Eric Chaim Kline, Bookseller - Old and Rare Books

DVANÁCT. Revolucni epos Prelozil (The Twelve. A Revolutionary Epic) INSCRIBED BY ILLUSTRATOR]

Blok, Alexander; Václav Masek (Ill.) Bohumilus Mathesius (Trans.)

Prague: Plamja Publishing House*, 1924. First edition. Hardcover. Quarto. 47 (6)pp. Original silk red cloth with blind-stamped design on cover, gilt lettering on spine; original cover with woodcut on light brown stiff wraps bound in. Rose ribbon marker. Textured endpapers. Title page printed in red and black. Contains eight full-page avant-garde woodcuts in b/w, incl. cover. With five-page epilogue on Alexander Blok by translator and translated from the original Russian. Title page with publishing date 1924, colophon states 1925.

Born into an aristocratic Russian family Alexander Blok enthusiastically embrace the 1905 Russian Revolution and is said to have had premonitions of the 1917 revolution, as recorded in his diary in the summer of 1917. He engaged actively in the restructuring of Russian society after the revolution.

The Twelve was written in 1918. Blok describes 12 Red Guards during the chaos of the Russian Civil War, expressing his belief of the messianic destiny of Russia, suggesting the twelve Bolshevik soldiers to be apostles with Jesus Christ walking ahead of them. Trotsky, devoting a whole chapter in his book Literature and Revolution to Blok, considered Blok to have overcome his pre-October literary stance to turn revolutionary when he wrote The Twelve.

Blok was considered a major Russian poet of the Russian Symbolism, a natural talent molding trivial maters and events into otherworldly imagery, often compared with Alexander Pushkin. Blok was admired and influential during the period placated as the Silver Age of Russian Poetry. Disillusioned by the progress of the Russian Revolution by 1921, he hadn't written poetry in three years, he wrote to his friend Korney Chukovsky "All sounds have stopped. Can't you hear that there are no longer any sounds?" (Orlando Figes, A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924, 1996, pp. 784-785). Within days Blok became sick and required treatment abroad. The process for a visa dragged and Blok dies on August 7, 1921, before the visa was delivered on August 10th.

Text in Czech. Light wear and sunning along edges and lightly sunned spine. Penciled note on front free endpaper. Faint stamp on half-title. Block lightly age-toned. Ribbon marker lightly frayed. Very good condition. Item #55759

* Plamja was a prominent Russian-language publishing house in Prague between 1923 and 1935. It was a cultural hub for the Russian Diaspora publishing more than 100 books, academic work, and periodicals.

Price: $575.00