Pavel Florensky was a multifaceted thinker and scientist, one of the most accomplished twentieth-century representatives of a rich tradition of Russian philosopher-poets. Compared by some to Leonardo da Vinci because of his versatile and inventive mind, Florensky is closer to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in his striving to define the basic morphological principles and primary phenomena that undergird organic and spiritual life. He elaborated his approach as a theory of symbolism that is closely related to the Symbolist literary movement but cannot be completely identified with it: spiritual creativity reveals the immanent structures of life, which are rooted in the transcendent and which counteract the entropy that prevails in the physical cosmos. Poetry was a minor facet of his creative personality; of his verse, only about fifty poems and two longer poetic works have been published. Although Florensky's verse garnered him much less recognition than his theological, aesthetical...