[FINE PRESS BOOK ILLUSTRATED AND PRINTED BY WOMEN]. The Poet: A Fable ["Der Dichter" in German with an English translation]

Santa Rosa, CA: Nawakum Press, 2025. First edition thus. As new. Folio (305 x 200 mm). 8 + 40 unnumbered pages printed on Rives, accompanied by Bugra and handmade Wake Robin Botanical papers. The binding by Cloverleaf Studio is a double-boarded slipcase covered covered outside with marbled paper and inside with blue "bamboo" pastepaper. The forty-eight pages are hand sewn over tapes at the exposed spine allowing the book to lay flat without straining the joints or textblock. The front cover bears a leather title-label; the book is housed in a slipcase with blue bamboo" pastepaper sides, chromo metallic book cloth edges, and the title direct foil stamped on the closed ("spine") side. LIMITED TO JUST 36 COPIES, THIS QUIETLY SUBLIME EDITION IMMEDIATELY SOLD OUT AND JUSTIFIABLY SO: THE BOOK, CREATED PRIMARILY BY WOMEN, IS A SUBTLE, STILL-WATER REFLECTION OF HESSE'S PROFOUND SHORT STORY, A MARRIAGE OF POWER AND BEAUTY, ELEGANTLY DESIGNED AND TECHNICALLY PERFECT.

Hesse's bittersweet short story is an early consideration of the themes that he would later explore in "Siddhartha," "Steppenwolf," and "Narcissus and Goldmund," and would define his legacy as an author: the transience of life, the requisite isolation and suffering for art, failure and self-doubt, the simultaneous passion for life and for self-negation, self-discovery, and the relentess quest for unattainable enlightenment.

To "The Poet" Hesse brought motifs from his own life, namely his journey to the East in 1911, which was for him a tranformative, even transcendant experience. The short story was first published on the eve of WWI, in 1913, as "Der Weg zur Kunst" (The Way to Art). It was first published in English in 1972. The new and elegant English translation of "Der Dichter" by Kate Roy was heir-approved and by far surpasses the clumsy, plodding text of previous attempts.

THE COLLABORATORS:

Kristen Etmund: multi-colored Japanese woodblock prints (Olympia, Washington). Her relief work is a rare combination of craft and art, inspired both by the beauty of nature and the art of her Japanese ancestors;
Dina Pollack: letterpress printer (San Francisco Bay area). She trained with Peter Koch, becoming the CODEX Foundation managing director. She started her own letterpress printmaking business in 2017;
Velma Bolyard (Wake Robin Paper and Books): botanical handmade papers (upstate New York); She is a practitioner of Olden Skills, namely as a weaver and spinner, and most notably as a papermaker and book artist. Her stunning papers are distinguished by her use of indigenous plants from the "hardscrabble" landscape she calls home.
Jemma Lewis: marbled papers (Wiltshire, UK). She creates a large array of traditional and contemporary designs from her studio, which she established in 2009.
Dr. Kate Roy: English translation. She is an adjunct professor of languages, literatures and cultures at Franklin University, Lugano, Switzerland.

Together with:

Jace Graf: paste-papers and binding (Austin, Texas). He is the proprietor in Cloverleaf Studio and specializes in fine edition bindings and book design.
Dr. Ingo Cornils: Afterward. He is Professor of German Studies at the University of Leeds.
David Pasco (Santa Rosa, California): designer and publisher. He is the proprietor of Nawakum Press.

Copy no. 13 of 36, of which this is one of the 18 with the slipcase, the remaining being the 18 lettered deluxe issue, all of which are signed by Pasco.

COMMENT: In what is likely the first in any antiquarian bookseller's catalogue description, we can report that upon receiving this long-awaited book we immediately read it from cover to cover, and nearing completion of the story we were surpised by the formation of a single, small unexpected tear which came without sadness from nowhere. (Inventory #: 4387)