Blok, Aleksandr

Blok, Aleksandr (Aleksandrovich)

(born Nov. 28, 1880, St. Petersburg, Russia—died Aug. 7, 1921, Petrograd [St. Petersburg]) Russian poet and dramatist. He was the principal representative of Russian Symbolism (see Symbolist movement). He later rejected what he termed their sterile bourgeois intellectualism and embraced the Bolshevik movement as essential for the redemption of the Russian people. Influenced by early 19th-century Romantic poetry, he wrote musical verse in which sound was paramount. His preeminent work of impressionistic verse was the enigmatic ballad The Twelve (1918), which united the Russian Revolution and Christianity in an apocalyptic vision. In the era of postrevolutionary hardship he declined into mental and physical illness, possibly brought on by venereal disease, and died at 40.