One afternoon, sitting with Roberto (Calasso) at the end of the day, in his office in Brera, the offices of Adelphi Edizioni, we turned to discussing the form of the books. The books are quite beautiful, the weight of the paper, the texture of the covers, the font, the folded over-leafs and the cover images. The design in the style of Aubrey Beardsley, the logo a chinese pictogram. So much attention to the book as an object, as well as a much, much more. He began to tell me of the early days of Adelphi (founded in 1962), and finding the right image for the Biblioteca Adelphi books.
The offices are in an apartment house-like building in Brera (the correct Italian word is slipping my head at the moment). There are entry ways and offices and a conference room with glass covered shelves. The bookstore is in the bottom, entrance on the other side, from the street not the courtyard. Roberto’s office had cream colored leather padded doors, and his desk took up most of the space. The image most seen of him, with the bookshelves behind him, is not this office.
We were sitting in his office, my back to the shelves he had once described as ‘Balzen’s perfect collection’, having an espresso at the end of the day. He was telling me of the early days, when image searches were done by hand and by mind, be dream and by revelation. Today, he said, the basement is full of all the books we used to need for this, art catalogs, books of archaeology, art, and artefacts. Photography. But it wasn’t only the past they sought, but also current and unknown, purposeful. Something, always, that spoke to deeper meanings and connections than what one might see with a glance of the eye.
The cover image of the first Biblioteca Adelphi, L’altra parte (The Other Side), by Kubin, is an image drawn by Kubin himself, better known as an artist than an author. My original essay on this project is here, but as a shorthand to why Kubin, an artist who is not in fact a great writer, is here in the beginning, comes from the original core purpose of these particular books. That there is a singular experience in one’s life, the experience that changes or defines or creates a person, and that there are remains of that, ashes, in sanskrit, in the sense that there is something left after the fire of sacrifice. And for a writer, that is one book, a singular expression, i libri unici, and these are the books that were sought for the original series. (Daily notes on the project were here until Tumblr blocked my access, 2015-2020. I realize most of the shortened links are gone, but they almost all linked to the Adelphi.it pages for the books.)
Daumal’s Il Monte Analogo (Mount Analog, Le Mont Analogue) has a cover image from Joseph Šima. It was created by him, for this book. Tracing Šima’s history and philosophies, one can see the alignment between the image and Daumal’s book. As for the image for the cover, it is in ‘private collection’, likely one of the early Adelphi core, Foa, Bazlen, Olivetti and then Calasso (that is a slight misrepresentation, but further explanation is not warranted here).
If one goes back and looks at the years of some of the images, it is interesting to trace the use of particular artists. Egon Schiele is on (at least) seven covers, beginning in 1993 with book 270, Johannes Irzidil’s Trittico Praghese. Max Ernst graces the cover of The Purple Cloud (La nube purpurea) by Matthew P. Shiel, published in 1967. Artemidoro’s Il libro dei sogni has John Heinrich Fussli’s Incubo as its cover. Kenko’s Momenti d’ozio uses an image from a page of the Antologia dei trentasei poeit, from the 12th century. Kafka’s Il processo (The Trial) has his signature as the cover image, Savinio’s books have his own images, as does Loos and Leonora Carrington and Bazlen himself. Frederic Prokosch’s cover fro Voci is by Karen Blixen (published as Isak Dinesen, in English-speaking countries), herself published by Adelphi Where Adelphi has published more than one book by an author, there is a relationship across time, in the cover images.
I remember Roberto telling me a story about an Italian painter, Sicilian, perhaps, that he had seen images from and wanted him as a cover for a particular book, and the time it took to hunt him down, chose and image, and make it so. The breadth of the images, the connections to the book, the house and the authors is akin to a puzzle box. Much like I explored the chose of books themselves, the more I looked at the books, the more I realized there were more threads across and between, and additional ways to engage with meaning. Of course, if one reads the Adelphiana or looks at the Review of Contemporary Fiction special edition on Roberto Calasso, one can see, also that so many of these authors, translators, and artists knew each other, or of each other. (I did get some good stories on some of this as well, for another day.) I envision this time period, the 1960s-1990s in particular, as something that must have been quite extraordinary, the seething curiousity, discussion and creativity.
To return to these books, each element of these books was so well thought through, from the initial design, to each book itself. The blurbs inside the books are themselves, which Roberto later told me he wrote most of, are also small pieces of some whole, not fractal, more puzzle-like, but also standing alone. If one turns to Roberto’s books themselves, they are also full of images, connections, crossings and references. Each time I read them, they are different, even more so across languages and translators.
There is a complex beauty to the early years of the Biblioteca Adelphi, the early decades. Since Roberto’s death in 2021 the line still publishes, but nothing, I believe, from living authors. It wonder if they are finishing the vision that Roberto had, with the last books in this format.
But to return to the beginning, Roberto’s descriptions of seeking out the right image for each book, not to know the collapsed form of all things, but rather to be connected, somehow, an image that would speak to the book unread, but once read, would also have a deeper meaning, and the long meetings — weeks sometimes longer — to argue what they should be, what they could mean, has some deep resonance in me, in the way I wish the world to be. Slower, somehow. With the internet, he said, you had everything at your fingertips, so there were many options, but that also, it was different, for him as well. Without spending time with all of these books, that which is tangential, the images, the Adelphiana, I would certainly see less, miss the underlying forms interwoven beneath the surface structure.
I’ve just gotten up to look through the books on my shelf, attempting to find the Italian painter he told me the story of. I can see the cover in my mind, but not the title. And I note, I only own about 150 of the Biblioteca Adelphi editions, and I am reminded how much I would like to own them all.
Ah! I found him. Adding this here rather than editing the above. Giuseppe Modica. He graces #557, Il fuoco del mare by Leonardo Sciascia.
