The Dramatic Symphony (extract) - Andrey Bely

1. The by-street was bathed in sun. The road was turning white. In place of the sky there hung a gigantic turquoise.
2. The neo-classical house had six columns, and on the six columns stood six white, stone maidens.
3. The stone maidens had six stone cushions on their heads, and the cornice of the house rested on the cushions.
4. In the little asphalt courtyard stood a pile of damp red sand.
5. Blond-curled children played on the pile of sand dressed in sailors’ jackets with red anchors.
6. They sank their little hands into the cold sand and threw the sand in handfuls over the dry asphalt.
7. On top of the pile of sand stood a little boy; his face was austere and thoughtful. His deep-blue eyes absorbed the colour of the sky. His curly hair was soft as flax and tumbled in dreamy waves onto his shoulders.
8. With austere authority the little boy held in his hands an iron piston, found heaven knows where. The child was beating his little sisters with a rod of iron, as the vessels of a potter breaking them to shivers.
9. His little sisters squealed and threw handfuls of sand at the despot.
10. With austere authority the boy wiped the red sand from his face and looked thoughtfully up at the turquoise of the sky as he leaned on his rod.
11. Then suddenly he abandoned his iron piston, leaped from the pile of sand and ran along the asphalt courtyard, crying out joyfully.
12. A cab carried Leavenovsky by. Leavenovsky was proceeding to the fair-haired prophet to talk about general mysteries.

1. A monk was walking along a fashionable street. His head-dress rose high above his lean face.
2. He wore a silver cross and walked quickly through the festive crowd.
3. His black beard reached down to his waist; it began right beneath his eyes.
4. His eyes were sad and mournful despite the fact that it was Whitsunday.
5. Suddenly the monk stopped and spat superstitiously. A malicious smile twisted his austere features.
6. This happened because the cynical mystic had uttered yet another new thought, and it had been published in Polar Patterns.

1. Prophets and prelates had been on display in the window of an art shop on Kuznetsky Bridge Street.
2. And the prophets appeared to be shouting from behind the glass windows, stretching their bare hands towards the street, shaking their sorrowful heads.
3. The prelates, however, looked serene and smiled quietly, hiding a crafty grin in their whiskers.
4. People clustered by the windows with wide-open mouths.

1. Golden streams of light flooded into the windows of the decadent house.
2. They fell on a mirror. The mirror reflected the next room. From where the sound of suppressed sobbing could be heard.
3. In the middle of the flowers and silk stood the fairy-tale who had turned very pale. Her reddish hair gleamed in the gold of the sun and her pale violet dress was covered with white irises.
4. She had found out at the festival of flowers about the death of the dreamer, and now the orphaned fairy-tale was wringing her slender white hands.
5. Her coral-coloured lips trembled and silver pearls ran down her pale marble cheeks, freezing in the irises pinned to her breast.
6. She stood distraught and weeping, looking out of the window.
7. And from the window the mad dawn laughed at her tears, as it burnt through a jasper-coloured cloud.
8. The fairy-tale’s tears were futile because the time of democrats was passing.
9. The wave of time had washed away the dreamer, had borne him away to eternal rest.
10. This is what the mad dawn told her, laughing to the point of exhaustion, and the fairy-tale wept over the scattered irises.
11. And ... in the next ... room stood the shattered centaur. He had entered this room ... and seen the reflection of his nymph.
12. He stood there stunned, not believing the looking-glass reflection, not daring to verify the perfidious mirror.
13. Two sorrowful wrinkles creased the brow of the good-natured centaur, and he pulled pensively at his elegant beard.
14. Then he quietly left this room.

"Their structure arose by itself, and I had no clear idea about what a “symphony” in literature should be." A. B. (1907)

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Andrey (or Andrei) Bely (born Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev) (1880-1934) Russia
Translated by Roger & Angela Keys
Source: Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern and Postmodern Poetry. Volume One: From Fin-de-Siècle to Negritude, edited by Jerome Rothenberg and Pierre Joris, University of California Press, 1995