'"[2] One of his closest friends and major influences as a young man was the polyglot Germanophile aristocrat Georgy Chicherin (who later entered the diplomatic service and after the October Revolution became People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs), a passionate supporter of Wagner and Nietzsche.

His first published writings appeared in 1905 and attracted the attention of Valery Bryusov, who invited him to contribute to his influential literary magazine Vesy (The Balance), the center of the Symbolist movement, where in 1906 he published his verse cycle "Alexandrian Songs" (modeled on Les Chansons de Bilitis, by Pierre Louÿs[3]) and the first Russian novel with a homosexual theme, Wings, which instantly achieved notoriety and made him a widely popular writer.

"But in spite of this contretemps, Kuzmin, Sudeikin, and Glebova continued to maintain a productive, professional relationship, collaborating on many ventures—plays, musical evenings, poetry declamations—especially at the St. Petersburg cabarets.

[6] Kuzmin's association with the Symbolists was never definitive, and in 1910 he helped give rise to the Acmeist movement with his essay "O prekrasnoi yasnosti" (On beautiful clarity), in which he attacked "incomprehensible, dark cosmic trappings" and urged writers to be "logical in the conception, the construction of the work, the syntax... love the word, like Flaubert, be economical in means and niggardly in words, precise and genuine -- and you will find the secret of an amazing thing — beautiful clarity — which I would call clarism.

"[7] He was no more a member of the group than he had been of the Symbolists, but he was personally associated with a number of them; in the years 1910-12 he lived in the famous apartment (called the Tower) of Vyacheslav Ivanov, who was another formative influence on the Acmeists, and he was a friend of Anna Akhmatova, for whose first book of poetry, Vecher [Evening], he wrote a flattering preface.

How sweet it is to read a classical poet living in our midst, to experience a Goethean blend of "form" and "content," to be persuaded that the soul is not a substance made of metaphysical cotton, but rather the carefree, gentle Psyche.