Verlaine / Daniel Girard - ‎Sagesse [num. sur vélin] - 1924

Luxury edition 'which will never be reprinted,' of Paul Verlaine's fifth poetic collection in verse, illustrated in the first printing, with delicate colored stencil compositions by Daniel Girard.

Unique edition of 550 copies. This one is among the 500 numbered copies of the vellum print, and it bears the number 120.

Copy bound in a beautiful half-red morocco binding, with a spine featuring gold-embossed raised bands decorated with a rich, compartmentalized, and gilded design. Gilt top. Cover preserved, without the spine.

Condition: binding well preserved despite the spine being worn, interior fresh and clean. Very beautiful, untrimmed copy.

Revealing his accents of humility and candor, his sorrowful and trembling prayers, his childish joys, in a touching innocence and contrition, Verlaine, in an strangely evocative language, is perhaps of all poets the one who has gone to the furthest reaches of poetry. There where it evaporates and where the art of music begins. Rejoining the delights of musical art, more eloquent through the strength of its expression to translate cries of pain and joy, admiration and fear, and due to its vague and floating contours, Verlaine has thus succeeded in expressing the most confused sensations of the soul, its wavering appetites, its fleeting pleasures, its subtle torments.

Verlaine / Daniel Girard
Wisdom. Illustrations by Daniel Girard.
Paris, Albert Messein, 1924
Grand in-8 (25 x 16.5 cm); 160 pages. 1 leaf.