A Less Known Bibliophile Edition in the Romanian Area

With this contribution, we bring to attention a bibliophile edition less present in the public funds of Romania, an accomplished work dedicated to Divinity and the creation of the universe by Prince Vladimir Ghika, Les Intermèdes de Talloires, published in Paris in 1923, in special graphic conditions. One of the 255 copies numbered in Roman numerals, each bearing the autograph signature of the author, is kept in the collections of the “Gavrilă Simion” Eco-Museum Research Institute Tulcea as a result of a purchase made from an antique shop in Bucharest in 1983. The suggestive and simple title of the work, Les Intermèdes de Talloires, expresses the idea of the author experiencing moments of silence and meditation in Talloires, a small town in France, on the shores of Lake Annecy, close to the border with Switzerland. In the preamble of the preface, the French painter Albert Besnard mentions that the drawings of the album have been made in pen by Prince Vladimir Ghika (b. 1873 – d. 1954), during night conversations at the villa in Talloires in 1919. At the end of his mandate as representative of the National Committee for Romanian Unity to the Vatican, following the recognition of the Great Union, Vladimir Ghika traveled between Rome and Talloires, the place where, inspired by the splendor of the landscape, he wrote the poem about the beauties of nature.