The directory «Plots»
Bely (Áåëûé) Andrey
(1880–1934)
Andrey Bely was the pseudonym of Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev, a Russian novelist, poet, theorist, and literary critic. His miasmal and profoundly disturbing novel «Petersburg» was regarded by Vladimir Nabokov as one of the four greatest novels of the twentieth century.
Boris Bugaev was born into a prominent intellectual family. His father, Nikolay Bugaev, was a leading mathematician who is regarded as a founder of the Moscow school of mathematics. His mother was not only highly intelligent but a famous society beauty, and the focus of considerable gossip. Young Boris was a polymath whose interests included mathematics, music, philosophy, and literature. He would go on to found both the Symbolist movement and the Russian school of neo-Kantianism.
Nikolay Bugaev was well known for his influential philosophical essays, in which he decried geometry and probability and trumpeted the virtues of hard analysis. Despite-- or because of-- his father's mathematical tastes, Boris Bugaev was fascinated by probability and particularly by entropy, a notion to which he frequently refers in works such as «Kotik Letaev».
Bely's creative works notably influenced—and were influenced by—several literary schools, especially symbolism. They feature a striking mysticism and a sort of moody musicality. The far-reaching influence of his literary voice on Russian writers (and even musicians) has frequently been compared to the impact of James Joyce in the English-speaking world. The novelty of his sonic effects has also been compared to the innovative music of Charles Ives.
Bely's symbolist novel «Petersburg» (1916; 1922) is generally considered to be his masterpiece. The book is vivid and memorable, and employs a striking prose method in which sounds often evoke colors. The novel is set in the somewhat hysterical atmosphere of turn-of-the-century Petersburg and the Russian Revolution of 1905. To the extent that the book can be said to possess a plot, this can be summarized as the story of the hapless Nikolay Apollonovich, a never-do-well who is caught up in revolutionary politics and assigned the task of assassinating a certain government official—his own father. Nikolay is pursued through the impenetrable Petersburg mists by the ringing hooves of the famous bronze statue of Peter the Great.
In his later years Bely was influenced by Rudolph Steiner’s anthroposophy and became a personal friend of Steiner's.
Bely has been credited with foretelling in this novel, which some have called semi-autobiographical, the Russian Revolution, the rise of totalitarianism, political terrorism, and even chaos theory.
USSR, 1991, 
Mikhail Chekhov as Ableukhov
Russia, 2005, 
125th Birth Anniv of Andrey Bely
