Leskov Nikolai Semenovich- Russian writer-ethnographer was born on February 16 (Old Style - February 4), 1831 in the village of Gorokhovo, Oryol province, where his mother stayed with wealthy relatives, and his maternal grandmother also lived there. The Leskov family on the paternal side came from the clergy: the grandfather of Nikolai Leskov (Dmitry Leskov), his father, grandfather and great-grandfather were priests in the village of Leska, Oryol province. From the name of the village of Leski, the family surname Leskovs was formed. The father of Nikolai Leskov, Semyon Dmitrievich (1789-1848), served as a noble assessor of the Oryol Chamber of the Criminal Court, where he received the nobility. Mother, Marya Petrovna Alferyeva (1813-1886), belonged to the noble family of the Oryol province.
In Gorokhov - in the house of the Strakhovs, relatives of Nikolai Leskov on the maternal side - he lived until he was 8 years old. Nikolai had six cousins and sisters. Russian and German teachers and a Frenchwoman were taken for the children. Nikolai, gifted with greater abilities than his cousins, and more successful in his studies, was not loved, and at the request of the future writer, his grandmother wrote to his father to take his son. Nikolai began to live with his parents in Orel - in a house on Third Noble Street. Soon the family moved to the Panino estate (Panin's farm). Nikolay's father himself sowed, looked after the garden and behind the mill. At the age of ten, Nikolai was sent to study at the Oryol provincial gymnasium. After five years of study, the gifted and easily studied Nikolai Leskov received a certificate instead of a certificate, as he refused to be re-examined in the fourth grade. Further education became impossible. Nikolai's father managed to attach him to the Orel Criminal Chamber as one of the scribes.
At the age of seventeen and a half, Leskov was appointed assistant clerk of the Oryol Criminal Chamber. In the same year, 1848, Leskov's father died, and his relative, the husband of his maternal aunt, a well-known professor at Kiev University and a practicing therapist S.P., volunteered to help in arranging the future fate of Nikolai. Alferyev (1816–1884). In 1849, Nikolai Leskov moved to Kyiv with him and was appointed to the Kyiv Treasury Chamber as an assistant clerk at the recruiting desk of the revision department.
Unexpectedly for relatives, and despite the advice to wait, Nikolai Leskov decides to get married. The chosen one was the daughter of a wealthy Kyiv businessman. Over the years, the difference in tastes and interests manifested itself more and more among the spouses. Relations became especially complicated after the death of the first-born Leskovs - Mitya. In the early 1860s, Leskov's marriage actually broke up.
In 1853, Leskov was promoted to collegiate registrar, in the same year he was appointed to the post of clerk, and in 1856 Leskov was promoted to provincial secretary. In 1857, he moved to serve as an agent in the private firm Schcott and Wilkins, headed by A.Ya. Shkott is an Englishman who married Leskov's aunt and managed the estates of Naryshkin and Count Perovsky. On their business, Leskov constantly made trips, which gave him a huge supply of observations. (“Russian Biographical Dictionary”, article by S. Vengerov “Leskov Nikolai Semenovich”) “Shortly after the Crimean War, I became infected with the then fashionable heresy, for which I later condemned myself more than once, that is, I quit the rather successfully started government service and went to serve in one from newly formed trading companies at that time. The masters of the business in which I settled down were the British. They were still inexperienced people and spent the capital brought here with stupid self-confidence. I was the only Russian.” (from the memoirs of Nikolai Semenovich Leskov) The company conducted business throughout Russia and Leskov, as a representative of the company, had a chance to visit many cities at that time. Three years of wandering around Russia was the reason that Nikolai Leskov took up writing.
In 1860, his articles were published in "Modern Medicine", "Economic Index", "St. Petersburg Vedomosti". At the beginning of his literary activity (1860s), Nikolai Leskov published under the pseudonym M. Stebnitsky; later he used such pseudonyms as Nikolai Gorokhov, Nikolai Ponukalov, V. Peresvetov, Protozanov, Freishits, priest. P. Kastorsky, Psalm Reader, Watch Lover, Man from the Crowd. In 1861, Nikolai Leskov moved to St. Petersburg. In April 1861, the first article, Essays on the Distillery Industry, was published in Otechestvennye Zapiski. In May 1862, in the reformed newspaper Severnaya Pchela, which considered Leskov one of the most significant employees, under the pseudonym Stebnitsky, he published a sharp article about the fire in Apraksin and Shchukin yards. The article blamed both the arsonists, to whom popular rumor attributed the nihilist rebels, and the government, which was unable to either put out the fire or catch the criminals. A rumor spread that Leskov connected the fires in St. Petersburg with the revolutionary aspirations of students and, despite the writer's public explanations, Leskov's name became the subject of insulting suspicions. After going abroad, he began writing the novel Nowhere, in which he portrayed the movement of the 1860s in a negative light. The first chapters of the novel were published in January 1864 in the "Library for Reading" and created an unflattering fame for the author, so D.I. Pisarev wrote: “is there now in Russia, besides the Russkiy Vestnik, at least one magazine that would dare to print on its pages something coming from the pen of Stebnitsky and signed by his name? Is there at least one honest writer in Russia who will be so careless and indifferent to his reputation that he will agree to work in a magazine that adorns itself with Stebnitsky's stories and novels? In the early 80s, Leskov was published in the Historical Bulletin, from the middle of the 80s he became an employee of Russkaya Mysl and Nedelya, in the 90s he was published in Vestnik Evropy
In 1874, Nikolai Semenovich Leskov was appointed a member of the educational department of the Scientific Committee of the Ministry of Public Education; the main function of the department was "to review the books published for the people." In 1877, thanks to the positive feedback from Empress Maria Alexandrovna on the novel The Cathedral, he was appointed a member of the educational department of the Ministry of State Property. In 1880, Leskov left the Ministry of State Property, and in 1883 he was fired without a petition from the Ministry of Public Education. The resignation, which gave him independence, accepted with joy.
Nikolai Semenovich Leskov died on March 5 (February 21 according to the old style), 1895 in St. Petersburg, from another attack of asthma that had tormented him for the last five years of his life. Nikolai Leskov was buried at the Volkov cemetery in St. Petersburg.
- Biography
Russian writer N.S. Leskov was born on February 4 (16), 1831 in the village of Gorokhovo, Oryol province. His grandfather was a clergyman in the village of Leski, Karachev district, where the writer's surname came from. The grandson of a priest, Leskov always emphasized his kinship with the estate, the image of which he considered his "specialty" in literature. "Our family comes from the clergy," said the writer. Grandfather was smart and had a cool temper. His son, who graduated from the seminary, he kicked out of the house for refusing to go to the clergy. And although Leskov’s father, Semyon Dmitrievich (1789-1848), “did not become a priest,” “having fled to Oryol with 40 kopecks of copper, which his mother gave him through the back gate,” seminary education determined his spiritual appearance. He went to the civil part, was an assessor of the Oryol Criminal Chamber, an "excellent investigator", who received hereditary nobility. While teaching in noble families, 40-year-old Semyon Dmitrievich married one of his students, 16-year-old noblewoman Maria Petrovna Alferyeva (1813-1886). According to N.S. Leskova, his father, "a big, wonderful smart guy and a dense seminarian," was distinguished by his religiosity, excellent mind, honesty and firmness of convictions, because of which he made a lot of enemies for himself.
The childhood years of the future writer were spent in Orel, and in 1839, when his father retired and bought the Panino farm in the Kromsky district, the entire large family (Nikolai was the eldest of seven children) left Orel for his tiny estate of 40 acres of land. Leskov received his initial education in Gorokhovo in the house of the Strakhovs, wealthy maternal relatives, where he was sent by his parents due to a lack of his own funds for home education. In the village, Leskov made friends with peasant children, to "the smallest details learned the common people's way of life." A close acquaintance with the serfs revealed to him the originality of the people's worldview, so unlike the values of people from the upper classes. In the wilderness of Orel, the future writer saw and learned a lot, which later gave him the right to say: "I did not study the people by talking with St. Petersburg cabbies, ... I grew up among the people ... I was my own person with the people ..." grandmothers, Alexandra Vasilievna Kolobova, about Orel and its inhabitants, about her father's estate in Panino, were reflected in many of Leskov's works. He recalls this time in the stories "Non-lethal Golovan" (1879), "The Beast" (1883), "Dumb Artist" (1883), "Scarecrow" (1885), "Yudol" (1892).
In 1841, Nikolai entered the Oryol gymnasium, but did not study very well. In 1846, he did not pass the translation exams and left the gymnasium without finishing it. Five years of study at the gymnasium did little good for the future writer. Later, he regretted that they taught there at random. The lack of learning had to be made up for by a wealth of life observations, knowledge, and the talent of a writer. And in 1847, at the age of 16, Leskov got a job as a scribe in the Oryol Chamber of the Criminal Court, where his father served. “I’m completely self-taught,” he said of himself.
Service (1847-1849) was the first experience of acquaintance with the bureaucratic system, and with the unsightly, and sometimes comical sides of reality. This experience was later reflected in the works "Extinguished Case", "Stinging", "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District", "Mysterious Incident". In those years, Leskov read a lot, rotated in the circle of the Oryol intelligentsia. But the sudden death of his father in 1848, the terrible Oryol fires of the 1840s, during which the entire fortune perished, and the "disastrous ruin" of the family changed Leskov's fate. In the autumn of 1849, at the invitation of his maternal uncle, medical professor of Kyiv University S.P. Alferyev (1816-1884), moved to Kyiv and by the end of the year got a job as an assistant clerk of the recruiting desk of the revision department of the Kyiv Treasury Chamber. In this capacity, Leskov often went to the districts, studied folk life, and did a lot of self-education.
The influence of the university environment, acquaintance with Polish and Ukrainian cultures, reading by A.I. Herzen, L. Feuerbach, G. Babeuf, friendship with the icon painters of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra laid the foundation for the versatile knowledge of the writer. Leskov's keen interest in the great poet of Ukraine awakens, he is fond of ancient painting and architecture of Kyiv, becoming a great connoisseur of ancient art. In the same years, mainly under the influence of the ethnographer A.V. Markovich (1822-1867; his wife is known, who wrote under the pseudonym Marko Vovchok), became addicted to literature, although he had not yet thought about writing. In the Kiev years (1849-1857) Leskov, working in the Treasury, attends university lectures on agronomy, anatomy, criminalistics, state law as a volunteer, studies the Polish language, participates in a religious and philosophical student circle, communicates with pilgrims, sectarians, Old Believers.
Public service burdened Leskov. He did not feel free, did not see any real benefit for society in his activities. In 1857, he left government service and first entered the Russian Society of Shipping and Trade, and then as an agent in the private commercial firm "Shkott and Wilkins", headed by the Englishman A.Ya. Shkott (c.1800-1860 / 1861) - was the husband of Leskov's aunt and manager in the estates of Naryshkin and Count Perovsky. He spent three years (1857-1860) constantly traveling on the business of the company, "he saw all of Rus' from a wagon and from a barge." As Leskov himself recalled, he "traveled around Russia in a variety of directions", collected "a great abundance of impressions and a store of everyday information", which were reflected in a number of articles, feuilletons, and notes with which he appeared in the Kiev newspaper "Modern Medicine". These years of wandering gave Leskov a huge stock of observations, images, well-aimed words and phrases, from which he drew throughout his life. Since 1860, Leskov began to publish in St. Petersburg and Kyiv newspapers. His articles "Why are books expensive in Kyiv?" (on the sale of the Gospel at elevated prices), notes "On the working class", "On the drinking sale of bread wine", "On the hiring of working people", "Consolidated marriages in Russia", "Russian women and emancipation", "On privileges", "On the resettled peasants", etc. In 1860, Leskov was not an investigator for long in the Kiev police, but his articles in the weekly "Modern Medicine", exposing the corruption of police doctors, led to a conflict with colleagues. As a result of an organized provocation, Leskov, who conducted an official investigation, was accused of bribery and was forced to leave the service.
In January 1861, N.S. Leskov gives up commercial activities and moves to St. Petersburg. In search of a job, he devotes himself entirely to literature, collaborates in many metropolitan newspapers and magazines, most of all in Otechestvennye Zapiski, where he is assisted by an Oryol acquaintance, publicist S.S. Gromeko, in "Russian speech" and "Vremya". He quickly became a prominent publicist, his articles are devoted to topical issues. He becomes close to the circles of socialists and revolutionaries, the envoy A.I. lives in his apartment. Herzen Swiss A.I. Benny (later Leskovsky's essay "The Mysterious Man", 1870, was dedicated to him; he also became the prototype of Reiner in the novel "Nowhere"). In 1862, Leskov published the first works of art - the stories "Extinguished Business" (later revised and called "Drought"), "Stinging", "Robber" and "In the tarantass". These stories by Leskov are essays from folk life, depicting the ideas and actions of ordinary people that seem strange to a civilized, educated reader. Thus, the peasants are convinced that the disastrous drought is caused by the burial of the drunkard sexton; all attempts by the village priest to refute this superstitious opinion are in vain.
In 1862, Leskov became a regular contributor to the liberal newspaper Severnaya Pchela. As a publicist, he acted as a supporter of democratic reforms, an adherent of gradual changes, criticized the revolutionary ideas of the writers of the Sovremennik magazine N.G. Chernyshevsky and G.Z. Eliseev. Leskov pointed out with concern that the socialists' inherent desire for violent changes in the social and political system of Russia is just as dangerous as the restriction of freedom by the government. The intolerance of radical publicists to the opinions of others, Leskov argued in the pages of Severnaya pchela, is evidence of their despotism.
In the summer of 1862, the famous fires in St. Petersburg took place, causing terrible excitement among the people. Rumors circulated that the perpetrators of the fires were anti-government students. There were cases of attacks on students suspected of "arson". An article by Leskov was published in Severnaya Pchela, which caused a deafening response. In it, he categorically demanded that the police either officially provide evidence that the students were setting fire, or officially denied the ridiculous rumors. Few people read the article itself, but the rumor quickly spread that Leskov connected the fires in St. Petersburg with the revolutionary aspirations of students. In vain Leskov struggled with a completely wrong interpretation of his article: the legend was firmly established, and Leskov's name became the subject of the most insulting suspicions. His reputation was indelibly branded as a political provocateur who supported the authorities in the struggle against love of freedom and free thought. Acquaintances turned their backs on the author of the note; in society, he was publicly shown contempt. This undeserved insult made a tremendous impression on Leskov. The writer broke with revolutionary-democratic circles and turned sharply in the other direction. In September 1862, he leaves St. Petersburg and goes as a correspondent for the "Northern Bee" on a long business trip to Europe. Leskov visited Dinaburg, Vilna, Grodno, Pinsk, Lvov, Prague, Krakow, and then Paris, he conceived a novel in which the movement of the 1860s was to a large extent reflected in an unfavorable way. The result of the trip was a series of publicistic essays and letters ("From a travel diary", 1862-1863; "Russian Society in Paris", 1863), which described the life and moods of Russian aristocrats, their servants and socialist emigrants who settled in Paris. In the spring of 1863 Leskov returned to Russia.
Actually, Leskov's writing biography begins precisely in 1863, when he published his first stories ("The Life of a Woman", "Musk Ox") and began publishing in the "Library for Reading" the "anti-nihilistic" novel "Nowhere", written under the pseudonym M. Stebnitsky . The novel opens with scenes of unhurried provincial life, outraged by the advent of "new people", then the action is transferred to the capital. The satirically depicted life of the commune, organized by the "nihilists", is contrasted with modest work for the good of the people and Christian family values, which should save Russia from the disastrous path of social upheaval, where young demagogues are dragging her. Most of the depicted "nihilists" had recognizable prototypes (for example, under the name of the head of the commune, Beloyartsev, the writer V.A. Sleptsov was bred). The immoral ideologues and "leaders" of the revolutionary movement and the leaders of the nihilistic circles are depicted with undisguised disgust; in their portraits, pathological bloodthirstiness, narcissism, cowardice, bad manners are emphasized. The novel created a huge, but far from flattering fame for the author. And although there was a lot of unfairness in this cruel attitude towards the novel, Leskov was branded as a "reactionary". False rumors circulated in St. Petersburg that by writing "Nowhere", Leskov fulfilled the direct order of the police department. Radical democratic critics D.I. Pisarev and V.A. Zaitsev hinted at this in his articles. Pisarev asked rhetorically: “Apart from the Russkiy vestnik, is there now in Russia at least one magazine that would dare to print on its pages something coming from the pen of Stebnitsky and signed with his name? And is there at least one honest magazine in Russia?” a writer who will be so indifferent to his reputation that he will agree to work in a magazine that adorns itself with stories and novels by Stebnitsky? From now on, Leskov's path to major liberal publications was ordered, which predetermined his rapprochement with M.N. Katkov, publisher of Russkiy Vestnik. Leskov was able to free himself from this reputation only at the end of his life.
In the 1860s, Leskov was looking for his own special way. On the canvas of popular prints about the love of the clerk and the master's wife, the story "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District" (1865) was written, based on the story of disastrous passions hidden under the cover of provincial silence. A fascinating and tragic plot, at the same time repulsive and filled with sublime power, the character of the main character, Katerina Izmailova, gave the work a special appeal. This tale of illicit passion and murder differs from Leskov's other writings. The story "Old Years in the Village of Plodomasovo" (1869), which describes the serf customs of the 18th century, he writes in the chronicle genre. In the story "The Warrior" (1866), tale forms appear for the first time. He also tries his hand at dramaturgy: in 1867, on the stage of the Alexandrinsky Theater, they put his drama from the merchant's life "The Spender". Since the courts and "modern-dressed" entrepreneurs who emerged as a result of liberal reforms are powerless in the play against the predator of the old formation, Leskov was again accused by critics of pessimism and antisocial tendencies. Among Leskov's other works of the 1860s, the story "Bypassed" (1865) stands out, written in polemic with the novel by N.G. Chernyshevsky "What to do?" (Leskov contrasted his "new people" with "little people" "with a spacious heart"), and the story of the Germans living on Vasilyevsky Island in St. Petersburg ("Islanders", 1866).
Leskov during this period held liberal views. In 1866, in the affairs of the office of the St. Petersburg police chief, in a note "On writers and journalists" it was stated: "Eliseev, Sleptsov, Leskov. Extreme socialists. Sympathize with everything anti-government. Nihilism in all forms." In reality, Leskov had a negative attitude towards extreme political, democratic trends, standing entirely on the basis of bourgeois reforms. He did not see the social forces on which the revolution could rely. He wrote: "There cannot be a social-democratic revolution in Russia due to the complete absence of socialist concepts among the Russian people." The anti-nihilistic motives that sounded in many of his works of the 1860s, as well as the novel "On the Knives" (1870), which shows the internal collapse of the revolutionary dream and depicts "swindlers from nihilism", aggravated hostility towards Leskov in the circle of radical intelligentsia. His best works of those years passed almost unnoticed.
The main storyline of the novel "On the Knives" is the murder by the nihilist Gordanov and his former mistress Glafira Bodrostina of Glafira's husband Mikhail Andreevich, whose property and money they seek to take possession of. The plot is full of unexpected twists, tragic events and secrets. The concept of "nihilism" in the novel takes on a special meaning. Former revolutionaries are reborn as ordinary swindlers, become police agents and officials, because of money they cleverly deceive each other. Nihilism is an extreme unscrupulousness that has become a philosophy of life. Gordanov's intrigues in the novel are opposed only by a few noble people - the knight of virtue, the nobleman Podozerov, the general's wife Sintyanina, who after the death of her husband becomes Podozerov's wife, the retired major Forov. The novel with an intricate plot caused reproaches for the tension and implausibility of the situations depicted (everything, as the expression goes, “is happening on the moon”), not to mention the next political accusations against the author. The novel "On Knives" is the most extensive and, undoubtedly, the worst work of Leskov, written, moreover, in a tabloid-melodramatic style. Subsequently, Leskov himself, with pleasure always starting a conversation about "Nowhere", avoided talking about "On the Knives". This novel is a kind of crisis that resolved the period of Leskov's activity, dedicated to settling scores with the movement of the 1860s. The nihilists then disappear from his writings. The second, better half of Leskov's activity begins, almost free from the topic of the day. Leskov never returned to the genre of the novel in its purest form.
Since the 1870s, the topic of nihilism has become irrelevant for Leskov. The writer's interest is directed towards church-religious and moral issues. He refers to the images of the Russian righteous: "We have not translated, and the righteous will not be translated." Convinced that in moments of "general disaster" the "environment of the people" itself puts forward its heroes and righteous people to the feat, and then composes legends about them with a "human soul", - Leskov comes to the conclusion about the "righteousness of all our smart and kind people."
The search for positive heroes, the righteous, on whom the Russian land rests (they are also in "anti-nihilistic" novels), a long-standing interest in schismatics and sectarians, in folklore, ancient Russian icon painting, in all the "variegated flowers" of folk life accumulated in the stories "The Sealed Angel" and "The Enchanted Wanderer" (both 1873), in which Leskov's narration style revealed its potential. In The Sealed Angel, which tells of a miracle that led a schismatic community to unity with Orthodoxy, there are echoes of ancient Russian legends about miraculous icons. The image of the hero of the "Enchanted Wanderer" Ivan Flyagin, who went through unthinkable trials, resembles the epic Ilya Muromets and symbolizes the physical and moral stamina of the Russian people. For his sins - the senseless "daring" murder of a nun and the murder of a gypsy Grusha (Grusha herself asked Flyagin to push her into the water, help her die, but he considers this act of his great sin), the hero of the story goes to the monastery. This decision, in his opinion, is predetermined by fate, by God. But Ivan Flyagin's life is not over, and the monastery is just one of the "stops" in his journey. Having won wide reader success, these works are interesting in that the writer created an artistic model of the whole of Russia in a limited plot space. Both works are sustained in a fairy tale manner: the author "hides" behind the narrator, avoiding unambiguous assessments.
Leskov used the experience of his "anti-nihilistic" novels and "provincial" stories in the chronicle "Soboryane" (1872), which became a turning point in the writer's life, demonstrating even to prejudiced readers the scale of his artistic talent. The story of Archpriest Saveliy Tuberozov, deacon Achilles Desnitsyn and priest Zakharia Benefaktov, who live in the provincial town of Stargorod, reminiscent of Orel, takes on the features of a fairy tale and a heroic epic. These eccentric inhabitants of the "old fairy tale" are surrounded on all sides by figures of the new time - nihilists, swindlers, civil and church officials of a new type. The small victories of the naive Achilles, the courage of Savely, the struggle of this "best of heroes" "against the pests of Russian development" cannot stop the onset of a new evil age that promises Russia terrible upheavals in the future. In "Cathedrals" tragic, dramatic and comic episodes are woven together.
After the release of the novel, Leskov again wins the attention of readers. There was a change in his attitude. Finally, his position in literature began to "settle". "Cathedrals" brought the author literary fame and great success. According to I.A. Goncharov, Leskov's chronicle "was read to the whole beau monde" of St. Petersburg. The newspaper "Grazhdanin", which was edited by F.M. Dostoevsky, referred "Soboryan" to the number of "capital works" of modern Russian literature, putting Leskov's work on a par with "War and Peace" by L.N. Tolstoy and "Demons" by F.M. Dostoevsky. The attitude towards Leskov at the end of the 1870s changed so much that the "liberal" newspaper Novosti published his "Trifles of Bishop's Life" (1878), written with a significant amount of slyness and had a resounding success, but aroused extreme displeasure among the clergy.
True, in 1874 the second part of Leskov's chronicle "The Seedy Family", which caustically portrayed the mysticism and hypocrisy of the end of Alexander's reign and affirmed the social non-embodiment in the Russian life of Christianity, displeased the editor of the "Russian Messenger" Katkov. As an editor, he subjected Leskov's text to distortions, which led to a break in their relationship, however, long overdue (a year earlier, Katkov had refused to publish The Enchanted Wanderer, referring to its artistic "unfinished work"). “There is nothing to regret - he is not ours at all,” said Katkov. After the break with the Russian Messenger, Leskov found himself in a difficult financial situation. Service (since 1874) in a special department of the Scientific Committee of the Ministry of Public Education for the review of books published for the people, gave him a meager salary. Excommunicated from major journals and unable to find a place among the "conservatives" of the Katkov type, Leskov almost to the end of his life was published in small-circulation or specialized publications - in humorous leaflets, illustrated weeklies, in supplements to the Marine Journal, in the church press, in provincial periodicals and etc., often using different, sometimes exotic pseudonyms (V. Peresvetov, Nikolai Gorokhov, Nikolai Ponukalov, Freishits, Priest P. Kastorsky, Psalm Reader, Man from the Crowd, Watch Lover, Protozanov, etc.). This "scatteredness" of Leskov's heritage is associated with significant difficulties in studying it, as well as the winding paths of the reputation of his individual works. So, for example, the story about the Russian and German national characters "Iron Will" (1876), which Leskov did not include in his lifetime collected works, was pulled from oblivion and republished only during the Great Patriotic War.
"Iron Will" is a tragicomic story of the German Hugo Pectoralis, who settled in Russia. The comically exaggerated trait of the German character - willpower, inflexibility, turning into stubbornness - turn out to be in Russia not advantages, but disadvantages: Pectoralis is ruined by the crafty, inconsistent and ingenuous iron-smelter Vasily Safronych, who took advantage of the stubbornness of the German. Pectoralis obtained permission from the court to keep the fence with which he fenced the courtyard of Vasily Safronych, depriving the enemy of access to the street. But cash payments to Vasily Safronych for the inconvenience brought Pectoralis to poverty. Pectoralis, as he had threatened, outlived Vasily Safronych, but died after overeating pancakes at his wake (this is exactly the death Vasily Safronych wished the German).
After his second trip abroad in 1875, Leskov, by his own admission, "most of all disagreed with the clergy." In contrast to his stories about the "Russian righteous", he writes a series of essays about the bishops, processing anecdotes and popular rumor into ironic, sometimes even satirical texts: "Trifles of Bishop's Life" (1878), "Bishops' Detours" (1879), "Diocesan Court "(1880), "Synodal Persons" (1882), etc. The measure of Leskov's opposition to the Church in the 1870s and early 1880s should not be exaggerated (as was done, for obvious reasons, in the Soviet years): it is rather "criticism from within". In some essays, such as, for example, "The Sovereign's Court" (1877), which tells about abuses in recruitment, familiar to Leskov firsthand, the bishop (Metropolitan Philaret of Kiev) appears almost as an ideal "pastor". During these years, Leskov was still actively collaborating in the church magazines Pravoslavnoye Obozrenie, Wanderer, and Church Public Bulletin; brochures: The Mirror of the Life of a True Disciple of Christ (1877), Prophecies about the Messiah (1878), Pointer to the Book of the New Testament (1879) and others. in the second half of the 1880s and did not leave him until his death.
In the 1880s, Leskov's most productive form was the tale form, which gave characteristic examples of his style ("Lefty", "Dumb Artist", etc.). Creating stories based on an anecdote, a "curious case" preserved and embellished by oral tradition, Leskov combines them into cycles. This is how "stories by the way" arise, depicting funny, but no less significant situations in their national character ("Voice of Nature", 1883; "Alexandrite", 1885; "Old Psychopaths", 1885; "Interesting Men", 1885; "Zagon" , 1893, etc.), and "Christmas tales" - tales of imaginary and genuine miracles that happen at Christmas ("Christ visiting a peasant", 1881; "Ghost in the Engineer's Castle", 1882; "Journey with a Nihilist", 1882 ; "The Beast", 1883; "Old Genius", 1884, etc.).
Fairy-tale motifs, the interweaving of the comic and the tragic, the author's dual assessment of the characters are the hallmarks of Leskov's works. They are also characteristic of one of his most famous works - the tale "Lefty" (1881, the original title - "The Tale of the Tula Oblique Lefty and the Steel Flea"). In the center of the narrative is the motif of the competition, characteristic of the fairy tale. Russian craftsmen, led by the Tula gunsmith Lefty, without any complicated tools, shoe a dancing English-made steel flea. Lefty is a skilled craftsman who embodies the talents of the Russian people. But at the same time, Lefty is a character devoid of technical knowledge known to any English master. He rejects the lucrative offers of the British and returns to Russia. But Lefty's disinterestedness and incorruptibility are inextricably linked with downtroddenness, with a sense of his own insignificance in comparison with officials and nobles. Leskov's hero combines both the virtues and vices of a simple Russian person. Returning to his homeland, he falls ill and dies, useless, deprived of any care. In a separate edition of "Lefty" in 1882, Leskov indicated that his work was based on the legend of Tula gunsmiths about the competition between Tula masters and the British. They said that the legend of Lefty was told to him in Sestroretsk by an old gunsmith, a native of Tula. Literary critics believed this message of the author. But in fact, Leskov invented the plot of his legend.
Critics who wrote about Leskov's work invariably - and often unfriendly - noted the unusual language, the author's bizarre verbal play. “Mr. Leskov is one of the most pretentious representatives of our modern literature. Not a single page can do without some equivocations, allegories, fictitious or God knows where dug out words and all kinds of kunstshtyukov,” A. M. Skabichevsky, a well-known literary critic of the democratic trend. The narrator in "Lefty" seems to involuntarily distort the words. Such distorted, misunderstood words give Leskov's tale a comic coloring. Private conversations in the tale are called "internecine", a double carriage is called "double-seat", a chicken with rice turns into a "hen with a lynx", the minister's name is "Kiselvrode", busts and chandeliers are combined into one word "busters", and the famous antique statue of Apollo Belvedere turns into "Abolon polvedere". A melkoskop, a multiplication dolly, a popular adviser, bills of exchange, waterproof cables, a couchette, beliefs, etc., are found on every page of Leskov, insulting the purist ear of his contemporaries and incurring accusations of "corrupting the language", "vulgarity", "buffoonery", " pretentiousness" and "originality".
Here is how the writer A.V. Amfiteatrov: “Of course, Leskov was a natural stylist. He discovers rare reserves of verbal wealth. Wandering around Russia, close acquaintance with local dialects, studying Russian antiquity, Old Believers, Russian crafts, etc. added a lot, over time, to these reserves. Leskov took into the depths of his speech everything that was preserved among the people from his ancient language, and put it into action with great success. and fictitious, newly formed verbal material served Leskov not for good, but for harm, dragging his talent onto the slippery path of external comic effects, funny catchphrases and turns of speech. Leskov himself spoke about the language of his works: “The voice of the writer lies in the ability to master the voice and language of his hero ... I tried to develop this skill in myself and reached, it seems, that my priests speak in a spiritual way, nihilists - in - nihilistically, peasants - like peasants, upstarts from them and buffoons with tricks, etc. On my own behalf, I speak the language of old fairy tales and church folk in purely literary speech. and did not subscribe to it. This pleases me. They say that it is fun to read me. This is because all of us: both my heroes and I myself, have our own voice. "
"Anecdotal" in its essence is the story "Dumb Artist" (1883), which tells about the sad fate of a talent from serfs in the 18th century. In the story, a cruel master separates the serfs of Count Kamensky - the hairdresser Arkady and the actress Lyubov Anisimovna, giving Arkady to the soldiers and dishonoring his beloved. After serving in the army and receiving an officer's rank and nobility, Arkady comes to Kamensky to marry Lyubov Anisimovna. The count favorably receives his former serf. But happiness betrays the heroes of the story: the owner of the inn where Arkady stopped, seduced by the money of the guest, kills him.
At one time (in 1877), Empress Maria Alexandrovna, having read the Soboryans, spoke of them with great praise in a conversation with Count P.A. Valuev, then Minister of State Property; on the same day, Valuev appointed Leskov a member of a department in his ministry. This was the end of Leskov's official successes. In 1880 he was forced to leave the Ministry of State Property, and in February 1883 he was dismissed from the Ministry of Public Education, where he had served since 1874. Leskov would not have to work hard to avert such an end to his career, but he gladly accepted the resignation, seeing in it a confirmation of his confidence that he was a completely independent person, not affiliated with any "party" and therefore condemned to arouse displeasure in everyone and remain lonely, without friends and patrons. Independence was especially dear to him now, when, partly under the influence of Leo Tolstoy, he devoted himself almost exclusively to religious and moral questions and to the study of the sources of Christianity.
Leskov is getting closer to L.N. Tolstoy in the mid-1880s, he shares the foundations of Tolstoy's religious and moral teachings: the idea of moral improvement of the individual as the basis of a new faith, the opposition of the true faith to Orthodoxy, and the rejection of existing social orders. At the beginning of 1887, they met. About the influence exerted on him by Tolstoy, Leskov wrote: "I exactly "coincided" with Tolstoy ... Sensing his enormous strength, I threw my bowl and went after his lantern." Assessing the work of Nikolai Leskov, Leo Tolstoy wrote: "Leskov is a writer of the future, and his life in literature is deeply instructive." However, not everyone agreed with this assessment. In his later years, Leskov was in sharp conflict with spiritual censorship, his writings with difficulty bypass censorship bans, causing the wrath of the influential Chief Prosecutor of the Holy Synod K.P. Pobedonostsev.
Leskov was hot and uneven. Next to absolute masterpieces, he lists hastily written things put into print from pencil scraps - the inevitable blunders of a writer who feeds on a pen and is sometimes forced to compose as needed. Leskov was for a long time and unfairly not recognized as a classic of Russian literature. He was a man preoccupied with the problems of everyday life and the survival of the fatherland, he was intolerant of fools and political demagogues. In the last 12-15 years of his life, Leskov was very lonely, old friends treated him suspiciously and incredulously, new ones - with caution. Despite the big name, he made friends mainly with writers of minor importance and beginners. Criticism did little for him.
All his life, Nikolai Leskov was between scorching fires. The bureaucracy did not forgive him for poisonous arrows directed at her; Slavophiles were angry at the words about the senselessness of the idealization of "pre-Petrine foolishness and falsehood"; the clergy were worried about this secular gentleman's suspiciously good knowledge of the problems of church history and modernity; the left-wing liberals-"communists", through the mouth of Pisarev, declared Leskov an informer and a provocateur. Later, the Soviet government awarded Leskov the rank of a moderately talented minor writer with incorrect political convictions and the right to publish occasionally. Having not received during his lifetime the literary assessment he deserved, contemptuously interpreted by critics as a "writer-anecdotist", Leskov received full recognition only in the 20th century, when articles by M. Gorky and B.M. Eikhenbaum about his innovation and dramatic creative life. Leskov's biography, compiled by his son Andrei Nikolayevich Leskov (1866-1953), was first published in 1954. And in the early 1970s, Leskov was suddenly and without explanation rehabilitated, in 1974 the house-museum of N.S. Leskov, and in 1981, in honor of the 150th anniversary of the birth of the writer, a monument to the writer was erected there, he was showered with praise and reprints. There were numerous performances and films based on his works.
Leskov's life itself was cut short for literary reasons. In 1889, a big scandal erupted around the publication of the collected works of Leskov. The sixth volume of the publication was arrested by censorship as "anti-church", some of the works were cut out, but the publication was saved. Having learned on August 16, 1889 in the printing house of A.S. Suvorin, where the collected works were published, about the ban and arrest of the entire 6th volume, Leskov experienced a severe attack of angina pectoris (or angina pectoris, as it was then called). The last 4 years of life of the patient N.S. Leskov continued to work on the publication of 9-12 volumes, wrote the novel "Damn's Dolls", the stories "On Christmas Offended", "Improvisers", "Administrative Grace", "Wild Fantasy", "Product of Nature", "Zagon" and others. The story "Hare Remise" (1894) was the last major work of the writer. Only now Leskov, as if catching up with bygone youth, falls in love. His correspondence with the young writer Lydia Ivanovna Veselitskaya is a postal novel about late and unrequited love. In his letters to her, Leskov comes to self-abasement: “There is nothing to love in me, and even less to respect: I am a rude, carnal person, and deeply fallen, but restlessly staying at the bottom of my pit.”
But the disease worsened. Anticipating the approach of the end, two years before the death of N.S. Leskov, with his characteristic uncompromisingness, writes his testamentary order: “Do not announce any deliberate ceremonies and meetings near my lifeless corpse ... I ask you not to speak at my funeral. I know that there was a lot of bad things in me and that I didn’t praise any and I deserve no regrets. Anyone who wants to blame me must know that I blamed myself ... "At the beginning of 1895, a walk around the Tauride Garden caused a new exacerbation of the disease. After five years of severe suffering, Leskov died on February 21 (March 5), 1895 in St. Petersburg. He was buried on February 23 (March 7) at the Volkovskoye cemetery (Literatorskie mostki). No speeches were made over the coffin ... A year later, a monument was erected on Leskov's grave - a cast-iron cross on a granite pedestal.
In this man combined, it would seem, incompatible. A mediocre student, a half-educated student who left the walls of the Oryol gymnasium ahead of schedule, became a famous writer with a worldwide reputation. Leskov was called the most national of the writers of Russia. He lived, striving with all his heart to "serve the motherland with the word of truth and truth", to seek only "truth in life", giving to any picture, in his words, "illumination, subject and sense according to reason and conscience." The fate of the writer is dramatic, life, not rich in major events, is full of intense ideological searches. For thirty-five years Leskov served literature. And, despite involuntary and bitter delusions, all his life he remained a deeply democratic artist and a true humanist. He always defended the honor and dignity of a person and constantly stood up for "freedom of mind and conscience", perceiving a person as the only lasting value that cannot be sacrificed either to various ideas or to the opinions of a contradictory world. He remained passionate and unapologetic when it came to his beliefs. And all this made his life difficult and full of dramatic clashes.
Falling off is more effective than resisting. To break is more romantic than to save. To renounce is more pleasant than to insist. And the easiest thing is to die.
N.S. Leskov
Nikolai Semenovich Leskov can be safely called the genius of that time. He is one of the few writers who could feel the people. This extraordinary personality had a passion not only for Russian literature, but also for Ukrainian and English culture.
1. Only Nikolai Semenovich Leskov graduated from the 2nd grade of the gymnasium.
2. In the Court of Justice, the writer began to work as an ordinary clerk on the initiative of his dad.
3. After the death of his father, Leskov was able to grow up in the judicial chamber to the deputy head of the court.
4. Only thanks to the Schcott and Wilkens company did Nikolai Semenovich Leskov become a writer.
5. Leskov was constantly interested in the life of the Russian people.
6. Leskov had to study the way of life of the Old Believers, and he was most carried away by their mystery and mysticism.
- Gorky was delighted with Leskov's talent and even compared him with Turgenev and Gogol.
8. Nikolai Semenovich Leskov always remained on the side of vegetarianism, because compassion for animals was stronger than the desire to eat meat.
9. The most famous work of this writer is "Lefty".
10. Nikolai Leskov received a good spiritual education because his grandfather was a priest.
11. Nikolai Semenovich Leskov never denied his belonging to the clergy.
12. The first wife of Leskov, whose name was Olga Vasilievna Smirnova, went crazy.
13. Until the death of his first wife, Leskov visited her in a psychiatric clinic.
14. Before dying, the writer was able to release a collection of works.
15. Leskov's father died of cholera in 1848.
16. Nikolai Semenovich Leskov began to print his works at the age of 26.
17. Leskov had several fictitious pseudonyms.
18. The political future of the writer was predetermined through the novel Nowhere.
19. The only work of Leskov, which did not use writer's editing - "The Sealed Angel".
20. After studying, Leskov had to live in Kyiv, where he became a volunteer of the Faculty of Humanities.
22. Leskov was a passionate collector. Unique paintings, books and watches are all his rich collections.
23. One of the first this writer made a proposal to create a book of recipes for vegetarians.
24. Leskov's writing activity began with journalism.
25. Since the 1860s, Nikolai Semenovich Leskov began to write about religion.
26. Leskov had a son from his common-law wife named Andrey.
27. The writer's death occurred in 1895 from an asthma attack, which exhausted him for 5 whole years of his life.
28. Leo Tolstoy called Leskov "the most Russian of writers."
29. Critics accused Nikolai Semenovich Leskov of distorting his native Russian language.
30. Ten years of his own life, Nikolai Semenovich Leskov gave to the service of the state.
31. Leskov never looked for higher values in people.
32. Many of the heroes of this writer had their own oddities.
33. The problem with alcohol, which was observed among the Russian people, Leskov found in many drinking establishments. He believed that this is how the state earns on a person.
34. The publicistic activity of Nikolai Semenovich Leskov is connected primarily with the subject of fires.
36. At the end of Leskov's life, not a single work of his was published in the author's version.
37. In 1985, an asteroid was named after Nikolai Semenovich Leskov.
38. Leskov managed to get his first education in a wealthy maternal family.
39. Uncle Leskova was a professor of medicine.
40. Nikolai Semenovich Leskov was not the only child in the family. He had 4 brothers and sisters.
41. The writer was buried at the St. Petersburg cemetery.
42. The childhood and youth of Nikolai Semenovich passed in the family estate.
43. The child from Leskov's first marriage died when he was not yet a year old.
44. Nikolai Semenovich Leskov during his work in the newspaper was able to visit European countries such as France, the Czech Republic and Poland.
45. A good friend of Leskov was Leo Tolstoy.
46. Leskov's father served as an investigator in the Criminal Chamber, and his mother was from a poor family.
47. Nikolai Semenovich Leskov was engaged in writing not only novels and short stories, but also plays.
48. Leskov had such a disease as angina pectoris.
49. The most serious activity of this writer began precisely in St. Petersburg in 1860.
50. In total, Leskov's women gave birth to 3 children.
51. On Furshtadskaya Street there was a house where Leskov spent the last years of his life.
52. Nikolai Semenovich Leskov was quite temperamental and active.
53. During his studies, Leskov had a lot of conflicts with teachers and because of this, he subsequently abandoned his studies altogether.
54. For three years of his life, Leskov had to travel around Russia.
55. The last story of this writer is considered to be "Hare remise".
56. Leskov was discouraged from entering into his first marriage by his relatives.
57. In 1867, the Alexandrinsky Theater staged Leskov's play with the title "The Spender". This drama about merchant life once again gave criticism towards the writer.
58. Very often the writer was engaged in the processing of old memoirs and manuscripts.
59. The influence of Leo Tolstoy affected the attitude towards the church on the part of Leskov.
60. The first Russian vegetarian character was created by Nikolai Semenovich Leskov.
61. Tolstoy called Leskov "the writer of the future."
62. Maria Alexandrovna, who was considered the empress of that time, after reading Leskov’s Cathedral, began to promote him to state property officials.
63. Leskov and Veselitskaya had unrequited love.
64. At the beginning of 1862, Leskov became a regular contributor to the Severnaya Pchela newspaper. There he published his editorials.
65. Because of the criticism presented to Nikolai Semenovich Leskov, he was not going to correct himself.
66. This writer considered the speech characteristics of the characters and the individualization of their language to be an important element of literary creativity.
67. Over the years, Andrei Leskov created a biography of his father.
68. In the Oryol region there is a house-museum for Leskov.
69. Nikolai Semenovich Leskov was a slanderous person.
70. Leskov's novel "Devil's Dolls" was written in the style of Voltaire.
Nikolai Leskov lived an interesting and difficult life. Leskov's writing path was thorny, however, he managed to break through to the stars. Many of Leskov's works, for various reasons, were hardly available to the reader. Many colleagues in the role, Leskov was unpleasant, "critics" and seasoned writers did not like his work. People who are fond of literature, describing Leskov's torment in walking around publishing houses, with the hope that at least someone will publish it, compare them with a trip to the indifferent doctors of a sick person. Hiding under various pseudonyms, Leskov was published in some publications, receiving a livelihood for this.
The writer Nikolai Leskov was born in February 1831, in the village of Gorohovo, which was in the Oryol province. The family in which Leskov was born was large and not rich. Nikolai's father was a criminal investigator. Leskov was brought up by wealthy relatives of his mother. When the boy turned 10 years old, he was assigned to the Oryol gymnasium. Nikolai Semenovich studied at the gymnasium for five years. The future writer studied carelessly, and eventually left the gymnasium. He went to work, got a job as a scribe in the Chamber of the Criminal Court.
Two years later, Leskov's father will die, the young man was 17 years old. The family was in a difficult financial situation. Nikolai's uncle, on his mother's side, Professor Alferyev invites the young man to his place in Kyiv. Arriving in Ukraine, Nikolai Semenovich Leskov gets a job in the state chamber. Working as a secretary of the recruiting presence, Leskov travels extensively throughout the Russian Empire. In villages, Nicholas communicates with different people - pilgrims, Old Believers. Communication with them makes a certain impression on Leskov. In his free time, Nikolai is engaged in self-education, reads, attends lectures at the university.
In 1857, Leskov left the civil service and went to work at the Schcott and Wilkens firm. For three years, on the business of the company, Nikolai Semenovich travels all over the country. It is time to return to Kyiv. Here he again enters the civil service, only this time in the office of the Kyiv Governor-General. He combined his work with journalism. Leskov's articles are published in the newspapers of Kyiv and. In 1861, Nikolai Semenovich Leskov moved to the capital of the Russian Empire. Here he is engaged in journalism, writes in many newspapers and magazines. Most of all, Leskov had a creative alliance with the journal Domestic Notes.
An article by Leskov is published in Severnaya pchela. The article is devoted to a series of fires in St. Petersburg. Nikolai urges the authorities to look into the reasons: what is it? Coincidence or activity of revolutionary students? After the article was published, a flurry of criticism fell upon Leskov, he was called an accomplice of tsarism and a strangler of freedom. Nikolai had to go on a business trip abroad, as a correspondent for Severnaya Pchela. In Europe, Leskov managed to visit Poland, France, Austria. Returning to Russia, Leskov publishes the stories: "The Life of a Woman", "Three Stories of Stebnitsky", "Musk Ox" and the novel "Nowhere". The novel "Nowhere" caused an unprecedented flurry of criticism in liberal circles, which hit Leskov like a cold shower.
Fortunately, not all of society shared liberal ideas, and there were magazines and newspapers of other political shades. The "evil" monarchy observed the foundations of political pluralism. Leskov is published in the Russian Bulletin and other conservative journals. In subsequent years, Leskov wrote several more works: “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District”, “Warrior”, “On Knives”. The last novel was another reason for Leskov's criticism from the liberals.
In the following years of his life, Nikolai Semenovich Leskov will deal with issues of morality and religiosity. He will write a number of amazing works "Cathedrals", "The Sealed Angel", "The Enchanted Wanderer". Nikolai Leskov is the author of many wonderful works, the most famous of which is the story "Lefty". The people liked the story so much that the word "left-handed" became a household word, and means a native of the people, a master of his craft. Nikolai Semenovich Leskov died in February 1895. Nikolai was buried at the Volkovsky cemetery in St. Petersburg.
Hypermarket of Knowledge >> Literature >> Literature Grade 10 >> Literature: N. S. Leskov. Essay on life and work
Nikolai Semenovich Leskov
1831.4 (16) February - was born in the village of Gorokhovo, Oryol province.
1841-1846 - studied at the Oryol gymnasium.
1857-1860 - commercial service and trips around Russia.
1862 - the first work "Extinguished Case" was published.
1865-1866 - the novels "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District", "Warrior Girl" were published.
1864 - published novel"Nowhere."
1871 - The pamphlet novel "On Knives" was published.
1872 - the chronicle "Soboryane" was published.
1873 - the story "The Sealed Angel" and the story "The Enchanted Wanderer" were written.
1883 - created the stories "Lefty", "Dumb Artist".
1889-1890 - publication of collected works.
1895, February 21 (March 5) - died in St. Petersburg.
Essay on life and work
Childhood and youth.
Nikolai Semenovich Leskov was born on February 4 (16), 1831 in the village of Gorokhovo, Oryol province. His father, Semyon Dmitrievich Leskov, was a minor judicial official who came out of the spiritual environment and only before his death received documents on personal nobility. The writer's mother, Marya Petrovna, was the daughter of an impoverished nobleman married to a merchant's daughter. The Raznochinsk origin of Leskov largely determined the democratic nature of his future work. Among the pictures of childhood, which opened on the neighboring steppe pasture, are soldiers' drills and stick fights, characteristic of the reign of Nicholas I. The boy encountered the despotism of serfdom in the house of wealthy relatives of the Strakhovs, where he received his initial education. When Nikolai was eight years old, his father bought Panin's farm on the Gostoml River on credit and the family moved to the village. This black earth southern Russian region became his real homeland. For the future writer, life on Panin's farm was the beginning of the knowledge of the people. There he heard folk tales, saw folk rituals got acquainted with the life of the people. There he felt himself flesh of the flesh of the people, these places awakened in him the creative nature of the artist. “I grew up among the people on the Gostomel pasture, with a cauldron in my hand, I slept with him on the dewy grass of the night under a warm sheepskin coat, and on the Panin’s crowded crowd behind the circles of dusty habits ... I was my own person with the people, and I have there are many godfathers and friends in it ... I stood between a peasant and rods tied to him, ”N. S. Leskov will write later.
From 1841 to 1846, Nikolai studied at the Oryol Gymnasium. The gifted boy was a passionate lover of reading, and this passion accompanied him all his life, but studying at a state educational institution did not arouse his interest. At the age of 16, having completed his education, he began serving as a clerk of the lowest rank in the Oryol Criminal Chamber, then in 1849 he transferred to the Kiev Treasury Chamber. Living with my uncle, professor of medicine in Kyiv university S.P. Alferyev, Leskov found himself in the midst of young students and young scientists. He read a lot, attended lectures at the university, got acquainted with the works of Herzen, Feuerbach, Kant, Hegel, Owen, with Ukrainian and Polish literature. In Kyiv, there was a meeting with the founder of Russian statistics, Dmitry Zhuravsky, who redeemed serfs to the detriment of his material benefits. This acquaintance influenced the formation of the writer's civic views.
Leaving the civil service in 1857 and getting a job in a private commercial company A. Ya. Shkotta, Leskov traveled a lot. The impressions received during these trips gave him the richest material for creativity. In old age, answering a journalist's question: “Where do you get material for your works? "- Leskov said, pointing to his forehead:" Here from this chest. Here are the impressions of six or seven years of my commercial service, when I had to travel around Russia on business, this is the best time of my life, when I saw a lot and lived easily.
The writer's journalistic debut was a series of articles of an economic, social and domestic nature, rather sharp, accusatory content. Determining the meaning of a literary word, Leskov wrote: “It’s time for us to wean ourselves from the idea that the subject literature there must be something special, and not something that is always before our eyes and from which we all suffer directly or indirectly. Throwing off the age-old rubbish of warnings, we will feel close to the life of our smaller brethren and will be able to help them in time and at the right time, discovering the aspects of social life that oppose hygiene. These articles cost the writer dearly, who was accused of slander and on perjury in a bribe. The case was dismissed, but Kyiv had to be left.
In 1861, Leskov moved to "the smartest city in the country" - St. Petersburg, in order to devote himself entirely to the cause to which he would devote his whole future life. The future writer is published in Otechestvennye Zapiski, works in the Severnaya Pchela newspaper, and writes for the Moscow weekly Russian Speech.
Leskov perceives the tsar's manifesto of 1861 as the beginning reforms. The split of social thought into a liberal and a revolutionary-democratic trend leads him to the "gradualists", whose moderation seemed to him more reliable. Although he was an unconditional supporter of broad reforms and the eradication of the remnants of the feudal system, the idea that a prejudiced people could really change society was not close to the writer, about which he argued with Sovremennik.
The beginning of a writer's journey. 60s.
In 1862, the first work of the writer was published in the Vek magazine - the story "Extinguished Business". Following him in other magazines appear: "Robber" (1862), "In the tarantass" (1862), "Musk Ox" (1862), "Stinging" (1863). Many of Leskov's early works are written in an artistic essay.
In 1864, the novel Nowhere was published in the Library for Reading magazine, in which he tried to shame the nihilists, showed the difficulties of the revolutionary struggle and expressed the idea of the hopelessness of the revolutionary movement in Russia in the 60s. The "anti-nihilistic" novel aroused indignation in the leading literary circles, and there was even a rumor that it had been written on behalf of the Third Section. One of the reviewers admitted: “... Mr. Leskov has such a literary reputation that to praise his kind of courage. Artistically, the work was quite immature. This novel bears in itself all the signs of my haste and lack of smallness, ”the writer himself later remarked.
In the center of a number of early works of the writer is a female character, the tragic fate of a woman: "The Life of a Woman" (1863), "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District" (1865), "The Warrior" (1866). The theme of female fate is one of the most relevant in the progressive literature of the 60s, and Leskov solves it with deep sympathy for the Russian woman. IN stories dramatic images of women of different classes are drawn: a peasant woman, a provincial merchant's wife, a provincial intellectual.
In the story "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District" - one of the pinnacles in the writer's work - Leskov, with amazing artistic power, showed the story of the rebellion of the female soul against the deadly atmosphere of the merchant environment. The tragic love that pushed the heroine of the story, Katerina Izmailova, to crime showed that a world in which everything is bought and sold, where a person becomes a thing, is doomed to self-destruction. Katerina Izmailova, a girl from a poor family, lively, lively, temperamental, married to a merchant, a boring man, thirty years her senior. She turns out to be a prisoner of a merchant's house, where "there is no living sound, no human voice." She has no children, no job, and the boredom of life is replaced by an all-consuming, unbridled passion for an unworthy person - a handsome, arrogant clerk Sergei, who uses a young woman for his own purposes and skillfully plays with her feelings. Sublime and bright by nature, love turns into a destructive and annihilating force: “... For her, there was no light, no darkness, no evil, no good, no boredom, no joys; she didn't understand anything, she didn't love anyone, and she didn't love herself. Hard labor becomes for Katerina the happiness of being close to her beloved. And when the most precious thing in life - her love - is taken away from her, she, taking revenge on her offender - her former lover - and defending her human dignity, dies, forcing everyone to freeze in horror.
The theme of the remnants of serfdom becomes one of the main ones in Leskov's work. Observations on the life of the country after the reform of 1861 showed how little change for the better took place. Unlike Dostoevsky, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Leskov saw the main danger not in the development of bourgeois relations, but in the age-old inertia of Russian life, in the stability of its old, obsolete forms.
Leskov's work of the 1960s is distinguished by a great variety of genres. The writer creates artistic essays, short stories, novels, novels, even tries his hand at dramaturgy - he writes the only play in his work, The Spender (1867), staged at the Moscow Maly Theater.
Creativity of the 70s.
"The Enchanted Wanderer". In 1871, Leskov created the pamphlet novel On the Knives, depicting the rebirth of former nihilists. In this novel, as in other stories and essays, the writer speaks of Russia's unpreparedness for revolutionary changes and the tragic fate of those people who linked their lives and activities with the hope of their soon implementation.
Important milestones in Leskov's work were works that were unusual in their genre and style: the novel-chronicle "Cathedrals" (1872), the story "The Sealed Angel" (1873) imitating a folk legend, the story "The Enchanted Wanderer" (1873). In the center of these works are bright and strong national characters. The positive heroes of Leskov are people who are always incorruptibly honest and direct, independent and internally free, who do not make deals with convictions and conscience, and therefore constantly come into conflict with hypocrites, conservatives, tyrants and sycophants. One of the researchers noted that among the images of the writer in the first place are “three main leading types that embody, according to Leskov, the main features of the Russian national spirit”: “the type of hero”, “the type of talented self-taught” and “the type of righteous man”.
In Soboryany, in search of a positive hero, Leskov turns to the environment of the provincial clergy. Archpriest Saveliy Tuberozov and deacon Achilla Desnitsyn embody the national aspirations that have awakened in the most conservative milieu. Heroes are forced to do something that does not correspond to their nature at all. Archpriest Saveliy, who belongs to the “type of the righteous”, cannot find himself in the church field, because the church has lost its role and cannot be a morally cleansing force for society. Strong in faith, firmly convinced of the loftiness and dignity of his pastoral ministry, he rejects all compromises and thereby spoils relations with spiritual and secular authorities. His accusatory sermon led to a dramatic finale - dismissal, humiliation. As a result, a person dies without doing what he could. Deacon Achilles, who, despite his position, represents the “type of a hero”, a dashing man, languished by his heroic strength, also sums up a disappointing result of his life.
The Captured Angel is one of Leskov's most striking works both in terms of language and strength of feeling. Leskov shows the desire of the peasant soul for beauty, the height of the people's aesthetic ideal. The people's worldview is shown through the Old Believers environment. The heroes of the story are bricklayers, Old Believers, who live as a single artel and build a bridge across the Dnieper. They are honest, pure and courageous people, talented in their work and innocently devoted to their faith. Most of all, they value icons, but they are taken away and destroyed by those in power, whose violence, dishonesty and arbitrariness are condemned by the author. In the story of the mason Mark Alexandrov about how the picturesque shrine with the image of the Archangel Michael created the miracle of the reunification of schismatics with the church, one can hear the author's reflections on the need to overcome ideological and other strife in the name of national unity. Leskov's story subtly and harmoniously depicts the personality of a "pious" commoner artist, a man of the utmost spiritual purity, a keeper of folk traditions in art. The writer paints portraits and landscapes with icons, filling the text with old Slavicisms, weaving vernacular into their canvas. “Ancient temples, holy monasteries with many holy relics; the gardens are dense and the trees are such as they are written in the headlines from old books, that is, peaked poplars.
The atmosphere of "enchantment" with life, which permeates many of Leskov's works, largely determined the character of the central character in his work. The hero also corresponds to the bright, semi-fairytale world - a man of whole nature, a generous soul, richly gifted, a real hero. Such a hero appears before the reader in the story "The Enchanted Wanderer". A talented Russian man, a fugitive serf Ivan Severyanovich Flyagin, who went through difficult life trials, symbolizes the physical and moral stamina of the Russian people, the gradual but steady growth of his spiritual strength, the development of self-consciousness.
In the process of studying life, various incidents, anecdotes, oddities, and inconsistencies fall into the writer's field of vision. Leskov's anecdote turns from a small comic story with an unexpected denouement into a structure-forming principle of his works, often becoming a central event: "Journey with a Nihilist" (1882), "The Spirit of Madame Genlis" (1881), "A Little Mistake" (1883), "robbery "(1887) and others.
Such a passion for the curious characterizes Leskov's worldview - his interest in bright, colorful,
unusual. Life in the perception of the writer is unusual and fabulously interesting. Any of the most common occurrences
life, getting into the artistic world of the author, become a fascinating story or “a cheerful old fairy tale, under which, through some kind of warm slumber, the heart smiles freshly and affectionately ...”. Leskov's “old fairy tale” is a connection with the past, with the national foundations of life, this is the poetic thing that exists in the life of every person and every nation. This is a manifestation of the writer's fascination with life, the Russian land, the poetic world and the breadth of the soul of a Russian person.
Creativity of the 80s.
Cycle "Righteous". The search for a positive hero leads Leskov to bright, unusual folk characters, captured by the writer in the works of the cycle "The Righteous". His righteous, in Gorky's words, are "little great people", they bring good to the world. Their common features are straightforwardness, fearlessness, heightened conscience, inability to come to terms with injustice. Leskov finds the righteous in the most diverse strata of Russian society: among nobles and commoners, peasants and clergy. All of them enter the fight against evil, guided in their actions by the voice of conscience. Such are the heroes of the stories “Odnodum” (1879), “The Man on the Clock” (1887), “The Non-Deadly Golovan” (1880) and others. The hero of the non-lethal Golovan cares for the sick during a plague epidemic, and ends his life saving people in a fire. “In such sad moments of a common disaster, the people’s environment puts forward heroes of generosity, fearless and selfless people. In ordinary times, they are not visible and often do not stand out from the mass; but “pimples” will run into people, and the people single out a chosen one from themselves, and he works miracles that make him a mythical, fabulous, “non-lethal” face. Leskov gave his understanding of ravedom in the article "On Heroes and the Righteous" (1881).
Financial difficulties forced the writer to enter the public service. In 1874 he was appointed a member of a special department of the Scientific Committee of the Ministry of Public Education for the review of books published for the people, but in 1883 he was dismissed for the "incompatibility" of his literary studies with the service. The Minister of Public Education, who knew the writer personally, asked him to submit his resignation, allegedly of his own free will. Leskov refused and demanded that he be fired without a request. It was embarrassing to fire a well-known writer without a petition, and the embarrassed minister asked: “But why do you need this, Nikolai Semenovich, without a petition?” "Need to! At least for obituaries: mine ... and yours, ”Leskov replied.
By this time, the writer began to collaborate in a number of magazines and newspapers without a specific political content. And since the second half of the 80s, it has been published by the liberal magazines Russian Thought, Nedelya, Picturesque Review, Vestnik Evropy.
Leskov's critical view penetrated the most diverse areas of Russian life. He wrote about the tragic fate of talented people from the people ("Lefty" 1883; "Dumb Artist", 1883). The image of a Russian craftsman, an artist-master, was most successful for Leskov in "Lefty". The creation of the story was helped by folklore sources, oral stories about the sharpness and amazing skill of the Tula gunsmiths. Drawing the image of a hero, the writer contrasts the skill of the left-hander with his ignorance, and his patriotism with the callousness of the rulers of the country and their indifference to the cause. The tragic end of a left-handed person speaks about the position of a simple Russian person, even marked by royal attention.
The last years of creativity.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the satirical line in Leskov's work intensified. The image of landowners, merchants, officers, and officials is becoming more and more caustic. The power of satire is further enhanced by the fact that we are talking about real people. The writer exposes the vile methods of work of the tsarist secret police, the moral decay of society.
