Lev Losev: “Most of all I love “The Modest Little Blue Handkerchief” (1982). I remember how I started reading for the first time and almost immediately switched to reading aloud - it was impossible to deny the tongue and larynx such a holiday.” ...And he wrote to the author: “I started reading, and I really liked the tone and the extraordinary mastery of the language... the exubOrance of images, colors, characteristic expressions that intoxicates and captivates you. There’s a lot of unnecessary, disproportionate things, but the verve and tone are amazing.” No, it wasn’t me who wrote to Aleshkovsky, it was my namesake, Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, who wrote to Nikolai Semenovich Leskov. I chose the quote from Eikhenbaum’s article about Leskov (“Excessive Writer”). This article develops an important thesis about the inseparability of the literary process from the general intellectual process, primarily from the development of philosophical and philological thought. New knowledge about the nature of language and thinking opens up new perspectives for the artist’s imagination, and along the way, new rules of the game are created. In the mid-twentieth century, the doctrine of dialogism spread, and Aleshkovsky’s hierarchy of “alien words” became pure poetry. “Handkerchief” mixes existential despair and everyday farce, and the result of the reaction is an explosion. In a similar way, in the tragic Prologue to “Poem without a Hero,” the “alien word” of the funniest Russian comedy appears:...And since I didn’t have enough paper, I’m writing on your draft. And now someone else’s word appears...