About the book: 2012 / The poetry of Vladislav Khodasevich (1886–1939) is one of the indisputable peaks of the 20th century. Like any great poet, its author is complex and contradictory. A tragic longing for another existence, a prideful desire to “fly out there, beyond the blue” - and a bitter attachment to the poor things and feelings of the earthly vale, Attic clarity of thought, precision of lyrical feeling, clarity of vision. Seeming almost an archaist to his contemporaries, half a century after his departure he was read as an innovator. Toughly sarcastic in everyday life, he himself, like many poets, was painfully vulnerable. Having accepted the revolution, he later found himself in the camp of its opponents. A master of biography and literary portraiture, the author of the famous book “Derzhavin” and the no less famous “Necropolis”, where contemporary writers are immortalized, a supporter of the biographical method in Pushkin studies, Khodasevich himself was not awarded a biography for a long time. Valery Shubinsky, poet, critic, literary historian, author of biographies of Lomonosov, Gumilyov, Kharms, presents to the readers the first attempt at a complete biography of Vladislav Khodasevich. Like any first attempt, the book will inevitably arouse not only interest, but also controversy..