The film tells about Nikolai Vladimirovich Shatrov, a poet. His name is little known to the general reader, because at one time he did not fit well into the "format" of Soviet poetry. And nowadays, when interest in poetry, as such, is practically reduced to zero, it is even less remembered. But in vain! He was an unusual poet, a peculiar person and the "godfather" of Pasternak's novel Doctor Zhivago. It was he who introduced Boris Pasternak to Jacqueline de Proyart, the same Slavist who took the only copy of the manuscript with the author's corrections out of the USSR.