ALBERTI, Rafael Holograph Manuscript of Marinero en tierra. 1930 c.
One hundred forty-three pages, rectos only, square small octavo notebook. Holograph fair copy manuscript of the text of Alberti's first book, the collection of poems entitled Marinero en tierra, this being the only known extant manuscript of the text. The present text was prepared from a later edition (ultima edicion) of the text, probably circa 1930 and containing something like two-and-a-half times the text of the first edition. The original collection won Spain's prestigious National Prize for Literature in 1925. Alberti is among the greatest poets of modern Spain, the equal of a Machado or a Garcia Lorca although he spent the majority of his many years in exile, returning only in 1977 at the age of 75. Among his dozens of volumes of verse and his ten significant plays, several number among the great volumes of twentieth-century poetry, including Cal y canto, Sobre los angeles and Sermones y moradas. The present work is one of extraordinary maturity and singularity of poetic voice for the work of a 22-year old. Its primary theme and tone is one of nostalgia for a lost world of childhood, namely, the sea (the Bay of Cadiz) of the poet's birthplace at Puerta Santa Maria. While formally reminiscent of the old Spanish ballad and the Cancioneros of the 15th and 16th centuries, it already bears the mark of the poet's own distinctive style. Alberti had intended a career as a painter, and he is indeed an accomplished artist, but a health problem that compelled him to take a mountain air cure would call forth the poet within him. Over many tedious months recuperating from his lung disease, Alberti longed more and more for the sea, and a voice singing the joys of his youth arose within him, resulting in the present lyrics. Juan Ramon Jimenez praised the work, viewing it as very personal and traditional but fresh, new and fully perfected. Alberti had shown Jimenez, a fellow Andalusian who had also grown up by the sea, an early draft of the poems, and the older poet was so favorably impressed that he not only published some of the text in the journal, Si, but wrote Alberti an appreciation which the poet subsequently included in all editions of the book, included here about half-way through the text. A wonderful manuscript.
$US45000
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