Between Crisis and Catastrophe

About the Book Andrei Bely was the greatest Russian writer of the twentieth century. Chiefly known outside of Russia as a novelist (his Petersburg is widely considered the best modern Russian novel), he was also a leading symbolist poet and profound philosophical critic. Bely was also a mystic who had an unsurpassed ability to express his visions in writing, and he often did so in the form of lyrical essays, a selection of which is offered here. Many of these essays were written as the twentieth century stood at the threshold of a new epoch. For Bely, a new religious consciousness was emerging, rooted in Vladimir Solovyov’s visions of Sophia and Nietzsche’s proclamation that a new man was on the verge of being created. A new dawn — both joyful and terrifying — was already visible on the horizon.