The publication brings together the memoir prose of the poet and literary critic Lev Losev - a book of memoirs about Brodsky “About Joseph” preserved in his archive, an unfinished autobiography “Meander”, essays on the unofficial literary life of Leningrad in the 50-70s of the last century and portraits of its key participants . The laid-back intelligence, gloomy humor and self-irony familiar to the reader from Losev’s poems are also inherent in the poet’s memoir prose, and the statements, assessments and intonations of this non-fictional narrative, in turn, sound in unison with Losev’s lyrics, putting his prose on a par with the best examples of the Russian memoir genre - memoirs of Herzen, Korolenko, Bunin, Khodasevich.