This book is a unique encyclopedia of love affairs and plots, unusual both in its erotic frankness and in the diversity of its situations: from playful and ironic to tragic and fatal. Intellectual prose intertwines with eroticism—a rare combination of genres, especially in Russian literature. The leitmotif of the inextricable link between love and creativity, Eros and Logos, runs through the entire collection. Writer, artist, scientist, philosopher, psychologist, philologist, journalist, historian, editor, lecturer, librarian—these are not only the characters' professional affiliations but also the prism through which their love affairs are refracted.