K.D. Balmont's treatise "Poetry as Magic" (1915) is the first author's poetics in Russian literature: an attempt to describe the poetic word as a constructive reality, redefining aesthetics as a science of the universal sensitivity of the living. Some of the provisions of the treatise, such as the meaning of individual sounds, magical plots based on different poetic genres, universal origins of lyricism, have been continued in other author's poetics. Balmont's work, distinguished by a solemn and figurative presentation, is published with a detailed commentary. The appendix contains the work of K.D. Balmont on Scriabin's musical experiments, developing the poet's main idea about the connection between sound, poetry and the structure of the universe.