The Eemis Stane, 1967

Not on View

Medium

woodcut in black with color letterpress on wove paper

Dimensions

image: 21.91 × 17.78 cm (8 5/8 × 7 in.)

sheet: 58.1 × 34.29 cm (22 7/8 × 13 1/2 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Jay Finkel

Catalogue Raisonné

Fern/O'Sullivan 1984, no. 730

Accession Number

2013.121.135

Artists / Makers

Leonard Baskin (artist) American, 1922 - 2000

Hugh MacDiarmid (author) Scottish, 1892 - 1978

Takeshi Takahara (carver)

Gehenna Press (publisher)

Image Use

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Inscription

lower left in black letterpress: Baskin del.; lower right in black letterpress: Takahara sculpt.; lower left in graphite: Leonard Baskin

text in image:
I’ the how-dumb-deid o’ the cauld hairst nicht / The warl’ like an eemis stane / Wags i’ the lift; / An’ my eerie memories fa’ / Like a yowdendrift. / Like a yowdendrift so’s I couldna read / The words cut oot i’ the stane / Had the fug o’ fame / An’ history’s hazelraw / No’ yirdit thaim. / HUGH MACDIARMID / THE EEMIS STANE / In the very dead of the cold harvest night the world, like a loose tombstone, sways in the sky; and my awesome / memories fall like a down-drive of snow. Like a down-drive of snow so that I cannot read the words cut out on the / stone even if the moss of fame and the lichen of history had not overgrown them. / Five hundred copies printed at The Gehanna Press at Northampton, Massachusetts, April 1967.

Provenance

Jay Finkel, Washington, DC; acquired 2013 by the National Gallery of Art

Associated Names

Finkel, Jay

Bibliography

1984: Fern, Alan, and Judith O'Sullivan. The Complete Prints of Leonard Baskin: A Catalogue Raisonné, 1948-1983. Boston, Massachusetts: Little, Brown and Company, 1984, no. 730.