Как поссорился Борис Михайлович с Виктором Максимовичем

The present paper reconstructs and examines a plot of friendship and split between two famous Russian philologists, Boris Eikhenbaum and Viktor Zhirmunskii. The starting point is that a quarrel itself is under implicit taboo within academic profession and has to be substituted by alternative forms, i.e. public and intimate text production (articles, reviews, letters, diaries). This multi-genre textual array could generate an independent story which demonstrates complicated reference to reality. The paper is devoted to the case of academic quarrel as a specific kind of narrative encoding psychological and worldview drama between closest friends.