Konstantin Dmitrievich Balmont Biography

Konstantin Dmitriyevich Balmont (15 June [O.S. 3 June] 1867 — December 23, 1942) was a Russian symbolist poet, translator, one of the major figures of the Silver Age of Russian Poetry.

Balmont was born into a noble family near Vladimir. In 1886, he entered the Moscow University, but was expelled the next year. He started poetic activity in the end of the 1890s, and became famous in 1905 after having published several compilations of poems. In the end of 1905, he illegally left Russia for Paris, traveled extensively, and returned to Moscow only in 1916. He accepted the February Revolution enthusiastically, but was against the October Revolution of 1917, and left Russia for Germany, and subsequently for France in 1920. He spent the last twenty years of his life in emigration and in poverty. He died in 1942 in Noisy-le-Grand, a suburb of Paris.