Alexander Blok ¹

He was born on November 28, 1880, in St. Petersburg. His father was a lawyer and professor at the University of Warsaw, and his mother was a writer (the daughter of Andrei Beketov, rector of St. Petersburg University). His parents soon separated, and the boy was raised by his mother and her family. Blok spent every summer at the Shakhmatovo estate near Moscow—a place that left a deep mark on his soul.
He began writing poetry as a child. As a teenager, he and his brothers published a handwritten magazine, "Vestnik." In 1891, he was enrolled in the second grade of the Vvedenskaya Gymnasium in St. Petersburg. In 1898, he graduated from the gymnasium and entered St. Petersburg University: initially in the Faculty of Law, but in 1901 he transferred to the Slavic-Russian Department of the Faculty of History and Philology, graduating in 1906. At university, Blok met Sergei Gorodetsky and Alexei Remizov.
A significant event was his meeting with Lyubov Dmitrievna Mendeleyeva (daughter of the chemist Dmitri Mendeleyev). They married in 1903. It was her image that inspired Blok's cycle "Poems about the Beautiful Lady" (published in 1904), which brought him fame. The poet's early poetry was strongly influenced by the philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov, in particular his concept of the Eternal Feminine.
In the early 1900s, Blok became close to the circle of Symbolists and met Andrei Bely, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, and Zinaida Gippius.