To the listener’s attention is offered not quite an ordinary book. Its analogue might be found only in Gogol’s “Arabesques,” where artistic prose freely combines with scientific research and essays. Gogol thereby asserted that a writer is one person in his two guises (as an artist and as a thinker). By putting the genre name in the book’s title, Gogol, quite like a romantic, played with the reader. Then, perhaps, that was clear. Today, the genre meaning of this title is forgotten for the broad reader. And not only today. “Arabesques,” published at the beginning of the 20th century by Andrey Bely, consisted mainly of articles and had largely lost their genre distinctiveness; the word “arabesques” was taken as a simple name. But the genre of “arabesques” connects philosophical and artistic patterns, weaving them into the common fabric of human fate. The arabesques speak of one person’s handwriting—but in different spheres. This genre confirms the old romantic idea of the inner unity of philosophy and art. In his new book, Vladimir Kantor, a well-known writer and philosopher, attempts to restore this interrupted tradition.