Andrei Bely
Encyclopedia
Andrei Bely was the pseudonym of Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev ' onMouseout='HidePop("86025")' href="/topics/Moscow">Moscow
– January 8, 1934, Moscow), a Russia
n novelist, poet, theorist, and literary critic. His novel Petersburg
was regarded by Vladimir Nabokov
as one of the four greatest novels of the 20th century.
, was a leading mathematician who is regarded as a founder of the Moscow school of mathematics. His mother was not only highly intelligent but a famous society beauty, and the focus of considerable gossip. Young Boris was a polymath whose interests included mathematics, music, philosophy, and literature. He would go on to take part in both the Symbolist movement and the Russian school of neo-Kantianism
.
Nikolai Bugaev was well known for his influential philosophical essays, in which he decried geometry
and probability
and trumpeted the virtues of hard analysis
. Despite—or because of—his father's mathematical tastes, Boris Bugaev was fascinated by probability and particularly by entropy
, a notion to which he frequently refers in works such as Kotik Letaev.
Bely's creative works notably influenced—and were influenced by—several literary schools, especially symbolism. They feature a striking mysticism and a sort of moody musicality. The far-reaching influence of his literary voice on Russian writers (and even musicians) has frequently been compared to the impact of James Joyce
in the English-speaking world. The novelty of his sonic effects has also been compared to the innovative music of Charles Ives
.
As a young man, Bely was strongly influenced by his acquaintance with the family of philosopher Vladimir Solovyov
, especially Vladimir's younger brother Mikhail, described in his long autobiographical poem The First Encounter (1921); the title is a reflection of Vladimir Solovyov's Three Encounters.
Bely's symbolist novel Petersburg
(1916; 1922) is generally considered to be his masterpiece. The book employs a striking prose method in which sounds often evoke colors. The novel is set in the somewhat hysterical atmosphere of turn-of-the-century Petersburg and the Russian Revolution of 1905
. To the extent that the book can be said to possess a plot, this can be summarized as the story of the hapless Nikolai Apollonovich, a ne'er-do-well who is caught up in revolutionary politics and assigned the task of assassinating a certain government official—his own father. At one point, Nikolai is pursued through the Petersburg mists by the ringing hooves of the famous bronze statue of Peter the Great
.
In his later years Bely was influenced by Rudolph Steiner’s anthroposophy
and became a personal friend of Steiner's.
Bely was one of the major influences on the theater of Vsevolod Meyerhold
.
He is the namesake of the Andrei Bely Prize
, one of the most important prizes in Russian literature.
's novel The Gift, where it is mentioned as "monumental research on rhythm". Fyodor, poet and main character, praises the system Bely created for graphically marking off and calculating the 'half-stresses' in the iambs. Bely found that the diagrams plotted over the compositions of the great poets frequently had the shapes of rectangles and trapeziums. Fyodor, after discovering Bely's work, re-read all his old iambic tetrameter
s from the new point of view, and was terribly pained to find out that the diagrams for his poems where instead plain and gappy. Nabokov's essay Notes on Prosody follows for the large part Bely's essay Description of the Russian iambic tetrameter (published in the collection of essays Symbolism, Moscow, 1910).
The Silver Dove
Kotik Letaev
The Complete Short Stories
Selected Essays of Andrey Bely
The Dramatic Symphony
The Christened Chinaman
In the Kingdom of Shadows
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
– January 8, 1934, Moscow), a Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n novelist, poet, theorist, and literary critic. His novel Petersburg
Petersburg (novel)
Petersburg or St. Petersburg is the title of Andrei Bely's masterpiece, a Symbolist work that foreshadows Joyce's Modernist ambitions. For various reasons the novel never received much attention and was not translated into English until 1959 by John Cournos, over 45 years after it was written,...
was regarded by Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...
as one of the four greatest novels of the 20th century.
Biography
Boris Bugaev was born into a prominent intellectual family. His father, Nikolai BugaevNikolai Bugaev
Nikolai Vasilievich Bugaev was a prominent Russian mathematician.-Biography:Bugaev was born in Georgia, Russian Empire into a somewhat unstable family , and at the age of ten young Nikolai was sent to Moscow to find his own means of obtaining an education...
, was a leading mathematician who is regarded as a founder of the Moscow school of mathematics. His mother was not only highly intelligent but a famous society beauty, and the focus of considerable gossip. Young Boris was a polymath whose interests included mathematics, music, philosophy, and literature. He would go on to take part in both the Symbolist movement and the Russian school of neo-Kantianism
Neo-Kantianism
Neo-Kantianism refers broadly to a revived type of philosophy along the lines of that laid down by Immanuel Kant in the 18th century, or more specifically by Schopenhauer's criticism of the Kantian philosophy in his work The World as Will and Representation , as well as by other post-Kantian...
.
Nikolai Bugaev was well known for his influential philosophical essays, in which he decried geometry
Geometry
Geometry arose as the field of knowledge dealing with spatial relationships. Geometry was one of the two fields of pre-modern mathematics, the other being the study of numbers ....
and probability
Probability
Probability is ordinarily used to describe an attitude of mind towards some proposition of whose truth we arenot certain. The proposition of interest is usually of the form "Will a specific event occur?" The attitude of mind is of the form "How certain are we that the event will occur?" The...
and trumpeted the virtues of hard analysis
Mathematical analysis
Mathematical analysis, which mathematicians refer to simply as analysis, has its beginnings in the rigorous formulation of infinitesimal calculus. It is a branch of pure mathematics that includes the theories of differentiation, integration and measure, limits, infinite series, and analytic functions...
. Despite—or because of—his father's mathematical tastes, Boris Bugaev was fascinated by probability and particularly by entropy
Entropy
Entropy is a thermodynamic property that can be used to determine the energy available for useful work in a thermodynamic process, such as in energy conversion devices, engines, or machines. Such devices can only be driven by convertible energy, and have a theoretical maximum efficiency when...
, a notion to which he frequently refers in works such as Kotik Letaev.
Bely's creative works notably influenced—and were influenced by—several literary schools, especially symbolism. They feature a striking mysticism and a sort of moody musicality. The far-reaching influence of his literary voice on Russian writers (and even musicians) has frequently been compared to the impact of James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
in the English-speaking world. The novelty of his sonic effects has also been compared to the innovative music of Charles Ives
Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown, though Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives came to be regarded as an "American Original"...
.
As a young man, Bely was strongly influenced by his acquaintance with the family of philosopher Vladimir Solovyov
Vladimir Solovyov (philosopher)
Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov was a Russian philosopher, poet, pamphleteer, literary critic, who played a significant role in the development of Russian philosophy and poetry at the end of the 19th century...
, especially Vladimir's younger brother Mikhail, described in his long autobiographical poem The First Encounter (1921); the title is a reflection of Vladimir Solovyov's Three Encounters.
Bely's symbolist novel Petersburg
Petersburg (novel)
Petersburg or St. Petersburg is the title of Andrei Bely's masterpiece, a Symbolist work that foreshadows Joyce's Modernist ambitions. For various reasons the novel never received much attention and was not translated into English until 1959 by John Cournos, over 45 years after it was written,...
(1916; 1922) is generally considered to be his masterpiece. The book employs a striking prose method in which sounds often evoke colors. The novel is set in the somewhat hysterical atmosphere of turn-of-the-century Petersburg and the Russian Revolution of 1905
Russian Revolution of 1905
The 1905 Russian Revolution was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire. Some of it was directed against the government, while some was undirected. It included worker strikes, peasant unrest, and military mutinies...
. To the extent that the book can be said to possess a plot, this can be summarized as the story of the hapless Nikolai Apollonovich, a ne'er-do-well who is caught up in revolutionary politics and assigned the task of assassinating a certain government official—his own father. At one point, Nikolai is pursued through the Petersburg mists by the ringing hooves of the famous bronze statue of Peter the Great
Peter I of Russia
Peter the Great, Peter I or Pyotr Alexeyevich Romanov Dates indicated by the letters "O.S." are Old Style. All other dates in this article are New Style. ruled the Tsardom of Russia and later the Russian Empire from until his death, jointly ruling before 1696 with his half-brother, Ivan V...
.
In his later years Bely was influenced by Rudolph Steiner’s anthroposophy
Anthroposophy
Anthroposophy, a philosophy founded by Rudolf Steiner, postulates the existence of an objective, intellectually comprehensible spiritual world accessible to direct experience through inner development...
and became a personal friend of Steiner's.
Bely was one of the major influences on the theater of Vsevolod Meyerhold
Vsevolod Meyerhold
Vsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold was a great Russian and Soviet theatre director, actor and theatrical producer. His provocative experiments dealing with physical being and symbolism in an unconventional theatre setting made him one of the seminal forces in modern international theatre.-Early...
.
He is the namesake of the Andrei Bely Prize
Andrei Bely Prize
The Andrei Bely Prize is the oldest independent literary prize awarded in Russia. It was established in 1978 by the staff of Hours, the largest samizdat literary journal in Leningrad, to recognize excellence in three categories: prose, poetry, and theory...
, one of the most important prizes in Russian literature.
Research on rhythm in poems
Bely's essay Rhythm as Dialectic in The Bronze Horseman is cited in NabokovNabokov
Nabokov may refer to:* Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov , Russian-American author, entomologist, and chess problem composer* Vladimir Dmitrievich Nabokov , Russian criminologist, journalist, and liberal politician, and father of Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov* Nicolas Nabokov , Russian-American...
's novel The Gift, where it is mentioned as "monumental research on rhythm". Fyodor, poet and main character, praises the system Bely created for graphically marking off and calculating the 'half-stresses' in the iambs. Bely found that the diagrams plotted over the compositions of the great poets frequently had the shapes of rectangles and trapeziums. Fyodor, after discovering Bely's work, re-read all his old iambic tetrameter
Iambic tetrameter
Iambic tetrameter is a meter in poetry. It refers to a line consisting of four iambic feet. The word "tetrameter" simply means that there are four feet in the line; iambic tetrameter is a line comprising four iambs...
s from the new point of view, and was terribly pained to find out that the diagrams for his poems where instead plain and gappy. Nabokov's essay Notes on Prosody follows for the large part Bely's essay Description of the Russian iambic tetrameter (published in the collection of essays Symbolism, Moscow, 1910).
English Translations
Petersburg- John Cournos, Grove Press, 1959.
- Robert A. Maguire and John E. Malmstad, Indiana University Press, 1978.
- David McDuff, Penguin, 1995.
- John Elsworth, Pushkin Press, 2009.
The Silver Dove
- George Reavey, Grove Press, 1974.
- John Elsworth, Northwestern University Press, 2001.
Kotik Letaev
- Gerald Janecek, Ardis, 1971.
The Complete Short Stories
- Ronald E. Peterson, Ardis, 1979.
Selected Essays of Andrey Bely
- Steven Cassedy, University of California Press, 1985.
The Dramatic Symphony
- John Elsworth, Grove Press, 1987.
The Christened Chinaman
- Thomas Beyer, Hermitage, 1991.
In the Kingdom of Shadows
- Catherine Spitzer, Hermitage, 2001.