Quarto. 83, (7)pp. A scholarly, artistic, material, and personal undertaking of the conceit of the "Eidolon," the invisible but terrible demonic presence of vengeance first examined by Homer in The Iliad. There, the Eidolon of the dead but still unburied Patroclus appears to Achilles and goads him toward revenge against Hector. Zauft begins his text here, and follows the thread forward through literary history, citing its incursions in the works of Goethe, Poe, Whitman, Crane, and Waite, among others. All references are indexed at the rear. Zauft concludes with his own experience, when the Eidolon came to him in a dream, or nightmare, and he felt inexorably compelled to kill it in order to save his own sanity. Zauft's photographs of a Pacific beach - not unlike that found on the Anatolian Peninsula - grow gradually darker and more abstract as the book progresses. Printed on a variety of papers, though most notable are the sheets of the plastic Enduroice 135 bearing the photographs. Bound by Nancy Southworth, Allie Kaplan-Thompson, and Marnie Cobbs of frosted acrylic covers and an exposed spine showing goatskin thongs. Wrapped in goat and calf skins. Very fine.