Andrey Bely

Andrey Bely (born October 14 [October 26, New Style], 1880, Moscow, Russia—died January 7, 1934, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.) was a leading theorist and poet of Russian Symbolism, a literary school deriving from the Modernist movement in western European art and literature and an indigenous Eastern Orthodox spirituality, expressing mystical and abstract ideals through allegories from life and nature.

Reared in an academic environment as the son of a mathematics professor, Bely was closely associated with Moscow’s literary elite, including the late 19th-century philosopher-mystic Vladimir Solovyov, whose eschatological thought (concerning the world’s purpose and final resolution) he absorbed. Carried by his idealism from harsh reality to speculative thought, Bely completed in 1901 his first major work, Severnaya simfoniya (1902; “The Northern Symphony”), a prose poem that represented an attempt to combine prose, poetry, music, and even, in part, painting. Three more “symphonies” in this new literary form followed. In other poetry he continued his innovative style and, by repeatedly using irregular metre (the “lame foot”), introduced Russian poetry to the formalistic revolution that was brought to fruition by his aesthetic colleague Aleksandr Blok.

Bely’s first three books of verse—Zoloto v lazuri (1904; “Gold in Azure”), Pepel (1909; “Ashes”), and Urna (1909; “Urn”)—are his most important contributions to poetry. Each of them stands out for an original view of the world: the first generates a new mythology; central to the second are images of the despair of Russian life; a somewhat ironic philosophical lyricism is used in the third. In 1909 Bely completed his first novel, Serebryany golub (1910; The Silver Dove). His most celebrated composition, Peterburg (published serially 1913–14; St. Petersburg), is regarded as a baroque extension of his earlier “symphonies.” In 1913 he became an adherent of the Austrian social philosopher Rudolf Steiner and joined his anthroposophical colony in Basel, Switzerland, a group advocating a system of mystical beliefs derived from Buddhist contemplative religious experience (see anthroposophy). While in Switzerland Bely began writing his Kotik Letayev (1922; Kotik Letaev), a short autobiographical novel suggestive of the style of James Joyce. Eventually Bely left Steiner’s group for personal reasons, but he remained attached to anthroposophical ideas to the end of his life.

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In 1916 Bely returned to Russia, where he witnessed the entirety of the Russian Revolution of 1917. Initially, like Blok, he welcomed the Bolsheviks’ ascent to power. His enthusiasm was reflected in Khristos voskrese (1918; “Christ Is Risen”), a novel in verse in which Bely renders contemporary life in mystical terms as a “revolution of the spirit.” Between 1918 and 1921 he worked in Soviet cultural organizations, and during that time he helped found the nonpartisan Free Philosophical Association (Volfila). The novel in verse Pervoye svidaniye (1921: The First Encounter) resurrects the events of his youth.

In 1921 Bely traveled to Berlin, where his already strained marriage collapsed and where he was subjected to Steiner’s enmity. Bely also began writing his memoirs, which were published later in three volumes: Na rubezhe dvukh stolety (1930; “On the Boundary of Two Centuries”), Nachalo veka (1933; “The Beginning of the Century”), and Mezhdu dvukh revolyutsy (1934; “Between Two Revolutions”). In 1923 Bely returned to Moscow, where he wrote a trilogy of novels set in Moscow; he also wrote literary criticism and revised his early works. Bely’s prose of the 1920s reflects his interest in form and in complex plot construction. In the early 1930s he tried to become a “true” Soviet author by writing a series of articles and making ideological revisions to his memoirs, and he also planned to begin a study of Socialist Realism. In 1932 he became a member of the Organizational Committee of the Writers’ Union of the U.S.S.R. Yet in an idiosyncratic way he managed to combine these activities with his attachment to anthroposophy and Russian Symbolism.