OSSENDOWSKI ANTONI F. Biesy [1937] [publisher's binding].

FIGHT. Poznan, R. WEGNER Polish Publishing House, series: Library of Polish Authors, vol. 17, pp . 256, dimensions 12 x 19.5, publisher's binding, cover soiling, rubbing at corners, spine worn, glued to block, ownership signature, annotations on pre-title page.

First edition of a novel, referring not only by its title to Dostoevsky's masterpiece, set in St. Petersburg at the turn of the 19th/20th century, among the local aristocracy and artistic circles.

OSSENDOVSKY in "Besy" masterfully portrays a strange and at the same time frightening world, a society shrouded as if by a fog of mystery of the increasingly powerful evil - on the one hand pretending to some unimaginable progress, and on the other still firmly stuck in the monstrous superstition of what, it would seem, should have passed away long ago: "St. Petersburg was melting into darkness. A yellow, cold fog, like vapor from the bottom of a deep grave, was pouring through the granite parapet of the waterfront, enveloping the mighty gray blocks supporting the statues of the two sphinxes, oozing from behind the iron bars of the snow-covered square, from the cracks in the chipped plaster of the yellow government buildings and from the acanthus leaves decorating the heads of the columns on the building of the Academy of Fine Arts. The ground itself even - hardened, frost-bound, armored with cobblestones made of round cat-heads, dusted itself with clusters and streaks of fog that stifled breath, made eyelids sticky and absorbed without a trace the yellow stains of the burning street lamps, although the clock on the fortress tower had recently struck two in the afternoon...."