Aleksandr Blok

Aleksandr Blok (1880-1921), Russian poet, born in St Petersburg. Blok was the leader of Russian Symbolism, a counterpart of the European literary movement (see Symbolist Movement) strongly influenced by the Eastern Orthodox faith. Blok's early cycle of love poems Stikhi o prekrasnoy dame (Verses About the Lady Beautiful, 1904) was a mystical equation of divine wisdom with the feminine soul. Disillusioned after the Russo-Japanese War and the failure of the 1905 revolution, his poetry took on a darker, pessimistic tone, as in Neznakomka (The Unknown Woman, 1906), but even his most melancholy works display his characteristic lilting musicality. In 1917 the Russian Revolution gave him new hope, and he turned against what he perceived as the sterile intellectuality of Symbolism. The Scythians (1918; trans. 1920), an ode alternately passionate and melancholy, expresses his faith in Russia's victory over the West. His last work, The Twelve (1918; trans. 1920), is a more ambiguous expression of this hope. Later, however, he became disenchanted because of the Soviet requirement that authors express party views rather than individual feelings.