La Cigale et la Fourmi

Abstract

Here is an extra copy found at Turtle Island Bookstore in Berkeley earlier in the summer. Reviewing it in Berkeley some weeks later led to my encounter with Paul Veres. As I wrote of the good copy, here is Paul Veres' excellent facsimile of Lorioux' original work from 1921. The colors are crisp. After all, it is the colors that attracted Paul in the first place. The cover and first two pictures cleverly allow the cicada's guitar to extend beyond the frame that Lorioux is careful to provide. Perhaps the most engaging image represents the moment of the ant's question What were you doing all summer? The French tradition typically made the ant into a stolid bourgeois mother standing at her house door with her children. Lorioux presents the ant rather as a cook in an apron busying herself with (confi?)ture boiling in a pot. Well done! The title-page comes from Lorioux' entire volume. The back cover reproduces Lorioux' delightful front cover showing La Fontaine sitting between two young children and, with quill in hand, reading his own fables to them. Two mice run away. The inside back-cover includes a picture of Lorioux and cites his edition of 1929. Eight pages.