SOURCE: "Bely's Poetry and Verse Theory," in Andrey Bely: Spirit of Spiritualism, edited by John E. Malmstad, Cornell, 1987, pp. 243-84.

In the following excerpt, Smith elucidates the factors that have inhibited critical attention to Bely's poetry, in particular the poet's extensive revision of his work.

It is a remarkable and suggestive fact that we do not seem to possess an extended analysis, a close reading, of any single one of the 500-odd lyric poems published by Andrey Bely. One of his two longer poems, The First Encounter (Pervoe svidanie, 1921), has received more adequate critical attention; the other, Christ Is Risen (Khristos voskres, 1918), has not. Circumstances have combined to foster either partial studies with a narrow thematic focus or generalizing works that wrench small quotations out of context and make broad summary judgments. The prose works have always been studied more than the works in verse, and never in...