Max Jacob, "Omnia Vanitas"
Max Jacob, "Omnia Vanitas"
“What is called a sincere work is one that is endowed with enough strength to give reality to an illusion” Max Jacob, Art poétique.
33 selected poems and fragments by the renowned early 20th century French poet, artist, and critic Max Jacob. Newly translated into English by Alastair M. Johnston. Contains 32 original illustrations by Jinny Pearce. Handset in Stempel Janson types. 135 copies were printed at Thyrsus Press in Berkeley, California. Designed and produced by Jinny Pearce and Douglas Heise. Hand bound in three quarter hard binding and covered in handprinted Lama Li Loka paper. 48 pages. All copies are numbered and signed by Alastair Johnston and Jinny Pearce.
Max Jacob, (born July 12, 1876, Quimper, Fr.—died March 5, 1944, Drancy), was a French poet who played a decisive role in the new directions of modern poetry during the early part of the 20th century. His writing was the product of a complex amalgam of Jewish, Breton, Parisian, and Roman Catholic elements. Jacob departed his native Brittany in 1894 to go to Paris, where he lived in extreme poverty but eventually became an important figure in Montmartre during the formative period of Cubism. He was a friend of the Cubist painters Pablo Picasso and Juan Gris and of the poet Guillaume Apollinaire. Jacob converted to Christianity in 1909 and became a Roman Catholic in 1915, but he nevertheless continued to oscillate between extravagant penitence and wild bohemianism until 1921, at which time he retired into semimonastic seclusion at Saint Benoît-sur-Loire. He lived there most of the time, supporting himself by painting, until World War II, when he was interned in the concentration camp at Drancy, near Paris, where he died. (Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica)
Alastair M. Johnston was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1950. He grew up in Northumberland and Newcastle upon Tyne. He has lived in California since 1970 where he works as a writer, teacher and letterpress printer. He is the author of “Transitional Faces,” a biography of Richard Austin, cutter of the Bell and Scotch Roman types and his son Richard T. Austin, a wood engraver. He is co-editor of William E. Loy’s “Nineteenth-century American Designers & Engravers of Type,” and most recently has produced “Dreaming on the Edge: Poets & Book Artists in California”. He is the co-founder and proprietor of Poltroon Press based in Berkeley, California. In addition to writing about literature and bibliography, he writes about world music. You can read more about Alastair at:
http://www.poltroonpress.com (his private press)
http://www.muzikifan.com (his world music review blog)
http://www.booktryst.com (poster "poltroon")
This edition contains translations of the following poems and fragments:
Story
Judgment of Women
Omnia Vanitas
Dilettantism Above All Else
The Beggar Woman of Naples
1914
Biographical Genre
Superior Degeneracy
The Non-Sentimental Education
Poem (Ivory Crabs)
In the Silent Forest
Poem (The Test)
(Untitled)
(Untitled)
Poem (Sitting Ducks)
The Centaur
M. Gilquin & Oriental Poetry
The Shot
They’re Never Coming Back
(Untitled)
Literary Ways
Abraham’s Sacrifice
The Serial Novel Again
Adventure Novel
Poem in a Style Not My Own (To you, Rimbaud)
Kaleidoscope
The Key
Japanese Family
Tree Rodents
The Periscope of Mentana
Paws or Pores
A Smile for a Hundred Tears
(Untitled)