Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Blok

Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Blok (1880-1921), Russian poet, the leader of Russian symbolism, a counterpart of the European literary movement (see Symbolist Movement) strongly influenced by the Eastern Orthodox faith. He was born in Saint Petersburg and educated at Petersburg University.

Blok's early cycle of mystical love poems Stikhi o prekrasnoy dame (Verses About the Lady Beautiful, 1904) equated divine wisdom with the feminine soul. Thereafter, as in Neznakomka (The Unknown Woman, 1906), his poetry took on a darker, pessimistic tone, 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. Skify (1918; The Scythians, 1920), an ode alternately passionate and melancholy, expresses his faith in Russia's victory over the West. His last and most famous work, Dvenadtsat (1918; The Twelve, 1920), is a more ambiguous expression of this hope. In the last years of his life, however, he became disenchanted because of the Soviet requirement that authors express party views rather than individual feelings.