her personal life. The novel has been criticized as an outlet for Losev's difficult relationship with Yudina, and as a poor example of his capabilities as a writer. Yudina disliked the character of Maria which she recognized as herself, and in early 1934 she broke with Losev, never to see him again.

During the 1930s, Losev composed what he intended to be a definitive work on classic aesthetics, titled A History of Ancient Aesthetics. The manuscript was lost along with everything else in his Moscow apartment when it was hit by a German