BALMONT, CONSTANTINE (1867— ), Russian au thor, was born June 3, 1867, at Gumishche, in the province of Vladimir, in Central Russia. A student of Elizabethan drama and of Shelley, he first became known as the translator of the latter and the apostle of his ideas. His extensive travels in South Africa, Mexico, New Zealand and Spain account for the exotic vein in his poetry. He produced his best work during the 'nineties and the early years of the present century. The very titles of the volumes published during this period—Under the Northern Sky (1894), Silence (1898), In Boundless Space (1895), The Burning Build ings (1900), Only Love (1903), Let us be like the Sun (19o3)— indicate the stages of his development from pure aestheticism to an aggressive and partly anarchical Nietzschean poetry, which brought him immense popularity and made him the acknowledged head of a younger generation of Russian symbolists. This vogue has long since passed, but he remained one of the finest of modern Russian lyric poets. The Liturgy of Beauty 0905), Evil Charms (1906) , The Bird of Flame (1907) are representative of his later work. He has also written several volumes of prose. In 1918, shortly after the outbreak of the Bolshevik revolution, he went to live in Paris.