Andrei Bely was a prolific genius of Russian Symbolism whose main achievements lay not just in the spheres of poetry, prose fiction, and philosophy but also in the fusion of different discourses into a singular and apocalyptic vision. Bely's breathless poetry betrayed a keen if idiosyncratic dialectical mind. His innovative prose prefigured the later achievements of the Western modernist novel and Gestalt psychology. In his lifetime he remained a major influence--and nuisance--to his Russian contemporaries. Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Blok, Valerii Iakovlevich Briusov, Maksim Gor'ky, Zinaida Nikolaevna Hippius, Vladislav Felitsianovich Khodasevich, Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva, and Maksimilian Aleksandrovich Voloshin called him their literary ally. Vladimir Vladimirovich Maiakovsky and Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov learned much from reading Bely, whereas Mikhail Alekseevich Kuzmin, Osip Emil'evich Mandel'shtam, and Leon Trotsky found his style unbearable. Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was the first to compare Bely's literary achievements to those of James Joyce. While Bely was often criticized...