Gustav Sack (1885-1916) grew up in the German village of Schermbeck, close to the Dutch border and the industrial Ruhr district. He attended the grammar school of the nearby town of Wesel and did German Studies and Natural Science at the universities of Greifswald, Münster and Halle before dropping out in 1910. Sack developed an interest in literature during his grammar school days, when he discovered…
‘A Wilderness of Dreams’ is a passage from Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘Hans Phaall – A Tale’, an early science fiction tale about a balloon flight from Rotterdam to the moon that was published in the Southern Literary Messenger in 1835. After its first publication ‘Hans Phaall – A Tale’ was revised and reprinted several times and renamed ‘The Unparalleled Adventure of one Hans Pfaall’. A later version, which includes…
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) was a short story writer and novelist who is generally regarded as one of the leading representatives of American ‘Dark Romanticism’. Hawthorne was born in Salem, Massachusetts and descended from a family of Puritan settlers of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, one of the earliest and largest New England colonies. His ancestor John Hathorne was a harsh and unrepentant…
Georg Trakl (1887-1914) grew up as the sixth of seven children in a well-to-do protestant family in Salzburg, where his father made a living as a hardware dealer. His mother was addicted to opium and had a disturbed relationship with her children. The upbringing of Georg and his younger sister Grete, with whom he developed an intimate relationship, were left to a young Alsatian woman. The governess, Marie…
Ben Schot’s edition ‘The Nothing Door’ consists of 5 small and (partly) hand coloured prints on Fabriano Accademia 200 gr paper. The water coloured prints of drawings by Schot and older engravings by others measure 147 x 100 mm each and are wrapped in black Japanese hand dipped paper. Once unwrapped, the prints can be displayed side by side on the black paper. For each of the 5 sets of this very limited edition Schot cut and folded a jacket, also from Fabriano…