Vladimir Solovyov’s literary criticism is an amazing read: he takes it so deeply, exhausts the question with such completeness, but it is also remarkable for the lessons that can be learned from it today; for it is not at all outdated. Russian literature, historically still very young, has risen to a par with Western European literature in the novel and in poetry; The same cannot be said about Russian criticism. For two centuries she has been in a fever, thrown into extremes, prompted by situations external to literature; she cannot take the right tone, cannot rise above the momentary and transitory. “Is this really such an inevitable fate for us: to balance one untruth with another?” - asks Soloviev in 1894, and precisely in connection with literary criticism. In his field of vision then there were two main untruths: the utilitarian, Pisarevsky approach to aesthetics, and his contemporary reaction to this approach: unbridled praise of pure art. His critical works are written in a beautiful, reliable and expressive language, which to this day inspires the reader - and himself in itself marks the triumph of “the tangible form of truth and goodness.”