Hostages of Love: Intimate Stories from the Lives of Russian Poets

This book includes sixteen love stories from the lives of great Russian poets - from Vasily Zhukovsky and Alexander Pushkin to Joseph Brodsky and Gennady Shpalikov. It does not talk about the «endless happiness» of love, but about its «sting of torment», not about realized hopes and the harmony of blissful calmness, but about the painful duality of the poetic spirit and its catastrophic insatiability - love walks hand in hand with betrayal, infidelity, and internal unfreedom... At the same time, it speaks of feelings of such incredible intensity and such high tension of passion that sometimes it is impossible not to shudder: «When a poet loves, an abandoned god falls in love». - This book is dedicated to the tragic magic of love.