Kotik Letajew

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One of the most important works of twentieth-century Russian prose, <i>Kotik Letaev,</i> the great symbolist novel of childhood, depicts the emergence of consciousness and its development into self-consciousness in a Russian boy growing up among the Moscow intelligentsia in the 1800s. Kotik's experience is based on elements from Bely's own early childhood, but on a larger level his experience represents the stages of human history, the history of philosophy, and childhood language development. The story, seen through the eyes of a child from the age of three to five years, is told in complex, poetically developed adult language, rich in imagery and musical sound effects.