CÀNTICO: A Selection.

First edition, first printing. Original black cloth lettered in gilt to the spine, in the dustwrapper designed by Diana Athill. Frontispiece photographic portrait of the author by Jack Delano. A fine copy, the binding square and firm, the contents clean throughout. In the bright dustwrapper, a little faded to the spine, rubbed and nicked to the upper spine tip, and a little dusty to the rear panel. Not price-clipped (35s net to the front flap). A very nice copy of this uncommon volume.

Jorge Guillén (1893-1984) was one of a group of poets who, informed by international currents of modernism and committed to refreshing Spanish poetry, became known as the 'Generation of '27' (Generación del 27), the name deriving from the year they first met as a group in Seville. Guillén's 'Cántico', originally published in four instalments between 1928 and 1950, is a rich and complex unity of 334 poems. This selection, the first appearance in book form of Guillén's poetry in English, presents a selection of 50 poems from the work, chosen by the author in collaboration with the editor. The English translations, which appear on facing pages with the Spanish originals, were executed by an illustrious list of poets including W. S. Merwin, Alastair Reid, Mark Strand, Richard Wilbur, and James Wright. The editor, Norman Thomas di Giovanni, is best known for his work with Jorge Luis Borges' (he was the Argentinian author's chosen English translator), and Borges himself provides one of the blurbs printed to the rear panel: "Jorge Guillén is beyond dispute the greatest living Spanish poet. Literature, in our time, is only too full of dark mazes and of harrowing involutions; the poems [...], though signally and splendidly modern, breathe a serenity and a tenderness that have something of the godlike about them."