[A FUTURIST PLAY] Klop: Feericheskaya komediya: 9 kartin [i.e. The Bedbug. A Faery Comedy in 9 Pictures]

Moscow; Leningrad: Gosizdat, 1929. 69, [2] pp. 20x14 cm. Original color wrappers. Slightly rubbed, damp stains in the bottom right corner throughout the book. Otherwise a very good copy.

First separate edition. Rare.
According to S. Khan-Magomedov (Alexandre Rodtchenko: L'Oeuvre complet, P. 139), Anonymous cover design was produced by Alexander Rodchenko (1891-1956).
Mayakovsky wrote the play Klop in 1928 based on materials collected by him while working in different newspapers (Komsomol'skaya Pravda [i.e. The Komsomol Truth], etc). "The mass of philistine facts" that the poet came across gave rise to the two main characters of the satire. Mayakovsky defined the main goal of the play as "the exposure of today's philistinism." The bold novelty of the play was in the poet's attempt to look at the philistines of the 1920s through a prism of the future, namely the year 1979.
Being curious about how the public would receive The Bedbug, Mayakovsky traveled around the country and read the play to workers, journalists, etc., before it was even published or staged. Klop was first printed in the Molodaya Gvardiya (#3-4) [i.e. Young Guard] magazine in 1929. The play premiered on the stage of the State Meyerhold Theater in February of the same year. The Meyerhold Theater was the place where all other Mayakovsky's plays were presented.

Katalog prizhiznennykh izdanii. №89.

Worldcat shows copies located in UC Berkeley, Harvard and Indiana Universities, Getty Institute, Amherst College.