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SECTION E:
This index includes publications edited printed, and published by Piero Heliczer and his Dead Language Press
1. Piero Heliczer and Angus MacLise. IMPRIMATUR M.CC.LXXX.I and THE COMPLETED WORKS OF ANGUS MACLISE
First edition:
White Plains: privately printed, 1957
Hand-sewn in printed and illustrated wrappers, 24 pages, letterpress printed by Piero Heliczer.
2. Om [pseud. Olivia de Haulleville]. MARIA
a. First edition, blue paper:
Paris: Dead Language Press, 1958
Broadside, 6.75″ x 15″, letterpress printed by Piero Heliczer. Contents: “Maria” [poem]
[not in archive]
b. First edition, white paper:
Paris: Dead Language Press, 1958
Broadside, 5″ x 6.5″, letterpress printed by Piero Heliczer. Contents: “Maria” [poem]
According to BeatBooks catalog #86, poem written partly in English and partly in French, probably composed in memory of the author’s maternal aunt, and wife of Aldous Huxley, Maria Nys, who died in 1955.
3. Om [pseud. Olivia de Haulleville]. LEMURS
First edition:
Paris: The Dead Language, 1958
Unbound sheets laid into printed and photo-illustrated wrappers, 11″ x 9″, 6 pages, letterpress printed by Piero Heliczer.
Note: This is the first separate edition of one of three pieces collected in A Pulp Magazine for the Dead Generation.
[scans of this item at Mimeo Mimeo]
4. [anthology] A PULP MAGAZINE FOR THE DEAD GENERATION, edited by Piero Heliczer
a. First edition, green cover:
Paris: The Dead Language Press, 1959
Three un-boud folded sheets laid into printed wrappers, letterpress printed by Piero Heliczer. Photograph of Om tipped in; this photograph is different in pose, format, and printing method than the one featured in the blue-covered issue. Contributors: Om [pseud. Olivia de Haulleville], Henk Marsman [aka J. Bernlef], Gregory Corso.
b. First edition, blue cover:
Paris: The Dead Language Press, 1959
Three un-boud folded sheets laid into printed wrappers, letterpress printed by Piero Heliczer. Photograph of Om affixed to last leaf, as issued; this photograph is different in pose, format, and printing method than the one featured in the green-covered issue. Contributors: Om [pseud. Olivia de Haulleville], Henk Marsman [aka J. Bernlef], Gregory Corso.
According to BeatBooks catalog #86, the book prints “Lemurs” by Om [pseud. Olivia de Haulleville]; five poems by Henk Marsman (the Dutch poet, Hendrik Jan Marsman, aka J. Bernlef); and four poems from The Vestal Lady on Brattle and Other Poems by Gregory Corso. Each contribution is preceded by a brief text, Corso’s probably written by Piero Heliczer, the others by the poets themselves.
5. THE DEAD LANGUAGE DIXHUIT RUE DESCARTES PARIS
First edition:
Paris: Dead Language, (c. 1959)
Flyer, 4.5″ x 8.25″, letterpress printed by Piero Heliczer.
Note: verso lists Dead Language publications, 1957-1959.
6. PURCELL FESTIVAL M.CM.L.IX
First edition:
Paris: The Dead Language, 1959
Flyer, 4.5″ x 8.25″, letterpress printed by Piero Heliczer.
Note: announces a festival “to be held in paris the second week of july to celebrate henry purcells three hundredth birthday…organised by the dead language”. Text in English and French.
According to BeatBooks catalog #86, The festival was organised by Piero Heliczer, a keen listener of English baroque, William Byrd as well as Purcell. When he visited Cambridge in early February 1960 as part of Michael Horovitz’s Live New Departures, Heliczer was presented with a viola da gamba by the musicologist and Purcell exponent, Thurston Dart, an instrument that Horovitz remembers Heliczer soon mastered.
Earlier, in June 1959, a petit scandale emerged when Peter Forbes, a British tabloid journalist, visited Heliczer in Paris after hearing of his invitations to English school girls to attend the festival, one of them sent to the headmistress of Queen Anne’s School in Caversham. Forbes’s article appeared in the Sunday Pictorial on June 7 and featured a photograph of Heliczer with Olivia de Haulleville (“A Bohemian young scamp and his girl friend”).
It claimed that Heliczer was offering “to receive groups of girls at a festival in Paris… The girls would pay their own fares, but Heliczer would provide free hotel accomodation.” Forbes added that Heliczer hoped “to get one of his girl guests to act in a play he has written. It features a headless man and a girl who appears naked standing on a tombstone”, and quotes the headmistress as initially having been “quite enthusiastic. Some of the girls had obtained their parents’ consent and were looking forward to the trip. Now, however, we shall unquestionably withdraw. I shall write to Heliczer telling him so.” The article concludes: “Other headmistresses, please copy. And Piero, please drop those crackpot capers. They will land you in real trouble one day.”
7. Haulleville, Eric de. MÉLANCHOLIA 1
First edition:
Paris: The Dead Language, (c. 1959)
Postcard, 6″ x 4″, letterpress printed by Piero Heliczer.
From the verso: “gardez ce poeme dans vos bas grace a sa preparation il les protegera des moisissures” (trans. “keep this poem in your stockings thanks to its preparation it will protect them from mold”).
According to BeatBooks catalog #86, Baron Eric de Haulleville, Olivia’s father, was a Belgian poet and writer who died in France during the second world war, shortly after his daughter’s birth.
8. Tyndall, Thomas. CITY SUMMER NIGHT
First edition:
Paris: The Dead Language, nd. (c. 1959)
Postcard, 6″ x 4″, letterpress printed by Piero Heliczer.
From the verso: “keep this poem between your sweaters because of its special properties it will protect them from moths”.
9. WHY ARE YOU LOOKING ASKANCE IM JUST TRYING TO SHOUT
a. First edition, cream-colored stock:
Paris: Dead Language, (c. 1959)
Postcard, 4″ x 6″, letterpress printed by Piero Heliczer.
b. First edition, orange-colored stock:
Paris: Dead Language, (c. 1959)
Postcard, 4″ x 6″, letterpress printed by Piero Heliczer.
Note: a publicity card printing a short text by Piero Heliczer on his private press (“the only one left which has not been absorbed by those given over to reminiscence”), and listing the titles and prices of its early publications.
10. MacLise, Angus. STRAIGHT FARTHEST BLOOD TOWARDS (OPENING SECTION)
First edition:
Paris: The Dead Language Press, 1959
Single 6.25″ x 22″ sheet folded three times to make six printed pages and a cover, 5.5″ x 6.5″, letterpress printed and with a block print cover by Piero Heliczer. Angus MacLise’s first publication.
According to BeatBooks catalog #86, it was after noticing a copy of this title in City Lights Books that La Monte Young first became aware of Angus MacLise. When the latter moved to New York in 1961 they began performing together regularly, and it was through Young that MacLise first met John Cale.
11. [anthology] WEDNESDAY PAPER, edited by Piero Heliczer and Angus MacLise
a. First edition, white cover:
New York: The Dead Language Press, (c. 1961)
Saddle-stapled in printed and illustrated wrappers, 5.5″ x 8.5″, 12 pages, offset printed. Contributors: Gregory Corso, Cyclops [Lester], Anselm Hollo, Gustav Schiele.
b. First edition, pink cover:
New York: The Dead Language Press, (c. 1961)
Saddle-stapled in printed and illustrated wrappers, 5.5″ x 8.5″, 12 pages, offset printed. Contributors: Gregory Corso, Cyclops [Lester], Anselm Hollo, Gustav Schiele. This apparent later issue adds the title to Hollo’s poem on the cover.
According to BeatBooks catalog #86, prints the poems “Song of Stations” by Anselm Hollo and “It Was the Happy Birthday of Death” by Gregory Corso (reputedly included without Corso’s permission). Also features reproductions of a sketch by Egon Schiele (with accompanying texts by him); a holograph letter from Cyclops Lester to Piero Heliczer; a ‘Woman Contest’ (“every two weeks wednesday paper will run photos of the winner and runner up of our quarter moon woman contest”); newspaper clippings; and brief ads. for the Dead Language, New Departures, and “hollands leading litry magazine”, Barbarber.
12. MacLise, Angus. YEAR, A WEDNESDAY PAPER SUPPLEMENT
First edition:
New York: The Dead Language Press, 1961
Multiple sheets tape-bound to make a single accordion fold with 12 panels, one for each of the twelve months and an entry for each day, 4.6″ x 9″ (folded), letterpress printed by Piero Heliczer. Cover illustration, “The Ascension of St. Rose of Lima”, by Aubrey Beardsley.
According to BeatBooks catalog #86, the publication prints MacLise’s renaming of every day of the year, some simply assigned a number, but most given poetic names, such as “day of the hearts blood”, “day of the two daughters”, “the shouts from the sea”, and “last day of the autumn feast”. La Monte Young used the calendar to date many of his recordings from the period, including “B-flat Dorian Blues (Fifth Day Of The Hammer)”.
[scans of this item at Brown Digital Repository]
13. Smith, Jack. THE BEAUTIFUL BOOK
a. First edition:
New York: The Dead Language Press, 1962 Saddle-stapled in printed and illustrated wrappers, 7.5″ x 9″, 20 pages, 200 copies (though it is often claimed that only sixty or so copies were ever completed), letterpress printed by Piero Heliczer. Includes 19 silver gelatin contact prints (2.25″ x 2.25″), one tipped on to each page: 19 photographs by Jack Smith, and 1 portrait of Jack Smith by Ken Jacobs. Cover art by Marian Zazeela.
b. Facsimile edition, second printing:
New York: Granary Books / Plaster Foundation, 2001
Saddle-stapled in printed and illustrated wrappers, 7.5″ x 9″, 20 pages, Includes 19 silver gelatin contact prints (2.25″ x 2.25″) made from the original negatives, one tipped on to each page: 19 photographs by Jack Smith, and 1 portrait of Jack Smith by Ken Jacobs. Cover art by Marian Zazeela.
Note: a printed sheet issued with the Granary Books / Plaster Foundation edition in 2001 stated: Noting the scarcity of this title on the rare book market and its absence from many prominent collections (not to mention the chaotic circumstances in which it was produced) it is likely that considerably fewer than 200 books were actually nished and distributed. Jack Smith, Piero Heliczer, and their associates assembled the books during the late spring and early summer of 1962 before shooting began on Smith’s seminal film Flaming Creatures (1963), one of the most notorious underground films of the 1960s, which became a test case of censorship laws.
14. FOLDING CHAIR OF THE PRINTING MASTER, A CATALOG OF ITEMS PRINTED BY THE DEAD LANGUAGE 1963
First edition:
New York: The Dead Language Press, 1963
Saddle-stapled in printed and illustrated wrappers, 4.75″ x 5″, letterpress printed by Piero Heliczer. Cover art by Aubrey Beardsley.
Note: a catalogue of Dead Language editions listing seven publications, each one including the price and pithy comments or quotes. The text ends: “make checks payable to piero heliczer”.
15. Hollo, Anselm. LOVER MAN
First edition:
New York: The Dead Language Press, (1963)
Accordion-bound sheets laid into printed and illustrated wrappers, 6.75″ x 8.75″, 12 pages, letterpress printed by Piero Heliczer. Cover art (“Le Viol”, 1934) by Rene Magritte.
According to BeatBooks catalog #86, the Folding Chair Dead Language catalog describes the publication as “a very free translation of the lemminkainen cantos of the kalevala” (a 19th century work of epic poetry compiled from Karelian and Finnish oral folklore and mythology). (©BeatBooks.com)
16. FOLDING CHAIR OF THE PRINTING MASTER, A CATALOG OF ITEMS PRINTED BY THE DEAD LANGUAGE 1963
First edition:
Paris: The Dead Language Press, 1963
Multiple sheets tape-bound to make a single accordion fold with 8 panels, 4.75″ x 5″, letterpress printed by Piero Heliczer. Cover art by Aubrey Beardsley.
Note: a catalogue of Dead Language editions listing ten publications, with The Beautiful Book, The First Battle of the Marne, and Loverman added to the seven titles listed in the earlier edition, the first two featuring quotes from Ron Rice and Fielding Dawson respectively.
[facsimile at Brown University Library digital repository]
17. [anthology] CORONA SPINARUM: SON OF WEDNESDAY PAPER, OFFICIAL JOURNAL OF THE EMPIRE OF EUROPE & THE PIERO HELICZER FAN CLUB, Vol. 1, No. 1, edited by Piero Heliczer
First edition:
Amsterdam: Piero Heliczer, October 1980
Folded and gathered unbound sheets, 5.75″ x 8.25″, 8 pages, photocopy printed.
[not in archive]
Note: prints the abstracts from the first meeting of the Imperial Council, attended by Piero, Bill Levy and Ira Cohen.
18. [anthology] DE VROUWE VAN ALLE VOLKEREN [trans. THE LADY OF ALL NATIONS], edited by Piero Heliczer
First edition:
Amsterdam: Piero Heliczer, 1981
Folded and gathered unbound sheets, 5.75″ x 8.25″, 12 pages, photocopy printed.
[not in archive]
Note: includes a map of Amsterdam with numbers encircled of places of importance, a professional horoscope reading (by Ronnie Dreyer), holy texts of Saints, and an ad for a marijuana sweepstakes.
19. [anthology] CORONA SPINARUM, No. 3, edited by Piero Heliczer
First edition:
Amsterdam: Piero Heliczer, 1981
Folded and gathered unbound sheets, 5.85″ x 8.3″, 12 pages, photocopy printed.
[not in archive]
Note: announces a poetry reading by Heliczer, and prints various texts (on Thomas Beckett, Bernadette Soubirous, Jeanne d’Arc, and Thérèse de Lisieux) in French, Dutch and English.
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