Written in Stone: Minerals Collected and Described

by Roger Caillois

Roger Caillois’s meditation on the nature and essence of stones excavates in highly concentrated and extremely precise poetic language an immanence hidden in things—“vitrified thousands of centuries ago at temperatures no longer known.” The hieroglyphic effigies found in cut or broken stones seem to offer hallucinatory revelations from cosmic time. This sumptuous and indispensable book features an abundance of photographs, Marguerite Yourcenar’s original eulogy, as well as other informational texts of interpretation and remembrances by friends. — Herbert Pföstl, Book Consultant for the New Museum Store.

Even though they belong to the Mineral Kingdom, the stones in the collection of the French writer Roger Caillois appear miraculously similar to works of art. Beginning from this mysterious but captivating link between two such apparently distant universes, the book collects a carefully curated selection of the finest stones in the collection and recounts the life of Caillois (sociologist, member of the surrealist movement...), reviewing and presenting his essays on stones. The persona and the personality of this atypical 20th-century intellectual emerge from the essay by Stefano Salis, who introduces us to Caillois' world and that of Marguerite Yourcenar, who took his place in the Académie de France after his death with a speech reviewing his life and work. The literary critic Carlo Ossola traces the outlines of the cultural climate in which Caillois lived and operated, while François Farges, now in charge of the collection, illustrates it in the final essay.

2023; hardcover; 9.5 x 13 inches; 150 pages; ISBN: 9791280294203.