1 See Struve, Gleb, “Neizdannye stikhi N. Gumilëva”, Novyj žurnal, No. 8 (1944)Google Scholar.

2 For a more detailed account see the article by Gleb Struve in Novoe Russkoe Slovo, Materialy dlja biografii N. S. Gumilëva,” November 26, 1947.

3 This and subsequent quotations are translated by the author

4 See Lollij Lvov, “Tri dramy Gumilëva,” Rossija i Slavjanstvo, August 29, 1931. This article was based on the complete manuscript of The Poisoned Tunic, mentioned earlier by me.

5 In his article on Gumilëv in the Russian Review(Autumn, 1946), Leonid I. Strakhovsky says that “he was one of the first to bring into Russian poetry exotic themes (particularly in his poems dealing with Africa, which he had visited on three successive [sic!] occasions) …” To ascribe to Gumilëv this priority is to disregard, not only the powerful “exotic” strain in Russian nineteenth-century “romanticism” (Puškin, Lermontov, Poležaev, and others), but also, of course, such direct and more obvious predecessors of Gumilëv as his maître Brjusov (to whom he dedicated his most “exotic” book of poetry, Pearls), Balmont, and other representatives of Russian symbolism, in whom this “exoticism“ was a direct legacy of French Parnassism and romanticism in general. On the other hand, so far as Gumilëv's African poetry is concerned, it is much more than mere “exoticism,“ which characterizes much of symbolism and Gumilëv's own earlier poetry; for it is rooted in his personal experience and is, rather, a sort of “lyrical logbook” of his travels.

6 The last poem in the album, entitled “Fragment from a Play,” is undoubtedly an excerpt from The Poisoned Tunic. See also the remarkable poem “Memory” in Pillar of Fire, which contains lines pointing to the “autobiographical” and subjective nature of the image Imr-King.

7 Italics mine.

8 In the album Gumilev writes: