The book I’m reading right now has three levels of authorship. (Searching the Web for the phrase “levels of authorship” leads you to a maze of twisty passages, all alike, most leading to swamps of tedium and despond. This link doesn’t.)
By..by..by
The book is The Chemical Wedding by Christian Rosencreutz, by Johann Valentin Andreae, by John Crowley. Or is it The Chemical Wedding by Christian Rosencreutz, by Johann Valentin Andreae, by John Crowley? Or is it one of the other possibilities?
One reason I love librarians is that they can catalogue this book “by author”, file it on a shelf, and then find it again later. Librarians can handle anything.
Historical note: When I first read this book (after a reference in Foucault’s Pendulum), it was in German. I mentally translated “Die chymische Hochzeit von Christian Rosencreutz” as the “Chemical Wedding of” C.R., not the “Chemical Wedding by“. That was only the first of many bruises I got from attempting to read a book in renaissance German (in Fraktur!) after learning modern Hochdeutsch in high school. I knew I was going to like Crowley’s version when correcting that mistake was the first sentence in his Introduction.
Modern note: It never ceases to delight me that I can just pull up 400-year-old texts from my dining-room table. Living in the future is in many ways awesome.
tom hillman
but really it’s by Tom Stoppard.
there are two good things about living in the future. indoor plumbing, and how much easier it now is to live in the past.
Joe
The book has black-and-red typography that closely matches my blog. They have a refined sense of aesthetics, over there at Small Beer Press.