The authors of the end of the XIX century tried to influence the mind and moral senses of a person by the means of aesthetic emotions. The purpose of our article is to analyse the perception of the first Russian symbolism wave, or, more precisely, the works of Nikolaï Minsky. We will determine if the Russian symbolism can be named an “anti-model” of the era from the point of view of the right-thinking public. First, we will provide a partial analysis of the perception of the texts of Minsky by his contemporaries in Russia: the men of letters; the editors of Severnyj Vestnik; the journalists; the literary critics. Secondly, we will describe the texts published on Minsky in a number of French sources.