Ivanov-Razumnik, R. Alexander Blok. Andrei Bely. First edition. Petrograd, Alkonost, 1919.

Иванов-Разумник [Р. В. Иванов]. Александр Блок. Андрей Белый.
Петербург : «Алконост», 1919. 179, [4] с. Уменьшенный формат.
Содержание: Вьюга и Пламя (вступление, январь 1919) ; Роза и Крест ; Пылающий ; Испытание в грозе и буре ; Весть весны.
Издательская марка на фронтисписе - работы Юрия Анненкова.
Твёрдый владельческий переплёт с наклеенной оригинальной издательской обложкой (передняя сторона наклеена на картонную крышку, тканевый корешок, уголки блока укреплены владельческими тканевыми накладками). Первое издание.
На первой странице текста - владельческая надпись чернилами.
Состояние: переплёт хороший - загрязнение и потёртость наклеенной оригинальной обложки; блок хороший - текст полный, страницы с возрастным пожелтением бумаги гражданской печати, отдельные пятна.
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Ivanov-Razumnik [pseudonym of Razumnik Vasilyevich Ivanov, 1878-1946]. Alexander Blok. Andrei Bely.
Petrograd : "Alkonost", 1919. 179, [4] pp. Small format.
Contents: The Blizzard and the Flame (introduction, January 1919) ; The Rose and the Cross ; The Blazing One ; Trial by Thunder and Storm ; Tidings of Spring.
Publisher's device on the frontispiece by Yuri Annenkov.
Owner's hardcover binding with the original printed wrapper mounted onto the front board (cloth spine, corners reinforced with cloth guards added by the owner). First edition.
Ownership inscription in ink on the first page of text.
Condition: binding good - soiling and wear to the mounted original wrapper; text block good - text complete, age-toned Civil War-era paper, scattered spotting.

A landmark of Russian Symbolist-era literary criticism, collecting five essays written over five years by Razumnik Ivanov-Razumnik - critic, literary theorist, and close personal friend of both poets discussed - on Alexander Blok and Andrei Bely, "родных по духу, различных по стихии" as the author's own January 1919 preface puts it. Ivanov-Razumnik was among the first critics to treat Blok and Bely as the twin culminating figures of Russian Symbolism, tracing in essays such as "The Rose and the Cross" (on Blok's reworked verse drama, itself published by Alkonost that same year) and "Trial by Thunder and Storm" the two poets' parallel responses to war and revolution - Bely's shift from the "dark Russia" of his 1908 poem "Despair" to the luminous "Rodina" of 1917 being a central thread. Issued by Samuil Alyansky's "Alkonost", the short-lived but extraordinarily influential Petrograd press that in these same years brought out first editions of Blok's "The Twelve" and "The Scythians" and much of Bely's late work, the book carries the press's characteristic publisher's device designed by Yuri Annenkov, the leading portraitist and stage designer of the Russian avant-garde. The volume's material was later absorbed, in expanded form, into Ivanov-Razumnik's 1923 collection "Vershiny" (Peaks), issued by a different press, making this 1919 Alkonost printing the true first appearance of the text. The Odessa ownership inscription dated to around 1930 traces the copy's passage through a private library in the early Soviet period, a time when critical writing on the recently deceased Blok (d. 1921) and the still-active but increasingly marginalized Bely carried particular resonance.