Alexander Blok

"The creative work of Alexander Blok – is an entire poetical epoch, an epoch of the recent past. The renowned master-symbolist, Blok had an enormous impact on the whole of contemporary poetry. To this day, some are unable to break free from his bewitching lines – having taken one of Blok’s words, they develop it into whole pages, building on it all of their own poetical wealth. Others have overcome the romanticism of his early period, and now wage a poetical war and, having cleansed the soul of the clouds of symbolism, they burrow through the foundation of new rhythms, pile up the boulders of new forms, fasten the lines with new rhymes – give us heroic labor, building the poetry of the future. But both, the former and the latter, remember Blok with the same feeling of love..."

Vladimir Mayakovsky, 1921