ERENBERG RUSSIAN POETRY JEWISH

ERENBURG, Ilya Grigorevich (1891-1967). Stikhi [Poems].Paris: [privately printed by the author], 1910. 8vo (205 x 140 mm). Original white wrappers. Condition: wrappers soiled; title page repaired. the author's first book. Although born Jewish, Erenburg briefly toyed with converting to Catholicism which influenced these poems. [Together with 4 other works by Erenberg:] Detskoe [Childish Things]. [Paris: Rirakhovskii, 1914]. 23 pp., 4to (130 x 100 mm). Original wrappers designed by E. Shiryaev. Condition: title page with former owner's signature and rubber stamp; browned. Stikhi o kanunakh [Poems about Beginning]. Moscow: [A. A. Levenson], 1916. 8vo (200 by 135 mm). Original decorated wrappers designed by Marya Vorobeva-Stebelskaya. Condition: wrappers detached from spine. V protochnom pereulke. Roman [On the Beaten Path. A Novel]. Paris: Gelikon,1927. 8vo (190 x 140 mm). Original two-color wrappers designed by Karel Teige and O. Mrkvichka. Condition: wrappers soiled and worn. one of 1,000 copies. Bourlivy Zivot Lazika Rotschwanze [The Stormy Life of Lazar Roitschwantz ]. Prague: Aventinum, 1929. 8vo (195 x 140 mm). Original two-color wrappers designed by Frantizek Muzika. Condition: front and spine chipped and back wrapper stained. Moscow did not believe in the tears of the luckless Jew of this story; the author's longtime friend Nikolai Bukharin called it "one-sided literary vomit." Erenburg was one of the most prolific Soviet writers of the twentieth century. He was also one of the most versatile who adroitly adapted to the turbulent ideological demands of his age. He was expelled at an early age from school for his revolutionary activities and left for Paris to avoid arrest. Here he met Picasso, Apollinaire, Léger, Rivera and Modigliani as well as Lenin and his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya. But Leon Trotsky's attitude so disgusted him that he gave up politics to devote his life to literature. On his return to Russia, he became one of the most visible writers of the day and associated with such important writers as Sergei Esenin, Osip Mandeshtam, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Boris Pasternak and Marina Tsvetaeva. Although initially anti-Bolshevik, Erenburg eventually became an effective propagandist for Stalin. Due to his political adaptibility, he was also one of the few Soviet writers of his generation allowed to travel freely in the West. When the newspapers and magazines refused to publish his work in 1949, he wrote Stalin and the ban was lifted. The title of his famous novel Ottepel [The Thaw] (1954-1956) was given to the period of Krushchev's anti-Stalinist campaign during the Cold War. (5)(5)