Search Results: Books:Slavic Literature:Poetry from ZH BOOKS

Peterburg: Alkonost, 1919. Softcover. First edition; 5 1/2 x 7 3/4; pp. 183; beige wraps printed in red and black; a few small nicks to spine and edges and faint crease line to lower corner; beautiful woodcut fronts; very good or better.On Aleksandr Blok and Andrei Belyi's poetry. Razumnik Vasil'evich Ivanov [Ivanov-Razumnik] (1878-1946) was a Russian author, philosopher, and literary critic. He was a member of the so called Scythian Movement, as were the two subjects of his book and close friends of his - Blok and Belyi.

Moscow: Moskovskii Rabochii, 1993. Softcover. First edition (1 of 4500 copies); 5 x 8; pp. [2], 5-287; illustrated off-white wraps; faint crease to upper back corner and a few minor spots to back cover and spine; internally clean; very good to near fine condition. Signed and dated by author on front cover and title page.Iurii Mikhailovich Kublanovskii is a Russian, poet, essayist, and art historian whose works, during the Soviet Era, were samizdat and emigre publications. He was a co-founder of SMOG (Courage, Thought, Image, Depth) - a literary association of young poets established in 1965 and one of the first of its kind in the Soviet Union to embrace and attempt rebellion against the control of state and party authorities. In 1975 Kublanovskii wrote an open letter "To All of Us" timed to coincide with the second anniversary of Solzhenitsyn's expulsion which resulted in all his works being banned from publication. His poetry was included in the legendary underground anthology… Read More

Moskva/Leningrad: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel'stvo, 1930. Hardcover. Near Fine. Second edition; 8vo 5 1/2" x 8"; pp. [6], 5-207, [1]; original blue/green boards with printed DJ; minor wear and discoloration to bottom edge of back cover; portrait frontis; near fine. DJ fair with a few closed tears and small losses of paper. Uncommon in the elusive DJ. "Two books" was the first collected edition of Pasternak's major collections of poems - 'Sestra Moia Zhizn' (My Sister - Life), considered seminal in Russian poetry, and 'Temy I Variatsii' (Themes and Variations). Interestingly enough, most poems from the latter were originally written for 'My Sister-Life' but then withdrawn from publication by the author.

Moskva: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel'stvo Khudozhestvennoi Literatury, 1947. Soft cover. Near Fine. First edition in this format; staple-bound 5" x 8"; pp. 3-46, [1]; original stiff pictorial wraps; small piece chipped off upper corner of front cover, else near fine. Il'ia Muromets, depicted in numerous epic poems some of which were collected in this book, was a Kievan Rus epic hero and one of the greatest bogatyrs. Though most of his adventures appear to have been a work of fiction, scientists believe that he indeed was a historic person sometime in the 12th century. He is also the only epic hero to be canonized as a Saint by the Russian Orthodox Church.

S. l. (Moscow [?]): Molodaia gvardiia, 1926. Softcover. First edition in book form (initially published in the same year in "Komsomolskaia pravda"), 1 of 4000 copies; 6 3/4 x 5 1/4; pp. [6], 9-30; beautiful, Avant-garde, pictorial wraps; a few small nicks and a bit of wear along edges; partially unopened; very good condition.Aleksandr Alekseevich Zharov (1904 - 1984) was a Soviet poet and political poster creator. He began his career writing for various satirical journals, including "Komar," "Krasnyi perets," and "Zanoza." He came into prominence with his current work and a movie with the same name would be adapted from the poem by one of the greatest early Soviet filmmakers igor Savchenko (1906 - 1950) in 1934. Zharov served in the Russian Navy during the Second World War and was one of the most active TASS poets (TASS - a major Russian news agency, founded in 1902), contributing texts to numerous political posters. After the war, he became heavily… Read More

Berlin: Izdatelstvo "Mysl", 1921. Softcover. Berlin: Izdatelstvo "Mysl", 1921. First edition; 5 3/4 x 3 3/4; light brown wraps, ruled and printed in dark brown; small nicks to tips of spine; thin, closed cut to spine along bottom of front wrap; small puncture to upper margin of title page; very good condition.One of Erenburg's (1891-1967) earlier books, the current poetry collection was published shortly after he moved to Germany, where he would remain until 1924. He also lived and worked in Paris and several other European cities well into the 1940s, where he kept in close contact with many of the other prominent Russian dissident intellectuals, including Pasternak, Esenin, and Maiakovskii. After returning to Russia, he would write his famous novel "Ottepel" (1954-56, The Thaw), whose title would be used to describe the de-Stalinization program of Nikita Khrushchev

Ann Arbor, MI: Ardis, 1977. Softcover. First edition; 8 1/4 x 5 1/4; pp. [6], 5-114, [1]; beige wraps, printed and illustrated in black; a bit of age-toning to spine and margins of wraps; minor wear to corners and tips of spine; small rubbed spot to upper corner of ffep (removed bookshop label); small, closed puncture to lower margin of back wrap; very good or better condition.Brodskii began writing poetry in the 1950s and by 1960, after meeting and becoming close friends with several leading figures of the Russian literary scene, including Anna Akhmatova and Dmitrii Bonyshev. In 1963, his poetry was denounced for being anti-Soviet and pro-Jewish, he was accused of parasitism, arrested, and sentenced to hard labor. He would be eventually released and would emigrate, first to Vienna in 1972, and then permanently to Ann Arbor. He would go on to teach at the University of Michigan, Columbia, Queens College, Smith, and Cambridge, and would win the Nobel Prize in 1987. All of his life's work, but for… Read More

Moskva: Sovetskii Pisatel, 1943. Soft cover. Near Fine. First edition, 12mo 4 1/2" x 6"; pp. 3-50, [2] index; original printed wraps; minor wear to covers with a few small faint spots; near fine. Pasternak wrote his collection of poems 'On Early Trains' at a time, when Socialist realism as a cultural model was becoming more and more constricting, thus forcing the author to abandon his natural avant-garde style and resort to, in his own words, a "shoemaker" type of poetry. The poems in this collection were written between 1935-1941. The publication was allowed as a form of propaganda, showcasing the ability of the Soviet literary authorities to "rehabilitate an outrageous and bourgeois writer." Succumbing to the demands of the government did not mean Pasternak liked these particular poems. In fact, in a letter to his friend - fellow writer Daniil Danin, he called 'On Early Trains' "a useless book.

Londyn: Oficyna Poetow i Malarzy, 1972 . Softcover. First edition; 8 1/2 x 5 1/2; pp. 64; beige card stock wraps, printed in green and red; small wrinkles along edges of wraps, else minor wear; very good to near fine condition. Signed and inscribed by the author on the half-title page verso.Janusz Ihnatowicz (1929 - ) is a Polish Roman Catholic priest, poet, literary critic, and Professor Emeritus at the University of St. Basilian. He left Poland after the Second World War, first to Ireland in 1946, then to Canada in 1951, and finally to Houston in 1969. He was greatly influenced by Walt Whitman and Ezra Pound, and translated many of their works into Polish. He is a member of the Polish Institute of Sciences of America, based in New York, the Association of Polish Writers in Exile in London and the National Polish Writers' Association. Although his literary career began in the early 1950s in London, with his poems being published in various journals, his current book of poetry was his first… Read More

San Frantsisko (San Francisco): By the author, 1971. Softcover. First edition; 8 1/2 x 5 1/4; pp. III-VI, 1-72, [2]; textured, off-white wraps, printed in black; minor wear to tips of spine and corners; small spot to front wrap, else clean; illustrated with drawings by the author; near fine condition.Published by a Russian emigre poet and member of the Society of Egyptologists in France, the cycle of lyrical poems often draw on mythology and history and is divided in three distinctive parts - "The Starry Heights," where each poem is titled after a celestial body, "Terra Firma," with poems of the Pacific Ocean and the Niagara Falls, and "Animal Characters."

Moskva: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatel'stvo Khudozhestvennoi Literatury, 1931. Hardcover. Good. Second revised edition; 4 1/2" x 5 3/4"; pp. [4], 5-164, [4] index; original boards with cloth spine; paste-on label with title to front cover; wear mostly along edges and corners of boards; some rubbing to head and tail of spine; pages clean; good or better. This edition limited to 3000 copies. The present book, "Over the Barriers," contains one of Pasternak's earlier collections, before he was forced to drastically change his style of creating poetry in order to comply with Stalin's demand for Socialist realism.

S.-Peterburg (St. Petersburg) : Tipografiia kn. V. P. Meshcherskago, 1894. Hardcover. Late 19th-century edition, two title pages, as issued; 9 x 6; pp. [3], 6-209, [3]; later 1/4 brown morocco and pebbled purple cloth over boards; gilt title and monogram to spine; 2" loss of leather and thin cut along joint of front board (still firmly attached); small personal stamp of previous owner to title page; a bit of wear to cloth; illustrated with 8 plates; very good- condition.Ivan Petrovich Miatlev (1796 - 1844) was a Russian poet and satirist. He published two collections of poems in 1834 and 1835, but did not reach notoriety until the early 1840s, when he created his current work, which was considered his best. Originally released between 1840 and 1844, the humorous verses were divided into three volumes - Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. The current edition contained all three in one volume and was illustrated with 8 beautiful and funny plates. Based on the author's trips to Europe between… Read More

Santa Barbara: Centaur Press, 1963. Softcover. First edition presumed; 5 x 4; pp. [28], recto only; illustrated beige wraps; paper label with title laid-on; faint crease to lower corner; two small smudges to illustration on front wrap (moisture drops [?]); overall in very good condition.A beautiful edition, possibly a first English translation, of Pasternak's poem "Zimnie prazdniki," it was published by a mystery small press in Santa Barbara, operating under the name Centaur Press (but not the New York publishing company under the same name, known for reviving pulp adventure and fantasy works of the early 20th century). Originally published in Russian in 1947 (?), the poem illustrated Boris Pasternak's love for finding reasons to celebrate the little things and the common happenings in life and for commemorating them in his poetry.