The Fire Horse: Children's Poems By Vladimir Mayakovsky, Osip Mandelstam And Daniil Kharms

(Hardback, Main)

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"What's definitely good in Russia are the children's books...Russian books for young children are today the best in the world." So the poet Marina Tsvetaeva described the astonishing flowering of picture books for children in Soviet Russia in the 1920s. The three picture books that are gathered here in wonderful translations by the poet Eugene Ostashevsky are the fruits of collaboration between some of the greatest Russian poets of the twentieth century and the Russian avant-garde artists who joyfully practiced children's illustration. Vladimir Mayakovsky meant the "The Fire Horse," with its stunning illustrations by Lidia Popova, to "introduce the child to the social nature of labor." Father and son have a rocking horse collectively built by workers of all sorts. Osip Mandelstam's "Two Trams" is the story of a day in the life of two Leningrad tramcars. When a young tram tires and stalls on a city square, his feisty cousin sets out to find him. The pictures are by Boris Ender. "Play" by Daniil Kharms and illustrated by Vladimir Konashevich follows three boys who run around pretending to be an automobile, an airplane, and a ship. Kharms perfectly captures the energy and excitement of children's games.

Reviews

The original illustrations, particularly by Lidia Popova to Mayakovsky and Boris Ender to Mandelstam, are richly rewarding, and the book will delight adult readers who dont know Russian as well as the three-to-nine year olds at whom the publishers direct it. Catriona Kelly,TLS

"Rendered in a jubilant, spirited English, these narrative poems are accompanied by their original and beloved avant-garde illustrations.... If todays readers want to empower their children to construct a better world from the miserable resources of the present one, the crafty poems of Fire Horse are necessary literature." Ania Aizman, The New Yorker Page-Turner

Pictures by Popova, Ender, and Konashevich, respectively, are wondrous to behold in their own right and as precursors to mid-20th-century Western picture-book art...A glimpse into Soviet children's-book illustration. Kirkus Reviews

The early Soviet period was a miraculously rich time for childrens books andtheir illustration. . . The illustrations [to MandelstamsTwo Trams] display greatelegance. The artist, Boris Ender, plays with a very limited palette of coloursblack, red and grey, with the occasional touch of light brownand with simplifiedshapes, especially the recurring sweep of parallel tramlines. Its a lovelyexample of less doing more. Philip Pullman

"A lesser-known product of early Soviet support for the arts was the breathtaking flowering of Soviet childrens literature, as witnessed by NYRBsThe Fire Horse, with its faithful reproductions of three books from 1925 to 1930."Ainsley Morse,Los Angeles Review of Books

"In The Fire Horse, which brings together six poets and illustrators from 1920s Soviet Russia, beautifully packaged by New York Review Books, it is not the ideology that excites, but the artistic craftsmanship, and the reflection of everyday life at the time....So arrestingly ahead of its time, The Fire Horse is testament to the necessity of translation and intercultural exposure; writers cannot possibly guess at the future of their field without discovering these hidden revolutions and inventions which have shaped and will continue to shape it. We have a duty to read any literature bequeathed by past cultures or political systems, in part to debunk any simplistic narratives of that culture or system which might prevail in our own. Ostashevsky, who was born in Leningrad but migrated to New York in 1979, understands this, and has approached these poems with both respect and a view to making them very accessible; The Fire Horse is, to put it simply, another world, alive." James Antoniou, Modern Poetry in Translation

Author Bio

Eugene Ostashevsky is the author of two poetry collections and The Pirate Who Does Not Know the Value of Pi and the editor and translator of Alexander Vvedensky: An Invitation for Me to Think (both NYRB Poets). Osip Mandelstam (1891-1938), was an established poet who was unpopular with Soviety authorities. The Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam and Voronezh Notebooks are available as NYRB Classics. Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930) is best known for his longer poems Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (1924) and All Right! (1927). Daniil Kharms (1905-1942) was an absurdist poet and writer, and founder of OBEIRU in 1928.