Alexander Blok

Origins and early years

Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Blok was born in Saint Petersburg on 28 November 1880 into an intellectual family. His father, Aleksandr Lvovich Blok, was a law professor in Warsaw, and his maternal grandfather, Andrei Beketov, a well-known botanist, served as rector of Saint Petersburg State University. After his parents separated, the boy was raised by aristocratic relatives at the estate of Shakhmatovo, near Moscow, a setting that shaped his sensibility.

Poetic formation

At Shakhmatovo he discovered the philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov and the verse of two then-neglected nineteenth-century poets, Fyodor Tyutchev and Afanasy Fet. These influences shaped his first publications, later collected in Ante Lucem. From the start his lyric was marked by musicality, though he later sought daring rhythms and uneven beats.

Marriage and the Beautiful Lady

On 17 August 1903 he married Lyubov Mendeleeva, daughter of the chemist Dmitri Mendeleev. She became the centre of his early work: to her he dedicated the Verses About the Beautiful Lady (1904), the cycle that made him famous and that turns his wife into an archetype of the feminine soul and the eternal feminine. Later, her involvement with the Symbolist Andrei Bely drew him into a complicated relationship of love and rivalry.

Between the ideal and the everyday

Blok could draw unforgettable images from the most banal surroundings and trivial events, as in Fabrika (1903). His mature poems often rest on the conflict between Platonic ideal beauty and the disappointing reality of industrial life, as in The Stranger (1906). In The City (1904–08) he drew a St Petersburg that is both impressionistic and eerie. Later collections, including Faina and The Mask of Snow, enlarged his reputation.

Drama, politics and revolution

He also wrote Symbolist plays such as The Puppet Show (1906) and The King in the Square (1906). He greeted the 1905 revolution with enthusiasm, and in his last period he turned more openly to political themes and the messianic destiny of his country, in works such as The Retribution and The Scythians. After 1917 his feelings were mixed: the revolution brought hope, but he soon grew disillusioned. The Bolsheviks nonetheless continued to honour him despite his earlier religious imagery. His poem The Twelve (January–February 1918) provoked controversy even among fellow Symbolists. It depicts twelve Red Guards in the chaos of the Civil War, likened to the Apostles, while "ahead of them Jesus Christ goes." He used colloquial language, polyphonic rhythms and the space of the page to shape the poem's rhythm.

Last years and death

After the revolution he wrote relatively little. By 1921 he was disillusioned; he told Korney Chukovsky that all sounds had stopped. He fell ill with asthma, and he had earlier suffered from scurvy. His doctors asked that he be allowed to travel abroad for treatment, but permission came too late. Maxim Gorky pleaded on his behalf, and the exit visa was granted only after Blok had died on 7 August 1921 in Petrograd. He was buried in the Smolensk cemetery and later moved to the Volkovo cemetery.

Legacy

Anna Akhmatova, Marina Tsvetaeva, Boris Pasternak and Vladimir Nabokov wrote verse tributes to him, and he is now regarded as one of the most important poets of the Russian Silver Age, often compared with Alexander Pushkin. His memory is preserved in the museum at Shakhmatovo, in a museum in St Petersburg, in a street named after him and in the minor planet 2540 Blok. Composers such as Dmitri Shostakovich and Georgy Sviridov set his poems to music.