The novel “The Silver Dove” (1909) was conceived by Andrey Bely as the first part of the trilogy “East and West,” in which he wanted to reveal, using contemporary material, Russia’s historical role as a place between Europe and Asia. The prototype for the story’s main hero, Petr Daryalovsky, was the symbolist poet Sergey Mikhailovich Solovyov.
The author responds to the painful atmosphere of “seeking for God” and sectarian ferment in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century and sets the doomed world of the noble estate (the western beginning) against the terrifying element of the people’s mystical movements (the eastern beginning).