After publishing a manifesto prophecy about the catastrophic immediate-future entitled The New Revelations of Being, Artaud abruptly left Paris and travelled to Ireland, remaining there for six weeks and existing without money, travelling first to the isolated island of Inishmore off Ireland's western coast, then to Galway, and finally to Dublin, where he was arrested as an undesirable alien, beaten by the police, and summarily deported back to France. On his return, he spent nine years in lunatic asylums, including the entire span of the Second World War. During that journey to Ireland - on which he accumulated signs of his forthcoming apocalypse, and planned his own role in it as 'THE REVEALED ONE' - Artaud wrote letters to friends in Paris and also created several magic spells, intended to curse his enemies and to protect his friends from Paris's forthcoming incineration and the Antichrist's appearance at the Deux Magots cafe. To André Breton, he wrote: 'It's the Unbelievable - yes, the Unbelievable - it's the Unbelievable which is the truth.' Many of his writings from Ireland were lost, and this book collects all of his surviving letters, drawn together from archives and private collections, together with photographs of the locations he travelled through. This edition, with an afterword and notes by the book's translator/editor, Stephen Barber, marks the seventieth anniversary of Artaud's death.

    Translated from the French by Jonathan Larson. On the 50th anniversary of its publication, The Song Cave is honored to publish the first English translation of Francis Ponge's NIOQUE OF THE EARLY-SPRING. Ostensibly a book written to honor the season itself and the cycle of time, upon its first publication in Paris, May 1968, these notes took on a greater metaphorical meaning within this context, addressing the need for new beginnings and revolution.April is not always the cruelest month. In these stray notations dated early April 1950, Ponge provides a latter-day version of Stravinsky's 'Sacre du printemps' or of William Carlos Williams' 'Spring and All'--a vernal enactment of all the resurrectional energies of a spring-time-to-come, as witnessed firsthand at the farmhouse of 'La Fleurie' in southern France. When subsequently published in Tel Que in May 1968, eighteen years later, Ponge's rural, pastoral text now acquired a specific urban history and Utopianism, its Lucretian 'Nioque, ' or gnosis, now speaking to the gnomic revolutionary slogans of the Left Bank barricades: 'Be realistic, demand the impossible, ' 'Beneath the cobblestones, the beach.' Jonathan Larson's careful engagement with Ponge manages to seize what is most prosaic about his poetry--its fierce communism of the ordinary, its insistence that taking the part of things means taking words at their most etymological everydayness.--Richard SieburthThis startlingly fresh and necessary document of the 1950s by Francis Ponge comes to us via the all too rare feat of true poetic reenactment. Understanding that each poet creates language anew, Jonathan Larson has found a poetics suitable for the occasion of Ponge's own poetic logic In this rendering, Larson's absolute care and attention to syllabic weight and measure, to the syntax and length of each line as it unwinds, allows us--as readers--to come into the drama of a text newly made, in other words, to discover a new poem in its very making. Yet, none of this comes at the cost of accuracy or through the subjugation of the original at the hands of one wielding the imperial language This is no mean feat in this day and age and, by way of Larson's exquisite ear, we are again given the poignancy and urgency of Ponge's own moment.--Ammiel Alcalay

    

     By a chance meeting, Horton, a Spitfire pilot, and Copley, the commando sergeant of a small raiding party form an alliance to escape Nazi-held France. The two men carry their courage as they journey through the ravages of war-torn country. From hiding in cider barrels, unlikely allies and involvement in a minor-naval engagement, the pair endure moments of breathless peril, tension and action. Back home they are hailed as heroes—the pilot, Horton, especially, as he is the third of three brothers to have escaped from Nazi territory. But the sergeant, Copley, has nagging doubts about Horton’s story. He passes his doubts on to Military Intelligence. A very hush-hush investigation begins. And gradually a strange secret is revealed, and an even stranger conspiracy. An old hand with a new name, Douglas Clark’s venture into the world of Combined Operations is a brilliant success—absorbing as a mystery, gripping as an escape yarn—which is not surprising for he is an old soldier himself. About the author Douglas Clark was born in Lincolnshire in 1919 and died in 1993. He was educated at the University of London and during WWII he served with the Royal Horse Artillery. He wrote over 20 crime novels and under other names, including James Ditton and Peter Hosier.

    After the war, he continued to serve with MI6, and so was constrained not to relate any of his experiences. His is an exciting story; time and again he was faced by danger and incipient disaster. He brushed shoulders with some of the worst traitors of the Second World War, and was targeted by the Gestapo, who came within an ace of entrapping him.

    Art. Jewish Studies. THE WHITE CRUCIFIXION starts with Chagall's difficult birth in Vitebsk 1887, in the present-day Belarus, and tells the unlikely story of how the eldest son of a herring schlepper became enrolled in art school where he quickly gained a reputation as "Moyshe, the painting wonder." The novel paints an authentic picture of a Russian town divided by belief and wealth, rumours of pogroms never far away, yet bustling with talented young artists. In 1913, Chagall relished the opportunity to move to Paris to take up residence in the artist colony The Hive (La Ruche). The Yiddish-speaking artists (Ecole Juive) living there were all poor. The Hive had no electric light, or running water and yet many of its artists were to become famous, among them Amedeo Modigliani and Osip Zadkine. The novel vividly portrays the dynamics of an artist colony, its pettiness, friendships and the constant battle to find the peace and quiet to work. In 1914 Chagall and Bella make what's supposed to be a fleeting visit to his beloved Vitebsk, only to get trapped there by the outbreak of the first world war, the subsequent Russian revolution, and the establishment of the communist regime which is increasingly hostile towards artists like Chagall. Yet, Chagall keeps on painting, and the novel provides a fascinating account of what inspired some of his greatest painting. He manages to return to France and is reunited with his paintings only to be thwarted by yet another world war which proves disastrous for the people he knew in Vitebsk which include his uncle Neuch, the original "Fiddler On The Roof." THE WHITE CRUCIFIXION is a fictionalised account of the rollercoaster life of one of the most enigmatic artists of the twentieth century.

    A mother plays a dangerous game. This is her fight for survival. Deep into the war, Marie Adamski has accentuated her German origins and played down her Polish ones. She is pregnant, persuading her German boyfriend to place her in the safety of Westwald, a home in Chantilly for pregnant women, whilst trying to protect her true love, and the real father of the child. But while it was Marie’s plan to get to Westwald, upon her arrival she realises that the mothers who reside there are nowhere near as important as the German babies they are rearing. Marie’s younger sister, Lise, has been covertly seeing a young resistance fighter, Emile. Emile, with all the enthusiasm of youth, is eager for the war to really begin for him. But when it comes to the front line, he has to grow up quickly. As the war rages around them, and loved ones are lost, will Marie and Emile be able to make it back home to those that still remain? Birthright is a first novel from Kerry Moore, an expat teacher and writer who has been living with her family in the land of wine and cheese for a the last twenty years. Historical fiction is a passion of hers as is French culture, both of which are combined in the pages of Birthright to transport the reader to French villages during the fascinating era of the second world war.

    This exceptional piece of bookmaking features 6 diaromas depicting a mother-daughter bond that blossoms throughout the cycle of life: birth, childhood, adolescence, love, marriage, and pregnancy. Illustrations by H�l�ne Druvert, an award-winning French artist and designer, beautifully depict this universal story set amidst a magical, modern Paris.Doubling as a precious decorative item, this veritable objet d'art captures Chaumet's time-honored elegance while serving as an ode to life's most precious memories.

    The Permanent Guillotine is an anthology of figures who expressed the will and wishes of this nascent revolutionary class, in all its rage, directness, and contradictoriness.

    Born Nadezhda Lokhvitskaya in 1872, she came to be admired by an impressive range of people - from Tsar Nicholas II to Lenin - and her popularity was such that sweets and perfume were named after her. She visited Tolstoy when she was 13 to haggle with him about the ending of War and Peace and Rasputin tried (and utterly failed) to seduce her. After the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 she was exiled and lived out her days in the lively Russian emigre community of Paris, where she continued writing - and enjoying comparable fame - until her death in 1952. Teffi's best stories effortlessly shift from light humour and satire to pathos and even tragedy - ever more so when depicting the daunting hardships she and her fellow emigres suffered in exile. While best known for her stories and feuilletons, she also moved over to other genres, from serious poetry to theatrical miniatures and even music, and inhabited an extraordinary range of spheres connected to both high and popular culture. In the first biography of her in any language, Edythe Haber here brings Teffi - who has recently been 'rediscovered' in the West to resounding acclaim - to life. Teffi's life and works afford a unique panoramic view of the cultural world of early twentieth century Russia, from the debauchery of the Silver Age to the terror and euphoria of revolution, and of interwar Russian emigration. But they also offer fresh insights into the seismic events - from the 1905 Russian Revolution and World War II to life as a refugee - that she experienced first-hand and recreated in her vivid, penetrating, moving and witty writing.