(#137540) THE CRUSHED FLOWER AND OTHER STORIES. Translated from the Russian ... by Herman Bernstein. Leonid Nikolaivich Andreyev, Leonidas Andreiyeff.

THE CRUSHED FLOWER AND OTHER STORIES. Translated from the Russian ... by Herman Bernstein. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1917. Octavo, pp. [1-8] 11-361 [362] [note: first leaf is a blank; text complete despite gap in pagination], original blue cloth, front and spine panels stamped in gold, top edge stained blue. First edition in English. Collects three novellas and five short stories. "The Serpent's Story" is narrated by a snake and is rather curious. "Andreyev was in his day more popular than his friend Gorki, but also less able to submit to revolutionary upheavals. He died in exile in Finland. He shared with Valery Brussiov a fascination for the macabre, but is a deeper writer with a profound sense of tragedy. The hideously poetic tale entitled 'Laughter' for example is about a 'colossal success' at carnival time, in which the narrator cries out, 'Oh if but for a moment I could have a human face!'" - Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Violet Books. "Andreyev, a depressive who attempted suicide more than once, led a tortured yet prolific life. He came into his own around the turn of the century after Gorki gave him some encouragement. His writings began to appear in English translation soon thereafter, resonating with a postwar audience whose mood was a cocktail of disillusionment and iconoclastic abandon. While the darkness of the fin-de-siecle decadents had a certain velvety texture, Andreyev's was as raw as bathtub vodka." - Robert Eldridge. "As his stories, novels and plays sank ever more deeply into the abyss of horror which was his milieu, he grew to be accepted as the 'apostle of gloom' and the master of chaos ... In his work, if he resembles any other author, it is Poe -- but a Poe who has crossed the border of fantasy into the realm of absolute blackness." - Kunitz and Haycraft, Twentieth Century Authors, pp. 28-9. Clute and Grant (eds), The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997), p. 29. Not in Bleiler (1948; 1978) or Reginald (1979; 1992). Ettlinger and Gladstone, Russian Literature, Theatre and Art: A Bibliography of Works in English, Published Between 1900-1945, p. 30. Private owner's bookplate affixed to front paste-down. Cloth lightly rubbed at spine ends and corner tips, scattered colored pencil marginalia by a former reader ("This has a Charm for me. 1920" at the end of "The Serpent's Story"), a bright, very good or better copy. (#137540).

Price: $150.00

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