Their relationship is considered one of the most dramatic, mysterious, beautiful and long love stories of all times. But it would be more correct to say that this is the story of the obsession of the great Russian writer Ivan Turgenev with a world-famous star, opera diva Pauline Viardot, who was married to the director of the Italian Opera in Paris - Louis Viardot. For forty years he lived in the status of an eternal family friend, on the edge of someone else's happiness and family nest, side by side with the husband of his only beloved. For her sake, he abandoned his homeland, the love of numerous fans and his own happiness, quarreled with his mother, renounced his inheritance, escaped from arrest and went to St. Petersburg with a false passport, just to catch a glimpse of her on stage... And even in old age I was ready to follow her to the ends of the earth. Turgenev spoke about his feelings for Polina: “I am subordinate to the will of this woman. She obscured everything else from me, which is what I need. I am only blissful when a woman steps on my neck with her heel and presses my face into the dirt with her nose.” This mysterious, completely ugly and even ugly, according to numerous testimonies of contemporaries, but attractive, like an angel, like a demon, a drug, the woman managed to chain the writer to you. It is to her that Russia owes the legacy that the great Turgenev left behind. Incredible fate and incredible love will reveal their secrets to you in this book!