THE TOMBSTONES

Georges Rodenbach

​In 1895 in Paris, a pair of Art Nouveau artist friends, Joseph Rippl-Rónai and James Pitcairn-Knowles, collaborated with the publisher Bing to make two of the very first livres de peintres as a slip-cased set of Christmas books. Bing persuaded the Belgian Symbolist poet Georges Rodenbach (then at the height of his fame) to write a prose poem for each of them, and in response, Rodenbach produced two mini-masterpieces of Symbolism. 

​

The Tombstones, written for the black and white etchings of Pitcairn-Knowles), ruminates in Symbolist style about three decaying headstones in an abandoned suburban cemetery, wonders whether that the people buried there were sisters in life. It imagines the inhumated soul dreaming as the process of decay returns the elements to the earth, until it is released as a butterfly. It is presented here in a mimotyped translation, conveying the look and feel of the original.