Da Vinci's Bicycle
Da Vinci's Bicycle. Ten Stories by Guy Davenport. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979. Paperbound edition. (Johns Hopkins: Poetry and Fiction [series], John T. Irwin, general editor)
Contents:
- The Richard Nixon Freischütz Rag
- C. Musonius Rufus
- The Wooden Dave of Archytas
- John Charles Tapner
- Au Tombeau de Charles Fourier
- The Haile Selassie Funeral Train
- Ithaka
- The Invention of Photography in Toledo
- The Antiquities of Elis
- A Field of Snow on a Slope of the Rosenberg
Acknowledgements:
The drawing of Leonardo da Vinci's bicycle on the title page is derived, with structural reinterpretation in the fork and seat strut, from Antonio Calegari's model in Augusto Marinoni's 'The Bicycle.' The Unknown Leonardo, edited by Ladislao Reti (McGraw Hill, 1974), and appears here with the kind permission of the publisher. Professor Calegari's model is based on the recently discovered drawing by Salai Jacopo dei Caprotti (aet. 11, circa 1493) of a bicycle drawn or perhaps built by Leonardo.
The final paragraphs of 'Au Tombeau de Charles Fourier,' beginning with 'Everybody was on the streets,' are from Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. For the parts about the cosmology of the Dogon I am indebted to Marcel Griaule's Dieu d'Eau: entretiens avec Ogotemmêli (1948) and his and Germaine Dieterlen's Le Renard pâle (1965). The drawing of the Wright Flyer No. 1 (Signal Corps Aircraft No. 1) is derived from a drawing by Peter F. Copeland, chief of the Illustration Department, NASM, Smithsonian Institution. The athlete in the collages is from photographs by Erik A. Ruby in his The Human Figure (Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1974). The drawing of James Joyce is from a photograph by Gisèle Freund. The drawing of the young Lartigue is from a photograph by his father.
The drawings accompanying 'The Invention of Photography in Toledo' are derived from Edward S. Curtis (the Mohave girl), Nadar (Rossini), and a photograph of the young Van Gogh (circa 1866) in the possession of Pastor J. P. Scholte-van Houten, Lochem. For the title of this story I am indebted to the poet Robert Kelly, who read a book so named in a dream.
All but one of these stories have appeared before in journals, and grateful acknowledgement is herewith made to their editors for permission to reprint. 'A Field of Snow on a Slope of the Rosenberg,' © 1977 by the University of Georgia, originally appeared in the Spring 1997 issue of The Georgia Review; 'Au Tombeau de Charles Fourier," © 1975 by the University of Georgia, originally appeared in the Winter 1975 issue of The Georgia Review. . . . Permission to reprint was also granted by Parenthèse for 'The Wooden Dove of Archytas,' by The Hawaii Review for 'The Richard Nixon Freischütz Rag (also published in Prize Stories 1976: The O. Henry Awards, edited by William Abrahams (Doubleday & Co., 1976), by Mulch for 'The Haile Selassie Funeral Train,' by The Hudson Review for C. Musonius' and 'The Antiquities of Elis,' and by The Kenyon Review for 'John Charles Tapner.'
Dedication: To the memory of / Louis Zukofsky / 1904 -- 1978
Photograph of GD on rear cover is by Guy Mendes.
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