51 · [Argentinian Publisher G. Kaplanski's Copy] Tolstoy, Leo. Translated by A. Mukdoni

DER LEBEDIKER MET: DRAME [MES] דער לעבעדיגער מת: א דראמא

Warsaw: Gezelshaft Tzentral, 1912. Item #43178

First Yiddish Edition. Original illustrated paper wrappers. 8vo, 85 pages. XX cm. G. Kaplanski's copy with his stamp on title page. In Yiddish. Title translates as “Living Corpse: Drama.”
Yiddish translation of Leo Tolystoy’s The Living Corpse with illustrated art nouveau cover.
G. Kaplanski (1889-1971) was a publisher whose "publishing house brought out Yiddish textbooks, among others: the first elementary booklet, Ershte bletlekh, ilustrirte alef-beys (First pages, illustrated ABCs) by B. Heler and Y. Roze (Buenos Aires, 1930-1931, 2 parts, which went through six printings; M. Alperson’s Draysik yor in argentine (Thirty years in Argentina); and Y. Y. Zinger’s (I. J. Singer), Yoshe kalb (Yoshe Kalb); among others. He died in Buenos Aires" (Leksikon Fun Der Nayer Yidisher Literatur).
“According to Tolstoy’s daughter Alexandra, the impetus for the birth of the play was Tolstoy’s response to Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya at the Moscow Art Theatre in 1900. Noting that it ‘lacked action’, Tolstoy was “suddenly seized with the desire to write a play which had been in his mind since the middle of the nineties. He immediately made an outline, based on a [true] story.…
It concerned a decent, upright woman married to a weak man, a drunkard. Abandoned by him, and in love with another man, the woman persuaded her husband, when he reappeared, to pretend suicide in order that she might remarry. When the fraud was discovered, she was charged with bigamy and was only at the last minute saved from life exile in Siberia. ‘It seems to me,’ Tolstoy wrote in his diary, ‘that in A Living Corpse there are notes inspired by Chekhov’s work. Such is the secret of artistic creativeness.” (Tolstoy: a life of my father, 1953, pp. 403-4).
SUBJECT(S): Russian drama. Yiddish drama. OCLC: 233364539
Brittle and some page separation. Edgewear to detached cover. Fair Condition, complete. Somewhat scarce (YID-48-26-X'CCL-’gge).

Price: $125.00