Description

“WE ARE THE HOLLOW MEN”: INSCRIBED BY T. S. ELIOT TO HIS FRIEND AND
GERMAN TRANSLATOR OF THE WASTE LAND, ANNOTATED BY THE RECIPIENT

ELIOT, T.S. Collected Poems 1909-1935. London: Faber & Faber, (1936). Octavo, original blue cloth, original dust jacket. Housed in a custom clamshell box.

First edition, first printing, inscribed by Eliot to his friend and German translator of The Waste Land, renowned literary scholar and philologist Ernst Robert Curtius: “To E.R. Curtius from T.S. Eliot.” With Curtius’ extensive pencil annotations and marginalia.

Includes “Prufrock,” “The Waste Land,” “The Hollow Men,” “Ash-Wednesday,” and others. Gallup A32a. The recipient, Ernst Robert Curtius, was Eliot’s friend and translator, an internationally respected literary scholar and philologist whose 1948 work European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (translated into English in 1953) is still a standard text. On the occasion of his friend’s death in 1956, Eliot wrote: “Certainly, in common with other English and French writers, I owe him a great debt, and perhaps I owe him more than does any other: for it was he who first brought my work to the notice of the German public? I have my own personal debt of gratitude to acknowledge to Curtius, for translating, and introducing, The Waste Land. Curtius was also, I think, the first critic in Germany to recognize the importance of James Joyce? Only a critic of scholarship, discrimination and intellect could perform the services that Curtius has performed” (Freundesgabe für ERC, 1956). Curtius’ extensive pencil marginalia and annotations (in German) indicate that he gave many of these poems a close reading.

Cloth only lightly rubbed; dust jacket with light wear to head of slightly darkened spine. A near-fine copy, most scarce and desirable inscribed and with distinguished association.