Imagine, if you will (and Borges did), a man who takes up the task of re-living the life of Cervantes, step by step, as if no time had passed, in order to write Don Quixote again for the twentieth century, word for word, but not referring to the original. Or imagine scholarly reviews of books which you might wish exist but don’t. Or a dramatist, facing a firing squad, who asks God to make time stand still so he can finish his masterpiece. And God complies. These are the “fictions” of Borges, the famed Argentinean writer. In this edition, the “geometries” of Sol LeWitt match the intricacies of Borges’ inventions. LeWitt has published several influential statements on the underlying theories of “conceptual art”. His modular cubes and grid structures, wall drawings, and serial graphics have been displayed at The Museum of Modern Art, where his work is in the permanent collection and at a major show at The Whitney Museum.

Sol LeWitt created twenty two drawings which he calls a “counterpoint” to the text. He also designed the actual volume itself, from choosing the typeface to determining the size of the pages. Months were spent casting and composing the type. All the italics had to be set separately and cut in by hand. Each of the twenty two silkscreen prints were tipped in by hand. The volume is full bound in black leather.

“He is the poet of rebellion…the greatest of all,” said Albert Camus of Arthur Rimbaud. Rimbaud had staked everything on expressing God and the infinite in this poetry. When this wouldn’t work, he resolved, in A Season in Hell, to leave God’s love behind and to keep his personal freedom at all costs. But Rimbaud is unable to remake life, to re invent love, and pays the price. The original text appears in French with the acclaimed English translation by Paul Schmidt on facing pages. In the art of Robert Mapplethorpe, as in the poetry of Rimbaud, Man’s exploration of his being leads to both darkness and divinity. Seven photogravures by Mapplethorpe illustrate the text with a shared knowledge of the passage through the dark side of the soul.

To preserve the delicate tonal changes and the richness of Mapplethorpe’s original photographs, the photogravure plates are printed in two colors: an alizarin black with a surface roll of yellow tint on paper from Cartiere Enrico Magnani, in Pescia, Italy, hand made for the photogravures. The book is bound in red Nigerian Oasis goatskin and the slipcase is covered in black linen, lined with ultrasuede.