]> La Prose du Transsibérien, a poem telling of his trip in 1905 on the newly opened Trans-Siberian Express railway. The work is a supreme example of European Modernism, a product of simultaneisme, which promoted the concept of the continuous present. It is a collaborative work, with images (including the Eiffel Tower) by artist Sonia Delaunay. The original edition unfolds to over six feet in length, and, according to legend, if the proposed edition of 150 copies were laid end to end, they would be as tall as the Eiffel Tower. In reality some 60 were produced; only seven are recorded as held in institutions. This copy is reproduced from the Yale University Press facsimile, 2009.]]> Blaise Cendrars]]> Les Fleurs du Mal, Charles Baudelaire kept on his desk two inspirational art works: a set of engravings by Alfred Rethel depicting a more modern, ironic, and hostile Danse Macabre; and a skeleton statuette sculpted by Ernest Christophe. With left hand positioned jauntily on her hip, the female skeleton wears a gown, is garlanded with flowers, and, right arm slightly bent, cradles a mask of flesh, looking as though she were about to attend a masquerade. In his poem ‘Danse Macabre,’ Baudelaire’s skeletal coquette is perfumed, elegant, and alluring as she leads humanity in a grotesque Danse Macabre.]]> Charles Baudelaire]]> Mornings in Mexico is a collection of travel essays, which incorporates Mexican myth and history. In the first essay, D. H. Lawrence describes two malevolent parrots as they mimic the yapping of a dog, and Corasmin, the ‘little fat, curly white dog,’ who appears resigned to their shrieking – and the heat and his fleas. The narrator realises that the thoughts he is projecting onto Corasmin belong to a different cycle of evolution. Quickly rejecting the evolutionary view, he prefers the Aztec account of successive suns and the convulsive ‘bang’ of history.]]> D. H. Lawrence]]> anathemata as things ‘made over to the gods,’ things devoted, donated, and dedicated. He records fragments and remains of cultural traditions, from the rituals of Mass to Rugby Union rules. His materials come from British and European myth, literature, history, and legend, and he acknowledges the composite tradition of Britain, with its Celtic, Imperial Roman, Saxon, and Christian roots. The Anathemata is a complex, allusive poem exploring cultural artefacts and themes of empire and resistance.]]> David Jones]]> Buile Suibhne (The Madness/Frenzy of Sweeny) tells the story of Sweeny, pagan King of Dal Araidhe in Ulster, whose ill-tempered actions are punished with a curse. Sweeny becomes mad and travels through Ireland, living in tree tops like a bird and composing poems about his location and fate. As ‘Suibne in the Woods’ opens, Sweeny comes to rest on a branch.]]> Edited and translated by Gerard Murphy]]> The Art of Wyndham Lewis]]> Edited by Charles Handley-Read]]> Edited by Charles Handley-Read]]> Edited by Richard Aldington]]> The Letters of T. S. Eliot. Vol. I 1898–1922]]> Edited by Valerie Eliot]]> Blast 2 is characteristic of Vorticism’s endeavour to capture the energy and urban, industrialised nature of the modern world.]]> Edited by Wyndham Lewis]]> Blast featured work by Vorticist writers and artists. It ‘Blasted’ or ‘Blessed’ various places, people, and things, sometimes blasting and blessing the same thing. The shocking pink cover is split by the title, which is strikingly positioned diagonally from top left to bottom right and appears in large black caps. Pound referred to the ‘new Futurist, Cubist, Imagiste quarterly’ as the ‘great MAGENTA cover’d opusculus [small or minor work].’]]> Edited by Wyndham Lewis]]> Cover of Blast 3]]> Edited by Wyndham Lewis]]> Blast is the Review of the Great English Vortex, the journal of the short-lived Vorticist art movement. Blast 1 features the movement’s manifesto and work contributed by Ezra Pound, Ford Maddox Hueffer (Ford), sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, and others, under editor Wyndham Lewis. It employs bold graphic design and inventive typography to arrest the reader’s attention.]]> Edited by Wyndham Lewis]]> Varieties of Parable, MacNeice comments on the metaphorical nature of Muir’s journeys and places and the ‘dream quality’ of his most successful poems.]]> Edwin Muir]]> The Sun Also Rises. In Grail legends, the Fisher King is wounded in his leg or groin, leaving him impotent and his land infertile, and he spends his time near his castle fishing. Yet the King and his kingdom can be healed if a questing knight asks the right question. Hemingway’s Jake was wounded in the groin in WWI, and his post-war life becomes meaningless. He is able to establish order in his life and potentially redeem and heal himself by going fishing.]]> Ernest Hemingway]]> Ripostes, Pound drew attention to the Imagist movement, developing that style in his own work and appending several poems by T. E. Hulme as examples of this new poetics. He included his translation of the Old English poem ‘The Seafarer,’ upsetting some readers by writing a poem based on his own personal interpretation of the medieval work rather than a literal translation of it.]]> Ezra Pound]]> Ezra Pound]]> Lume Spento (With Tapers Quenched) is Pound’s first collection of poetry; its dramatic lyrics examples of Pound’s early poetic style. The title is a phrase borrowed from Canto III of Dante’s Purgatorio, and the poems reflect Pound’s fascination with the poetry of the troubadours.]]> Ezra Pound]]> Personæ]]> Ezra Pound]]> Pisan Cantos. Embarking on an intellectual and spiritual journey, the imprisoned Pound retrieves materials from his memory, cultural and linguistic fragments, in a spiritual quest for transcendence and enlightenment.]]> Ezra Pound]]>