Great Couples

I don’t know if there is always a great woman behind a great man, but almost every great creator, regardless of gender, has a unique love story behind them. Sometimes lasting a lifetime. Most often tragic. Yet at the same time happy, for a genius is the only partner with whom you are guaranteed never to be bored. This book collects stories of couples who became symbols of creative collaboration, mutual torment, or spiritual closeness. Not all of them were related to art, but all these people became heroes of outstanding works. Sometimes they inspired each other, sometimes they destroyed each other. But each couple wrote a unique chapter in the universal grammar of love, which humanity continues to enrich and reread. DMITRY BYKOV Leo Tolstoy and Sofia Andreyevna | Turgenev and Polina Viardot | Lenin and Nadezhda Krupskaya | Blok and Lyubov Mendeleeva | Akhmatova and Gumilev | Tsvetaeva and Efron | Mandelstam and Nadezhda Kazina | Pasternak and Zinaida Neuhaus | Merezhkovsky and Zinaida Gippius | Bunin and Vera Muromtseva | Schwartz and Ekaterina Ivanovna | Zabolotsky | Alexei Tolstoy and Natalia Krandievskaya | Gorky and Maria Andreyeva | Andrei Bely and Asya Turgeneva | Khodasevich and Nina Berberova | Bryusov and Nina Petrovskaia | Kapler and Yulia Drunina | Nikolai Erdman and Lina Stepanova | Bonnie and Clyde | Elem Klimov and Larisa Shepitko | Simonov and Valentina Serova | Bernard Shaw and Patrick Campbell In the Direct Speech Lecture Hall, outstanding scholars, writers, actors, and science popularizers perform every day. For many years now, Dmitry Bykov's lectures on literature have been the business card of Direct Speech. Now they are also available in book format. The collection is based on the transcripts of Dmitry Bykov's speeches, as well as his