Previous studies of Innokentii Annenskii’s poem “Drugomu” [“To the Other”] have relied on mythopoetic methods and contextual analysis in their attempts to ascertain the poem’s addressee. Many have ascribed Annenskii’s personal contacts a crucial role in divergent claims to knowing the Other’s identity, pointing to different historical fi gures. The current study suggests a different approach. By turning to dialogic poetics and Annenskii’s conception of the human being in his later poetry, it is possible to explain the poem’s underlying principles and more precisely describe its literary communication as a multifaceted form of addressing which goes beyond that of an extraliterary subject and object.