The book contains articles dedicated to outstanding German and Scandinavian writers, whose heritage has entered the treasury of world culture. The creativity of the classics - in the person of Goethe, Schiller and Hölderlin *, Andersen, Ibsen and Strindberg - and modern masters of the artistic word allows us to pose problems of tradition and innovation, ways of developing aesthetic thought, features of the development of romantic and realistic literature, relationships in various artistic systems.