Bely, Andrey - Gerald Janačk (essay date 1984)
Gerald Janačk (essay date 1984)
SOURCE: "Andrey Bely," in The Look of Russian Literature: Avant-Garde Visual Experiments, 1900—1930, Princeton University Press, 1984, pp. 25-67.
[Janaček has translated The First Encounter by Bely and edited a collection of critical essays about him. In the following excerpt, he emphasizes the importance of typographical experimentation in Bely's poetry.]
The modern history of Russian typographical experimentation can be said to have begun with the appearance in print of the first literary works by Andrey Bely (1880-1934). Though he remained conservative, or rather stayed within certain bounds, while others soon tried more radical things—thus relieving him of his avant-garde preeminence—he was nevertheless the first of the line and, in certain areas, the best. The year 1902, the date of the appearance of Symphony [Vtoraia simfoniia], Bely's first published work (actually his...
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