POLISH LANDED GENTRY
Poem in four songs
by
KAJETAN KOŹMIAN
editions
by Edward Raczynski
Originally printed!
in Wroclaw 1839, Nakładem Zygmunt Schlettera, pp. xii, 228, format 14x22cm
Kajetan Koźmian devoted "The Polish Landed Gentry" (1839) to work on the land, descriptions of farmsteads and orchards and forests, praise of the life of a farmer-landowner, personifying the ideal of civic virtues. He introduced domestic animals in the work and gave hints and advice on gardening and farming.
The pinnacle achievement of Polish classicism with a very careful construction, a didactic poem intended as a response to Adam Mickiewicz's "Crimean Sonnets."
The author's goal was to tie the reader to the nature identical with virtue.
The work, completed after 25 years in 1829, had been printed in fragments since 1812. Its first full publication, which had already passed unnoticed in the Romantic era and was ridiculed by the great bard, described Koźmian's work as "a thousand poems about planting peas."
HARDCOVER FULL CONTEMPORARY DECORATIVE LEATHER, ON THE FACES OF THE DOUBLE ORNAMENTAL BORDURE OF FLORAL CHARACTER TOPPED WITH A GILDED FLOWER IN THE CORNERS, IN THE MIRROR OF THE COVERS INTRICATELY EMBOSSED AND GILDED ORNAMENT OF FLORAL CHARACTER, THE SPINE WITH DIVISION INTO FIELDS, CONVEX SCROLLS AND RICH GILDING, THE EDGES OF THE PAGES STAINED, THE LINING OF HAND-DYED MARBLED PAPER, THE INTERIORS OF THE COVERS FINISHED WITH A GOLD ROLL. BINDING REFERRING IN STYLE TO THE EXQUISITE BINDINGS OF THE ERA! BOTH PUBLISHER'S COVERS PRESERVED
BDB condition/some rusty spots, minor dusting of margins, BEAUTIFUL piece
