About the book: year / The leading idea of ​​this work is bridging the gap between abstract “formalism” and abstract “ideologism” in the study of the literary word. Form and content are united in the word, understood as a social phenomenon, social in all spheres of its life and in all its moments - from the sound image to the most abstract semantic layers. This idea determined our emphasis on “genre stylistics.” The detachment of style and language from the genre has largely led to the fact that only the individual and directional overtones of a style are studied, while its basic social tone is ignored. The great historical destinies of the artistic word, associated with the destinies of genres, are overshadowed by the small destinies of stylistic modifications associated with individual artists and movements. Therefore, stylistics is devoid of a genuine philosophical and sociological approach to its problems and is buried in stylistic trifles; does not know how to sense behind individual and directional shifts the great and nameless destinies of the artistic word. Stylistics in most cases appears as the style of indoor craftsmanship and ignores the social life of the word outside the artist’s workshop, in the vastness of squares, streets, cities and villages, social groups, generations, eras. Stylistics deals not with the living word, but with its histological preparation, with the abstract linguistic word in the service of the individual skill of the artist. But even these individual and directional overtones of style, divorced from the main social ways of life of the word, inevitably receive a flat and abstract interpretation and cannot be studied in organic unity with the semantic spheres of the work. 1934 — 1935