Audrey Bely was one of the most innovative prose writers in Russian in the twentieth century. This book traces the development of his technique as a novelist from the early experimental Symphonies (1902 8) to the last novel, Masks, published in 1932. In the first two chapters of the book, Dr Elsworth explores Bely's theoretical writings on the aesthetic theory of Symbolism, and his association, after 1912, with the doctrines of Rudolf Steiner. Bely regarded art as an active force for the transformation of the human personality and the resolution of the crisis that he diagnosed in the culture...