The published correspondence between two Soviet literary critics, N. Berkovsky and V. Grib, dates from 1936 and 1939 (letters from 1937–1938 are missing from the archive). The subject of the letters was determined by their mutual academic interests (European literatures of the new age) and, equally importantly, their determination to subject historical material to philosophical analysis, and preoccupation with general aesthetic problems. However, squabbles were not uncommon: Grib’s rationalistic tendencies throughout his research (corresponding to his biggest academic interest: literature of the Enlightenment) would prompt an occasional joke from Berkovsky, whose ideas were often guided by romantic intuitivism. Over a decade after Grib’s untimely death (1940), Berkovsky published a laudatory review of the fellow scholar’s posthumous works, where he still managed to gently point out their differences. He expressed even more praise for Grib’s unorthodox academic views in a private letter (to B. Zingerman, 1961), an extract of which is cited in the closing lines of this article.