book-aesthete:

Severnye Tsvety na 1831 god. [Northern Flowers for the Year 1831.]
PUSHKIN, Alexander Sergeevich. St. Petersburg: Dept. of Public Education, 1830.

16° (122 x 100mm). Additional engraved title, and two leaves of musical notation, illustrated with two lithographed plate (perhaps without one plate once bound before p.101). Contemporary Russian binding with red morocco spine, white silk sides with richly gilt frame and allegorical scenes onlaid in red morocco gilt, white silk endpapers with gilt turn-ins.

First edition in a highly ornate and unusual contemporary Russian binding. One of the most famous 19th-century Russian almanacs, first edited by Pushkin’s great friend Delvig. Poems by Pushkin in this volume include: Poemu (Sonet), Otvet anonimu, Monastyr na Kazbek, Otryvok, and Obal; a third part, also present here but not listed by Smirnov-Sokol’skii, includes Pushkin’s Sobranie Nasekomykh, and a number of pieces by Glinka. Kilgour 1049; Smirnov-Sokol’skii 67.

High, o’er the family of tops, lead,
Kazbek, your royal dome’s spread,
And shines with timeless beams around.
Your cloister, hidden behind clouds,
Like some ark of the heaven-land,
Glides, vaguely seen over the mounds.

Oh, distant and desired strand!
There, saying ‘farewell’ to the gorges,
To lift self to the free abode –
Into the cell o’er clouds, gorgeous,
Into the neighborhood of God!…

Monastyr na Kazbek, translated by Yevgeny Bonver.