Luxurious production in superb condition
Publication: Academia, [Moskva], 1934.
First edition with these striking illustrations, printed with a beautiful technique rendering perfectly the Palekh style of folk art. An impressive, artistic edition in folio format; this copy in excellent condition, with the original wrapper and box.
£1,250
In stock
Stalin-era luxe, large-format edition of the medieval East Slavonic literary masterpiece: “Amazing! Amazing! But how did you ever manage to do it?” (the reaction of writer Maksim Gorkii on seeing the completed artwork for this edition (Krylov, our translation here and below)).
A magnificent example, very fresh in its original box.
This edition of The Tale of Igor’s Campaign (an anonymous epic poem of the 12th century) is one of the “most famous, beautiful, and rare books” (Vasilenko) to be produced by the Soviet publishing house Academia (1921-1937), which specialised in finely-designed volumes on art and literature. It came out in 1934 in conjunction with a second Academia edition of the Tale, which included expert commentary and translations of the original Old East Slavonic text into modern Russian. Both were overseen by the scholars Sergei Shambinago and Viacheslav Rzhiga.
The aim of this edition, though, was purely artistic rather than scholarly. Its artistic editor Mikhail Sokolnikov originally wanted to solicit illustrations from a group of artists from the village of Palekh (northeast of Moscow), but was convinced by the famous Soviet writer Maksim Gorkii to delegate the entire work to one of the most influential practitioners of this folk art, Ivan Golikov (1886-1937). The result has been dubbed the “greatest monument of book illustration” in the Palekh style (Lavrov).
Golikov spent over two years working on this project. He wrote out the entire Old East Slavonic text by hand, following the semi-uncial style used in the medieval Russian chronicles. He provided a chromolithographed title page, decorative head-, tailpieces and initials, endpapers with colour illustrations from the Tale, and ten richly-detailed mounted plates in the ornate Palekh style. Full of knights on horseback and arrows that darken the sky, these depict key scenes such as Prince Igor’s battle with the Polovtsian nomads, his capture, and the lament of his wife Iaroslavna.
The Palekh style was originally one of icon painting, but was adapted to secular themes after the Bolshevik Revolution, with Golikov being one of the instigators of this change. As it developed into one of the USSR’s best-known forms of folk-art production, Palekh miniature painting typically involved the depiction of scenes from Russian folklore, done in lacquered tempera with bright colours (especially red) on a black background. A remarkable printing feat, the plates of this edition beautifully render the style and even the materiality of the miniature painting.
This edition of the Tale evinces the Stalinist concern with the canonisation of selected types of national folk expression, as well as the promotion of coryphaei (like Golikov) throughout the arts and sciences, emblematising the communist future in their superhuman cultural feats.
Bibliography
Smirnov-Sok. 2317; Krylov, V. Izdatelstvo “Academia”: Liudi i knigi. 1921-1938-1991. Moscow: Academia, 2004. pp. 88-91; Lavrov, D. “Palekhskii khudozhnik I. I. Golikov i ego oformlenie knigi ‘Slovo o polku Igoreve’: K voprosu o tvorcheskikh zaimstvovaniiakh,” Kultura i iskusstvo, no. 8 (2022), 102-09; Vasilenko, O. “‘Slovo o polku Igoreve’ v palekhskom iskusstve,” (online).
Item number
3286
Large folio (43.0 x 30.0 cm). 49, [3] pp. with colour and black-and-white illustrations in text, with 10 mounted lacquered colour plates with tissues.
Binding
Publisher’s crimson cloth with lacquered overlay illustrated in colour, in original plain protective paper dust-jacket, preserved in original publisher’s brown cardboard box with decorative colour label, publisher’s insert, illustrated colour endpapers, deckled edges, brown silk marker ribbon.
Condition
Box chipped at extremities, dust-jacket browned with closed tear near spine, publisher’s label pasted inside box and partly torn off; offset and very minor staining to protective tissues, otherwise impeccable.
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