[IN A RARE SAMIZDAT] - Stikhi [Poetry]

Very rare: we could not find any examples of Nabokov in samizdat in the West, and only one example of Nabokov's samizdat poetry at auction in Russia.
With nice provenance.

This samizdat selection of poems by Nabokov from 1918-1939 is copied from the illegal in the USSR, large edition of his collected Russian poems Stikhi [Poetry] (1979, Ardis, Ann Arbor), which was prepared by the author himself and finalised by his wife Vera after his death in 1977. Nabokov, who "for a long time considered himself first and foremost as a poet" (Malikova), left a considerable poetic legacy: his "almost complete edition of poetry" (Vera Nabokov), Stikhi, consists of almost 250 poems, from which the author of this samizdat chose 40, and even added a title and a table of content for this smaller, 'home edition' for personal use. A couple of titles in French is also added in text manually for the author may not have had any Latin type.

Most of the selected poems describe narrator's longing for home, reflections about Russia and challenges of new life as an immigrant — the themes with which the samizdat creator could resonate well, being in an 'inner emigration' while still in the Soviet Union. Some of the poems are firmly (and dangerously) anti-Soviet, such as "Poet" (1918, first published in 1923) and the famous poem titled here "To Russia", "Otviazhis, ia tibia umoliaiu" ["Will you leave me alone, I implore you"] (1939), written at the very beginning of the Second World War and prompted by "the nasty pact between two totalitarian monsters" - Nazi Germany and Bolshevik Russia, as Nabokov himself pointed out. The samizdat additionally includes an explicitly erotic poem (also unimaginable in Soviet print), "Lilith" (1928), prefiguring Nabokov's later bestseller Lolita (1955).

Provenance
Aleksandr Belobokov (b. 1945, a noted Russian film historian, screenwriter, documentary film director and cameraman; inscription in blue ink on title).

Description
Folio (30.2 x 21 cm). Title, 30 ll. typescript on verso of each leaf.
Condition
Title lightly soiled and rubbed at extremities, with a couple of small closed tears and light creases, t.o.c. with a few marginal closed tears.
Bibliography
Grigorii Utgof, "Top-7 Stikhotvorenii Nabokova" // Mir Vladimira Nabokova, Arzamas academy.
M. A. Malikova, "Zabytyi poet" // V. V. Nabokov, Stikhotvoreniia, Sankt Peterburg, Akad. proekt, 2002. ref: [2369]