PROMETHEUS AND PANDORA
IVANOV, Vyacheslav Ivanovich.
Prometei tragediia [Prometheus a tragedy].
St Petersburg, “Alkonost”, 1919.
4to, pp. xxiv, 79; browning to edges; in the original printed wrappers; spine repaired.
First edition of Ivanov’s dramatic poem Prometheus, which follows the form of Greek tragedy.
The plot is a restatement of classical myth of Prometheus in terms of Ivanov’s Neoplatonic philosophy. In addition to Prometheus himself, the play also features Pandora, Nereus (the old man of the sea), nymphs, and the three Erinyes (goddesses of vengeance).
Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov (1866–1949) was chair of Classical Philology at the University of Baku from 1920, and after emigrating from the Soviet Union was Professor of Russian literature at Pavia from 1926 to 1934. The philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev recalled that Ivanov was ‘pre-eminently a man of Western culture … His immense erudition in Classics and ancient history, and his brilliant scholarship dominated the stage wherever he appeared in Petersburg. He succeeded in combining an intense poetical imagination with an amazing knowledge of Classical philology and Greek religion’ (quoted in Polonsky, English Literature and the Russian Aesthetic Renaissance (1998), p. 49).
Getty 273; Tarasenkov, p. 155; not in Kilgour.
