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First edition of Mariette Lydis’s first book, number 70 of 100 copies on thick handmade paper and bound in bright yellow ‘duvetine’ cloth (the limitation notice mentions copies are either in ‘duvetine’ or in Chinese silk), complete with rare original box. Though described on the title as Chinese stories by Balàzs illustrated by Lydis, in fact the illustrations came first, with the 16 fables added in response — so the book is in effect a series of pictures ‘illustrated’ with text. Its genesis lay with Lydis (then Marietta Pachoffer-Karñy) and her friend, the Viennese progressive educationalist Eugenie Schwarzwald, who approached the Hungarian emigré poet and aesthetician Balàzs (who had composed the libretto for Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle in 1911) to write a text so that a book could be published. In order to have it ready for Christmas he had to write the sixteen tales in just three weeks, producing a series of strange and sometimes chilling tales true to the striking orientalism of the images. It was a great success — Thomas Mann extolled it as ‘a beautiful book’ in a press review, while a modern critic writes: ‘Not surprisingly [Balàzs] stuck to his favorite theme — human alienation... In these fables, Balàzs suggested that men could only unite with women in the utopian world of dreams and longing’. (Congdon, Exiles and Social Thought: Hungarian Intellectuals in Germany, 2014, p. 104). Der Mantel der Träume has more recently been published in English as The Cloak of Dreams (Princeton, 2010).

The sixteen illustrations and fables are: Der Mantel der Träume; Li-Tai-Pe und der Dieb; Die Sonnenschirme; Der ungeschickte Gott; Die Opiumraucher; Der Floh; Das Alte Kind; Die Gottesräuber; Li-Tai-Pe und der Frühling; Die Ahnen; Der Mondfisch; Die Freunde; Die Rache des Kastanienbaumes; Tränenblick; Das Lehmkind and Der Sieger. The 20 illustrations are from watercolour miniatures and reproduce dates (Lugano 1921-2) and the artist’s initials ‘M.P.K’ [for Marietta Pachoffer-Karñy, from her first marriage in 1910 to Austrian businessman Julius Koloman Pachoffer-Karñy, who died April 1922].

First edition of this luxurious production, the text translated by Lucie Paul-Marguerite from the Chinese seventeenth-century collection Kin-kou-kikouan (or Jingu qiguan) and telling the moral story of an extra-marital adventure. The 16 original paintings on silk are attributed to Ouang Shao Ki of Szechuan, copied for this edition in Peking by four separate artists (one each for the drawing, the foliage, the clothing and the figures). They are remarkable productions, and each one is captioned in manuscript with Chinese characters. Produced in only 125 copies, this is one of the 10 copies on Japon reserved for the author (copy number 3).
Lucie Paul-Margueritte (1886-1955) began publishing in magazines at the age of eighteen. After three years of marriage, she divorced and thereafter lived with her widowed sister, Ève Paul-Margueritte. Together, they raised the latter's son, living from their writings. She made numerous translations including several from the Chinese and a number of English novels, including Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Carteret IV. p. 265: ‘Belle publication’. WorldCat: Bn and Boston Athenaeum only.