The two friends were having a drinking session in the city of Irbit in the Ural Mountains when they started a discussion on literature, the Sverdlovsk regional investigators said in a statement.
鈥淭he fellow drinkers started an argument about which of literary genres, poetry or prose, is more significant.鈥
鈥淭he host insisted that real literature is prose, while his guest, a former teacher, argued for poetry.鈥
鈥淭he literary dispute quickly escalated into a banal conflict and the 53-year-old lover of poetry stabbed his opponent to death with a knife,鈥 investigators said. He was later detained while hiding at a friend鈥檚 house.
In September last year, a similarly high-brow dispute got out of hand when two drinkers discussed their mutual love of German philosopher Immanuel Kant in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don. The brawl ended up with one shooting the other in the head, although the victim survived.