Alexander Blok (1880 – 1921) was a Russian lyrical poet, writer, publicist, playwright, translator and literary critic. He was married to the daughter of the renowned chemist Dmitri Mendeleev. The idealized mystical images presented in his first book helped establish Blok as a major poet of the Russian Symbolism style. Blok enthusiastically greeted the 1905 Russian Revolution. He has vague apocalyptic apprehensions and often vacillated between hope and despair. He expressed his opinions about the revolution by the enigmatic poem "The Twelve” (1918). The long poem exhibits "mood-creating sounds, polyphonic rhythms, and harsh, slangy language."