Andrei Bely (Андрей Белый) was the pseudonym of Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev (1880 - 1934), a Russian novelist, poet, theorist, and literary critic. His creative works followed theories of different kinds in different periods (mystical, musical, symbolist ideas current of the early 20th century) which lead to striking, unusual prose styles and methods. His methods and impact could be compared to James Joyce (in English language literature). The impact of mystical ideas on his music could be compared to Charles Ives (the American composer).
Readers commonly consider his symbolist novel Petersburg (1913) to be his masterpiece. It is vivid and memorable, with a unusual prose method in which for example sounds evoke colors. Set in a time of social chaos, revolutionaries unknowingly assign the protagonist comrade to assassinate a government official, who is his own father. The protagonist is pursued through the city streets by the ringing hooves of the famous bronze statue of Peter the Great.
Bibliography
1902 "Second Symphony, the Dramatic";
1904 "The Northern, or First--Heroic";
1904 "Gold in Azure" (poetry);
1905 "The Return--Third";
1908 "Goblet of Blizzards--Fourth";
1909 "Ash";
1909 "Urn" (poetry);
1910 "Symbolism" (criticism/theory);
1910 "Green Meadow" (criticism);
1910 "The Silver Dove" (novel);
1911 "Arabeques" (criticism);
1914 "Kotik Letaev" (novel based on his childhood);
1917 "Revolution and Culture";
1918 "Christ Has Risen" (poem);
1922 "Recollections of Blok";
1926 "The Moscow Eccentric" (1st of trilogy of novels);
1926 "Moscow Under Seige" (2nd of trilogy of novels);
1927 "The Baptized Chinaman";
1931 "Masks" (3rd of trilogy of novels);
1930 "At the Border of Two Centuries" (1st memoir of trilogy);
1933 "The Beginning of the Century" (2nd memoire of trilogy);
1934 "Between Two Revolutions" (3rd memoire of trilogy);
1934 "Rhythm as Dialectic in The Bronze Horseman" (criticism);
Each of them is a being, and, since the same can be said of everything else, we cannot avoid the conclusion that being is the only property certainly shared in common by all that which is. Being, then, is the fundamental and ultimate element of reality.
Being is quite conceivable apart from actual existence; so much so that the very first and the most universal of all the distinctions in the realm of being is that which divides it into two classes, that of the real and that of the possible.
The question of the nature of being first arose in the context of Parmenides' series of logical dichotomies between being and nonbeing (me on): that which is, cannot not be; that which is not, cannot be, i.e., a denial of passage from being to nonbeing or genesis (q.v.; fr.
Being is the notion implicit only: its special forms have the predicate ‘is’; when they are distinguished they are each of them an ‘other’: and the shape which dialectic takes in them, i.e.
Being, as we first apprehend it, is something utterly abstract and characterless; but it is the very essence of Being to characterise itself, and its complete characterisation is reached in Measure.
Being or immediacy, which by the negation of itself is a mediation with self and a reference to self — which consequently is also a mediation which cancels itself into reference to self, or immediacy — is Essence.
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