The first posthumous collection of works by M. L. Gasparov, presented in six volumes, aims to fully convey the multifaceted nature of his scholarly interests and to showcase the main directions of his work. In all of Gasparov's writings, there is a rigor cultivated by the tradition of classical philology, the precision essential for a scholar of verse, and the boldness to engage with diverse scientific fields.

Gasparov's articles and monographs on Russian poetry are based on the extensive material from his verse studies, which have long since become classics. The works compiled in this volume include historical overviews of various stages of Russian poetry, characterizations and biographical notes on both famous and forgotten poets, interpretations and analyses of individual poems, as well as innovative commentary on the lyrics of O. Mandelstam and B. Pasternak.

The volume opens with the monograph "Meter and Meaning," which explores the connection between poetic meter and content, a phenomenon known as the semantics of meter or the semantic aura of meter. This book, drawing on a vast array of Russian poetic texts from the 19th and 20th centuries, illustrates the workings of this crucial component of poetic language and demonstrates the laws of literary tradition and the evolution of the poetic system. In "Meter and Meaning," a new step is taken in the development of the science of verse, as the scholar himself defined the sections of his research.

Some of the works included in the volume have been sourced from limited circulation editions and have until now been difficult for most readers to access. M. L. Gasparov's works on Russian poetry, despite their genre diversity, form a coherent, systematic, and comprehensive picture thanks to the unity of thought and style of this outstanding Russian philologist of the second half of the 20th century.