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[PANAIT ISTRATI] Mykhailo [i.e. Mihail]

Istrati, P.

Item #2796

Kyiv: Knyhospilka, [1928?]. 174, [2] pp. + 4 pp. of ads.19,5x13 cm. In original illustrated wrappers. Spine and cover edges restored, small tears, some stains on covers, some pale foxing, otherwise very good.

First and only edition. One of 4000 copies. In Ukrainian. Cover design was likely created by Nikolai Alekseev (1894–1934), a prolific Leningrad book designer and engraver.

This Soviet translation is a token of the USSR’s approval of the author in the late 1920s.

Panait Istrati (born Panayis Valsamis; 1884–1935) was a Romanian writer who chose to express himself in French. This decision carried his voice across Europe and eventually brought him into a tragic confrontation with the Soviet dream.

His origins were as turbulent as his life. Born in Brăila (Romania) to a Romanian laundress and a Greek smuggler. He took his pen name from Istros, the ancient Greek name for the Danube river. Formal education ended after just five years. At twelve, he walked out into the world, surviving on odd jobs and wandering. His first attempts at writing date from around 1907 when he started sending pieces to the socialist periodicals in Romania, debuting with the article, ‘Hotel Regina’ in “România Muncitoare”. Here, he later published his first short stories, ‘Mântuitorul’ [The Redeemer], ‘Calul lui Bălan’ [Bălan’s Horse], ‘Familia noastră’ [Our Family], ‘1 Mai’ [May Day]. He also contributed pieces to other leftist newspapers such as “Dimineața”, “Adevărul”, and “Viața Socială”.

By 1916, he had left Romania entirely. In 1921, stranded in Nice and broken by life, Istrati attempted suicide. He left a farewell letter addressed to Romain Rolland, the French Nobel laureate. The attempt failed, the letter reached its destination, and an extraordinary correspondence began – one that would last until Istrati's death. In particular, Istrati shared his leftist ideals with Rolland.

After “Kyra Kyralina” was published in 1924, critics dubbed him the “Balkan Gorky”. It became the first in his Adrien Zograffi literary cycle. Those works, rooted in the oral traditions of the Balkans, brim with life, loss, and the stubborn dignity of the dispossessed. In 1925, Russian translation of “Kyra Kyralina” was published in the USSR. “Adolescence d’Adrien Zograffi. Mikaïl” was originally printed in Paris in 1927, as a part of the Adrian Zograffi cycle's childhood subseries.

The same year Istrati was invited to the Soviet Union as a fellow traveler, a man of the left who believed in the promise of a new world. He traveled to Kyiv, Batumi, Baku, Nizhny Novgorod, and the Moldavian ASSR. The Ukrainian edition of “Mikhail” was published while Istrati was in the USSR. According to the foreword, Istrati welcomed the translation of books from this literary cycle into Ukrainian more than into any other language, given all the hardships and suffering the Ukrainian people had endured.
He returned in 1928, still searching for the revolution's soul. What he found instead sickened him. Bureaucracy, arbitrariness, the daily crush of ordinary people under an indifferent system. In 1929, years before André Gide or Arthur Koestler would publish their own disillusioned accounts, Istrati released ‘Vers l'autre flamme’ [To the Other Flame: Confession of a Loser]. Written in collaboration with Boris Souvarine and Victor Serge (though their names didn’t appear on the first edition) the book was a damning indictment of Soviet reality.

The reaction was swift and brutal. To Henri Barbusse and other Western sympathizers, to the Soviet cultural apparatus itself, Istrati had committed the unforgivable sin: he had seen and spoken. A massive campaign of character assassination followed. He was denounced as a Trotskyist, a petty bourgeois, a fascist. The Soviet ‘Literary Encyclopedia’ duly recorded his fall from grace in terms that left no room for ambiguity. Istrati found himself isolated, his reputation in tatters. Old tuberculosis, dormant for years, flared up. He sought treatment in Nice, but the disease had him. He returned to Romania.

Worldcat shows the only copy at Cleveland Public Library.

Price: $950.00