SOURCE: "Symphonic Structure in Andrej Belyj's Pervoe Svidanie," California Slavic Studies, Vol. VI, 1971, pp. 61-70.

In the following essay, Karlinsky praises Bely's use of musical imagery, forms, and language in his book-length narrative poem The First Encounter.

A student of Russian poetry would have to go back to Lomonosov to find another Russian poet whose poetry is comparable to Andrej Belyj's in its scope and variety of erudition, spanning the most diverse fields. Certainly, no other twentieth-century poet has Belyj's grasp of physical and mathematical sciences, of speculative philosophy, of aesthetics, of linguistics, and of musical theory and practice….

Andrej Belyj … could write of musical theory and practice both in his prose (descriptions of concerts, recitals, and private musical performances in his Second Symphony, the chapter on Émilij Metner in Načalo veka, and the numerous passages on music in the rest of the autobiographical trilogy) and in...