Pluh [The Plow].

First edition of one of Tychyna's most famous and important works. His first collection of poetry Clarinets of the Sun (1918) brought him instant recognition as the major Ukrainian poet of his time. His second collection The Plow confirmed Tychyna's position in Ukrainian culture. The wrappers were designed by Oleksander (Les) Lozovsky, a student of Narbut and Mykhailo Boichuk.

Pavlo Tychyna is a complex figure who played along with changing Party dictates after enjoying a period of creative independence and has a problematic reputation for his later work. Tychyna's work from 1917 through 1932 is acknowledged to be his most important and he is accepted as Ukraine's premier poet of the beginning of the twentieth century. He was nominated for a Nobel Prize in 1967 but forced to reject the nomination despite conforming to Socialist Realism decades earlier.

'What Tychyna has given our literature indeed constitutes a great treasure. It so happened that this young dreamer, with a look directed deep inside him, in his very first book appears so profoundly original and mature and at the same time so tied to the best traditions of our literature that there could be no doubt that a new, fresh, and captivating page has been written in it. Tychyna took from the old soil a humane treatment of themes, a deep national colouring, and the most beautiful language, [forming] a laconic style that in its simplicity, lyricism, and compactness reminds us of the manner of our great prose writer, Vasyl' Stefanyk. Possibly of world stature, Tychyna through his form is a deeply national poet because he has used what was best in earlier generations. He drank in, as it were, all the beauty of the popular language and has used it with great taste and mastery in a most sophisticated manner. He has added to this his dreaminess and depth, brilliant form, and a flexible sonorous verse technique, usually scorned by our writers with the exception of two or three mannerist poets' (Yefremov).

First edition, 8vo (20 x 14.5 cm); original printed wrappers designed by Oleksander Lozovsky, some restoration to corners and spine, a very good copy.