BELY, ANDREY

born Oct. 14 [Oct. 26, New Style], 1880, Moscow, Russia died Jan. 7, 1934, Moscow pseudonym of Boris Nikolayevich Bugayev, or Bugaev leading theorist and poet of Russian Symbolism, a literary school deriving from the modernist movement in western European art and literature and 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, like Blok's, diaries in poetry. 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, Switz., a group advocating a system of mystical beliefs derived from Buddhist contemplative religious experience. While in Switzerland Bely began writing his Kotik Letayev (1922; Kotik Letaev), a short autobiographical novel suggestive of the style of James Joyce. Bely returned to Moscow in 1916, and, like other Symbolists, he at first greeted the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution ecstatically. His brief poem "Khristos voskrese" (1918; "Christ Has Prevailed") lauded the messianic promise of Russian socialism; however, after Blok's death and the execution by the Soviets of several of his literary colleagues, the dispirited Bely went abroad, although he returned to Russia in 1923. His development of new techniques of writing significantly affected later Russian verse and prose style.