Russian Symbolism

Russian Symbolism was the branch of the broader European Symbolist movement that developed in Russia from the 1890s through the 1910s, drawing on French Symbolist poetics while developing its own distinct mystical, often apocalyptic preoccupations shaped by Russian Orthodox thought and the philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov. Conventionally divided into an earlier, more decadent elder generation, including Valery Bryusov and Konstantin Balmont, and a later, more mystically and religiously inflected younger generation, including Alexander Blok and Andrei Bely, the movement treated poetry as a vehicle for intuiting a hidden spiritual reality beyond ordinary appearances rather than merely an aesthetic or decorative art. Blok's long poem The Twelve and Bely's novel Petersburg are among the movement's most enduring works, and Russian Symbolism is generally credited with inaugurating the Russian Silver Age of poetry, setting the stage for the Acmeist and Futurist movements that reacted against it in the years leading up to the Russian Revolution.