APOLLINAIRE, Guillaume.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Le Bestiaire ou cortège d'Orphée. Illustré par Raoul Dufy. Second edition, number 254 of 1,250 copies, of one of the great illustrated books of the 20th century. The work was first issued in 1911 in a tiny edition of 122 copies.Apollinaire's sequence reimagines the medieval bestiary for the modernist age, pairing short, witty animal poems with the figure of Orpheus and his attendant creatures. He first conceived the project after seeing Picasso's animal woodcuts in 1906, before turning to Dufy. Ray describes the result as "one of the most delightful of livres de peintres".This 1919 edition appeared the year after Apollinaire's death in the influenza pandemic. Dufy contributes a brief prefatory note, recalling the rarity of the first edition and the poet's "la mort soudaine".

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