A Collaboration in Allegory
KAVAN, Anna, and K. T. BLUTH. The Horse's Tale. London: Gaberbocchus Press. [1949.]
8vo. Original grey cloth, spine lettered red; pp. 112; boards discoloured in parts with some soiling; uniformly browned throughout, as usual, due to paper stock; a very good copy.
First edition of the novel written jointly by Kavan and her psychiatrist and friend Karl Theodor Bluth.
One of the scarcest Gaberbocchus publications, as well as Kavan's rarest work, The Horse's Tale is a reaction to the psychiatric techniques of the 1940s, which she experienced firsthand. It is an allegorical tale of a talking philosophical horse traversing the Post-War art scene, securing a place in a creative herd only to suffer the consequences of his success.
Karl Theodor Bluth was a huge influence in Anna's life, a life plagued by several episodes of severe mental breakdown. As her psychiatrist Bluth was responsible for enabling her to maintain a lifelong heroin addiction which they used as an antidote to her often fragile mental state. Her short story The Mercedes was prompted by her deep sense of abandonment following his death and appeared in the posthumously published Julia and the Bazooka (1970).
#2121334