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 her rarest title, The Horse's Tale is ultimately a reaction to the prevailing psychiatric measures popularised in the 1940s which Kavan experienced firsthand. It is a mesmerising, 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.
Kavan's previous work, Asylum Piece and Other Stories was significantly the first book under the name Anna Kavan and was published in 1940. Her pseudonym was plagiarized from the name of a predominant character in her novel Let Me Alone (1930), written under her original name Helen Ferguson. This change in identity was also accompanied by a radical shift in creative style and atmosphere with a preference for the surreal avant-garde and bold introspection.
On the cover of the 2001 Peter Owen paperback of Asylum Piece looms the photograph of a figure not unlike those in her Kafka-esque environments and it is that of Karl Theodor Bluth, the cowriter of The Horse's Tale who was of huge influence in Anna's life, a life plagued by several episodes of severe mental breakdown. An experience of loss and institutionalization greatly informs her writing. Bluth was responsible for enabling her to maintain a lifelong heroin addiction which they used as an antidote to her often fragile mental states. 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).
Publisher Peter Owens wrote, "It is sad that writers whose vision transcends that of their own contemporaries often remain unappreciated in their own lifetime" and Anna Kavan is finally experiencing her deserving place alongside the high ranking profiles of experimental women's literature.
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