To be honest and upfront I struggled through this book but was determined to power through it. In The Symphonies there are four individual stories, or symphonies. Each one was poetic, melodic and a little difficult to follow at times. To be fair, it was my first attempt at reading Russian symbolism. The translator did a great job retaining the prose and musicality from the original works which speaks volumes about The Symphonies as beautiful literature that transcends language barriers. It was confusing and thought provoking and sometimes I had no idea what I was actually reading. Yet, I was so clearly able to imagine magical and unreal scenes as if they were real.
While I understand and can appreciate the power of repetition it sometimes felt like some of the writings were drawn out and unnecessarily convoluted. This, of course, is no fault of the translator and is really the only hurdle I faced when reading The Symphonies. I would encourage anyone interested in reading The Symphonies to do some research into the context of these works, the history surrounding the era in which they were written and the genre before diving into them as it might help you contextually understand what you're reading.

This is not the type of book I enjoy reading and thus I found it a struggle. It’s experimental, innovative, modernist, fragmented – all those aspects of the novel that don’t sit comfortably with me. It’s sometimes called a Russian Symbolist masterpiece and is a work in which reality is juxtaposed with mysticism and otherworldliness, the everyday with the fantastic and with evocative imagery and non-linear narrative. Just like a symphony it is divided into four movements, or prose poems. The first is heavily influenced by fairy tale and tells of three generations of rulers in a mythical kingdom. The second is more realistic, takes place largely in Moscow drawing rooms and is a study of a young philosopher who goes mad and turns to mysticism. The third recounts the story of a professor who glimpses another world in dreams and hallucinations. And the fourth, the longest, is a mystical love story, somewhat autobiographical. Each sentence is numbered which makes for a fragmentary reading experience. It’s hard to rate a book like this because reader response is so crucial, and every reader will respond in a different way, but essentially it’s just not one for me, although I can appreciate what Bely was trying to achieve in breaking away from traditional narrative technique.

The first two symphonies really stood out for their lyricism, imagery, and repetition. I thought I was going to love it. However, the remainder of the work gets even more repetitive and the imagery more abstruse that it borders on incomprehensible. Worth it if you're interested in Russian literature and/or for the first half of the book. 2.5 stars rounded up to 3.

A flawless, engaging translation of a flawed experiment by Andrei Bely. Readership for the text at the time of its release was limited--not unfelicitous for something that ranged so far from the mastery of, say, Pushkin's narrative poetics. Hard for Russians of the day, hard for non-Russians of today, but definitely worth the work if one is open to potency, urgency and (I could be shot for this) deeply romantic sentimentality that Symbolist poets expressed in their best work. Kudos to Columbia University Press for putting a firm stake in the heart that a writer of Bely's enormous talent was just another Russian "one hit wonder".

Andrei Bely was a noted Russian symbolist, so it’s probably unsurprising, given that movement’s penchant for mysticism and reexamining the everyday that The Symphonies is a dense, often cryptic work. It’s also probably unsurprising that – even though there’s a lot of very helpful footnotes throughout the text – this book is best consumed by people with a decent grasp of Russian culture and history from the time when Bely was writing.

The work is musical, as you would expect from the title. It collects four novellas – or Symphonies – and presents them, occasionally with prefaces, though these do not provide much of a guide to the terrain. The stories slide between the everyday and a sort of fairytale land, suggesting a semipermeable membrane between realities, with transitions between the two a distinct possibility. But nothing is certain: the giants galumphing about the place could be metaphors, or they could just be really fucking big dudes.

It’s easy to latch on to the musical nature of the work: lines are numbered, as in a score, and figures and images run throughout the stories, though their repetition is often more graspable than is their meaning.

Look. I’m a literature grad. I’m someone who has read my share of Russian literature, including some of the other entries in this brilliant series, released by Columbia University Press. I like odd fiction. But for almost the entirety of this work, I wore a bemused face.

The notes I took as I read began to take more cryptic forms as I continued. “Someone fucks a nun and then there’s diamond snow (again)!” was a typical line. I probably should’ve just let go and enjoyed the book as a flow of imagery, but the belief that it would all make sense at some point goaded me into looking for a through-line, which was probably my downfall. I mean, this is one of the more comprehensible passages in the work:

The mad abbot carried his avenging sword over the buildings and his mouth gaped with a dark opening–a dark wail.
“I’ll smother them with snow–shred them with wind.”
He lowered his sword. He tore at his robes. He brimmed with tears of rage.
And the tears fell, fell like diamonds, pelting the windows.
He flew up.
And from the heights he fell like a horse: pissing a stream of snow over the city.

Not for me, sadly. I made it through but spent a lot of time wondering why.

Andre Bely is new to me - but I’m always open to reading new authors, especially from Eastern Europe. I believe this is the first novel I have ever read in the prose style - it adds and lessens the overwhelming style that looms above the words on each line. I wish this had been an annotated version to help explain each of the cultural allusions that belong to the uniqueness of the celebrated Russian Soul.

A wonderful introduction to Bely’s work. The prose is wonderful and beautifully written. I throughly enjoyed this work.

Bely's experimental prose-poem was absolutely my cup of tea; an ideal introduction to any reader who wants to delve into the Russian literary avant-garde movement.

The language was more poetic, dreamy, and disjointed than I expected. I felt as though I were drifting among clouds instead of anchored in a narrative that could capture my attention. After multiple attempts to finish the book, I can only say that the style is not for me (but I'm sure the right reader would love to sink their teeth into it).

I received an electronic ARC via NetGalley for review.

I'm not sure if I simply prefer the stories in this book over Bely's more famous novel Petersburg, if I've developed a greater appreciation for Symbolists since undergrad, or if this translation has made the material more accessible to me, but I genuinely enjoyed this collection far more than I initially expected.

The stories are strange--that's the nature of them, and I suspect that a reader who doesn't at least somewhat enjoy the sorts of things that came out of the Symbolist movement won't much enjoy this book. It's not a quick read, either--the translation is quite beautiful and smooth, and there are notes to explain some of the references that might not be immediately obvious to a reader who doesn't catch them on their own, but the stories are also something you do have to sit with and enjoy to catch the patterns in the repetition of the language.

As with the other books I've read in these Columbia University Press Russian Library editions, the introduction is interesting and insightful, and provides valuable context and a framework for understanding the rest of the text. Also like them, it's probably mainly of interest to readers who already have an interest in the subject matter. I do, though, so for me--it's enjoyable and very much worthwhile.

This is a book of beautiful prose. Four stories speak to the intellectual imagination in a poetic and atmospheric voice. While Bely is to be lauded so too is the translator Jonathan Stone who has brought this prose to the English language maintaining the beauty of the writing. All four stories together can feel a little overwhelming - a little like four steak dinners in a row. Spaced out though they are to be savoured and enjoyed. Delicious!

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC

It's hard to know where to start in writing about Bely's Symphonies. Firstly, the style of the prose leapt out at me, looking almost like a prose poem in the way the text was structured. It took me a little while to get used that, but once I did, I settled into the stories. Of the four sections, I enjoyed the first the most, as I liked the fairytale elements of the narrative. However, the remaining three pieces were also interesting, each in their own way, taking the mundane and turning it into something mystical and fantastical. Bely was a symbolist, and that is certainly clear from this text. It was intriguing to see the comparisons he was drawing and the way he highlighted different things, but by the end of four stories like that, it started to feel a little too much and I longed for something simpler again. Nonetheless, I could see the artistry that went into crafting this piece and I appreciated it as something new and experimental, even if I wouldn't want to read books in this style all the time. Recommended for readers who enjoy a touch of the avant-garde in their early-twentieth century fiction, and those interested in the Russian symbolist movement.