BLOK, Alexander.

First edition of one of Blok's greatest achievements, only published after his death.

Alexander Blok worked on Retribution for over eleven years, starting in 1910 and still writing fragments just days before his death in June 1921. His main concern for the epic autobiographical work in verse was its composition and he was never quite satisfied enough to publish it. 'Blok was tormented by the sense of his poem's elusiveness, inexplicability, by its ineluctable incompleteness. Whatever external reasons may have caused Retribution to remain unfinished, one of the main internal reasons lay with the organization of space' (Nina Segal).