By analogy with Pushkin's Golden Age, the period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was dubbed the Silver Age and was marked by the emergence of an unprecedented number of prominent names in Russian poetry: Balmont and Bryusov, Gippius and Merezhkovsky, Sologub and Annensky, Blok and Akhmatova, Gumilev and Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva and Pasternak, Yesenin and Mayakovsky, and dozens of others. But this era produced more than just a vast array of poetic talents. The Silver Age was characterized by a unique romantic worldview, a remarkable atmosphere that reflected a spiritual uplift and new trends that affected Russian literature, painting, philosophy, music, and theater—it was a true 'cultural renaissance,' as Nikolai Berdyaev wrote.
This collection presents in sufficient detail the most outstanding poets of the Silver Age, whose work has stood the test of time and has become the property not only of the past era, but also part of the treasury of Russian literature as a whole.