Signed by Octavio Paz and artist Enrique Chagoya

Beckett, Samuel, Octavio Paz, Eliot Weinberger, and Enrique Chagoya.

The Bread of Days / El pan de los días: Once poetas mexicanos / Eleven Mexican Poets.

Covelo: Yolla Bolly Press, (1994). First edition. Translated by Samuel Beckett; notes on the poets by Octavio Paz; commentaries by Eliot Weinberger and Octavio Paz; and twelve etchings by Enrique Chagoya.

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A large (11 by 14-inch), deluxe bilingual collection of long poems by the Mexican writers Bernardo de Balbuena, Luis de Sandoval y Zapata, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Ignacio Rodríguez Galván, Salvador Díaz Mirón, Amado Nervo, José Juan Tablada, Enrique González Martínez, Ramón López Velarde, and Alfonso Reyes. The poems, with Beckett's translations, were originally published in 1958.

In addition to notes on the poets by the Nobel laureate Octavio Paz, this edition includes a transcribed conversation on literature between the scholar Weinberger and Paz.

For all its literary muscle, the highlight of this volume are the dozen large, full-page color etchings by Enrique Chagoya (signed with initials), who is becoming one of the most highly regarded Mexican-American artists of his generation. Chagoya's distinctive style brings together elements of Mexican folk and religious art with contemporary American consumer culture. In addition to showing work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the San Jose Museum of Art, and the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, a twenty-five year retrospective exhibition toured several regional museums in 2007 and 2008.

Chagoya's signed prints at this size typically sell for $500 to $1,000 each in galleries. Segura Publishing, for example, sells a suite of eight 11 by 15-inch etchings based on the work of Goya for $5,000. Priced as a book at a fraction of the art value.

From the colophon:

"The verse was set by hand in the Bembo types at the press by Jocelyn Webb. The text pages were printed from the type at the Press by Aaron Johnson, who also assisted with the planning of this edition. The English text was printed on mouldmade Zerkall Halbmatt. The Spanish text was printed on TwinRocker Chapin, which was handmade for this edition. The etchings were printed by Jesus Romero and Curtis Patience on Lana Royal. The binding structure was designed by Julie Chen [who now operates as Flying Fish Press]. Renee Menge bound the book by hand." The edition was limited to 141 copies. This is one of 85 in a slipcase (the remaining copies were offered in a series of increasingly elaborate versions).

Signed by Paz, Chagoya, and Weinberger on the colophon. Fine in a fine slipcase.

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