In Boundlessness
In Boundlessness (Russian: В безбрежности, romanized: V bezbrezhnosti) is a second major poetry collection by Konstantin Balmont, first published in 1895 in Moscow. Following Under the Northern Sky, it features 95 poems, some of which bear first signs of the author's experiments with the Russian language's musical and rhythmical structures he would later become famous for.
| Author | Konstantin Balmont |
|---|---|
| Original title | В безбрежности |
| Country | Russian Empire |
| Language | Russian |
| Genre | Russian Symbolism |
Publication date | 1895 |
| Media type | print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Preceded by | Under the Northern Sky |
| Followed by | Silence |
The book came with an epigraph from Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov: "Kiss the earth and love tirelessly and insatiably; love everyone and everything, keep seeking delight and ecstasy." Balmont read Crime and Punishment at sixteen, and The Brothers Karamazov a year later. "It gave me more than any other book I've ever read," he later wrote of this novel.
The initial reviews by mainstream critics were lukewarm, but the Symbolist faction of the Russian artistic community embraced the book as an innovative work. In retrospect it is regarded as an important artistic statement that in many ways shaped the face of Russian literary modernism.