Cheeks on Fire: Collected Poems

CHEEKS ON FIRE: COLLECTED POEMS by Raymond Radiguet, translation from French into English by Alan Stone, bilingual text, hardcover with dust jacket (price-clipped), 1st English translation, 1976. BOOK CONDITION: very good. The text block is in fine condition, with no marks, tears, or dog-ears. Not a library book nor a remainder. No bookplate nor signature of prior owner. Tight binding. The maroon cloth boards are in very good condition (very slight corner bumping, but no bumping on spine which has gilt lettering). The dust jacket is in good/fair condition (edge chipping, tiny wrinkles and scratches, smudged square where price tag used to be). 8 ¾ x 5 ½, 113 pages, 9 ounces. XX [From the dust jacket] If you were looking for a prototype for a poet, it would be difficult to find a better one than Raymond Radiguet whose brief talent burned itself out before his 20th birthday. But in those brief years of adolescence, he wrote 2 novels which have already taken their place among twentieth century French classics and the poems collected in this volume. A protegé of Jean Cocteau, who instantly recognized his talent and took his first novel DEVIL IN THE FLESH to a publisher, Radiguet's astonishing maturity still has all the freshness and lyrical delight of youth. Many comparisons have been made with Rimbaud, Chatterton, and Shelley where comparisons do not only concern their early deaths. These poems speak for themselves, but they tell us that the poet must have crammed a wealth of experience and observation into his few years, that he knew the delights of love, had an original eye for nature and understood the sentiments of others. Born in June 1903, he grew up during the first war and DEVIL IN THE FLESH, an account of a love affair between an adolescent boy and the wife of a soldier away at the war, tells us much about that period. The film version gave Gérard Philippe probably his greatest role. His second novel, COUNT D'ORGEL, is a brilliant description of Parisian high society immediately following the war. These poems, which have been through countless editions in France, now appear for the first time in English, so that all Raymond Radiguet's major work is at last available in translation.…