Gerald Janecek

Gerald Janecek describes the experiments in visual, literature conducted from 1900 to 1930, the heyday of the Russian Avant Garde. Focusing on an aspect of Russian literary history that has previously been almost ignored, he shows how Russian writers of this period tried unusual methods to make their texts visually interesting or expressive. The book includes 183 illustrations, most from rare publications and many reproduced for the first time. The author discusses such figures as the Symbolist Andrey Bely, the Futurists Aleksey Kruchonykh, Vasili Kamensky, and Vladimir Mayakovsky, and the post-Futurist Ilya Zdanevich, and their use of devices ranging from unorthodox layouts and florid typography to roughly done lithographed or handmade books. Originally published in 1984. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Avant-Garde Visual Experiments, 1900-1930

The Look of Russian Literature

Andrey Bely, novelist, essayist, theoretician, critic, and poet, was a central figure in the Russian Symbolist movement of the 1920s, the most important literary movement in Russia in this century. Bely articulated a Symbolist aesthetic and originated a new approach to the study of Russian metrics and versification, giving rise to a new scholarly discipline that still thrives in the West. Although regarded by some critics, including Vladimir Nabokov, as the author of the greatest Russian novel of this century, Bely has been nearly forgotten in his native country for ideological reasons. In the West he remains little known and generally under-valued. But with recent English translations of Kotik Letaev and his masterpiece, Petersburg, interest in Bely is increasing. Janecek's book brings together some of the best modern scholarship on Bely and the Russian Symbolist movement of the 1920s.

A Critical Review

Andrey Bely

A Russian novel which looks at childhood, seen through the eyes of a boy from the age of three to five years, in the 1800s.

Gerald Janecek

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