Aleksandr P. Michnevich

A.P. Michnevich, The Abyss of Thought: A Poetic Diary. St Petersburg, published by O. Kirchner; L.I. Liberman Printing House, 1891. 312 pp.

An elegant late nineteenth-century edition conceived as a collection of thoughts, proverbs, and poetic quotations arranged according to the days of the year. The author, Aleksandr Petrovich Michnevich, a general and military educator, composed this diary under the influence of Goethe's idea of reading one elevated thought each day.

Each month is devoted to a moral theme - faith, homeland, love, work, childhood - and each day offers a Russian proverb together with quotations from Russian and foreign authors. The volume contains approximately 1,100 proverbs and poetic quotations in all.

Printed on high-quality coated paper, the book is enriched with numerous allegorical headpieces and preserved in a sumptuous publisher's cloth binding by the celebrated bookbinder Otto Kirchner, Purveyor to the Court of His Imperial Majesty, with rich gilt and colour decoration on the spine and boards.

A bibliographic rarity of particular appeal to collectors of antiquarian Russian editions.