To the Hermitage

Main Characters and Their Development

• At the heart of the story is a British professor whose ironic perceptiveness and gentle self-mockery guide the reader through the labyrinth of modernity and history. His inner world is a complex mosaic of doubts, intellectual quests, and a quiet longing for meaning that slips away in the whirl of events. Alongside him is a motley company of scholars, writers, and philosophers, each bearing the imprint of their era: an eccentric French researcher, a mysterious Russian translator, a skeptical American, and a passionate Swede, each with their own baggage of memories, dreams, and disappointments. Their characters are revealed through clashes of opinion, subtle dialogues, and the search for truth and self among the shadows of the past and the shifting outlines of the present. The characters gradually shed their masks, exposing their vulnerability, and in this process their development becomes an integral part of the philosophical and cultural journey, where the personal and the historical are woven into a single tapestry.