SOURCE: "Andrey Bely," in The Look of Russian Literature: Avant-Garde Visual Experiments, 1900—1930, Princeton University Press, 1984, pp. 25-67.

Janaček has translated The First Encounter by Bely and edited a collection of critical essays about him. In the following excerpt, he emphasizes the importance of typographical experimentation in Bely's poetry.

The modern history of Russian typographical experimentation can be said to have begun with the appearance in print of the first literary works by Andrey Bely (1880-1934). Though he remained conservative, or rather stayed within certain bounds, while others soon tried more radical things—thus relieving him of his avant-garde preeminence—he was nevertheless the first of the line and, in certain areas, the best. The year 1902, the date of the appearance of Symphony [Vtoraia simfoniia], Bely's first published work (actually his second work in the series of four "symphonies"), can be considered the chronological starting point of this...