Item #124789 Dear Judas. Robinson Jeffers.

Dear Judas.

1929. New York: Horace Liverwright, 1929.

8vo, 129 pp. Vellum backstrip, black boards with vellum tips, backstrip slightly soiled, in a worn publisher's slipcase.

§ Edition limited to 375 numbered and signed copies, of which this is copy number 286. "Jeffers published Dear Judas and Other Poems, which featured a pair of longer poems that displayed Jeffers’ nuanced interest in Christianity as nothing Jeffers had published before. He had hinted at his Christian pedigree and parentage in Shine, Perishing Republic, Apology for Bad Dreams and The Women at Point Sur, but in this volume he took direct aim at the religion of his father and his fellow countrymen.

The two narratives in this book, Dear Judas and The Loving Shepherdess, take on opposing images of Jesus: one is the Christ, a masculine, right-wing power figure; the other is the more feminine Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount, more amicable to left-wing sensibilities. The savior of Dear Judas is the protagonist of a passion play, following the Messiah theme; the savior of The Loving Shepherdess is on a kind of death march of the Good Shepherd, with her Via Dolorosa stretching from somewhere south of Big Sur to the San Joaquin River." (The Inhumanist). Item #124789

Price: $600.00

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