The poetry of Alexandr Blok (1880-1921) marks the highest achievement of that fertile period in Russian literary history chiefly identified with the Symbolist movement. The aim of this book is to convey some idea of Blok's scope and development as a poet in a selection of fifty poems and it provides an editorial apparatus to facilitate understanding and appreciation.

The visionary, mystical element is present in most of Blok's poetry, but this does not preclude a considerable evolution - from highly personal lyrics of the early cycles through the 'transitional phase' of volume II, in which new themes reflecting the poet's broadening experience of life are combined with extensive formal experimentation. The result is some of the finest poetry in the Russian language since the death of Tyutchev (1873), and a unique record of the doubts, fears and hopes which accompanied an unusually sensitive intellectual's experience of the collapse of the world he knew and of the chaos and tensions of Russia's 'terrible years'.