Knowra Alexander Blok Alexander Blok Alexander Blok (1880–1921) was a Russian poet and playwright, a leading figure of Russian Symbolism. His poem The Twelve became his best-known response to the Russian Revolution.
Russian Symbolism : A literary and artistic movement that used symbols, myth, and suggestion to express spiritual or hidden realities. Blok became one of the movement’s leading Russian poets.
The Twelve : Alexander Blok’s 1918 poem about twelve Red Guards moving through revolutionary Petrograd. Its jagged rhythms and startling religious ending made it his most debated poem.
Andrei Bely : A Russian Symbolist writer, poet, and theorist whose works include the novel Petersburg. Bely was both Blok’s fellow Symbolist and a close friend whose relationship with him became strained.
Silver Age of Russian Poetry : A period of intense innovation in Russian poetry around the turn of the twentieth century. Blok was among its defining poets, alongside writers who renewed Russian verse.
Russian Revolution : The political upheavals that ended imperial rule and established Soviet power in Russia between 1917 and 1923. The revolution supplied the historical setting and central force of Blok’s late poetry.
Symbolism : A late nineteenth-century artistic movement that conveyed ideas and emotions through suggestive images and symbols. Its broader European currents shaped the literary movement Blok joined.
Verses About the Beautiful Lady : Alexander Blok’s early poetry collection, centered on a mystical ideal of feminine beauty. It established the visionary and devotional mode of his first poetic period.
Dmitry Merezhkovsky : A Russian novelist, poet, and religious thinker associated with the beginnings of Russian Symbolism. His generation helped establish the movement in which Blok became a central figure.
Dmitri Mendeleev : A Russian chemist who formulated the periodic law and organized the periodic table of elements. Blok spent part of his childhood at the family estate of Mendeleev, his future father-in-law.
October Revolution : The Bolshevik seizure of power in Petrograd in October 1917, according to the Julian calendar then used in Russia. Blok’s The Twelve responds to the new revolutionary order that followed it.
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