Russie

Russie — marelibri

[African Americana]: [Soviet Russia]: [Hughes, Langston]Biblio.com

Khvatit s menia! Narodnaia poeziia negrov Soedinennykh Shtatov Ameriki title page translated to English: I've Had Enough of This! Folk Poetry of the Negroes of the United States of America. From a Collection Compiled by Langston Hughes. Translated from the English by Nina Voronel

1966Best.-Nr. 13401Moscow: Detskaia Literatura Children's Literature Publishing House 1966. Original illustrated wrappers stapled. Illustrated by Mark Kliachko. Front wrapper detached moderate soiling rubbing and toning. Contents a bit creased but mostly clean. Good condition. A rare Soviet anthology of African American folk poetry comprising work songs songs from the era of slavery blues texts humorous verse counting rhymes and children's folklore selected from material previously edited by Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps in the major 1958 anthology The Book of Negro Folklore. The editors drew extensively on traditional African American stories blues rhythms and folk songs. For a Soviet child of the mid-1960s the book offered a remarkably direct encounter with the voices of Black America. There is little of the explanatory narrative framework through which the United States was so often presented to Soviet readers: here for the most part the songs speak for themselves. They evoke slave labour cotton plantations and Mississippi docks poverty exhausting work and racial inequality; yet alongside these appear humour play mockery children's rhymes and the distinctive rhythms of African American oral tradition. The work songs are particularly striking. In "Song on the River" the speaker compares the position of workers in different cities and comments with bitter irony on racial disparities in wages; in "Bales of Cotton" the monotonous movement of heavy cotton bales becomes the rhythmic principle of the poem itself. For a Soviet publisher such material naturally carried an obvious social and ideological significance. Yet the book is not reducible to a political illustration of American racism: it genuinely communicated to Russian readers something of the forms rhythms and humour of African American folk culture. The translation is by Nina Voronel a prominent Soviet translator from English. A graduate of the physics faculty of Kharkov University she entered the Literary Institute after meeting Korney Chukovsky and went on to specialise in literary translation. She became particularly known for her Russian translation of Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol. Voronel later became a playwright and an active participant in the Soviet Jewish emigration movement; she left the USSR in 1974. Mark Kliachko's minimalist illustrations are constructed almost entirely from black line and solid areas of ink. Laborers carrying heavy cotton bales solitary figures animals and grotesque characters do not merely illustrate individual lines but echo the rhythm of the songs themselves. Even the cover -- a guitar a bird and a flower against a yellow ground -- gives the volume something of the character of a small graphic album rather than an ordinary Soviet collection of verse. OCLC locates only two copies outside Russia in Armenia and the United States the latter at the Bancroft Library. Detskaia Literatura [Children's Literature Publishing House] unknown

The Joe Fay Company LLC · Vereinigte Staaten850,00 $≈ 759,40 €

[African Americana]: [Soviet Russia]: Sergich, IlyaBiblio.com

Skazki dlia Frenka title page translated into English: Fairy Tales for Frank. Retold Based on African American Folk Tales by I. Sergich

1971Best.-Nr. 13402Leningrad: Children's Literature Publishing House 1971. 32pp. Quarto. Profusely illustrated by Boris Vlasov. Original pictorial wrappers printed in black brown red and blue stapled. Minor scuffing to spine minor edge wear and toning. A rare and unusual Soviet children's book devoted to African American culture. The traditional tales are set within a contemporary frame narrative as a Black family travels across the United States to Washington. A white motorist refuses to give them a lift and insults them because of their race; gradually the protagonists find themselves surrounded by marches a large encampment and groups of people making their way towards the capital. The old tales of slavery cunning strength and liberation are thus brought into direct connection with the contemporary African American struggle for civil rights. The frame story appears to allude to the 1968 Poor People's Campaign and in particular to the celebrated Resurrection City encampment in Washington. Following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. thousands of participants travelled to the capital from across the United States in caravans and buses and spent several weeks living in a temporary settlement erected on the National Mall demanding economic and social equality. The combination found in the book -- the journey to Washington the large camp and new groups of people continually arriving from different parts of the country -- is particularly suggestive of these events. The tales themselves however have genuine roots in African American oral tradition. One episode is recognizably related to the celebrated story of Big Sixteen a slave of supernatural strength who is capable of overcoming even the Devil. The tale was recorded by Zora Neale Hurston during her folkloric fieldwork in the American South and included in her book Mules and Men. For a Soviet publisher such material naturally carried an obvious ideological charge: racial discrimination provided a ready means of exposing the contradictions of American society. Through this ideological framework Soviet children were nevertheless introduced to African American folk culture the history of slavery and the contemporary Civil Rights Movement. The book is given particular distinction by the illustrations of Boris Vlasov 1936-1981 an important representative of the Leningrad school of graphic art of the 1960s and 1970s. Vlasov's expressive manner is especially effective here. Red blue black and white form an almost poster-like visual language. OCLC locates only one copy outside Russia held in Armenia. As such no copies in American libraries. Children's Literature Publishing House unknown