Balmont, Konstantin Dmitrieyevich [key], 1867–1943, Russian poet and translator. After first hailing the Bolshevik revolution, he repudiated it and lived chiefly in France, where he died destitute and forgotten. Although his early verse was revolutionary in content, after 1894 it revealed the influence of the symbolists. His travels all over the world supplied exotic details for his poems. He translated Shelley, Ibsen, Poe, Calderón, and Whitman. His major work began with Under Northern Skies (1894). Let Us Be Like the Sun (1903) and Love Alone (1903) are typical of his melodious and inventive verse. His verse written after 1910 is considered mediocre.
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