Russian symbolist poet, memoirist, essayist and novelist, whose best-known work is Peterburg (1916, Petersburg), a baroque evocation of pre-revolutionary capital of Russia. Andrey Bely's masterpiece, with its playful use of language and literary experiments, has often been compared to James Joyce's Ulysses. The famous political thinker and essayist Isaiah Berlin has described Bely as "a man of strange and unheard-of insights – magical and a holy fool in the tradition of Russian Orthodoxy."

"On our part let us add: Apollon Apollonivich was not in the least agitated when he contemplated his ears, green all over and enlarged to immense size, against the bloody background of a Russia in flames. Thus had he recently been portrayed on the title page of a gutter rag, one of those trashy humor rags put out by the kikes, whose bloody covers in those days were spawned with staggering swiftness on prospects swarming with people . . ." (from Petersburg, translated, annotated, and introduced by Robert A. Maguire and John E. Malmstrad, Indiana University Press, 1978, p. 5

Andrey Bely was born Boris Nikolayevich Bugaev in Moscow, the only child of a prominent professor of mathematics, Nikolay Vasilevich Bugaev, and Aleksandra Dmitrievna (née Egorova), a society woman. The marriage of his  parents was not a happy one and he was used as a pawn in their battles. To distance Bely from his father, Aleksandra dressed him like a girl, and covered up his "mathematician's forehead" by keeping his hair long.

At an early age, Bely developed a passion for German music, especially for Wagner. Aleksandra, who was a gifted pianist, played Chopin and Beethoven in the evenings, and went to conserts with him. His father never accompanied them and he did not encourage Bely's interest in Wagner. (Wagner and Russia by Rosamund Bartlett, 1995, p. 140-142)

Before becoming "a writer by accident," Bely received a thoughtful education in the natural sciences at the University of Moscow, where he studied from 1899 to 1906 science, philology and philosophy. Bely was also interested in romantic music, religion, mysticism, Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Kant and Maeterlinck affected him also. With the publication of his first prose work, he took the pen name Andrey Bely ("Andrew White"), partly because colors had for him a special significance and parly to avoid embarrassing his father, who was the dean of the faculty of science at Moscow. A positivist, he supported strongly the doctrine that all true knowledge was scientific. Bely's conflict with his father provided him a recurring theme in his works – in Petersburg a son plans to assassinate his father, a reactionary senator.

Bely was the most talented novelist of the "second-generation" of writers, who emerged from the Symbolist movement at the turn of the century. The period is commonly called the "Silver Age." Symbolists emphasized spiritual and mystical elements in art. Bely believed that it is possible to acquire knowledge of the "world beyond" through the contemplation of artistic "symbols." In his youth he had frequented the salon of M.S. Solovyov, and was introduced in the apocalyptic philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov (1853-1900), who regarded poetic symbols as "windows on eternity".

Bely's four Symphonies (1902-1908) were attempted to create a new literary form, which combined prose, poetry, music, and even, in part, painting. Anticipating structuralist-semiotic theories, he argued that a word has a logical meaning, and a certain phonetic sound has an emotional meaning. In the essay 'The Magic of Words' (1909) Bely stated that the word is a magical, world-creating force: "The word begot myth; myth begot religion; religion begot philosophy; and philosophy begot the term." (By "the term" he meant abstract thought.) (New Myth, New World: From Nietzsche to Stalinism by Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002, p. 104)

Zoloto v lazuri (1904), Bely's first collection of verse, appeared when he was 24. Its optimistic in tone changed after the failure of the 1905 revolution into disillusionment in Pepel (1909). Urna (1909) was a collection of love lyrics. The three collections were typographically innovative and used daring metaphors. Urna was inspired by Bely's affair with Aleksandr Blok's wife Liubov Mendeleev – he later depicted his fellow poet in Vospominaniya o Bloke (1923). Bitterness between Blok and Bely led them to challenge each other to duels. However, some kind of truce was achieved when Bely fell in love with another woman. In 1909 he met the eighteen-year-old Asia Turgenieva, the grand niece of Ivan Turgenev. They married in 1912, but the date of their marriage, usually given as 1914, in Bern, Switzerland, is according to some sources perhaps a civil marriage required by Swiss law. They separated in 1921.

From 1903 to 1909 Bely contributed actively to the journal Vesy. He then worked for the publishing house Musagetes 1909-10. Bely's first novel, Serebryany golub (1909, Silver Dove), was structurally based on oppositions – the division between intelligentsia an the folk, spiritualism and eroticism, rationality and instincts. The protagonist, Petr Dar'ial'skii, is a young philosopher and poet. He searches spiritual revival, spends time among simple rural people, and is involved with an eschatological religious sect, the Doves. It is headed by an impotent carpenter, Kudearov, who has selected Dar'ial'skii as the surrogate father for a Dove-child. Later Bely claimed that he had foreseen in this novel the rise of Rasputin and Rasputinism.

Petersburg was a story of conspiracy and betrayal set in the days of the 1905 Revolution. In writing the novel, Bely especially studied the language of Pushkin and Gogol, becoming himself one of the masters of the written word. Yevgeny Zamyatin said that Bely's Petersburg has the same complicated relation to the Russian language that Ulysses has to English.

After P.B. Struve refused to publish the early version of the novel in the journal Russian Thought, Bely continued his work, and in 1913-14 it appeared in the almanac Sirin, and later in book form. Still dissatisfied with the text, Bely started a series of revisions, and this version was printed in Berlin in 1922. In the Soviet Union Petersburg was published in 1928. Originally it was conceived as the second part of Bely's East and West trilogy, the first part was The Silver Dove. The third part was never written. The novel remained unknown to English-speaking readers until John Cournos's translation of 1959. Later Robert Maguire and John Malmstad produced the definitive English version of the 1922 ("Berlin") text.

The Russian Estonian semiotician Yuri Lotman has said in that St. Petersburg is inseparable from its mythology. The city contains two achetypes: the "eternal Rome" and the "non-eternal, doomed, Rome" (Constantinople). (Universe of the Mind by Yuri Lotman, 1990, p. 192) Bely was a Muscovite and his attitude toward the imperial metropolis was deeply negative. Anna Akhmatova often said that for Petersburgers the novel Petersburg was not the real city. Like Gogol and Dostoevsky before him, Bely portrayed the world of Moscow's rival in fantastic terms, mixing hallucination with reality. At the same time the book was both the culmination of the Petersburg theme in the great tradition in Russian fiction and a total annihilation of its imperial image.

In the story a group of radicals plan the assassination of Senator Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov, but their act of revolution turns into a farce and a patricide, which eventually fails. The bomb is camouflaged as a can of sardines, Nikolai Apollonovich Ableukhov manages to lose it, and blows up his father's study. Bely's text is full of hallucinatory images – the Bronze Horseman visits Apollon Apollonovich, and the section mark, "the natural devourer of papers, a phylloxera," turns into the thirteenth sign of the zodiac. "What a vile idea the book has – 'Petersburg will stand empty.' What did Petersburg ever do to him," said Ivan Bunin. (St. Petersburg: A Cultural History by Solomon Volkov, 1995, p. 215) Bunin himself wrote of the decay of the Russian nobility.

During the writing of Petersburg Bely became interested in anthroposophy. He read also Helene Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine. The years 1910-16 Bely spent abroad and living several years in Dornach, Switzerland, as Rudolf Steiner's (1861-1925) discipline. At that time the Goetheanum, an anthroposophical temple and centre, was under construction, and Bely worked at the site. Asia Turgeneva immersed herself in Anthroposophy. In 1916 Bely returned to Russia – he was called up for military duty, but back in his homeland he avoided serving in the military. Asia remained in Dornach for the rest of her life. 

"He had, as it were, a therapeutic smile," Bely wrote later of Steiner, "the countenance blossomed in the abundance of perfect love into a barely discernible rose-exuding fragrance. He only 'bestowed' a smile, but one felt that one had nothing of the kind to give in return." (Reminiscences of Rudolf Steiner by Andrei Belyi, Aasya Turgenieff, Margarita Voloschin, 1987, p. 8) Steiner believed that through training individuals could retrieve their innate capacity to perceive a spiritual realm, a subconscious cosmic memory. One exercise involved the concentrated recollection of life before one was born. The influence of his thoughts marked Kotik Letayev (1917-18), an autobiographical work on his childhood which he started to write in Switzerland, Zapiski chudaka (1922), and Glossolalia (1922). Bely's narrative poem 'Pervoe svidanye' is considered his greatest lyrical achievement. Among his later works is Kreshchony kitayets (1927), drawn from the sounds of Schumann's Kreisleriana, and Maski (1933), his last novel which Bely called a "lyrical epic poem."

During the revolution and civil war Bely lived in poverty, but he welcomed the fall of the tsarist regime with the poem 'Khristos voskrese' (1918), in which he praised new future with Messianic tones. Between the years 1917 and 1921 he worked as a lecturer in Moscow and Petrograd. In 1921, after Blok's death, Bely left for Berlin, where he spent a few years.

The Café Landgraf in the large Russian quarter became a favorite meeting place; it was called the House of Arts. Such writers as Bely, Sergei Esenin, Boria Pasternak, Aleksei Tolstoy, and Marina Tsvetaeva recited there their prose or poetry. Depressed by the breakup with his wife, Bely often sought Tsvetaeva's company; she was his harbor. Her daughter Ariadna tells that Bely had "crazy eyes, like those of a cat." (No Love Without Poetry: The Memoirs of Marina Tsvetaeva's Daughter by Ariadna Efron, 2009, p. 225) Bely and others founded a local branch of Petrograd's Free Philosophical Association. Finding exile untolerable, Bely returned to the Soviet Union in 1923, but the home-coming turned sour, when Leon Trotskii denounced him in his Marxist literary study Literature and Revolution. "I returned to my grave," Bely concluded and appealed to Stalin. In August 1926 Bely was struck by a streetcar. His final years he spent in the village of Kuchino, outside Moscow.

Bely was known for his suddenly changing intellectual and political stands, and now he expressed his belief in Marxism, although he did not abandon his anthroposophical ideas and friends. In July 1931 Bely married Klavdiia Nikolaevna Vasil'eva; they had been living together since 1923. An anthroposophist, she was arrested in May 1931 and spent 6 weeks in prison. Bely's trilogy of memoirs, which appeared in the early 1930s, depicted Russian social and cultural life before, during and after the revolution. Bely also revised much of the poetry he had written earlier during his career. His last book was Masterstvo Gogolya (1934), a detailed study of Gogol's language and style.

Bely died from internal beeding in his cranium, on January 8, 1934. A year later the Russian linguist and literary theorist Roman Jacobson indicated that the prose of Bely, Maiakovskii, Pasternak and others was already opening up "hidden paths to a revival of  Russian  prose." (Boris Pasternak: His Life and Art by Guy de Mallac, A Condor Book, 1981, p. 348) However, following the enforcement of Socialist Realism as the dominant aesthetic dogma, a large quantity of Bely's writings remained unpublished. After 1940 Bely's works were banned, but the ban was partly lifted in 1965. Petersburg was not republished in Russia between 1935 and 1978. The first English version came out in 1959. "Apart from gross misreadings, it makes numerous cuts, which eliminate, among other things, virtually the entire persona of the narrator, whose presence is essential to any real understanding of what Bely is up to." ('Translators' Introduction', in Petersburg by Andrei Bely, translated, annotated, and introduction by Robert A. Maguire and John E. Malmstad, Indiana University Press, 2018, p. xxviii)

Bely's writing influenced among others Yury Olesha (1899-1960), Boris Pilnyak (1984-1941), and the early works of the Nobel writer Boris Pasternak. ". . . of course Andrey Bely was a genius – Petersburg, Kotik Letaev are full of wonderful things – I know that, you need not tell me – but his influence was fatal," Pasternak once said to Isaiah Berlin. (The Proper Study of Mankind by Isiah Berlin, edited by Henry Hardy and Roger Hausheer, 1998, p. 529) In the 1960s Pasternak supported financially Bely's widow and others in need.

For further reading: The Frenzied Poets: Andrei Bely and the Russian Symbolists by O.A. Maslenikov (1952); Andrej Belyjs Romane. Stil und Gestalt by Anton Hönig (1965); Andrey Bely: A Critical Study of the Novels by J.D. Elsworth (1972); The Apocalyptic Symbolism of Andrey Bely by Samuel D. Cioran (1973); Andrei Bely: His Life and Works by Konstantin Mochulskii (1977); Andrey Bely: A Critical Review, edited by Gerald Janacek (1978); Andrej Belyi's "Petersburg," James Joyce's "Ulysses," and the Symbolist Movement by Alexander Woronzoff (1982); Andrei Bely: The Major Symbolist Fiction by Vladimir Alexandrov (1985); Andrei Bely's "Petersburg" and the Cult of Dionysus by Robert Mann (1986); Andrey Bely: Spirit of Symbolism by J.E. Malmstad (1987); Andrei Belyi v 1900-e gody by A.V. Lavrov (1995); Andrei Belyi i teatr by T. Nikolesku (1995); The Reluctant Modernist: Andrei Belyi and the Development of Russian Fiction by Roger Keys (1996); The Stony Dance: Unity and Gesture in Andrey Bely's Petersburg by Timothy Langen (2005); The Silver Mask: Harlequinade in the Symbolist Poetry of Blok and Belyi by Olga Yu. Soboleva (2008); Twelve Essays on Andrej Belyj's Peterburg by Magnus Ljunggren (2009); The Red Jester: Andrei Bely's Petersburg as a Novel of the European Modern by Judith Wermuth-Atkinson (2012); Andrei Bely: Life Literature Symbolism Anthroposophy by Daniel H. Shubin (2017); Master seriĭnogo samosochineniia Andreĭ Belyĭ by Masha Levina-Parker (2018); A Reader's Guide to Andrei Bely's Petersburg, edited by Leonid Livak (2018); 'Intfroduction,' in The Symphonies, translated by Jonathan Stone (2021)    

Selected works:

• Simfoniya, 2-ya, dramaticheskaya, 1902 [The Dramatic Symphony]
  - The Symphonies (translated by Jonathan Stone, 2021)
• Severnaya simfoniya, 1904 [Northern Symphony]
  - The Symphonies (translated by Jonathan Stone, 2021)
• Zoloto v lazuri, 1904 [Gold in Azure]
  
• Vozvrat, 3-ya simfoniya, 1905 [Return]
  - The Symphonies (translated by Jonathan Stone, 2021)
  
• Kubok meteley, 4-ya simfoniya, 1908 [A Goblet of Blizzards]
  - The Symphonies (translated by Jonathan Stone, 2021)
• Pepel, 1909 [Ashes]
  
• Urna, 1909
• Serebryany golub, 1909
  - The Silver Dove (translated by George Reavey, 1974; John Elsworth, 2000)
• Lug zelenyi, 1910
• Simvolizm, 1910
• Arabeski, 1911
• Tragediia tvorchestva: Dostoevskii i Tolstoi, 1911
• Peterburg, 1916
  - St. Petersburg (translated by John Cournos, 1959); Petersburg (translated by Robert A. Maguire and John E. Malmstad, 1978); Petersburg (translated by David McDuff, 1995; John Elsworth, 2009)
  - Peterburg' (suom. Esa Adrian, 1968)
• Chetyre simfonii, 1917
• Rudol'f Shteiner i Gete v mirovozzrenii sovremennosti, 1917 [Rudolf Steiner and Goethe from a Contemporary Point of View]
• Revoliutsiia i kul'tura, 1917
• Kotik Letaev, 1917-18
  - Kotik Letaev (translated by Gerald Janecek, 1971, rev. ed. 1999)
• Kristos voskres, 1918 [Christ Has Risen]
  
• Na perevale, 1918-20 (3 vols.)
• Sirin uchenogo varvarstva, 1918
• Korolevna i rytsari, 1919
• Pervoe svidanie, 1921
  - The First Encounter (translated by Gerald Janecek, with Nina Berberova, 1979)
• Kreshchennyi kitaets, 1921
  - The Christened Chinaman (translated by Thomas R. Beyer, Jr., 1991)
• Posle razluki, 1922
• Vozvrashchen'e na rodinu, 1922
• Zapiski chudaka, 1922
• Zvezda, 1922
• Glossalaliaa: poema o zvuke, 1922
• O smusle poznaniia, 1922
• Putevye zametki: Sitsiliya i Tunis, 1922
• Stikhi o Rossii, 1922
• Poeziia slova: Pushkin, Tyutchev, Baratynsky, V. Ivanov, A. Blok, 1922 [Poetry of the Word]
• Stikhotvoreniia, 1923
• Vospominaiya ob A.A.Bloke, 1922 (2 vols.)
• Odna iz obitelei tsarstva tenei, 1924 [In the Kingdom of the Shades]
• Moskva, 1926 (2 vols.) [Moscow]
  
• Moskivskii chudak, 1926
• Moskva pod udarom, 1926
• Kreshchyony kitaets, 1927
• Veter s Kavkaza, 1928
• Ritm kak dialektika i "mednyi vsadnik", 1929
• Na rubezhe dvukh stoletiy, 1930
• Maski, 1932 [Masks]
  
• Nachalo veka, 1933
• Mezhdu dvukh revolyutsiy, 1934
• Masterstvo Gogolia; issledovanie, 1934
  - Gogol’s Artistry (translated from the Russian and with an introduction by Christopher Colbath; foreword by Vyacheslav Ivanov, 2009)
• Stikhotvoreniia, 1940
• A. Blok i A. Belyi: perepiska, 1940
• Vospominaniya A.A. Bloke, 1964
• Stikhotvoreniia i poemy, 1966 (edited by T. Yu. Khmel'nitskaya)
• Complete Short Stories, 1979 (edited by Ronald E. Peterson)
• Rasskazy, 1979
• Kak i stal simvolistom, 1982
• Vospominaniia o Shteinere, 1982
• Stikhotvoreniia, 1982-84 (3 vols., edited by John E. Malmstad)
• Selected Essays of Andrey Bely, 1985
• Gibel' senatora (Peterburg). Istoricheskaia drama, 1986
• Stikhotvoreniia, 1990 (2 vols.)
• Simfonii, 1991
  - The Symphonies (translated by Jonathan Stone, 2021)
  
• Simvolizm kak miroponimanie, 1994
• Kritika. Estetika. Teoriia simvolizma, 1994 (2 vols.)
• Sobranie sochinenii: stikhotvoreniia i poemy, 1994
• Stikhotvoreniia, 1994-95 (4 vols.)
• Serebrianyi golub'. Rasskazy, 1995
• Moskva. Drama v piati deistviaakh, 1997
• Sobranie stikhotvorenii, 1914, 1997 (edited by A.V. Lavrov)
• Andreĭ Belyi i Ivanov-Razumnik--perepiska, 1998 (edited by A. V. Lavrov and D. Malmstad)
• Andreĭ Belyi i Aleksandr Blok--perepiska 1903-1919, 2001 (edited by A.V. Lavrov)
  
•  "Vash rytsarʹ": pisʹma k M.K. Morozovoi, 1901-1928, 2006 (edited by A. V. Lavrov and Dzhona Malmstad)
  
• Perepiska, 1902-1932 / Andrei Belyi, Alekseĭ Petrovskii, 2007 (edited by D. Malmstad)
  
• Perepiska, 1928-1933 / Andrei Belyi, Sannikov Grigorii, 2009 (edited by D.G. Sannikov)
  
• Nachalo veka: Berlinskaia redaktsiia (1923), 2014 (edited by A.V. Lavrov)
  
• Andrei Belyi: avtobiograficheskie svody, 2016 (edited by A.V. Lavrova and Dzh. Malmstada)
• The Moscow Eccentric, 2016 (edited by Brendan Kiernan)
  
• Between Crisis and Catastrophe: Lyrical and Mystical Essays, 2016 (compiler, translator: Boris Jakim)
  
• Andrei Belyi, Emilii Metner: perepiska 1902-1915, 2017 (2 vols.; edited by A.V. Lavrova and Dzh. Malmstada)
  
• Zhezl Aarona: raboty po teorii slova 1916--1927 gg., 2018 (sostavlenie, podgotovka teksta, vstupitelʹnaia statʹia, tekstologicheskie spravki i kommentarii E.V. Glukhovoĭ, D.O. Torshilova; otvetstvennyĭ redaktor O.A. Korostelev)
  
• Istoriia stanovleniia samosoznaiushcheĭ dushi, 2020 (sostavlenie, podgotovka izdaniia M.P. Odesskiĭ, M.L. Spivak, Kh. Shtalʹ; otvetstvennye redaktory O.A. Korostelev, M.L. Spivak)
  
• "Vse mysli dlia vykhoda v svet -- zaperty": dnevniki 1930-kh godov, 2021 (sostavlenie, vstupitelʹnaia statʹia, podgotovka teksta i kommentarii Moniki Spivak)
• The Symphonies, 2021 (translated by Jonathan Stone)