About the book: year / M.: New Literary Review, 2001 Mikhail Leonovich Gasparov is the largest Russian philologist, literary critic, translator, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, laureate of the State Russian Prize (1995), author of numerous works on ancient literature, poetics and poetry. His works “Ancient Literary Fable” (1971), “Modern Russian Verse. Metrics and Rhythmics" (1974), etc. He is the author of the best-selling book "Entertaining Greece. Stories about Ancient Greek Culture", a collection of "Selected Articles", which received the Booker Small Prize (1997) for significant contributions made to historical, philosophical and cultural studies of Russian literature. New book by M.L. Gasparova is a bizarre fusion of diary notes, memoirs and literary critical essays. Some of the texts were published in the magazine “New Literary Review”, arousing great interest among readers, and were awarded the Andrei Bely Prize (1999). Artist D. Chernogaev. The design of the book used a friendly cartoon by E. Stankevich and a drawing by Solmi. [Original page numbers are placed in square brackets.]