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On the Distinctive Features of A. Bely’s Book of Poetry, The Star

Eva Maliti


The paper analyses Andrei Bely’s (1870–1934) book of poetry, The Star, which occupies a distinctive position in his oeuvre. The poet thematizes Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy as a new teaching. The methods Bely uses in this collection as well as in his prose works from his Swiss-German period border on occultism. The verse rhythm based on Steiner’s eurhythmics, which reflects the vibration and the rhythms of a soul, plays the essential role in The Star. The poems record states of meditation and inspiration leading to the grasp of another reality. The evocation of a state of expansion and separation of the sensory body represents a topic of distinctive duplication which pervades the whole book beginning with the image of duplication of Bely and his friend, the German writer Christian Morgenstern, in two central poems. The poet creatively combined anthroposophy with the ideas of Russian symbolism. He used the experience of widened anthroposophical consciousness to artistically grasp the symbolist vision of the New Man and of the modern religious consciousness. Bely’s anthroposophical book of poetry has a ritual, initiatory character. It is also distinguished by the genre adapted to the essence of verses that often border between poetry and prose.


Keywords: Bely. Poetry. Anthroposophy. Morgernstern. Russian Symbolism. New Man.


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