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Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Blok, (born Nov. 28 [Nov. 16, Old Style], 1880, St. Petersburg, Russia—died Aug. 7, 1921, Petrograd [now St. Petersburg]), poet and dramatist, the principal representative of Russian Symbolism, a modernist literary movement that was influenced by its European counterpart but was strongly imbued with indigenous Eastern Orthodox religious and mystical elements.
Blok was born into a sheltered, intellectual environment. After his father, a law professor, and his mother, the cultured daughter of the rector of St. Petersburg University, separated, Blok was reared from age three in an atmosphere of artistic refineament at the manor of his aristocratic maternal grandparents. In 1903 Blok married Lyubov Mendeleyeva, daughter of the famous chemist D.I. Mendeleyev. To Blok, who began to write at age five, poetic expression came naturally. In 1903 he published for the first time, and his early verse communicates the exaltation and spiritual fulfillment his marriage brought.
