ABSTRACT
The leading Russian Symbolist poet was Aleksandr Blok, other important representatives being Annensky, Balmont, Bely, Bryusov, Zinaida Gippius, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Kuzmin, and Sologub. Most of these influenced the four poets, but without converting them to Symbolism. The Russian public is no less sensitive to poetry than the Russian government, as is vividly illustrated by the warning once given to an American translator who had rashly described Blok as “highly overrated”; he was told by a compatriot of Blok’s that if he said such a thing in Russia he would be lynched on the spot. The conflict between the Russian poet and the Russian State goes back to the early nineteenth century, when one minor poet was hanged and others were imprisoned or exiled for involvement in the abortive Decembrist coup which followed the death of the Emperor Alexander I in 1825. To the sensitive eye and ear the poets’ seemingly tame or conventional approach is nothing of the sort.
