Item #60962 The Writing of Stones. Marguerite Yourcenar, Barbara Bray.

The Writing of Stones.

Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1985. First English language edition. Hardcover. Small quarto. xx+ 108pp. Original teal cloth with gilt lettering to spine, numerous full page color frontis and plates. First published in 1970 in French as "L'écriture des pierres" by Editions d'Art Albert Skira. From the publisher: "'The Writing of Stones' is a fascinating meditation on the human imagination contemplating the interior of stones. Caillois examines patterns that are revealed by polishing sections of minerals such as agate, jasper, and onyx. He considers the impact these configurations have had upon the human imagination throughout history and he reviews man's attempt to categorize and explain them. Marguerite Yourcenar points out that "there had taken place in [his] intellect the equivalent of the Copernican revolution: man was no longer the center of the universe, except in the sense that the center is everywhere; man, like all the rest, was a cog in the whole system of turning wheels. Quite early on, having entered 'the forbidden laboratories,' Caillois applied himself to the study of diagonals which link the species, of the recurrent phenomena that act, so to speak as a matrix of forms." Caillois found the presence throughout the universe of a sensibility and a consciousness analogous to our own. One way which this consciousness expresses itself is in a "natural fantasy" that is evident in the pictures found in stones. Man's own aesthetic may then be no more than one of many manifestations of an all-pervasive aesthetic that reveals itself in the natural world." Very light bruising to corners and spine ends, - otherwise a lovely, clean near Fine copy in mylar covered VG dust jacket (Dust jacket lightly rubbed with a few scratches to panels, not clipped). Item #60962
ISBN: 0813910501

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