Life has passed. But youth persists... A guide to Irina Odoevtseva"s book On the banks of the Neva

“I am writing these memories with the secret hope that you, my readers, will love as the living people I remember. Love them, resurrect them in your memory and in your hearts.
And thereby give them immortality.
You, my contemporaries, and you, those who will read, I self -confidently hope - On the banks of the Neva ”, when I haven’t been in the world for a long time.”
Irina Odoevtseva
Irina Odoevtseva’s memoirs “on the banks of the Neva” have been reading and re -read for several decades, but many secrets have not yet been disclosed. < BR /> Oleg Lexmanov - a philologist, a professor at the Higher School of Economics, who wrote books about Osip Mandelstam, Sergey Yesenin and Venedikte Erofeev - studied the famous text, laying it out into many components. “The guide on the book“ On the Bores of the Neva ”is the dialogue of the author and researcher.
“ The charm of Odoevtsev’s book is huge and the author’s talent is obvious, and the love of characters, time and place is indisputable. Oleg Lexmanov was the first to comment on this captured and slandered book in detail and accurately - and now we can finally imagine how everything was actually. And most importantly, it becomes clear that there is no “actually” - there are evidence of biased contemporaries that differ only in a measure of talent and the ability to value each other. ”
Dmitry Bykov