Songs of Russia.
Blackwell In Defense Of Russian Jews
Blackwell, Alice Stone, translator. Songs of Russia. [Chicago]: Published by the Author, 1906.
Small, thin 8vo.; red cloth, stamped in gilt; t.e.g.; few pencil ticks throughout; other pages fresh, bright; covers lightly worn; spine slightly cocked.
First edition of this scarce volume of Russian and Yiddish poetry translated by Blackwell.
A nice association copy, inscribed by Blackwell’s friend and fellow Russian scholar Annie Seitlen to Chicago physician and suffragist Anna Hinds: Anna M. Hinds from her friend Miss Annie Seitlen.
In addition to being a suffragist activist, Blackwell was directly involved in international human rights causes: in particular, she was an early and outspoken opponent of the Russian government’s persecution of Jews, Armenians, and other minority groups. This compilation prints 29 poems Blackwell translated from both Russian and Yiddish, including works by Tolstoy, Gorky, Bashkin, Nadson, Nekrasov, Rosenfeld, Galin, Polivanoc, Mikhailov, Dobroliubov and Edelstadt. The majority of the poems are overtly political—for example, Nebrasov’s “Russia’s Lament,” and “Freedom”; Galin’s “To The Youth of Russia”; Polivanov’s “The Prisoner’s Dream”; Rosenfeld’s lengthy verse “The Jewish Soldier”:
...But still the Jewish Soldier on the fortress stands alone,
And every word he utters like a hot grenade is throne:
“O Russia! From my wife and child you reft me without ruth,
And to defend your honor I perished in my youth…”
and, especially, Edelstadt’s “At Strife,” a poem composed in Yiddish which begins:
Hated are we, and driven from our homes,
Tortured and persecuted, even to blood....
Because for the enslaved and for the poor
We are demanding liberty and truth.
In her preface Blackwell denounces “the utter inefficiency, incapacity, and corruption of the Russian government... [and] the aristocracy’s lack of regard for all moral considerations [which have] been made plain by its treatment of the Finns, Jews, Poles, and Armenians...” (p. 5); she credits three friends—Dr. Antoinette Konikow, Miss Bessie Levine, and Miss Annie Seitlen, presenter of this volume—with helping to translate these verses by “Russian lovers of freedom.”
(#4613)
Print Inquire
