The book of the famous Soviet literary critic D.E. Maksimova is devoted to a problematic analysis of the works and characteristics of the work of the largest Russian poets of the early XX century: V. Bryusov, A. Blok, Andrei Bely, A. Akhmatova, their connections with the literature of the era. Parts of this book were written, intermittently, for many years as separate essays, but gradually developed into a unity, clear from the title of the book. This unity is determined not only by the constancy of the author's point of view, but, first of all, by the commonality of those historical and spiritual laws of the era that, penetrating into the work of the studied poets, give us reason to see in them, with all their differences between themselves, adjacent, related and dependent on each other phenomena of literature. The author of the book considers the material in many angles corresponding to various problems and tasks, hoping that this approach will not destroy the sequences of presentation and will contribute to multilateral coverage of the topic.