Paris: Au Vent D'Arles, (1962).
Price: $3,500.00
Softcover. First edition. Hors commerce issue limited to 155 copies. Quarto. [37]pp. Tan printed wrappers. Covers are slightly toned with very faint foxing, else a near fine, unopened copy. An elusive title in this 1962 edition, published by Au Vent D'Arles, and issued with the text sheets only, reserved for distribution, hors commerce, by St. John Perse, Georges Braque and Janine Cremieux. *OCLC* locates 11 copies; six in the U.S. The Getty copy in their description states: "No etchings accompany this ed." *Oiseaux* was also separately published, along with etchings by Georges Braque, under the title *L'Ordre des Oiseaux* (1963).
This is one of a few copies reserved for Saint-John Perse, not numbered and designated in type on the colophon leaf: "Exemplaire Saint-John Perse," and Signed by St-John Perse in ink on the limitation page. This copy is also Inscribed by St.-John Perse to Lincoln Kirstein on the front flyleaf: "A Lincoln Kirstein, pour qui la vie est creation. Amicalement, St-John Perse Washington, 1963." Kirstein started the influential little magazine *Hound and Horn* while still a Harvard student and cofounded the New York City Ballet with George Balanchine in 1946. His sister, Mina Kirstein Curtiss, fluent in French, was a Smith College professor, and she also translated and edited publications by French authors including Saint-John Perse, with whom she had a close friendship.
Item #523703
