SOURCE: "The Symbolists," in A History of Russian Literature, edited by Francis J. Whitfield, 1949. Reprint by Alfred A. Knopf, 1966, pp. 430–84.

In the following excerpt from an essay that was originally published in 1926, Mirsky discusses stylistic aspects of Bely's poetry, focusing on its satirical, philosophical, and musical elements.

If Blok was the greatest of the symbolists, certainly the most original and influential was Bély. Unlike Blok, whose nearest affinities are in the past with the great romanticists, Bély is all turned towards the future, and, of all the symbolists, he has most in common with the futurists. The example of his prose especially revolutionized the style of Russian prose writing. Bély is a more complex figure than Blok—or even than any other symbolist; in this respect he can easily vie with the most complex and disconcerting figures in Russian literature, Gógol and Vladímir...