| Cagliostro Second of Mirro Edition Contributor(s): Huidobro, Vicente (Author), Wells, Warre Bradley (Translator) |
|
 |
ISBN: 1848616589 ISBN-13: 9781848616585 Publisher: Shearsman Books OUR PRICE: $16.20 Product Type: Paperback Published: May 2019 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Historical - General |
| Physical Information: 0.26" H x 6" W x 9" (0.37 lbs) 108 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Cagliostro is a lurid tale of magic and secret societies during the reign of Luis XVI, centred on the gure of the Italian occultist Giuseppe Balsamo, known under his alias of Count Alessandro di Cagliostro. The book owes its style of presentation to the example of German expressionist cinema, of the kind exemplified by The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. In the early s, Vicente Huidobro--always fascinated by the new medium of film--wrote a script on the subject of Cagliostro. The film seems to have been made in 1923 by the Romanian director Mime Mizu, but was scrapped due to dissatisfaction with the editing. No trace of the film survives, although three pages from a script exist in the author's papers. A revised version of the script was submitted to The League for Better Motion Pictures in New York in and won a $10,000 award as the best candidate for a new movie. Alas, this was just when the "talkies" arrived and this style of film was immediately rendered outmoded. The author converted the script into a novella, retaining many cinematic elements, and it was published in English translation in 1931, to positive reviews. It appeared in the original Spanish only in 1934, in the author's native Santiago, where it made no impact at all. This edition reproduces the text of the translation. |
Contributor Bio(s): Huidobro, Vicente: - The Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro (1893-1948) is one of the most important figures in 20th-century Hispanic poetry and, with César Vallejo, one of the pioneering avant-gardists in Spanish. Originally from an upper-class Santiago family, Huidobro was fortunate to have the means to support himself and his family while he found his artistic way. After an early phase writing in a quasi-symbolist style in his native city, he moved to Paris and threw himself into the local artistic milieu with a passion, quickly becoming a notable figure, publishing two full-sized collections and four chapbooks in 1917-18, and a French-language selected poems in 1921. Influenced initially by Apollinaire, Huidobro quickly befriended both forward-looking French writers such as Reverdy, Cocteau and Radiguet, and the Spanish expatriate artists, including Picasso and Juan Gris. He was to reach his artistic maturity in 1931 with the publication of two masterpieces: the long poem, Altazor, and the book-length prose-poem Temblor de cielo (Skyquake). Two further collections followed during his lifetime, both published in Santiago in 1941. Although he is best remembered today for his poetry, his novels and other writings are still worth the modern reader's attention.Wells, Warre Bradley: - Warre Bradley Wells (1893-1958) was an Irish writer, journalist, translator and a newspaper editor. He edited the Irish Statesman from 1919-1921, which promoted the views of the Irish Dominion League; he had previously edited The Church of Ireland Gazette from 1906 to 1918, and also served as wartime correspondent for the paper, writing The War This Week column. He wrote a biography of the Irish politician John Redmond and a volume on Anglo-Irish relations. In the same period he served as assistant editor and leader writer of The Irish Times (1911-1918). Born in Dublin, Wells also spent time in England where he worked for the Liverpool Daily Post and Liverpool Echo. |