''Song Without Words: A Book of Engravings on Wood'' is a wordless novel of 1936 by American artist Lynd Ward (1905–1985). Executed in twenty-one

wood engraving Wood engraving is a printmaking technique, in which an artist works an image or ''matrix'' of images into a block of wood. Functionally a variety of woodcut, it uses relief printing, where the artist applies ink to the face of the block and ...

s, it was the fifth and shortest of the six wordless novels Ward completed, produced while working on the last and longest, '' Vertigo'' (1937). The story concerns the anxiety an expectant mother feels over bringing a child into a world under the threat of fascism—anxieties Ward and writer

May McNeer May Yonge McNeer Ward (pen name, May McNeer; 1902 in Tampa, Florida – 1994 in Reston, Virginia) was a 20th-century American journalist and writer. Early life Her first published story appeared in a Washington, D.C. newspaper when she was eleven ...

were then feeling over McNeer's pregnancy with the couple's second child.

Content and style

A woman conceives a child and suffers anguish over whether to give birth to it. She imagines one nightmare image of fascism and death after another, filled with such imagery as skulls, concentration camps, and an infant impaled on a bayonet. She ends standing defiant against the forces that threaten her, and her male partner joins her and the baby in an image of hope for the future. Ward employs symbols much as he had in previous works, such as towering buildings representing capitalism. Vermin swarm in the pictures, heightening the expectant mother's fears—nightmare images of vultures, ants crawling over an impaled infant, and rats scattering around a Nazi concentration camp filled with children.

Background

Lynd Ward (1905–1985) was a son of

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's b ...

minister and social activist Harry F. Ward (1873–1966). Throughout his career the younger Ward displayed in his work the influence of his father's interest in social injustice. Ward married writer

in 1926 and the couple left for Europe, where Ward spent a year studying

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...

, Germany. There he encountered German

Expressionist Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

art and read the wordless novel '' The Sun'' (1919) by Flemish woodcut artist Frans Masereel (1889–1972). Ward returned to the United States and freelanced his illustrations. In 1929, he came across German artist

Otto Nückel Otto Nückel (Cologne, 6 September 1888 – Cologne, 12 November 1955) was a German painter, graphic designer, illustrator and cartoonist. He is best known as one of the 20th century's pioneer wordless novelists, along with Frans Masereel and Ly ...

's wordless novel '' Destiny'' (1926) in New York City. The work inspired Ward to create a wordless novel of his own, (1929), which he followed with ''

Madman's Drum ''Madman's Drum'' is a wordless novel by American artist Lynd Ward (1905–1985), published in 1930. It is the second of Ward's six wordless novels. The 118 wood-engraved images of ''Madman's Drum'' tell the story of a slave trader who stea ...

'' (1930), ''

Wild Pilgrimage ''Wild Pilgrimage'' is the third wordless novel of American artist Lynd Ward (1905–1985), published in 1932. It was executed in 108 monochromatic wood engravings, printed alternately in black ink when representing reality and orange to repre ...

'' (1932), and the short ''

Prelude to a Million Years ''Prelude to a Million Years: A Book of Wood Engravings'' is a 1933 wordless novel consisting of thirty wood engravings by American artist Lynd Ward (1905–1985). It was the fourth of Ward's six wordless novels, a genre Ward discovered while s ...

'' (1933). Ward began engraving on ''Song Without Words'' while working on his longest wordless novel, '' Vertigo'' (1937), which took two years to complete. McNeer was pregnant with their second child and the couple were facing the same anxieties as the book's protagonist, and having worked through these issues they carried through the birth of daughter Robin. Into adulthood Robin kept a wall of her home decorated with prints from ''Song Without Words''. Ward returned to the themes of ''Song Without Words'' in ''Hymn for the Night'', a retelling of the birth of Christ in Nazi Germany. The book was to have been Ward's seventh wordless novel, but he abandoned it in 1940 after engraving twenty blocks of it after finding the story too removed from his personal experiences.

Production and publication

Ward produced 21

s for the book, sized . It appeared in 1936 in a limited edition from

Random House Random House is an American book publisher and the largest general-interest paperback publisher in the world. The company has several independently managed subsidiaries around the world. It is part of Penguin Random House, which is owned by Germ ...

of 1250 copies. The pages were printed from the original engravings by Equinox Press co-founder Lewis F. White. The original woodblocks are in the Lynd Ward Collection in the Joseph Mark Lauinger Memorial Library at

Georgetown University Georgetown University is a private university, private research university in the Georgetown (Washington, D.C.), Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded by Bishop John Carroll (archbishop of Baltimore), John Carroll in 1789 as Georg ...

in Washington, DC.

Notes

References

Works cited

* * * * * {{Wordless novels Wordless novels by Lynd Ward 1936 books 1936 comics debuts Pantomime comics