Republic of the Southern Cross, The

Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov was born on 13th December 1873 into a merchant's family in Moscow. His parents did little to involve themselves with his upbringing and Bryusov seems to have spent long periods immersed in books until studying in two private Moscow gymnasia between 1885 and 1893. Whilst a student at Moscow State University he completed translations of the French Symbolists and some of Edgar Allan Poe. Bryusov, influenced by both the Symbolist and Decadent movements, also began to publish his own poems. With the appearance of ‘Tertia Vigilia’ he became acknowledged by other Symbolists as an authority in matters of art and then, in 1904, he became the editor of ‘The Balance’, the influential literary magazine. With his poems gradually being seen as outdated he worked harder at prose and two historical novels ‘The Altar of Victory’ (regarding life in Ancient Rome) and ‘The Fiery Angel’ (based in 16th century Germany) brought him much recognition as did a series of science fiction short stories. Over the decades he also translated authors as diverse as Hugo, Racine, Byron, Verlaine, Goethe and Virgil. After the 1917 Revolution Bryusov supported the Bolsheviks and was given a position in the cultural ministry of the new state. For his Russian translation of the Armenian folk epic ‘David of Sasun,’ he was designated the People's Poet of Armenia in 1923. Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov died on 9th October 1924. He was 50.