MAIAKOVSKII, Vladimir Vladimirovich.

Khorosho! Oktiabr'skaia poema. Izdanie vtoroe [Very good! An October poem. Second edition].

Moscow and Leningrad, Gosizdat, 1928. 8vo, pp. 104; title-page and first text leaf worn, creased and repaired at inner margin, else a good copy in the original paper wrappers designed by El Lissitsky, printed in red and black, horizontal crease across front covers, lower edges and foot of spine worn; in a folding cloth box. Second edition of a long poem first published in 1927, written to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution. ‘Its nineteen chapters tell of the bolshevik seizure of power, the frozen and starving winters of the Civil War period, and recovery and rebuilding, and it ends with an affirmation of life, of Russia, and of socialism … Out of real names and events and actual documents he creates in the poem several kinds of myth’, political, literary and autobiographical’ (Brown). Interspersed with the ‘factographic’ elements are moving personal moments: chapter 6, for example, tells of his meeting with Blok – and of the latter’s sympathy with the revolution but personal sadness that the peasants on his estate have burnt his library.Hellyer 312; The Russian Avant-Garde Book 748; Russian Modernism 513 (first edition); Tarasenkov, p. 250. Edward Brown, Mayakovsky, a Poet in the Revolution, Princeton UP, 1973.

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• ordernr.: F1138.4

• bookseller: Bernard Quaritch Ltd. (GREAT BRITAIN)