Katastroofid : 1919-1920 (Catastrophes : 1919-1920) [Poetry Collection] [Estonian avant-garde]

Fine condition; small creases across cover corners, repaired upper right corner of front cover (minor corner missing piece was replaced with triangle paper); internally perfect unread copy with uncut pages.

The third collection of verses relates to author's early Expressionist period of creation, and poems included here imbued with sensuality and enjoyment glorification, which had broken existing morality of literature. In modernist urban descriptions the problem of the poor and the rich is raised by author. He depicts cities in the daytime and at night: the first is connected with working class people, the factory proletariat, and the latter with prostitutes, buying and selling human beings. Catastrophic descriptions of the world's disgust and rebellion sound very vividly. The impending global Catastrophe passes through the verses. Cities were harnessed to the ideological bandwagon, they were eternally corrupt, and this could only be changed by means of social-political rebellion. Author shows his protesting, militant, active attitude, a wish for a better time and era, created by the class of the poor.

Constructivist graphic cover design of the book created by Aleksander Mülber (1897-1931). Unique and talented artist of Ants Laikmaa Atelier School, during his study he created paintings in national romanticism style, later turned to Expressionism. Finally cultivated more rationalist, playful form of expressionism identified as cubo-futurism. Today little remains of his artworks.

Johannes Vares (1890-1946) became a well known Estonian poet as well as radical socialist, using the pen name Johannes Barbarus. In 1917 he became a member of the Siuru literary group. He published fourteen successive collections of verse, which style varied greatly during his career. After neo-romanticist debut followed expressionist volumes, which in the end of 1920s gradually gave way to the avant-garde collections, from then on verse took more realistic turn with strong left-wing influences. After the fall of the bourgeois regime in Estonia he became president of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Estonian SSR (1940-46). Afraid of the NKVD, he committed suicide in 1946.