Our Notes & References

First edition of Kuzmin’s collection of innovative poems: a fine example, from only 62 copies printed ad nominem, this one for Savelii Isaakovich Grinberg, brother-in-law of the publisher, Yakov Blokh, who owned the active Petropolis publishing house. Originally from St Petersburg, but educated at Cambridge before and after World War I, Grinberg became administrator of Petropolis once in Berlin; he moved to Holland in 1932, and settled in England in 1934 where he became a manufacturer.

Mikhail Kuzmin (1872–1936) held a central position in Russian modernist culture: poet, composer, and publicist, he served as mentor to an entire generation of writers, among them Khlebnikov and Mandelshtam, who drew directly on his work. A defining figure of St. Petersburg’s bohemian circles, he was openly homosexual and engaged with his own orientation throughout his writing.

His verse, composed in free verse forms and marked by significant formal innovation, draws extensively on Classical philosophy and poetry, as well as Italian and German literary traditions. It is distinguished by density of reference to European culture, richly visual imagination, and notable attention to musical effect: alliteration and assonance.

This eighth poetry collection contains 55 poems written by Kuzmin between 1914 and 1920, comprising a poetic introduction, “Oh, the Extraordinary Evenings,” and seven sections: “A Boat in the Sky,” “Fuji in a Saucer,” “Days and Faces,” “St. George,” “Sofia” (subtitled “Gnostic Poems”), “Poems about Italy,” and “Dreams.”

The title evokes evenings situated elsewhere, in some other place and time, and several poems turn to foreign landscapes, a striking fact given that Kuzmin had not travelled to Europe for nearly twenty years by the time the collection was written.

As often with Petropolis publications of poetry at the time, the charming cover was designed by Dobuzhinskii, a member of Diaghilev’s Mir Iskusstva, who also designed the publisher’s emblem.

Provenance

From the estate of Savelii Grinberg (1896-1985).