This book attracts primarily with its idea and original form.
Georgy Sergatsky, Doctor of Technical Sciences, wrote an almost seven hundred page discussion about the nature of love — more precisely, about how “high” and “low”, spirituality and carnal attraction are combined in this feeling. His co-authors are almost two hundred thinkers, philosophers, psychologists, whose quotes are chosen so deftly and accurately that one gets the feeling (sometimes comical) that authorities from different eras sit at the same table and compete in eloquence and wit, either arguing or supplementing and clarifying each other. Between the quotation marks, Sergatsky himself “emerges” from time to time in order to push the conversation a little in the right direction. You don’t have to read the book from cover to cover. You can open it anywhere and find how the writer Bernard Shaw complains about loneliness to the philosopher Erich Fromm, and on the next line they are both condescendingly consoled in his couplet by the poet Igor Guberman. Sometimes the author’s idea fades into the background, but this is not so scary. If the book was meant to be an experiment, it certainly could be considered curious.
Alpha Advertising, 668 p., 2015.