Dvanact ("The Twelve")
Prague: Nakladem Plamja, 1925. Vaclav Masek. Original wraps. The 1925 1st Czech edition of Alexandr Blok's "Dvanact", widely considered "one of the first poetic responses to the October Revoluton of 1917". The Russian lyrical poet Alexandr Blok (1880-1921) centered his story on "The march of twelve Bolshevik soldiers (the Twelve Apostles) through the streets of Revolutionary Petrograd, with a fierce blizzard raging around them". The illustrations, highly-evocative woodcuts by Czech artist Vaclav Masek, powerfully complement Blok's verse-in-translation and the book's design --also by Masek-- captures the ominous mood of the "march" while achieving a deeply artistic, very stylized aesthetic. The poem, in its fragile pictorial wrappers, has held up well and is solid and clean and VG to VG+, with very light creasing along the panel edges. Quarto, 8 Masek woodblocks thruout (including the front cover), 47 pgs. of text. Very Good +. Item #16560
Price: $1,250.00