Andrey Bely, pseudonym of Boris Nikolayevich Bugaev, was a Russian poet, novelist, theorist and literary critic. He was a leading member of Russian Symbolist movement, a literary school deriving from the Modernist movement in western European art and literature and an indigenous Eastern Orthodox spirituality, expressing mystical and abstract ideas through allegories from life and nature.
Background
Boris Nikolayevich Bugaev was born on October 26, 1880, in Moscow, then the Russian Empire, into a prominent intellectual family. His father was one of Russia’s leading mathematicians; his mother was reportedly a capricious, self-centred woman who was determined to prevent her son from following in the intellectual footsteps of his father. For fear of his mother’s tantrums, Bely was forced to repress any intellectual activity as a child, and he soon learned to hide behind a cloak of feigned stupidity. Fortunately, young Boris was placed under the tutelage of a governess who exposed him to the worlds of literature and music. As he grew older, an interest in art and aesthetics eventually dis-placed interest in the scientific world of his father.
Education
As a child, Bely received an excellent home education, followed by studying science, then philosophy at Imperial Moscow University (now Moscow State University) from 1899 to 1903. However, his absorption in his writing and independent research interfered with his formal studies. Restless and erratic, he took interest in all subjects and in 1903 he earned a master's degree from the respectable Natural Sciences Department of the university.
At age fifteen, Boris met the intellectually gifted Soloviev family. Vladimir Soloviev was a philosopher, poet, theologian, and historian whose concept of the "Eternal Feminine" in the form of "Sophia, the Divine Wisdom" became central to Symbolist thought. Vladimir's younger brother Mikhail took Boris under his wing, encouraging him as a writer and introducing him to Vladimir Soloviev's metaphysical system. It was Mikhail Soloviev, who applauded Boris's early literary endeavours and suggested the pseudonym Andrey Bely.
Bely started his writing career with the publication of Second Symphony, the Dramatic in 1902. Deeply influenced by Vladimir Solovyov’s concept of ‘all-in-oneness’ and the image of Sophia as the female embodiment of Holy Wisdom, the ‘symphony’ was aimed at creating a synthesis of music and word by applying the structural laws of music to a literary composition and using a system of leitmotifs as well as a rhythmization of prose.
During 1901-1903, Bely became a part of the Moscow symbolists group including Bryusov and Balmont called the “Argonauts”. He was one of the main organizers of the literary club, preaching the principles of symbolism as religious creation and the equality of the ‘text of life’ with ‘text of art’. Bely's first poetry collection, Gold in Azure (Zoloto v lazuri, 1904) was also published during this period, a body of work that would deeply explore Bely’s cyclical interpretation of time and include several poems based on the Greek myth that inspired the name of his literary circle, including “The Golden Fleece” and “The Argonauts”.
The revolutionary year of 1905 significantly affected Bely’s views, changing his philosophical orientation from Solovyev’s religious overtones to the social tendencies of the neo-Kantian world-view. So his next poetry collections move into murkier territory: Ashes (Pepel, 1909) expresses disillusionment with the 1905 revolution, while Urn (Urna, 1909) reflects his affair with Blok's wife, Lyubov, which caused hostility, even threats of duels, between the two poets.
The following two years witnessed Bely working as a gifted essayist and tireless symbolism preacher. Three volumes of critical articles were published, including Symbolism (1910), Green Meadow (1910) and Arabesques (1911). One of the most considerable works of the period was his novel The Silver Dove (1910), a tale of a young poet leaving the city to join a religious group, later to be murdered by sectarians.
Bely started a relationship with Asya Turgeneva around this time, and between 1910 and 1912 they travelled together through Sicily, Tunis, Egypt, and Palestine.
Regarded as his major masterpiece, the novel Petersburg was published in 1913. As critics observe, the book employs a striking prose method in which sounds often evoke colours. Set in the mystical and hysterical atmosphere of the turn-of-the-century imperial metropolis, the novel touches upon the topics of history and identity.
While writing Petersburg, Bely was affected by Rudolph Steiner’s religious philosophy of anthroposophy and during his visit to Switzerland in 1914 he became the mystic’s personal friend. This new philosophy would inform Bely's next novel, the autobiographical Kitten Letayev (Kotik Letayev, 1917–1918).
During World War I Bely returned to Russia, leaving Asya Turgeneva in Switzerland. Like other Symbolists, Bely welcomed the October Revolution of 1917. In the post-revolutionary years, Bely lectured the young writers of “Proletcult” (a Soviet, avant-garde ‘proletariat-cultural’ institution) on literature and philosophy. During this period he wrote his essay Revolution and Culture (1917) and the poem Christ Has Risen (1918).
However, not surprisingly, Bely's idiosyncratic mix of revolutionarism, spiritualism, and strict moralism earned him criticism and praise from both the Left and the Right. When the revolution finally got its way in Russia during 1917 and 1918, Bely very easily felt out of favour with the new ruling elite, and from 1921 to 1923 he went into temporary exile in Germany.
While he was in Europe, Bely published Recollections of Blok in 1922. He returned to Russia in 1923, where he married Klavdia Vasilyeva and worked on his trilogy of Moscow novels: The Moscow Eccentric (1926), Moscow Under Siege (1926) and Mask (1931).
Bely devoted his last years to writing memoirs (At the Border of Two Centuries, 1930; The Beginning of the Century, 1933; Between Two Revolutions, 1934) of significant importance both as literary criticism and historical documents. He also continued his literary studies and published Rhythm as dialectic in ‘The Bronze Horseman’ and The Mastery of Gogol (1934).
Andrey Bely is the pseudonym of the author recognized as the most original and influential member of the Russian symbolist movement. A brilliant, restless, and undisciplined in spirit, Bely consistently sought spiritual meaning within the social and literary turmoil of pre-Soviet Russia. His enormous body of work, much of it autobiographical, presents a vivid impression of this quest.
Bely’s explorations of form and language served as a first step toward the modernist revolution of Russian verse, a call-to-arms by many young writers for more individual artistic freedom and the complete overthrow of the traditional values and social criticism of the nineteenth century. Although he was hardly a popular writer—his work was too subjective and esoteric for the general public—Bely received great attention and acclaim as the standard-bearer for those symbolists who believed that symbolism was more of a Weltanschauung, or worldview than mere literary method. Bely’s works are characterized by their verbal artistry, inner rhythm, and keenly developed style.
Among a number of Bely’s works, his 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, and his most celebrated composition, Peterburg, rewritten three times between 1913 and 1922, is considered one of the great masterpieces of 20th Century literature.
A prolific and influential critic, Bely wrote more than three hundred essays, four volumes of memoirs, and numerous critical works, including his famous Symbolism (1910), which paved the way for Formalism, and The Art of Gogol (Masterstvo Gogolya, 1934).
The Andrey Bely Prize, one of the most important prizes in Russian literature, was named after him. His poems were set to music and frequently performed by Russian singer-songwriters. His apartment at Arbat, 55, in Moscow became a public museum in 2000.
Bely supported the Bolshevik rise to power and later dedicated his efforts to Soviet culture, serving on the Organizational Committee of the Union of Soviet Writers.
Views
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. Eventually, Bely left Steiner’s group for personal reasons, but he remained attached to anthroposophical ideas to the end of his life.
Bely's work strived to transcend ideas of a limited creative "self" and of literature defined solely by its historical or social significance. For him, everything written was only a point of departure in a quest for a final liberation from false authorities—a way to restore the unity of humanity. In accordance with his belief in the essential oneness of different artistic and intellectual discourses, Bely maintained that poetry was a true "philosophy of practical reason."
Connections
During his lifetime, Andrey Bely was married twice. His first wife was Asya Turgeneva, who he married in 1914. However, the couple got divorced in 1923, and the same year, Bely married his second wife Klavdia Vasilyeva, with whom he lived the rest of his life. Andrey Bely had no children.
