Petersburg

📙 Andrei Bely was the pseudonym of Boris Nikolayevich Bugayev: a novelist, poet and critic, he became a leading figure amongst Russian Symbolist writers. Born in Moscow in 1880 he studied mathematics, zoology and philosophy at Moscow University, simultaneously interesting himself in art and mysticism. He began to publish in 1902 while still a student, adopting his pseudonym to spare his father, an eminent profes¬sor of mathematics, the embarrassment of public association with the still scandalous Symbolists. In 1914 he joined a Rudolf Steiner anthropo-sophical community in Switzerland. Returning to Russia in 1916 he welcomed the Revolution, but with the increasing restrictions placed upon artistic expression he became disillusioned. After making a forlorn attempt to revive the Symbolist aesthetic through the journal Zapiski mech-tateley, he emigrated again in 1921. Bely returned to Russia in 1923 and was left relatively undisturbed during his last years. His work continued to be published in small editions but was largely ignored; nevertheless the influence of his style and ideas upon other Soviet writers was considerable. On his death in 1934, Evgeny Zamyatin wrote of him: 'Mathematics, poetry, anthroposophy, fox-trot - these are some of the sharpest angles that make up the fantastic image of Andrei Bely ...