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Lot 56A

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IURKUN, Iuri Osip Ivanovich (1895-1938) and Iurii

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Petrograd: ["Felana,"] 1917 [1918]. 187 pp. 8vo (165 x 125 mm). Illustrated by Iu. P. Annenkov. Original decorated tan wrappers designed by Annenkov. Condition: backstrip partially reglued, wrappers with occasional light soiling, fore edge with intermittent slight chipping. rare novel about early soviet life by mikhail kuzmin's bisexual companion. After the first major love of his life Vsevolod Knyazev committed suicide in 1913, Kuzmin took up with another, much younger poet Iuri Iurkun. Their household was complicated with Iurkun's mother joining them and, for a brief time, Iurkun's wife. And yet the two men stayed together until Kuzmin's death from pneumonia in 1936. Kuzmin refers to Iurkun in his last book Forel razbivaet led [The Trout Breaks the Ice] (2929) with the nickname "Mister Dorian" from Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. The Communist Party decreed consensual sodomy between men illegal in 1933. Although Kuzmin died before the law could affect him, Iurkun was arrested in 1937 and executed the following year.

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