A highly uncommon and obscure book designed by Goncharova. Not found in WorldCat.

Bezotvetnoe [Unanswered] was the first and only book to be published by Arkady Gurev, a poet and singer of the Russian Silver Age. Not much is known about Gurev's fate after the Revolution but he was a close friend of Pasternak and as this work demonstrates he mixed in Moscow's artistic circles of the time. Pasternak wrote in Liudi i Polozheniia that he had a round head like an onion and behaved incredibly eccentrically, pretending that he couldn't move his heel off the pavement as the devil had pinned him down.

Goncharova's cover design in black and white is similar in style to her illustrations for Churilin's poetry which appeared a year earlier. The inscription on the title page reads 'Oblozhka Natalii Goncharovoi. Knigoizdatel'stvo "Osen'" | Moskva MCMXIII' and dated in the corner. There are also a couple of corrections in the text and although we don't know who the owner was it may have well been someone connected to the work.

First edition, 8vo (22.7 x 16 cm); contemporary ink inscription to title-page, a few corrections in pencil and ink; original wrappers designed by Goncharova, faint spotting and minor repairs to wrappers, spine strengthened, small contemporary bookseller's stamp to lower wrapper, a very good copy.