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[ILIA ZDANEVICH’S CORRESPONDENCE WITH HIS FRIEND] Pis’mo [i.e. The Letter]

Iliazd

Item #1353

Paris: 41 degrees, Union printshop, 30.06.1948. 28, [3] p+ 8 blanks at the beginning and 8 blanks at the end. 18,5x14 cm. Original printed wrappers. Unbound as issued.

A copy from the first printing of the poem, 1 of 60 copies produced, all numbered and signed by Iliazd (including this one).
The first printing of the first edition. The second printing came out the same year in a slightly different format, in 66 copies, and was accompanied by Picasso’s etchings.
A limited edition. One of the 30 copies on French rag paper. In Russian.
Printed at the Imprimerie Union by Dimitri Snégaroff and Volf Chalit. This printshop issued a number of Iliazd’s other publications as well. The print shop was founded in 1910 and existed through the 1970s.
Born Ilia Zdanevitch in Tiflis, Georgia, Iliazd (1894–1975) was a founding member of the Russian Futurists. Like many of his contemporaries, the artist eventually made his way to Paris where he designed and published extraordinary livres d’artistes, including several with his own prose and poetry under the imprint Le Degré 41 (41 degrees refers to the latitude of his hometown, the alcoholic content of brandy, and the Celsius measure of the point at which fever leads to delirium). (Princeton)
Iliazd printed three books of poetry in Paris, using the same publisher as 41° (Tiflis), which was associated with Ilia’s name throughout his life. The other two publications were Lidantu Faram (1923) in memory of the artist’s friend Mikhail Le Dantu who had passed away earlier, and Afet (1949), consisting of 76 sonnets dedicated to the English painter Joan Spenser.
Pis’mo is a collection of poems in the form of correspondence between Iliazd and his Georgian female friend. The two met in Paris, and the addressee of these letters was struck by the fact that Iliazd preferred to speak Russian rather than Georgian. She asked him why he liked Russian so much, to which Zdanevich replied with a made-up story that he helped someone write a dissertation in Slavic studies. Impressed by this, she said: Then write me letters in Russian. As a result, the two started exchanging letters that inspired Zdanevich to print this unique publication titled Pis’mo.

The second printing with Picasso etchings has been sold for 23,500 USD in 2019 by Bonhams.

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