first edition Hardcover
1993 · Philadelphia
by Schwitters, Kurt; Edited and translated by Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris
Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993. First edition. Hardcover. Very good. 251pp. Quarto [26 cm] Black cloth over boards with a silver stamped title on the spine. The bottom edges of the covers are a bit scuffed. The jacket is lightly soiled, faded at the spine, and has a 1" closed tear in the top edge of the rear panel. "My aim is the total Merz art work, which combines all genres into an artistic unity. First I married off single genres. I pasted words and sentences together into poems in such a way that their rhythmic composition created a kind of drawing. The other way around, I pasted together pictures and drawings containing sentences that demand to be read. I drove nails into pictures in such a way that besides the pictorial effect a plastic relief-effect arose. I did this in order to erase the boundaries between the arts." - Kurt Schwitters. (Inventory #: 47657)