Belyi, Andrei

(pseudonym of Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev). Born Oct. 14 (26), 1880, in Moscow; died Jan. 8, 1934, in Moscow. Russian writer; theoretician of symbolism.

Belyi graduated from the mathematics department of Moscow University (1903). His first verses came out in 1901. He belonged to the symbolists of the “younger” generation. His first collection of poems was Gold in Azure (1904). The four “symphonies” written in rhythmical prose (The Heroic, 1900, published in 1903 under the title Northern Symphony; Dramatic Symphony, 1902; Return, 1905; Goblet of Snowstorms, 1908) were marked by decadent features.

The Revolution of 1905–07 aroused Belyi’ s interest in social problems (the collection of poems Ashes, 1909). In the novel Petersburg (1913–14, revised edition, 1922), a harsh satire of reactionary, bureaucratic St. Petersburg emerges through symbolic imagery; however, the revolutionary movement is shown in a distorted light. While abroad in 1912, Belyi was under the influence of the leader of anthroposophy, R. Steiner. In 1916, Belyi returned to Russia. After the October Revolution, from 1919–22, he published the symbolist-oriented journal Notes of Dreamers.

In the postrevolutionary years he wrote primarily prose: the autobiographical novellas Kotik Letaev (1922) and The Baptized Chinaman (1927), and the historical epic Moscow (part 1, The Eccentric of Moscow, 1926; part 2, Moscow Under Attack, 1926; and Masks, 1932). In his prose Belyi remained faithful to the symbolist aesthetic with its fragmented plot, its shifting planes, and its attention to rhythm and the auditory effect of phrasing. He developed a symbolist aesthetic (the collection of articles Symbolism, 1910) and a theory of rhythm in verse and prose in which he was the first to make use of mathematical methods (Rhythm as Dialectic and the “Bronze Horseman,” 1929, and articles in the journal The Furnace in 1919). Belyi’s memoirs On The Border Between Two Centuries (1930), The Beginning of the Century: Memoirs (1933), and Between Two Revolutions (1934) are of great interest.