Beschreibung:

ERNEST HEMINGWAY (1899-1961); JEAN COCTEAU (1889-1963); JOHN STEINBECK (1902-1968); EZRA POUND (1885-1972); & OTHERS A quarto album, being the visitors book of Giorgio Polacco's antique shop in Venice, bound in calf with the initials 'G.P.' stamped in gilt on the spine, decorative Italian endpapers, containing signatures and personal messages from important writers of the 1950's, including i) Autograph message in Italian, signed and dated 'Ernesto Hemingway/Venezia 20/2/50', quoting Donne, 'No man is an island, entire in himself...' ii) Autograph sketch of 'Orphe', with signed dedication 'a Giorgio Polacco souvenire de Jean Cocteau Venise 1950' iii) Autograph sentiment, signed 'W. Somerset Maugham', on objects: 'Beauty is as transitory as everything else in this world...only that which produces the specific pleasure which leads us to call an object beautiful during a certain period in the world's history & it does that because it responds to certain needs of the period.' iv) Autograph sentiment dedicated to Georgio Polacco, signed and dated 'John Steinbeck/Venice 1952', on words: 'The temptation is to write beautiful words on a beautiful page. It is to be resisted. For words are little people who must grow and live an [sic] be free. Free words like parrots never seen to die. "In the beginning was the word" and I can believe that when this planet is a blackened rock, there will be clinging to it one frightened but indestructable word. I have a respect akin to terror for words'. v) Autograph quotation, signed and dated 'Ezra Pound/Venezia/14 giugno 1965', '"In the gloom the gold gathers the light about it"...'. Also, signatures and dedications from French writers such as Albert Camus, Franois Mauriac ('I came here in 1910. Forty-five years ago! Nothing has changed. Everything has changed because I change'), Eugene Ionesco (thanking all Venice for it's welcome, all the Italians for their kindness, and Italy for being so beautiful), Jules Romains, Franoise Sagan; and American writers such as William Saroyan ('ABC is enough for me'), Erskine Caldwell ('I am very glad to put myself in the company of the noteworthy persons already entered in your album'), Sonya Bogart ('thanks...for the many years of joy...each summer at the Bienalle'), Eric Mann, James Jones; and others, in a decorated slip case.