The article dedicated to the memory of Vladimír Svatoň (1931–2018), an eminent Czech literary scholar, specialist in Comparative and Russian literature, attempts an outline of the main themes and principles of his comparative literary analyses and reflections focusing particularly on the great literary and philosophical currents, on the “lasting shapes” of European aesthetics and poetics, the universal models and situations of artistic creations, its spiritual and cultural contexts. Svatoň’s contributions to the theory and the meaning of genres (novel, tragedy) or the typology of movements (Russian symbolism) are similarly fundamental.