Alexander Blok, poet and dramatist, was the greatest of the Russian Symbolists. Blok was born on Nov. 28th, 1880 in St. Petersburg and raised by his maternal grandparents, he began writing poetry at the age of five. For Blok, sound was paramount, and musicality is the primary characteristic of his verse. His first collection of poems, Verses About the Lady Beautiful (1904) personifies divine wisdom as the feminine world soul. Shortly thereafter, Blok's romantic expectation of other worldly fulfillment had been transformed into a concern for the human suffering around him.—G. Forman