Dem Zeydns Kloles: a Kinder Komedie in Ayn Akt [Grandfather's Curses: A Children's Comedy in One Act], by Tsadok Dolgopolski, illustrations by El Lissitsky. [Moscow: Tsentraler Yidisher Komisariat, 1919]. Yiddish.
A play for children by the Soviet Yiddish writer Tsadok Dolgopolski, accompanied by two fine, intricate illustrations by El Lissitsky, who also designed the cover (the cover illustration is printed again in the last page of the book).
Rare. This booklet is among the earliest publications of the Tsentraler Yidisher Komisariat ["Central Jewish Commissariat, in Russian: Tsentraler Yidisher Komisariat].
[2], 5–32 pp. (title–page apparently missing). Approx. 11.5X16.5 cm. Good condition. Inscriptions and signatures on cover. Minor stains. Detached leaves. Pinholes to inner page margins. Signs of pasting to cover margins. Minor tears to spine.
Tsadok Dolgopolski (1879–1959), Yiddish author, playwright and teacher, native of Vitebsk (Belarus). In 1914 he published in Vilna an anthology of his writings, mostly comprising stage works concerned with Jewish life in the Shtetl. In 1919 he published his play "Dem Zeydns Kloles". A socialist, following the October Revolution he moved to Minsk, where he published stories, plays, poems and novels, all in the spirit of Communism, aiming to spread the values of the revolution among the Jewish populace.
In 1936, as part of a "purge" of Soviet Belarus from "Jewish nationalism" (i.e. Zionism), many Jewish intellectuals, among them Dolgopolski, were arrested, murdered or deported. Dolgopolski was among the sole survivors of this purge; after his release he returned to Vitebsk.
El (Eliezer Lazar Markovich) Lissitzky (1890–1941), Russian Jewish artist, designer, photographer, educator, typographer, and architect, among the most prominent and influential leaders of the Russian Avant–Garde movement. An architect by training, Lissitzky, along with his mentor and friend Kazimir Malevich, greatly contributed to the formation and development of the Suprematist movement, which advanced a geometric form of abstract art. His was responsible for the design of numerous books and periodicals, as well as exhibitions and propaganda material on behalf of Russia's Communist regime, and he exerted considerable influence on Europe's Bauhaus and Constructivist movements. Early in his career, Lissitzky expressed a keen interest in Jewish culture, and Jewish motifs were integrated into many of his works. In this vein, in 1915–16 he took part in Sh. An–ski's ethnographic expedition into the Pale of Jewish Settlement. With the outbreak of the October (Bolshevik) Revolution, Lissitzky came to be wholeheartedly identified with the Communist cause. In the interest of advancing Jewish culture in Russia in the aftermath of the Revolution, he devoted much of his creative energy, among other things, to designing and illustrating Yiddish children's books, and a number of his published children's books were regarded as pioneering masterpieces of graphic design and typography.
See:
• Kazovsky, 2003, pp. 201, no. 74.
• Sanctity – Art – Aesthetics, Exhibition catalog, Mané-Katz Museum, 2011.
Provenance: The Gross Family Collection, Tel Aviv, B.1404.
