Gumilev, Nikolai Stepanovich (1886-1921)

Russian poet, essayist, and translator. Together with his wife, the poet Anna Akhmatova, he founded in 1912 the Acmeist movement, which promoted clarity and precision, in a reaction to the allusiveness of Symbolist verse. Journeys in Africa lent his poetry its exotic themes of adventure and travel, rare in the work of Soviet writers. His greatest works date from his last years, and include Koster/The Pyre 1918 and Ognennyi stolp/The Pillar of Fire 1921.

Gumilev was active in literary life in Petrograd (now St Petersburg) after the Revolution, until he was arrested and shot for complicity in an anticommunist plot.