Our Notes & References

A most pleasant example of the rare first edition, with erotic vignettes by Bakst – this copy num. 81 from a limited quantity of ad hominem copies (“imennoi ekzempliar”).

The author is one of the most original stylists of the Russian modernist era, whose “daring stylistic innovations place him alongside such influential symbolists as Alexander Blok, Fyodor Sologub, and Andrei Bely” (Friedmann).

The tale exposes what Terras describes as Remizov’s “penchant for blasphemous humour”, but it also reflects the author’s longstanding interest in folkloric themes. Its plot inverts that of Pushkin’s bawdy “Tsar Nikita and His Forty Daughters”: the poet’s heroines are specimens of corporeal perfection in all but one tiny detail – one in which the marriageable daughter of Remizov’s Tsar Dodon is, in contrast, only too richly blessed.

Written in 1907, the text remained unpublished for 13 years, despite multiple failed attempts—first in 1908, then in 1912 in Russian provincial towns, in French in Paris, and again in 1913 in St. Petersburg.

Somehow, permission for publication was finally granted under the new Soviet rule, and the tale first appeared in Remizov’s collection Zavetnye skazy [Confidential Tales], published by Alkonost a year earlier. This first separate edition followed soon after, issued under the imprint of The Great Liberal Order of Monkeys’, Remizov’s imaginary and playful secret literary society. The Order’s chevalier Leon Bakst, renowned for his work with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, provided discrete but provocative vignettes — an unusual venture for the artist. The fine Order’s emblem was designed by another chevalier, Iurii Annenkov, while Remizov himself is credited in the edition as the Order’s former chancellor and political commissar.

This publication was singled out by an article in an émigré literary journal, whose author expressed surprise that pornography was now being legally sold in Soviet Russia (though the journal’s editors felt compelled to add their own note professing doubt that such a book could be characterised as “pornographic”; see Malmstad).

To publish this edition, Remizov submitted a petition to the St. Petersburg branch of the State Publishing House (Gosizdat) on 27 January 1921, seeking permission to print Tsar Dodon alongside another provocative tale, Chto est tabak [What is Tobacco], illustrated by Konstantin Somov. However, the latter met a less fortunate fate: its illustrations were accidentally seen by members of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate, who promptly complained to the head of Gosizdat: “Our children have no textbooks, and yet they publish this obscene stuff, wasting paper” (Remizov, quoted by Danilova, our translation). Later in 1921, Remizov left Russia, and his works there were soon banned.

Scarce outside Russia: one of 333 copies only, this one numbered (from an unspecified quantity of ad hominem copies). We could trace only one copy selling at auction in recent decades outside Russia, in 2013, and OCLC leads to online copies and reprints only.

Provenance

Petropolis Book Cooperative (“chlena knizhnago kooperativa Petropolis”, printed limitation statement); Eden Martin Robert Eden Martin (b. 1940; American lawyer and noted collector of Russian, British and American literature works).

Bibliography

Terras, p.368; Kilgour 937; Lesman 1934 (copy num. 61); Danilova I. F. (editor, introduction, and notes). A. M. Remizov. Sobranie sochinenii, IRLI Pushkinskii dom, Moskva, 2000.; Friedman, J. Beyond Symbolism and Surrealism: Alexei Remizov’s Synthetic Art. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2010, p. xxviii; Malmstad, J. Mikhail Kuzmin: A Life in Art. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1999, p. 422.