Balmont's early education came from his mother, who knew several foreign languages, valued literature and theater, and exerted a strong influence on her son.

Unhappy in marriage, on 13 March 1890 he attempted suicide by jumping from a third-storey window, resulting in a limp and an injured writing hand for the rest of his life.

[2][3] Balmont learned to read at the age of five and cited Alexander Pushkin, Nikolay Nekrasov, Aleksey Koltsov, and Ivan Nikitin as his earliest influences.

[10][13] In February 1889 he married Larisa Mikhailovna Garelina; unhappy in marriage, on 13 March 1890 Balmont attempted suicide by jumping from a third-story window, leaving him with a limp and an injured writing hand for the rest of his life.

[17] Instrumental in helping the publication was Vladimir Korolenko, by then an established writer, who had received a handwritten notebook (sent to him by Konstantin's classmates) and sent back detailed and favorable critical analysis.

He praised the schoolboy's eye for detail, warned against the occasional lapse of concentration, and advised him to "trust that unconscious part of the human soul which accumulates momentary impressions.

People dear to me have made this fiasco even less bearable with their negativism," he wrote in 1903,[20]: 376  meaning apparently Larisa, but also his university friends who considered the book 'reactionary' and scorned its author for 'betraying the ideals of social struggle'.

Again, Korolenko came to Balmont's aid: "The poor guy is very shy; more editorial attention to his work would make great difference," he wrote to Mikhail Albov, one of the editors of Severny Vestnik, in September 1891.

[12] The professor accepted his essay on Percy Bysshe Shelley and in October 1892 introduced him to the authors of Severny Vestnik, including Nikolai Minsky, Dmitry Merezhkovsky, and Zinaida Gippius, as well as the publisher Kozma Soldatyonkov, who commissioned him to translate two fundamental works on the history of European literature.

The lawyer and philanthropist, Prince Alexander Urusov, an expert in Western European literature, financed the publication of two of Poe's books, translated by Balmont.

[23] In December 1893 Balmont informed Nikolai Minsky in a letter: "I've just written a series of my own poems and I am planning to start the publishing process in January.

"[24] Under the Northern Sky (Под северным небом) came out in 1894 and marked the starting point in his literary career, several critics praising the young author's originality and versatility.

[9] Around this time Balmont met and became close friends with Sergei Poliakov, Knut Hamsun's Russian translator and an influential literary entrepreneur (who in 1899 would launch the Scorpion publishing house).

[6]: 15 [28]The book in question, Burning Buildings (Горящие здания, 1900), a collection of innovative verse aimed at "inner liberation and self-understanding," came to be regarded as an apex of Balmont's legacy.

[33] Established poets, like Mirra Lokhvitskaya, Valery Bryusov, Andrei Bely, Vyacheslav Ivanov, Maximilian Voloshin, and Sergey Gorodetsky, treated him (according to biographer Darya Makogonenko) as a "genius... destined to rise high above the world by submerging himself totally in the depths of his soul.

Back from his trip to Mexico and California, Balmont became involved in the 1905 street unrest, reciting poems on barricades and (according to Yekaterina Andreyeva) "carrying a pistol in his pocket wherever he went."

[2] Vladimir Markov later argued that Green Vertograd marked the start of a new ascent in Balmont's lyrical poetry, based on the reworking of folkloric material (mostly but not exclusively Russian in origin).

[3] The outbreak of World War I found Balmont in France, and he had to make a long trip through the United Kingdom, Norway, and Sweden to return home in May 1915.

According to Sergey Litovtsev (a Russian critic who lived in immigration) at one of the secret meetings of the Cheka the fate of Balmont was discussed, "...it's just that those who were demanding he be put to a firing squad happened to be in the minority at the time.

[6]: 19  As soon as Balmont reached Reval, rumors began to circulate that he had begun to make anti-Soviet public statements, leading to the cancellation of other writers' journeys out of Soviet Russia.

Great Britain's acknowledgement of the legitimacy of (in Balmont's words) "the international gang of bandits who seized power in Moscow and Saint Petersburg" rendered "a fatal blow to the last remnants of honesty in post-War Europe.

[41] In emigration Balmont published several books of poetry, including A Gift to Earth (Дар Земле), Lightened Hour (Светлый час, both 1921), The Haze (Марево, 1922), From Me to Her.

From the mid-1920s Balmont turned his gaze to Eastern Europe, traveling to centers of the Russian emigration in Lithuania, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria, translating poetry from their languages, and adapting their folklore in his own original work.

[43] In April 1936 a group of Russian writers and musicians abroad celebrated the 50th anniversary of Balmont's literary career by staging a charity event; among the organizers and contributors were Shmelyov, Bunin, Zaitsev, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Mark Aldanov.

[7] Boris Zaitsev, ridiculing good-humouredly his best friend's vain eccentricities, remembered episodes when Balmont "could be an altogether different person: very sad and very simple.

Mark Talov, a Soviet translator who in the 1920s found himself penniless in Paris, remembered how often, after having left Balmont's house, he would find money in a pocket; the poet (who was very poor himself) preferred this anonymous way of helping so as not to confuse a visitor.

[12] In 1889, ignoring his mother's warnings, Balmont married Larisa Mikhaylovna Garelina, a daughter of Shuya-based factory-owner, described as a neurasthenic who "gave [the poet] the love of a truly demonic nature".

[12] Later some critics warned against demonizing Larisa Garelina, pointing to the fact that years later she married the well-known Russian journalist and literature historian Nikolai Engelgardt and enjoyed a normal family life with him.

[12] On 27 September 1896 Balmont married Yekaterina Alekseyevna Andreyeva (1867–1952), a well-educated woman who came from a rich merchant's family, related to the well-known Moscow publishers, the Sabashnikovs.

[7] Andreyeva, a strong-minded woman, was a leading force in the family, and in her 'strong, healthy and loving hands' (according to Boris Zaitsev, who knew them well) Balmont led a "disciplined, working man's life.