Sole edition, one of approximately 500 copies. 4to., 29x22.5cm, [6], 56, XVI, 40 numbered plates, 56, [2]pp. Stiff red paper wrappers with black text printed on covers and spine, edges untrimmed, printed on four different kinds of woven paper. Genova, Edition Marsano, 1932.
Good, spine cracked and lightly sunned with small chip at the head, covers intact but entirely separated from text block, with occasional light soiling and small tear on upper edge of rear cover close to hinge. Leaves intermittently uncut throughout, with some foxing on ffep.
Announced on its title page as an ‘edizione rappezzata fra le rovine’ (‘edition salvaged from the ruins’), this volume is a collection of Guido Cavalacanti’s poetry alongside facsimiles of the original manuscripts and Pound’s own translations and commentaries. The ‘ruins’ from which the text was ‘salvaged’ were Pound’s original efforts to have it published by Faber and Gwyer, who deemed it too expensive, and the Aquila Press, which folded after the first 56 pages had been printed. Pound took it upon himself to print the remainder of the text at his own expense in Genova, with the manuscript facsimiles printed in Germany, leaving the eventual book a transnationally printed assemblage. Guido Cavalcanti, 13th century troubadour and mentor to Dante Alighieri, had a vital influence upon Pound’s poetic aesthetic, a fact surely testified to by the lengths to which Pound went in seeing through this book’s publication.
