Hrdlicka, Alfred. Estravagario. 105 S. With etched and signed TVignette as well as 4 separate signed original etchings by Alfred Hrdlicka. 40,5 x 30,5 cm. White OLeinenband and black OLeineen-Mappe in black OLEinen-Schuber. Hamburg, Hoffmann & Campe, 1971. Propyläen 335 c and 340-343. – One of 190 numbered copies (total edition: 250), here no. 178. After the printing the plates of etchings were destroyed. - Monumental and congenial illustrated edition of the poetry Pablo Nerudas (1904-1973) by Alfred Hrdlicka (1928-2009). In the collection of poems "Estravagario" the poet and writer suggests sounds of the changeable, the diversity, the richness of variation and the contradiction: "To the contradiction against 'the others' comes here now, however, as a novelty of contradiction against itself ... Neruda once called his 'Estrapagario' poems 'cosas humoristicas' himself. It must have been an understatement. But the reference to the Schalk, which constantly peeps out between the lines, is certainly appropriate ... Something like 'light muse', however, is not 'Estravagario' either. [But] there is an experience from them, which no poet can pass by today [...] our conscience forces us to commit ourselves, no one can do without commitment today - but how can we prevent that this bond becomes a [political] bond, and how do we unite the two counter-dictatory demands that our time imposes on us, the commitment and freedom?" (Afterword by Jürgen von Stackelberg). A problem that Alfred Hrdlicka has repeatedly addressed in his entire work and which led to his maxim, "that art has to deal with nature, the environment and social reality and that one's own life has to flow into them" (Interview with Urs Jenny, 1984). In his four large-format etchings (395 x 295 mm) and the etched title vignette (65 x 65) for "Estravagario" Hrdlicka Nerudas visualizes counter-dictorical, bizarre-humoristic poetry: among other things, he shows a chewer who eats from the ground like a dog, while his fellow human beings turn their backs on him, a running skeleton, and a sitting, very luxuriant and so to speak Earth-linked female act. This may be a portrait of Mathilde Urrutía, the partner of Pablo Neruda, which the poet has also immortalized in the "Estravagario": "With all physical presence, she is also a figure symbolically representing the native south, the poet's 'roots' in the rain-rich forests of the province of Cautín" (Afterword). Print it.