Hombres y Máquinas. 1929

[Larisa Reĭsner]. [Ramon Puyol]. Reissner, Larisa. Hombres y Máquinas. Madrid: Editorial Cenit, 1929.

First edition. 8vo, 260 pp.; cloth with original wrapper and spine bound in, boards scuffed and nicked, text block toned, else good.

Hombres y Máquinas is possibly the first anthology (and first Spanish translation?) of Bolshevik soldier and journalist Larisa Reisner’s writing (it would be another thirty-five years before her collected works appeared in Russian). It is comprised of three of her long-form essays: Afghanistan (1924); The Land of Hindenburg (1925); and Coal, Iron and Living People (1925), each describing first-hand experiences: as part of the USSR’s diplomatic mission in Afghanistan; as a revolutionary in Hamburg in 1923; and her journey through the Urals reporting on the lives of miners and factory workers. The anthology was published after her death of typhoid in 1926 at age 30; Reisner’s lover Karl Radek provides the book’s hagiographic prologue, which forever enshrined her in the Bolshevik pantheon.

Spanish Republican artist Ramon Puyol designed the cubistic cover, which is rarely present. Puyol is best-known for his Spanish civil war posters, authorship of the wartime slogan “no pasaran,” and the murals for the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 Paris Exposition.

Uncommon, OCLC locates only one copy in North America; there are no other trade copies with the original illustrated cover.

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