Close Encounters : Essays on Russian Literature Close Encounters: Essays on Russian Literature combines discussions of ethical esthetic and philosophical interest raised by Pushkin Gogol Turgenev Dostoevsky Tolstoy and Gorky with close analyses of their texts. This book focuses on four thematic configurations: first (Chance and Fate) issues of freedom and responsibility the necessity of free individual expression and yet the limits of will or self will; second (Two Kinds of Beauty) the unity of moral esthetic and spiritual categories and the quest for the ideal; third (Critical Perspectives) examples of the type of commentary that approaches art with a unified ethical and spiritual perspective (Dostoevsky Gorky V.I. Ivanov and the partially dissenting Bakhtin); and fourth (Poems of Parting) three poems (works by Tyutchev Severyanin and Pushkin) involving parting loss and recovery