A few months ago, for purposes that will remain clouded in mystery for the moment, I had the occasion to compose an ideal list of rare books of various kinds, which do not necessarily exist. <\/p>\n
Here is what I came up with:<\/p>\n
(i) “The Elements of the Most Noble game of Whist; elucidated and discussed in all details”<\/em>, by A. Bandersnatch, Duke Dimitri, N. Fujisaki, A. Grothendieck, Y. Gr\u00fcnfiddler, J. Hardy, Jr., B. Kilpatrick and an Anonymous Person.<\/p>\n (ii) “Vorlesungen \u00fcber das Ikosaeder und die Aufl\u00f6sung der Gleichungen vom funften Grade”<\/em>, by F. Klein; with barely legible annotations and initialed \u201eHW\u201c on the first page.<\/p>\n (iii) “Histoire Naturelle”<\/em>, Volume XXXIII: Serpens, by George Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, edition of 1798; initialed \u201eA.K.\u201c on the title page.<\/p>\n (iv) “Chansons populaires de Corse, Navarre et Outre-Qui\u00e9vrain”<\/em>, collected and commented by P. Lorenzini.<\/p>\n (v) “\u00d5\u00d1\u00d1\u00d2\u00fc\u00ab\u00fe\u2524\u2591\u00da\u00fc\u00f4” (Oku no Hosomichi<\/em>), by Matsuo Bash\u00f2.<\/p>\n (vi) “On the care of the pig”<\/em>, by R.T. Whiffle, KBE.<\/p>\n (vii) “La Chartreuse de Parme”<\/em>, by Stendhal.<\/p>\n (viii) “Der tsoyberbarg”<\/em>, by T. Mann; Yiddish translation by I.B. Singer of “Der Zauberberg”.<\/p>\n (ix) “Les probl\u00e8mes d\u2019un probl\u00e8me”<\/em>, by P. M\u00e9nard; loose manuscript.<\/p>\n (x) Opera Omnia of L. Euler, volumes 1, 2, 7, 11, 13, 23, 24, 30, 56, 62, 64, 65 and 72.<\/p>\n (xi) “Discorsi sopra la seconda deca di Tito Livio”<\/em>, by N. Macchiavelli.<\/p>\n (xii) “An account of the recent excavations of the Metropolitan Museum at Khr\u00f3uton, in the vicinity of Uqbar”<\/em>, by E.E. Bainville, OBE.<\/p>\n (xiii) Die Annalen der Physik, volumes 17, 18, 23 and 25.<\/p>\n (xiv) “Diccionaro y gram\u00e1tica de la lengua Tehuelve”<\/em>, anonymous; attributed on the second page to “a Humble Jesuit of Rank”.<\/p>\n (xv) “Le roi cigale”<\/em>, French translation by Jacques Mont\u2013H\u00e9l\u00e8ne of an anonymous English romance.<\/p>\n (xvi) “M\u00e9moires du G\u00e9n\u00e9ral Joseph L\u00e9opold Sigisbert Hugo”<\/em>, by himself, with an Appendix containing the “Journal historique du blocus de Thionville en 1815, et des si\u00e8ges de cette ville, Sierck et Rodemack en 1815”. <\/p>\n (xvii) “Le Comte Ory”<\/em>, full orchestral score of the opera by G. Rossini with Libretto by E. Scribe and Charles-Gaspard Delestre-Poirson.<\/p>\n (xviii) “Absalom, Absalom”<\/em>, by W. Faulkner; first edition, dedicated To R.C. on the second page.<\/p>\n (xix) “Ficciones”<\/em>, by J-L. Borges, third edition with page 23 missing.<\/p>\n (xx) “Die Gottardbahn in kommerzieller Beziehung”<\/em>, by G. Koller, W. Schmidlin, and G. Stoll.<\/p>\n (xxi) “The etchings of the Master Rembrandt van Rijn, faithfully reproduced in the original size”<\/em>, anonymous.<\/p>\n (xxii) “The memoirs of General S.I. Kemidov”<\/em>, by Himself.<\/p>\n (xxiii) “Catalogue raisonn\u00e9 des \u253c\u00f4uvres d\u2019Anton Fiddler”<\/em>, by W.B. Appel.<\/p>\n (xxiv) “Zazie dans le m\u00e9tro”<\/em>, by R. Queneau.<\/p>\n (xxv) “The mystery of the green Penguin”<\/em>, by E. Mount.<\/p>\n (xxvi) “\u256c\u00ba\u256c\u2510\u256c\u00c0\u00a4\u00e5\u00a4\u00ee\u00a4\u00fc\u256c\u2510\u256c\u2563”<\/em> (The Libation Bearers), by Aeschylus; an edition printed in Amsterdam in 1648.<\/p>\n (xxvii) “The Saga of Harald the Unconsoled”<\/em>, Anonymous, translated from the Old Norse by W.B. Appel.<\/p>\n (xxviii) “Uncle Fred in the Springtime”<\/em>, by P.G. Wodehouse.<\/p>\n (xxix) “The Tempest”<\/em>, by W. Shakespeare.<\/p>\n (xxx) “The 1926 Z\u00fcrich International Checkers Tournament, containing all games transcribed and annotated according to a new system”<\/em>, by S. Higgs.<\/p>\n (xxxi) “A day at the Oval”<\/em>, by G.H. Hardy.<\/p>\n (xxxii) “Harmonices Mundi”<\/em>, by J. Kepler, initialed I.N on the second page.<\/p>\n (xxxiii) “Stories of cats and gulls”<\/em>, by G. Lagaffe.<\/p>\n (xxxiv) “Trait\u00e9 sur la possibilit\u00e9 d\u2019une monarchie g\u00e9n\u00e9rale en Italie”<\/em>, by N. Faria; loose handwritten manuscript on silk.<\/p>\n (xxxv) “Broke Down Engine”<\/em>, 78 rpm LP record, interpreted by Blind Willie McTell.<\/p>\n (xxxvi) “Les plages de France, Belgique et Hollande”<\/em>, by A. Unepierre.<\/p>\n (xxxvii) “La L\u00e9gende du Cochon Voleur et de l\u2019Oiseau Rageur”<\/em>, traditional folktale, translated from the Arabic by P. Teilhard de Chardin.<\/p>\n (xxxviii) “Discours des Girondins”<\/em>, collected and transcribed by a parliamentary committee under the auspices of the “Veuves de la r\u00e9volution fran\u00e7aise”, published by Van-den-Broeck, Bruxelles in 1862.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A few months ago, for purposes that will remain clouded in mystery for the moment, I had the occasion to compose an ideal list of rare books of various kinds, which do not necessarily exist. Here is what I came up with: (i) “The Elements of the Most Noble game of Whist; elucidated and discussed … Continue reading An ideal hypothetical list<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":625,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1825,905,362,1185],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts","category-homages-and-parodies","category-language","category-literature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/625"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4471\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/kowalski\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}