Autograph poem, translation of Apollinaire. n.d.

Mikhail Alekseevich Kuzmin (1872-1936)
Autograph poem, translation of Apollinaire. n.d.
Autograph manuscript signed ('translated by M. Kuzmin'), n.p., n.d.

In Russian. Title and 57 lines on three pages, 216 x 141mm, on bifolia, a neat copy with two small cancellations and annotations.

A translation of Guillaume Apollinaire's 'A la Santé'.

Pred tem kak v kameru voshli my,
Ya dolzhen stat' sovsem nagoy.
I gnalsya krik neumolimyy: -
Giyom, chto sdelalos' s toboy?

Apollinaire's poem, a description of the experience of a prisoner in Paris's La Santé prison, was inspired by his arrest and week-long incarceration in September 1911 on the remarkable (and unfounded) charge of having stolen the Mona Lisa. Kuzmin's translation very likely dates from the late 1920s, when, having been cut off from publication like many of his fellow Silver Age authors, he chiefly made his living through translations (notably of Apuleius, Petrarch and Shakespeare). The present translation appears, however, to be unpublished. Any autograph by Kuzmin is rare at international auction: ABPC and RBH record only a single example, in 2008.

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