Lot 52A email save

GUMILEVA, Mariya (compiler). Autograph album.

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24 pp. Original dark green felt backed, embossed boards; housed in custom case. Condition: rubbing to board extremities. an extraordinary collection of autographs of many of the most important russian poets of the early twentieth century. With poems and drawings by Anna Akhmatova, Innokentii Annenskii, Aleksandr Blok, Nikolai Gumilev, Mikhail Kuzmin, Vsevolod Emilevich Meierkhold, Aleksei Remizov, Aleksei Tolstoi, Maksimilian Voloshin and others. Gumileva compiled this autograph book between 1908 and 1910. As the niece of the poet Nikolai Gumilev, she had extraordinary access to the up-and-coming literary figures of her day. They often visited her uncle in Tsarskoe Selo (now Pushkin) and attended literary parties in his home. Kuzmin and Gumilev were great friends and Meierkhold and Blok signed the same page. Annenskii was director of the gymnasium in Tsarskoe Selo that Gumilev attended. Anna Akhmotova (then Anna Andreevna Gorenko) was his first wife. He and Voloshin later quarreled over a lady and fought a duel. Both survived. Gumilev wrote his poem "Oxhota" {"The Hunt"] in his niece's album and Kuzmin added "Protyanulo pautinu." [""Stretching out of the spider's web."] that would be the second poem in his second collection Osenniya ozera [Autumn Lakes] (1912). Remizov wrote a poem as well as provided an amusing watercolor. On her return to Tsarekoe Selo in June 1910from her honeymoon in Paris with Gumilev, Akhmatova entered her well-known poem "Zharko veet veter dushnyi." ["Hot blows the stifling wind."] and signed it affectionately "Dear Marya, Aunt Anna."

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