Bookvica

[WARTIME POETRY BY ANNA AKHMATOVA] Izbrannoe. Stikhi [i.e. Selected Works. Verses]

Akhmatova, A.

Item #2476

Sovetskii pisatel’, 1943. 113, [2] pp. 14x11 cm. In original printed wrappers. Spine is chipped from both sides, tear of back cover, wrappers rubbed, some light stains on front cover, otherwise very good and clean internally.

First and only edition. One of 10 000 copies. Very rare in this condition. Minimalistic design was created by V. Alfeevskii.

This edition was published during a short favorable period for Akhmatova’s poetry. It was released in conditions of wartime evacuation of Soviet publishing business out of large cities to inland territories.
Poetess Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) couldn't publish her poems since the mid-1920s. In the early 1930s, her spouse Nikolai Punin and son Lev Gumilev underwent arrests. In 1938, Lev Gumilev was arrested again and sentenced to 5 years in GULAG camps. In 1939, she was accepted into the Union of Soviet Writers (generally, the membership gave much more opportunities for publication). In the same year, Stalin approved the publication of her poetry collection ‘From Six Books’. Despite the permission, that edition had been withdrawn from book trade and destroyed after only a few months. By 1940, Anna Akhmatova had finished the poem ‘Requiem’, which she wrote and edited while waiting near the Kresty Prison where her son was confined. After WWII broke out, doctors insisted on Akhmatova’s evacuation from Leningrad. She moved first to Moscow, then to Chistopol, near Kazan, from there through Kazan to Tashkent. Akhmatova’s fame among the evacuees was an enduring phenomenon, but the living conditions in a writers’ dormitory were difficult. After the publication of the poem ‘Muzhestvo’ [Courage] (1942) in the Pravda newspaper, the authorities offered her a nice room in a new house, but she refused – it was difficult for her to live far from people she knew. However, her wartime poems started to be published in Tashkent periodicals.

The title page credits a former theoretician of the literary constructivist group, critic Konstantin Zelinsky (1896–1970) as a compiler. He certainly worked in the evacuated publishing house. However, this edition was mostly organized by Akhmatova’s close friend Lydia Chukovskaya who took care of the poetess’ life in Tashkent. Lydia wrote that the Leningraders had entrusted her with the care of the poetess. Chukovskaya’s wartime diary reads that in March 1942 Akhmatova asked her to choose poems for the edition. In May, Zelinsky brought to Akhmatova a proof of her collection with his preface, "terrifying in terms of illiteracy and vulgarity”. Poems in the collection were "arranged by topics”. Akhmatova instructed Chukovskaya to “put the book in order”. Most likely, it was Chukovskaya who wrote the new editorial. In summer of 1942 the book was sent to a printing
shop, then it was suspended. Some months later, Zelinsky made a trip to Moscow, to obtain “a high permission” for publication. At the same time, Akhmatova was infected with typhoid fever and was ill for a long time.

The first section of the book consists of wartime poems, including previously unpublished.

Worldcat shows copies located in Connecticut, Harvard, Notre Dame, Princeton, Stanford and Yale Universities.

Price: $950.00