Qu’ils sont beaux, de mes bras les dons vastes et vaines!

1936

Narcisse: Qu’ils sont beaux, de mes bras les dons vastes et vaines!, 1936. Laure Albin Guillot (French, 1879–1962). Fresson print; image: 34 x 26.4 cm (13 3/8 x 10 3/8 in.); paper: 34 x 26.4 cm (13 3/8 x 10 3/8 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Dudley P. Allen Fund 2018.211.21 Laure Albin Guillot wanted to produce a book that illustrated contemporary literature with photographs of equal quality and was itself a work of art. She chose to illustrate Paul Valéry’s poem Fragments de Narcisse, 1919–22, based on the myth of a beautiful young hunter who falls in love with his own reflection in a pond and is driven to suicide by the futility of his unrequited love. The tactile emphasis in this book’s printing and papers echoes the sensuousness appropriate to a love story.