The bilingual Velvet Series represents the Russian Silver Age poet Nikolay Gumilyov (1886–1921).
Until recently Latvian readers could enjoy just few works by the poet, leader of the Acmeists, romanticist and utopian, critic and talented translator, Anna Akhmatova’s husband and Osip Mandelshtam’s friend Nikolai Gumilyov. Banned by censorship, from 1923 up until 1988 his books were not published in the Soviet Union. During the awakening period some pieces of prose and separate poems appeared in the Latvian press, but the present publication, compiled by Jānis Elsbergs and Einārs Pelšs, is the first collection of Gumilyov’s poetry in Latvian.