SOURCE: An introduction to Selected Works of Nikolai S. Gumilev, edited and translated by Burton Raffel and Alla Burago, State University of New York Press, 1972, pp. 3-26.

In the following excerpt, Monas places Gumilev and his works in the context of early twentieth-century Russian literary culture.

Gumilev lived in a world of obstacles. At home, as a child, he had an older brother and a morose father to rival him for the attention of a young mother and a pretty girl cousin. Later, there were the Symbolists; and, above all, Alexander Blok. Conscious of his own homeliness and awkwardness, he was a performer, a surmounter, an over-reacher. He cultivated the matter-of-fact ease of the tightrope walker and the assurance of the trapeze artist: the difficult and dangerous act carried through with unflappable sang-froid. Those who knew him well write nevertheless of his freshness of spirit and his childlike...