Eric Chaim Kline, Bookseller - Old and Rare Books

Mit Schoenheit befleckt (Akkorde der Liebe) zehn Gedichte (Stained With Beauty (Accords of Love) Ten Poems) [MANUSCRIPT COPY INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR]

Vrenski, Fjodor (Pseudonym for Manfred Vogel)

NP: The author, 1940. Original Typescript. Softcover. Octavo. Unpaginated. 12 leaves]. Original tan string bound wraps with black lettering on cover. Inscribed "Schönheit ist nicht oberflächlich; sie geht bis auf's Blut Oscar Wilde, Juli 1940, F. Vrenski (Beauty is not superficial, she goes down to the blood)" in pencil on first typed page with Plato quote.

Though not traceable as one of Wilde's quotes, the first couplet of Vrenski's poems opens with "Die Liebe ist der Puls der Welt, Bewegt sich frei und kann nicht fliehen (Love is the pulse of the world, it moves freely and cannot flee..." (Vrenski). This and the second poem "Nur eine Viertelstunde (Only a Quarter Hour)" are crossed through diagonally in pencil, third, ninth and tenth poem with minor pencil corrections. The other titles: Königliche Krone (Royal Crown); Junge Glieder (Young Limbs); Abend und Morgen (Evening and Morning); Mit Schoenheit befleckt (Stained with Love); Juengling und Knabe (Youth and Boy); Am Meer (At the Ocean); Dreifache Trauer (Threefold Morning); Neue Liebe (New Love). Text in German. Light wear with light age-toning. Pencil corrections presumably by the author. Manuscript of the publication published by Weinfeld, Jerusalem, in 1940. Very good condition. Item #54287

"People say sometimes that Beauty is superficial. That may be so. But at least it is not so superficial as Thought is. To me, Beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.” (Oscar Wilde. The Picture of Dorian Gray)

Copies at the Deutsche Nationalbibliotheken Frankfurt and Leipzig (These with Manfred Vogel indicated as author, same pagination and publisher), the National Library of Israel, the British Library, Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg, British Library Reference Collections (this with additional data "S. Weinfeld's Printing Press"), one entry with Vogel and Vrenski credited as the author at the National Library.

"Manfred Vogel was born in 1923 into a prominent merchant family in Berlin, where he also spent his early years. After fleeing Nazi persecution and emigrating to Mandate-Palestine aged sixteen in 1939, he studied art history and theater studies in Jerusalem. Vogel also worked as a journalist for Arnold Zweig’s German-language paper Orient and the Palestine Post (since 1950: The Jerusalem Post). Today, he is mostly remembered for editing the anthology Ariel: Ein Almanach für Literatur-Graphic-Musik (Jerusalem, 1941), a collection of German-Jewish exile literature, graphics and music that also features two poems by Else Lasker-Schüler. In 1943, Vogel wrote one of the first reviews of Lasker-Schüler’s famous collection of poems Mein blaues Klavier in the Hebrew daily newspaper Mischmar (Tel Aviv). After moving to Vienna in 1952, Manfred Vogel worked as an author, journalist and theater critic. He is also known for the translation of 17 Shakespeare plays and was a member of the PEN Centre for German authors abroad. Manfred Vogel died in Vienna in 1983. Vogel and Lasker-Schüler met being part of a group of German-Jewish intellectuals who had come to Mandate-Palestine fleeing Nazi persecution in the 1930s. Hence, the epitaph 'Else Lasker-Schüler - Ein Gedenkblatt' gives a personal impression of both her final years and the experience of the German-Jewish minority in Mandat-Palestine who had to cope with the violent loss of their Heimat." (Leo Baeck Institute London).

Price: $750.00