ABSTRACT
Early Life Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Blok was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on November 28, 1880, into a family of the gentry. His father, Aleksandr L. Blok, was a jurist, a professor of law at Warsaw University, and a talented musician. His mother, the former Aleksandra A. Beketova, was a writer. Blok's parents divorced soon after he was born, and he spent much of his childhood in the family of his maternal grandfather, Andrei Beketov, a botanist and rector of the University of St. Petersburg, in St. Petersburg and at his estate, Shakhmatovo, near Moscow. Blok rarely saw his father. In 1889, Blok's mother married an officer, F. F. KublitskyPiottukh, and the family moved back to St. Petersburg. After graduation from the Gymnasium, Blok entered the law school at the University of St. Petersburg, but in 1901 he transferred to the historical philology faculty. He was graduated in 1906. Blok had an early interest in drama and in becoming an actor, but by the age of eighteen he had begun to write poetry seriously and was almost immediately successful.
