Bliznets v tuchakh. [Twin in the Clouds].

Moscow, P.P. Riabushinskii for Lirika, 1914 [but 19 December 1913]. . First edition, one of only 200 copies; small 4to (17 x 12.7 cm); foreword by Nikolai Assev, original printed wrappers, stains to covers, cover detached from spine, text block detached from covers, without any restoration, in a custom make black morocco and cloth clamshell box, text in gilt to spine. Scarce collection of poems by one of Russia's most famous literary figures, it was only after Bliznets v tuchakh was published that Pasternak considered writing as a serious career. Both the author and his friend Nikolai Aseev who wrote the preface were relatively unknown at the time and the book was not well received by Maykovsky or the First Journal of Russian Futurists. Pasternak later said that of this criticism that 'everything I did a long time ago was unacceptably revolutionary, overturning all my contemporaries' conceptions of poetry'.