Some writers are chiefly remembered for their active contribution to the literary life of their day. Others seem to stand outside this process, and only assume their true importance after death. Vyacheslav Ivanov (1866–1949) was both. As a major poet and the leading theoretician of the Russian Symbolist movement, he played a key role in shaping the literature of his time, and received wide recognition from his contemporaries. His deeper significance, however, goes far beyond this. In the long term, he is most likely to be remembered for the unique voice which he developed in his poetry and prose to convey a mystical and teleological vision of human life, history and culture. He believed that ‘in every place … there is a Bethel and a Jacob's ladder – in the centre of every horizon’, and devoted his life's work to the creation of just such a ladder. The present study concentrates more on the nature of this ‘ladder’ than on the surrounding plane; it is not a work of literary biography, but an attempt to explore the way in which the poet's vision took form and expressed itself through his art.