About the book: 2015 / Russian literature tends to contradict itself. The book by the famous literary and cultural critic Mikhail Epstein examines the paradoxes of Russian literature: the holiness of the little man and the demonism of the sovereign power, the meaning-filled silence and the muteness of the word, the Oedipus complex of Soviet civilization and the strange symbiosis of the images of the warrior and the dreamer. The book traces the “damned questions” of Russian literature, which falls into the extremes of foolishness and demonism and at the same time painfully seeks the Whole. The special dialectic of self-denial and self-destruction, characteristic of individual authors and literary eras and movements, is explored. The striving for ideal and harmony reveals its tragic or ironic side, the majestic and titanic are demonic features, and the low and small are the ability for spiritual asceticism. The author considers Russian literature from A. Pushkin and N. Gogol through A. Platonov and V. Nabokov to D. Prigov and V. Sorokin - as a single text, where stable motifs vary in ever new images. Their range covers basic cultural universals: being and nothingness, greatness and humility, speech and silence, reason and madness. The dynamics of literature are revealed in its super-intense paradox, in the direct conjugation of semantic poles.