The novel of the philosopher Lev Shestov and the poetess Varvara Malachieva-mIrovich took place in the world of literature - conversations about Shakespeare, Kant, Nietzsche and Dostoevsky - and remained in letters to each other.The love story of Varvara Grigoryevna, the difficult relationship with her sister Anastasia become a kind of prologue to Shestov's "philosophy of tragedy" and shed light on what prompted him to existentialism — it is about this white spot in the biography of the philosopher that the historian and novelist Natalia Gromova tells in a new book “An otherworldly friend”"“I dreamed about L.I. (Shestov) today. A young, fast, joyful man came in. In the hands of a huge bouquet of flowers. He put it in front of me with his radiant shy smile. Fourteen years have passed since I last saw her. Ten years since the last letter. Does this dream mean that he has already stepped over and, perhaps, this very night, beyond the line where there is no old age, there are no conventions and barriers of human life, there is neither Paris nor Moscow? And there is no separation”.From the diary of Varvara Malachieva-mIrovich