Nikolai Gumilev, Osip Mandelstam et al.
Tsekh poetov, II-III.
Berlin: Izdatel'stvo Efron, 1923. First edition. 114 pages.
Volume, measuring approximately 5" x 7.75", is bound in original wrappers. Book shows significant wear, with loss at outside corners of rear cover as well as closed tear at fore edge. More minor loss is visible at top corners of front cover, and at bottom edge of the same. Minor loss is also visible at top of spine. Wrappers are preserved in transparent plastic cover. Title has been written on front cover. Binding is sound. Pages are clean and without markings.
"The Guild of Poets", also known as Acmeism, was a modernist transient poetic school, which emerged c. 1911 or in 1912 in Russia under the leadership of Nikolay Gumilev and Sergei Gorodetsky. "The Guild of Poets," which was modeled after medieval guilds of Western Europe. They advocated a view that poetry needs craftsmanship just like architecture needs it. Writing a good poem they compared to building a cathedral. To illustrate their ideals, Gumilev published two collections, "The Pearls" in 1910 and the "Alien Sky" in 1912. It was Osip Mandelstam, however, who produced the movement's most distinctive and durable monument, the collection of poems entitled "Stone" (1912)." (Wikipedia)Parts II and III here contain work written since around 1918, including six poems and an essay by Gumilev, who had been arrested and executed by the Cheka in August 1921. Mandelstam later followed a similar fate, exiled in 1934, finally arrested and sent to his death in a Gulag camp in 1938.
Contributors to this Russian-language poetry collection, in addition to Gumilev and Mandelstam, include Georgy Adamovich, Georgy Ivanov, Mikhail Lozinsky, Irina Odoyevtseva, and Nikolai Otsup. Also present are essays by Adamovich ("The Death of Blok", "Two words on rhythm", "To the memory of Annenskii"), Gumilev ("Reader") and Otsup ("On the poetry of Aleksandr Blok" and "On N. Gumilev and classical poetry").
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