|
|
|
|
| LES CHANSONS DE BILITIS. Paris: Librairie Charpentier et Fasquelle, 1922, Half bound leather, gilt, patterned paper boards. Very good. 8vo. pp. xii+356. This edition in French contains 300 illustrations. These Chansons were originally published in 1894 and purported to be translations of prose poems by a 6th century B.C. woman. The first edition did not carry the name of Louys, merely his initials as the translator. In fact, the poems were part of an elaborate and fairly successful hoax, skillfully contrived by Louys, and were preceded by an erudite "Vie de Bilitis" that included an account of the poetess's childhood in Pamphylia, her life on Lesbos and her friendship with Sappho, and her later experiences in Cyprus where she was a religious prostitute in the service of Aphrodite. In the course of this biography, mention is made of the recent discovery of the tomb of Bilitis, where the poems were found. This 'find' was made by a German academic named Professor G. Heim - a pun on the word 'Geheim' meaning 'secret' or 'mysterious' - who is stated to have been the first to publish the poems, in Leipzig in 1894. This reference, together with many others of a similar nature, added substance to the hoax, since it was at Leipzig that the publisher Taubner brought out a famous series of scholarly editions of the Greek and Latin classics, beginning in the 1880's. The volume is somewhat chipped around the edges and has a small dark spot on the upper front. Price: CyP 250.00 | ||