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KUZMIN RUSSIAN LITERATURE GAY BANNED

KUZMIN, Mikhail Alekseevich (1872-1936) and Vladimir Alekseevich Milashevskii (1893-1976). Zanaveshennye kartinki [Curtained pictures].

Amsterdam [Petersburg]: ["Petropolis"], 1920. Illustrated by Vladimir Alekseevich Milashevskii. No. 108 of 307 copies. 34 pp., 8vo (250 x 205 mm). Original decorated gray wrappers. Condition: wrappers rebacked and some soiling of pages. probably the only example of illustrated Soviet homoerotica. When the Soviet censors forbid these homoerotic poems, Kuzmin and the publisher Yakov Blokh settled on an anonymous publication. "Petropolis" followed the practice of French publishers of erotica who provided false title pages with Amsterdam or Brussels as the place of publication to avoid legal prosecution. Kuzmin never intended the book for public sale; copies were available to collectors of erotica directly from the author. Nevertheless, word got out and Kuzmin could never entirely shake himself free of the taint of the book's notoriety. "The shocking bisexuality of the verses found brilliant incarnation in the similarly daring illustrations and head-pieces executed not without Beardsley's influence. The theme of one-sex masculine love was treated by the poet and the artist with such challenging boldness probably for the first time and became in fact the main subject of the book. But thanks to Milashevsky's undoubted talent his drawings for the Curtained Pictures cease to be a mere trifle and rank with the talented illustrator's best graphic works." (Alexandr Soloviev, "The Pilgrimage to Cythera: International Exhibition of Love Eroticism in the Fine Arts," web exhibition). Milashevskii later became a prolific illustrator of children's books.