don aminado pseud (1 risultati)

8vo, pp. 197, [3]; the odd page lightly spotted, but a very good copy in contemporary or early dark blue cloth; printed label pasted to the blank first recto: 'This copy, no. [38], belongs to Vladimir Mikhailovich Shapiro?.First edition, no. 38 of 150 copies, a poetical collection by the émigré poet, satirist and feuilletonist Aminad Shpolyansky. A journalist during the First World War, Shpolyansky (18881957) emigrated to Paris shortly afterwards. 'With his poetry and prose he continued the classical tradition of Russian humour with its compassion for the "small man" Published in Paris in 1935, Don-Aminado's book Bare garden assembled alongside poetical works, a cycle of aphorisms under the general title "The new Koz'ma Prutkov" [a fictional author invented by Aleksei Tolstoy] brilliantly witty and wicked. He casts doubts on all moral values brotherly love, friendship, kindness, justice', in a manner reminiscent of both Koz'ma Prutkov and Oscar Wilde (Literaturnaia entsiklopediia russkogo zarubezh'ia 1918-1940).Nabokov included several characters with the name Shpolyansky in his work, and his short story 'Zaniatoi chelovek' ('A Busy man') features a sketch of 'Don-Aminado' under the name Graf It: 'So here he is a thirty-two-year-old, smallish, but broad-shouldered man, with protruding transparent ears, half-actor, half-literatus, author of topical jingles in the émigré papers over a not very witty pen name'. Others were more generous, and he was extremely popular among the Parisian émigré community, including Marina Tsvetaeva. Language: Russian.