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Lot #146
Albert Einstein

The genius as poet: “Perusing violins full of taste / While your mother sits smoking without haste”

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The genius as poet: “Perusing violins full of taste / While your mother sits smoking without haste”

AQS, signed “A. Einstein,” on a 5.5 x 3.5 photo postcard of Coq sur Mer, also bearing a note regarding a trip from writer Antonina Vallentin to her daughter Irene. Einstein pens an original couplet at the bottom of the correspondence panel, translated in full: “Perusing violins full of taste / While your mother sits smoking without haste.” In fine condition, with a couple biographical pencil notations to top right. Vallentin was a biographer and close personal friend of the Einstein family, publishing The Drama of Albert Einstein in 1954. The physicist's love of the violin is well known—Einstein often remarked that if he were not a scientist, he would have been a musician. His love of poetry, however, is mostly forgotten—he once cited the German Romantic Heinrich Heine as his favorite poet, and even compared his own work to the craft, saying, 'Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.' With its associations to his favorite hobbies, the close relationship between he and Vallentin, and the fantastic condition of the postcard, this boldly-penned couplet is a truly remarkable piece. Pre-certified John Reznikoff/PSA/DNA and RR Auction COA.

Auction Info

  • Auction Title: Civil War Auction
  • Dates: #412 - Ended July 25, 2013





This item is Pre-Certified by PSA/DNA
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