About the book: year / Criticizing the type of novel that was created by Danilevsky, Saltykov expressed a number of fundamental literary and theoretical positions. It was no coincidence that he called this novel “an exceptional phenomenon” and connected it with the tradition of A. Dumas and Feval. This tradition, first of all, is characterized by “external, purely fairy-tale interest,” alien to Russian literature, which has always been distinguished by a restrained and sober attitude to reality. Saltykov substantiates the idea of ​​the inner essence of drama and comedy, which is very important for his aesthetics. In his review of “New Works,” Saltykov again contrasts Danilevsky with “the majority of our novelists and storytellers,” who “pay primary attention to the psychological development of characters and to the resolution of certain life problems that interest society, while the plot itself is placed on a distant plane.” The predominant attention to the “plot”, to entertainment, according to Saltykov, throws Danilevsky’s work back to the literary era before Belinsky.