A blog about preserving our heritage of books. Treasures found this weekend: 

The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem. Fables for the Cybernetic Age. Seabury Press, 1974. Translated from the Polish by Michael Kandel. Illustrations by Daniel Mroz. Book is Near Fine, dust jacket Very Good +. (Cost $15). The superb dust jacket illustration in yellow and black and the book illustrations are of cyber machines rendered in what appears as dry-point engraving. 

DJ Blurb: "The Cyberiad is a cycle  of tales recounting the episodes of the cosmic constructors Trurl and Klapaucius as they out-invent each other at home and take up the Gargantuan tasks thrust upon them in other galaxies, creating laser-eyed beasts and dragons of improbability, electronic bards and machines that can make anything beginning with the letter n." 

Trurl the Constructor has invented a machine. "Still not completely sure of its ability, he had it produce, one after the other, nimbuses, noodles. nuclei, neutrons, naptha, noses, nymphs, naiads and natrium. This last it could not do, and Trurl, considerably irritated, demanded an explanation."Never heard of it," said the machine.   "What? But it's only sodium, You know, the metal, the element..."  The machine said, "Sodium starts with an s, and I only work in n."   Trurl said, "But in Latin it's natrium"

"Look, ole boy", said the machine, "if I could do everything starting with n in every possible language, I'd be a Machine That Could Do Everything in the Whole Alphabet, since any item you care to mention undoubtedly starts with n in one foreign language or another. It's not that easy. I can't go beyond what you programmed. So no Sodium."

Begins to sound like a regular Dagblog thread. Oddly enough in connection with this accidental book find a banner from a few days ago stated that Dagblog was being brought to us by the letter "n". 

The Three Cornered World, by Natsume Soseki, published in 1967 by Peter Owen, London, translated from the Japanese by Alan Turney. Soseki, who died in 1916, wrote this novel in the early 1900's. The book is in Fine condition, the dust jacket Very Good. (Cost $7.50). This translated book has been re-published by Owen in soft cover several times but the 1967 hardback is rare---I found one other on the internet and no other dust jackets. 

As Tennyson represented the Victorian age in England, Soseki is considered the writer of his age in Japan. He was often ruthlessly critical of the Westernization of traditional Japanese society. In the book an artist, presumably Soseki, wanders into a hotel in the far off mountains and encounters the hostess, O'Nami.

Having had a habit in the late fifties of jumping into the third class section of a train with my Japanese dictionary and back pack and then getting off the train when I was sure I didn't know where in the world I was and begin the search for a small hotel, a bath house and a tiny restaurant serving buckwheat noodles---I was intrigued by a bath scene in Soseki's novel in which the figure of a woman has appeared through the mist:

"The whiteness of the woman's skin came floating towards me, and I feared that with one more step my maiden from the moon would degenerate into a being of this common world. Just then, however her thick blue-black hair streamed around her with a swish like the tail of some gigantic legendary turtle cleaving through the waves. Next moment her white figure was flying up the steps tearing through the veils of mist. A clear peal of feminine laughter rang out in the corridor and gradually echoed away into the distance, leaving the bathroom quiet again. The water washed over my face, so I stood up. As I did so, startled waves lapped against my chest, and splashed noisily over the sides of the tank."

Eh, Ryokan! Wakarimasu ka? 

Ah, yes, you're looking for a small Inn are you?