Piotr Potiomkin’s “Green Hat” and Russian Émigré children’s literature

Abstract

The essay reconstructs history of the 1924 publication of Piotr Potiomkin’s (1886—1926) poem for children Green Hat in a wider context of the Russian émigré literary culture. A well-known writer before the revolution, the author of two books of poetry Funny Love and Geranium, Potiomkin found himself after emigrating to Chishinau and further to Prague, on the periphery of the Russian Diaspora. In 1922 he slowly started to publish his works in the periodicals of “Russian Berlin.” Sasha Chiornyi, his friend from the era of the Satyricon magazine, included two of Potiomkin’s poems in the Rainbow, the first children’s anthology which Chiornyi edited for the Slovo publishing house. By that time Chiornyi occupied a leading position in the émigré children’s literature. He began to invite Potiomkin’s partici- pation in the publishing enterprises of “Russian Berlin,” and recommended the poet to the Volga publishing house as a potentially valuable author. Potiomkin was one of the creators of the genre of “a poem for children” in pre-revolutionary children’s literature—-in 1912 the magazine Galchionok published his “story in verse” Boba Skvozniakov in the Country. Therefore, Potiomkin offered the Volga to publish another “poem for children” Green Hat. As a book designer he invited Hans Fronius (1903—1988) who at the time was a student at the Kunstakademie in Vienna. Later Fronius became the first illustrator of the literary works of Franz Kafka.

Keywords: Russian e´migre´ children’s literature, Russian e´migre´ publishing houses, Russian illustrated publications for children, history of rare books, Russian Berlin, Piotr Potemkin, Hans Fronius, Sasha Chiornyi, Don- Aminado, Franz Kafka