Leskov's innovative experiments in combining realistic writing with the conventions of traditional folk poetic techniques, the courage to resurrect the style and genres of old Russian literature in the interests of updating the narrative palette, virtuosic stylistic experiments with phraseology, gleaned either from the vernacular of the road, or from persistent professional lexicons, from the Nestor Chronicle and topical newspaper periodicals, from the language of theology and the exact sciences - all this often baffled criticism, lost in the definitions of Leskov's art. This is what N.S. Leskov against the backdrop of all the writers of the 19th century.
His skill was compared with icon painting and ancient architecture, the writer was called an "isographer", and this was generally true. Gorky called the gallery of original folk types painted by Leskov “the iconostasis of the righteous and saints” of Russia. However, along with the archaic stylization, Leskov impeccably mastered a lively "voice leading": countless confessions of his peasants, masons, soldiers, wanderers, buffoons, merchants, serf actors, single-palace residents - as well as representatives of other classes - sound like the richest symphony of Russian national speech of the 19th century.
The most diverse characters in their social status in the works of Leskov got the opportunity to express themselves in their own word and thus appear, as it were, independently of their creator. Leskov was able to realize this creative principle thanks to his outstanding philological abilities. His "priests speak in a spiritual way, nihilists - in a nihilistic way, peasants - in a peasant way, upstarts from them and buffoons with frills."
Juicy, colorful language Leskovsky characters corresponded to the bright colorful world of his work, in which life is fascinated, despite all its imperfections and tragic contradictions. Life in the perception of Leskov is unusually interesting. The most ordinary phenomena, falling into art world of his works are transformed into a fascinating story, into a sharp anecdote or into a “funny old fairy tale under which, through some kind of warm slumber, the heart smiles freshly and affectionately. To match this semi-fairytale, "full of mysterious charms of the world" and Leskov's favorite heroes are eccentrics and "righteous people", people with a whole nature and generous soul. None of the Russian writers we will meet so many positive characters. Acute criticism of Russian reality and an active civic position prompted the writer to search for the positive beginnings of Russian life. And the main hopes for the moral revival of Russian society, without which he could not imagine social and economic progress, Leskov placed on the best people of all classes, be it priest Savely Tuberozov from Soboryan, a policeman (Odnodum), officers (Unmercenary Engineers, Cadet Monastery), a peasant (Nemortal Golovan), a soldier (Man on the Watch) , craftsman ("Lefty"), landowner ("The seedy family").
Leskov's genre, thoroughly saturated with philology, is a "skaz" ("Lefty", "Leon the Butler's Son", "The Sealed Angel"), where the speech mosaic, vocabulary and voice setting are the main organizing principle. This genre is partly popular, partly antique. Here reigns "folk etymology" in the most "excessive" forms. Lesk's philologicalism is also characterized by the fact that its characters are always marked by their profession, their social and national sign. They are representatives of this or that jargon, dialect. It is also characteristic that these dialects are used by him in most cases in a comic way, which increases the play function of the language. This applies both to learned language and to the language of the clergy (cf. the deacon Achilles in The Councilmen or the deacon in Journey with the Nihilist), and to national languages. The Ukrainian language in the "Hare Remise" is used precisely as a comic element, and in other things broken Russian appears now and then - in the mouth of a German, then a Pole, then a Greek. Even such a "public" novel as "Nowhere" is filled with all sorts of linguistic anecdotes and parodies - a trait typical of a storyteller, a variety artist. But apart from the realm of the comic tale, L also has an opposite realm - the realm of sublime declamation. Many of his works are written, as he himself said, in "musical recitative" - metrical prose, approaching verse. There are such pieces in "The Bypassed", in "The Islanders", in "The Spender" - in places of greatest tension. In his early works, L uniquely combines stylistic traditions and techniques he took from Polish, Ukrainian. and Russian writers. But in later works this connection
The most striking and original in the literary work of Nikolai Semenovich Leskov is the Russian language. His contemporaries wrote and tried to write in an even and smooth language, avoiding too bright or dubious turns. Leskov greedily grabbed every unexpected or picturesque idiomatic expression. All forms of professional or class language, all sorts of slang words - all this can be found on its pages. But he was especially fond of the comic effects of colloquial Church Slavonic and the puns of "folk etymology." He allowed himself great liberties in this regard and invented many successful and unexpected deformations. common sense or familiar sound. Another distinguishing feature of Leskov: he, like no other of his contemporaries, possessed the gift of storytelling. As a storyteller, he, perhaps, occupies the first place in modern literature. His stories are mere anecdotes, told with colossal gusto and skill; even in his big things, he likes to characterize his characters by telling a few anecdotes about them. This was contrary to the traditions of "serious" Russian literature, and critics began to consider him just a Gaer. Leskov's most original stories are so filled with all sorts of incidents and adventures that the critics, for whom the main thing was ideas and trends, seemed ridiculous and absurd. It was too obvious that Leskov simply enjoys all these episodes, as well as the sounds and grotesque faces of familiar words. No matter how hard he tried to be a moralist and preacher, he could not neglect the opportunity to tell an anecdote or pun.
Nikolay Leskov. Life and legacy. Lecture by Lev Anninsky
Tolstoy loved Leskov's stories and enjoyed his verbal balancing act, but blamed him for the oversaturation of his style. According to Tolstoy, Leskov's main shortcoming was that he did not know how to keep his talent within limits and "overloaded his cart with good things." This taste for verbal picturesqueness, for the rapid presentation of an intricate plot, is strikingly different from the methods of almost all other Russian novelists, especially Turgenev, Goncharov or Chekhov. In Leskovsky's vision of the world there is no haze, no atmosphere, no softness; he chooses the most flashy colors, the roughest contrasts, the sharpest contours. His images appear in merciless daylight. If the world of Turgenev or Chekhov can be likened to the landscapes of Corot, then Leskov is Brueghel the Elder, with his colorful, bright colors and grotesque forms. Leskov does not have dull colors, in Russian life he finds bright, picturesque characters and paints them with powerful strokes. The greatest virtue, outrageous originality, great vices, strong passions and grotesque comic features are his favorite subjects. He is both a servant of the cult of heroes and a comedian. Perhaps one could even say that the more heroic his characters, the more humorously he portrays them. This humorous cult of heroes is Lesk's most original trait.
Leskov's political novels of the 1860s and 70s, which brought him hostility at the time radicals are now almost forgotten. But the stories he wrote at the same time did not lose their glory. They are not as rich in verbal joys as the stories of the mature period, but in them already in high degree showcased his storytelling skills. Unlike later works, they give pictures of hopeless evil, invincible passions. An example of this Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District(1866). This is a very powerful exploration of a woman's criminal passion and her lover's brash, cynical callousness. A cold, merciless light is shed on everything that happens and everything is told with strong "naturalistic" objectivity. Another wonderful story that time - Warrior , a colorful story of a St. Petersburg procuress who treats her profession with delightfully naive cynicism and is deeply, completely sincerely offended by the “black ingratitude” of one of her victims, whom she was the first to push onto the path of shame.
Portrait of Nikolai Semenovich Leskov. Artist V. Serov, 1894
These early stories were followed by a series chronicle fictional city of Stargorod. They make up a trilogy: Old years in the village of Plodomasovo (1869), Cathedral(1872) and seedy kind(1875). The second of these chronicles is the most popular of Leskov's works. It is about the Stargorod clergy. Its head, Archpriest Tuberozov, is one of Leskov’s most successful images of the “righteous man”. The deacon of Achilles is a superbly written character, one of the most marvelous in all portrait gallery Russian literature. The comical escapades and unconscious mischief of a huge, full of strength, completely soulless and simple-hearted like a deacon's child, and the constant reprimands that he receives from Archpriest Tuberozov, are known to every Russian reader, and Achilles himself has become a common favorite. But in general Cathedral the thing is uncharacteristic for the author - too even, unhurried, peaceful, eventful, non-Leskovskaya.
The writer’s belief in the surmountability of the growing alienation, the fragmentation of life is also connected with his favorite form of narration - a tale, which implies a lively orientation of the narration to another person, constant contact with him, confidence that everything told is close to his soul.
Significant in this sense is the typically Renaissance situation widely used in the exposition of Leskov’s works: chance (bad weather, off-road) brought together many of the most different people, different position, education, life experience, dissimilar characters and habits, views and beliefs. It would seem that nothing connects these random people who make up a motley crowd of people.
But then one of them, an inconspicuous person for the time being, begins a story, and with all its simplicity and unpretentiousness, this story suddenly instantly changes the atmosphere of communication, giving rise to relationships of spiritual openness, sympathy, unanimity, equality, kinship.
It was in the art of narration that the folk basis of the creative gift of the writer was most manifested, who, like Nekrasov, managed to reveal the diverse characters of the Russian people from within.
Admiring Leskov's original talent, Gorky later wrote: “The people in his stories often talk about themselves, but their speech is so amazingly lively, so truthful and convincing that they stand before you as mysteriously palpable, physically clear as people from the books of L. Tolstoy and others ... ". In the skillful weaving of the "nervous lace of colloquial speech," Leskov, according to Gorky, has no equal.
Leskov himself attached great importance to the "setting of the voice" of the writer and always considered it a sure sign of his talent. “A person lives with words, and you need to know at what moments of your psychological life which of us will find words,” he said in conversations with A. I. Faresov. The writer was proud of the vivid expressiveness of the lively speech of his heroes, which he achieved at the cost of "tremendous labor."
Creating the colorful language of his books on the basis of his great life experience, Leskov drew it from a wide variety of sources: “... collected it for many years according to catchwords, proverbs and individual expressions caught on the fly, in the crowd, on barges, in recruiting presences and monasteries”, he borrowed from the old books, annals, schismatic writings he lovingly collected, learned it from communication with people of a wide variety of social status, various occupations and interests.
As a result of this "stubborn learning", as a modern researcher rightly noted, Leskov "created his own dictionary of the Great Russian language with its local dialects and colorful national differences, opening a wide path for a new living word creation."
In love with a living folk word, Leskov artistically plays with it in his works and, moreover, willingly creates his own words, rethinking foreign terms in the spirit and style of "folk etymology". The saturation of the writer's works with various neologisms and colloquial expressions is so great that sometimes it caused well-known criticism from contemporaries who found it excessive and "excessive".
So, Dostoevsky in the course of literary controversy with Leskov, he criticized his predilection for "talking in essences." L. Tolstoy once addressed a similar reproach to the writer, seeing the excess of characteristic expressions in his fairy tale “The Hour of God's Will”. True to his original artistic style, Leskov himself, however, did not recognize the legitimacy of such reproaches.
“This language, like the language of the Steel Flea, is not easy, but very difficult, and love of work alone can induce a person to undertake such mosaic work,” he noted in a letter to S. N. Shubinsky, objecting to accusations of artificiality and mannerisms. “It’s as easy to write as Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy—I don’t know how,” he confessed in another letter. It's not in my gifts<...>Take mine as I can make it. I’m used to finishing work and I can’t work easier.”
Leskov’s attitude to the word makes him related to that trend in Russian literature (B. M. Eikhenbaum called it “philologism”), which originates in the struggle between the “Shishkovists” and the “Karamzinists” and clearly manifests itself in the work of philologists of the 30s gg. - Dahl, Veltman, who largely prepared his speech innovation with their activities.
The work of Leskov, who managed to realize so deeply the contradictory possibilities of Russian life, to penetrate into the peculiarity of the national character, to vividly capture the features of the spiritual beauty of the people, opened up new perspectives for Russian literature.
It is a living part of our culture and continues to have a life-giving effect on the development of contemporary art, in which the problems of people's self-consciousness and people's morality continue to be relevant and the most significant problems.
History of Russian literature: in 4 volumes / Edited by N.I. Prutskov and others - L., 1980-1983
How much we sometimes lose the wonderful moments that Russian literature can give us, just because in our age of high computer technology, we don’t just have enough time to open the worn volume of our favorite author...
We have forgotten how to succumb to the charm of the unhurried, melodious Russian language. Let's stop our run for a while and try to take a different look at the creations of the amazing, truly Russian writer - Nikolai Semenovich Leskov.
How many charming details, filled with the deepest meaning, pass a cursory glance of the reader, who then marvels at the “complexity” and “excessive ornateness” of Lesk’s writing. Maybe that's why at the end of the 20th century, the researchers of N.S. Leskov still has to prove his belonging to the galaxy of Russian classics.
Let's try to restore historical justice in relation to the remarkable Russian writer, let's dive into Magic world his “words”, from which one does not want to return to the world of modern problems, modern relations, modern language.
Realizing the place and significance of N.S. Leskova in literary process, we always note that this is a surprisingly original writer. Even among the classics of Russian prose, each of which is a bright, unique artistic phenomenon, even among them Leskov looks somewhat unusual.
The outward dissimilarity of his predecessors and contemporaries sometimes forced him to see in him a completely new phenomenon, which had no analogues in Russian literature. However, as a master of the word, he also has his predecessors (N.V. Gogol, V.I. Dahl, A. Veltman), and contemporaries close to him in many respects (I.F. Gorbunov, A.N. Ostrovsky, A. I. Levitov), and followers who continued his artistic traditions in different ways (M. Gorky, and later, and primarily in relation to the language, - M. Zoshchenko).
Leskov is brightly original, and at the same time, one can learn a lot from him.
He is an amazing experimenter who gave rise to a whole wave of artistic searches in Russian literature; he is a cheerful, mischievous experimenter, and at the same time extremely serious and deep, setting great educational goals for himself.
“The nature of artistic discoveries by N.S. Leskov is due to the originality of his views on life. He always relied on reality, but in the accident he was able to see a hidden pattern; in a single fact - a link in the chain linking the past with the present. He gravitated toward original characters and incidents of life, to exceptional circumstances in which “ordinary improbability” is suddenly revealed” (1).
For a long time there were negative judgments about Leskov's style, as, indeed, about all his work. Here is what is said in the "Great Encyclopedia" edited by S.N. Yuzhakov:
“As for the style and architectonics of L[eskov’s] works, in both respects, to the great disadvantage of their author, they significantly deviate from the generally accepted samples, bequeathed true masters our fiction. L[eskov's] language is often distinguished by such turns of speech, replete with such pretentious words and clownish distortion of the most commonly used "ordinary expressions, which often produces the most repulsive impression" (2).
A similar assessment is contained in the “Desktop Encyclopedic Dictionary” by Br[atiev] A. and I. Granat: “Leskov’s style is distinguished by originality, strength, humor and would have gained a lot if the author had renounced his weakness for cunningly invented words, from some mannerism in descriptions and exaggerations in the character of the characters and the conduct of the scenes” (3).
And here is how P.N. wrote about Leskov’s style. Krasnov: “Just as on every note of Chopin’s compositions there is the signature “Frederic Chopin”, so on every word of Leskov there is a stigma indicating belonging to this writer ... He mastered the manner characteristic of many Russian people with a somewhat ecclesiastical fold, it is not easy to speak, but to embroider, using words, comparisons, turns, making reservations and stops in interesting places, not going to the point, but decorating speech, just as vignettes decorate the pages of a book, although they do not belong to the text, and icing decorations make bread more pleasant to look at, without improving its taste” (4).
Indeed, Leskov himself, recognizing the “variety of styles”, the stylistic play of his writings, passed it off as the language of his people, and he, the writer, is just a copyist of folk diversity. In the introduction to the work “Leon the noble son”, Leskov writes that folk legends are filled with infantile naivety. “Hence,” he writes, “the very plot of legends is full of insufficiency and contradictions, and the language is dotted with the most diverse deposits of ill-used words of the most diverse environment” (5). This feature, as the writer admits, he retains in his legends and asks the reader to “reconcile” with this.
In fact, the language of Leskov is one of the wonders of our speech culture, and one cannot belittle its role in the development of the Russian literary language and in artistic and verbal creativity, which was first noticed by M. Gorky, who saw in Leskov a great master of the language and his teacher .
Gorky wrote: “The people in his stories often speak on their own, but their speech is so amazingly lively, so truthful and convincing that they stand before you, just as mysteriously tangible, physically clear, like people from the books of L. Tolstoy and others, otherwise to say, Leskov achieves the same result, but by a different method of skill” (6).
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In the work of Leskov, an important role is played by the use of the linguistic composition of Ancient Rus', which has been preserved in folk dialects, and in the monuments of ancient Russian literature, and in writing.
Not only folk speech (“speech lanes”) of various estates and classes, but also the language of ancient Russian literature and writing was alive for Leskov. He thought in terms of the Russian language; colloquial vocabulary broke into the pages of a literary text, merging in a peculiar way with modern language norms. So the bizarre “inlay” of a literary text with old Russian sayings is found in almost all of his works. Is there a story about the death of the hegumen-libertine in “Trifles bishop's life”, does irony appear in the phrase from “The Tale of Bygone Years” - “perished like an obre” (VI, 463); whether the “Pechersk Antiques” tells about a trip to Kursk, the reader hears familiar words - “My Kurians, led by the kites” (VI, 198), whether the repeated tricks of the immoral and greedy Marya Stepanovna from the Companions are reported and accusatory expression sounds from “The Prayer of Daniil the Sharpener” - “returns like a dog to his vomit” (VII, 424) is the fairy tale “The Hour of the Will of God” written - is brought in from the “Tale of the Chernorizet the Brave” and the Old Russian verb “mitusit” and the turnover “written ... with features and cuts” (XI, 14, 28). Such examples are common for Leskov.
These are not excerpts from books, but something that sat firmly in the very structure of the language and artistic thinking of the writer. The ancient text is reproduced from memory, as evidenced by the approximate, inaccurate reproduction of Old Russian phraseology.
The methods of use Old Russian language and its wide application make it possible to attribute Leskov to exceptional, peculiar phenomena in all Russian literature. Only he has such a connection, such an attitude to the culture of the Old Russian language and imagery.
Old Russian literature was based on the principles of different styles of works. Not only such monuments as “The Tale of Bygone Years”, which included various ancient Russian genre formations, are diverse in style, but also “The Tale of Igor's Campaign”, and “The Life of Stephen of Perm”, “The Tale of Peter and Fevronya”, etc.
Leskov as a writer uses various stylistic systems. In this sense, his work, taken as a whole, is diverse in style. “More than any Russian writers of the 19th century, Leskov left traces of a stylistic game with the properties of the Russian language” (6). “Leskov brought the principle of different styles of ancient Russian literature to high artistry, to a “stylistic game”, which, however, naturally fits into the poetic narrative system” (N.N. Prokofiev).
This "stylistic game" or, more precisely, the use of various stylistic systems in Leskov's literary and artistic work has its own laws.
The choice of stylistic system depended on:
- storytelling forms;
- the type of the narrator, from his social class affiliation, from his mental and spiritual needs, his moral character;
- the nature of the literary heroes about whom the story is being told;
- the originality and role of a specific structural part of the work, that is, whether it is a dialogue, the narrator's speech about the social and domestic situation that precedes the development of the action, or a narrative about the actions of the literary heroes themselves” (8).
Of course, these four aspects do not cover the whole variety of stylistic devices, which in the practice of Leskov's work are more flexible and subtle, however, these "subtleties" still exist within the indicated patterns.
Works of the type of “folk stories” (“Buffoon Pamfalone”, “Mountain”, “ Beautiful Aza”, “Innocent Prudentius” and others) according to their genre and purpose, according to the universal moral pathos, were formed in rhythmic speech, sounding like prose poetry.
The story “Buffoon Pamphalon”, as the writer himself admits, “one can chant and read whole pages with a cadence” (XI, 460). Indeed, the language of the story sounds like chants, even direct speech is conveyed in rhythmic prose that sounds like prose poetry.
Leskov attached great importance to the finishing of the language of this story. “I worked on it a lot, a lot,” he wrote. - This language, like the language of the "Steel Flea", is not easy, but very difficult, and one love for work cannot induce a person to take on such a mosaic work. But this very “peculiar language” was blamed on me and still forced me to spoil and discolor it a little” (XI, 348. Letter to S.N. Shubinsky dated September 19, 1887).
In a different " folk story- "Mountain" - Leskov also achieved the musicality of speech. “Mountain,” he wrote, “required an extremely large amount of work. This can be done only “out of love for art” and out of confidence that you are doing something for the benefit of people, striving to suppress the instincts of rudeness in them and encourage their spirit to endure trials and undeserved insults. “Mountain” has been rewritten so many times that I have forgotten the count, and therefore it is true that the style reaches “music” in places ... I achieved “musicality” that suits this plot like a recitative” (XI, 460).
Another “stylistic game” in parables - fairy tales (“The Hour of the Will of God” and “Malanya - the head of a ram”, created on folklore basis. Academician A.S. Orlov, considering the stylistic system of the tale, notes in it the presence of not only folklore, oral-poetic syntax and vocabulary, but also the Old Russian book phraseology (9).
Leskov himself wrote about the language of the fairy tale “The Hour of the Will of God”: “Fairy tales are boring to write in modern language. I began to jokingly monkey the language of the 17th century and then, as Tolstoy says, “drunk myself with luck” and sustained the whole tale in a solid tone” (XI, 470-471).
The language of ancient Russian literature is widely used, folk speech various social classes of Russia and in narrative works Leskov about the “righteous”, which are original stories, stories, inflow tales and historical and everyday chronicles on contemporary themes(“The Sealed Angel”, “Odnodum”, “Pygmy”, “Non-Deadly Golovan”, “Engineers - Unmercenaries”, “Lefty”, “The Enchanted Wanderer”, “The Man on the Clock”, “Sheramur”, “Pechersk antiques”, “ At the end of the world”, “Unbaptized pop” and others). The style of these works is flowery and ornate, ornamentally embellished with folk phraseology, ancient Russian sayings, preserved not only in the monuments of ancient literature, but also in the lively speech of some sections of the Russian people. Examples of this ornamentality are found in any work. However, in the selection of ancient Russian sayings, Leskov, unlike the writers - his predecessors, goes his own way. His gaze, first of all, captures the original Russian vocabulary and phraseology, gives it preference over the Church Slavonic linguistic elements. Leskov knew how to inlay poetic speech with them, which captivates the reader with its brilliance. This is how the plot of the plot begins in the story “The Sealed Angel”.
“Suddenly we saw that there are in our midst two vessels of God's election for our punishment. One of those was the forager Mara, and the other was the counter Pimen Ivanov. Mara was quite a simpleton, even illiterate, which is even a rarity according to the Old Believers, but he was a special person: he was clumsy in appearance, like a vellud, and unkempt like a wild boar - one bosom one and a half heads on the dome gumenzo shaved. His speech was dull and unintelligible, he kept mumbling his lips, and his mind was tight and so clumsy for everything that he didn’t even know how to memorize prayers; clairvoyant, and had the gift of prophesying, and could give inconsistent ones.
Pimen, on the other hand, was a spiky man: he liked to behave very forcefully and spoke with such a cunning twist of words that one should have been surprised at his speech; but the character was light and fascinating. Mara was old man for seventy years, and Pimen is medieval and graceful: he had curly hair, parted in the middle; shaggy eyebrows, a face with a blush, the word veliar. Here in these two vessels suddenly fermented the value of astringent drink, which we should have drunk” (IV, 327). In this story. written directly on the samples of ancient originals, ancient Russian words are scattered over the speech tissue.
They highlight the properties of the narrator himself and describe in a peculiar way those people who play such a role. big role in the events of the story.
Leskov did not follow the path beaten in literature, did not turn only to the Church Slavonic language, which was familiar to the reader of that time, but selected the Old Russian vocabulary. The text includes words archaic, out of use in late XIX centuries, but widely used in ancient Russian writing: nedrist - chesty (from the bowels - chest); sinus - a synonym for the word "chest"; simpleton - a worldly person, unspiritual, simple; prophesy - speak, predict; shrapaty - mannered, dapper; twist - sophistication; medieval - a person of average height, not old.
Of course, Leskov also used biblical phraseology, which has become firmly established in Russian literature, language and colloquial speech. In this case, the conversation about the cup, “in which the estimation of astringent drink fermented” and which “should have been drunk”, is a very common metaphor coming from the gospel text.
The whole structure of the narrator’s speech, the characters and the author’s language are colored with unusualness, but this “unusualness is created on deep national-folk foundations, on the historical origins of a living language, preserved in the modern writer of speech and ancient literary monuments” (12).
The unusualness of Leskov's language is in the flamboyance and quirkiness of vocabulary, phraseology and syntax, so harmoniously associated with his characters and narrators, with people with a "freak", to whom the reader treats so favorably and trustingly that they become living people and natural speech. The vitality and authenticity of the language are determined by the correspondence of its (language) to the personality of the narrator and literary heroes, the originality of the ways of expressing their thoughts, their spiritual appearance. And before Leskov, writers knew well that a person is characterized not only by WHAT she says, but also by HOW she says it. New at N.S. Leskov lies in the wide use of the riches of the language of ancient Russian literature.
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Leskov created a broad picture of life - from everyday facts to national events - going back into the depths of time. His works are imbued with historical legends, folk legends, people's rumors. In this regard, the image of the narrator is extremely important for Leskov. This image was a kind of artistic discovery of the writer. Gorky, who highly appreciated the writer, noted this artistic feature of his: “Leskov is ... a magician of words, but he did not write plastically, but - told, and in this art he has no equal ...”
Telling, telling is one of the stable features of folklore and poetic traditions coming from antiquity.
Leskov was convinced that humane relations between people could develop only on the basis of the best centuries-old folk traditions.
The tale style of narration has long penetrated into literature, being equally convenient for both oral and written presentation. The word “tell” in the meaning of “transmit events”, “notify”, “report”, and the same word denotes one of the ways of narration inherent in folk art. The speaker was a participant or a witness to the events, and quite concrete, non-fictional reality prevailed in his story.
The transmission of events as it actually happened in reality, which once had a practical purpose, eventually becomes in written literature (especially in the 19th century) artistic device. In the work, instead of specific person, a witness of past events appeared literary image a narrator who narrates about any incidents and people.
In folklore, the narrator is an epic figure. his role is to calmly and truthfully present facts and events in their chronological order. In literature, this image, on the contrary, is usually devoid of epic scope. Here his role is not only that he leads the narration, but at the same time - and in everyday involvement in the narrated. Such are the narrators of Lermontov, Dostoevsky, L. Tolstoy, A. Chekhov. In this image, the character of a simple-minded person, sometimes with cunning, was recreated. In a certain sense, the narrator also expresses the author's point of view: behind each of these narrators one can feel the presence of the writer. The narrator's assessments and judgments are usually deciphered by the reader without much difficulty. The authors treat them kindly, if they make fun of them, then without malice. Here the narrator narrates, testifies, gives assessments and leads the reader (not without the help of the author, of course) to a certain conclusion.
Leskov has a completely different narrator. Firstly, Leskov significantly expanded the field of activity of his narrator. “Leskovsky's narrator is not just an observer and participant in the event, he is an active, and often one of the main characters (Tuberozov from The Cathedral, 1872, or Ivan Severyanovich Flyagin from The Enchanted Wanderer, 1873).
Moreover, if you look closely, the narrator also acts as the embodiment of moral ideal writer - at least in the most important respects” (13).
Secondly, the image of the Leskovsky narrator has a rather complex internal structure, which makes it difficult to directly understand the true motives of his behavior. Its essence is not revealed immediately, but is revealed gradually, emerges through a dense layer of plot riddles, “secrets”, extravagant antics of the hero, and so on.
The image of the narrator in Leskov to a certain extent embodies the artistic testament of N.V. Gogol, who believed that in a new kind of narrative writings there should be “a private and invisible person, but, nevertheless, significant in many respects for an observer of the human soul ... in order to present ... in a living, true picture of everything significant in features and customs taken them time...” (14).
It is thanks to the image of the narrator that a previously unknown literature is created artistic reality, the pictures of which are refracted in the people's consciousness, are perceived through the prism of centuries-old folk experience. Therefore, the narrator plays a decisive role in the ideological and artistic system of many of Leskov's works. And in "The Imprinted Angel" (1873), and in "The Toupee Artist" (1873), and in other works - the heroes - storytellers - these are outstanding, talented people.
At the same time, in a number of significant works by Leskov, the narrator is a passive figure, the object of authorial irony, sometimes hidden, and often frank, as, for example, Vatazhkov (“Laughter and Sorrow”, 1871) or Onopry Peregud (“Hare Remise”, 1884; published in 1917 ). And here is the paradox: frankly mocking his hero-narrator, leading him through a series of situations and trials discrediting him, the writer nevertheless turns him, in a certain sense, into the mouthpiece of his ideas: after all, it is through the mouth of the narrator (Vatazhkov, Peregud and others) that he speaks author's, often critical attitude to the curiosities of reality. At the same time, “thanks to such a hero, reality appears to the reader as many-sided and complex... Before Leskov, there was no such storyteller in literature” (15).
Lesk's characters are connected in different and complex ways with the image of the narrator. These connections and relationships, on the one hand, make the characters of Leskov's heroes more alive and multifaceted, and on the other hand, determine the amazing variety of forms and aspects of the author's self-expression. This is another artistic discovery of Leskov.
In those works where the writer "hides" behind the hero - the narrator, the author's voice does not disappear, but from time to time breaks through either in a detached - objective presentation of events, or in a wide epic stream of historical and special information that is unlikely to accommodate limited personal experience. the consciousness of the narrator. Meanwhile, all these objectively presented events and various information that seem to go beyond the life experience of the hero - the narrator are evaluated by him and receive a very special original coverage in his speech. So in Leskov's narrative, the author's voice and the hero's voice, the author's view and the hero's point of view merge in a peculiar way.
Often the very speech of the narrator somehow imperceptibly merges into the speech of the literary hero and even the author himself. As a result, three stylistic layers merge into a single language stream. This was done not spontaneously, but consciously, as an artistic necessity, which the author himself admitted: “Please do not condemn me for that,” Leskov wrote in the story “Hare Remise,” that here his (the narrator) and my words will be mixed together (IX, 503). This principle is noticeable in many works of N.S. Leskov.
A great many socio-psychological types created by the writer, with all the brightness of their individuality and originality of language, nevertheless reveal a certain commonality of style, a certain property inherent in all of them to think “in a national key, in Russian”.
This Leskovian way of thinking is manifested both in impulsive sincere spontaneity, and in a kind of bashful intricacy of expressions, and in a constant and fruitful look back at tradition, antiquity.
Tradition is manifested in bright ancient sayings and catchphrases, and in the complex construction of old speech, and in cursory historical excursions expressed with respect and with a sense of kinship with the past, and sometimes with some admiration for it. This " national image thoughts” was reflected in a generalizing artistic form, which became the literary tale of Leskov.
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Leskovsky tale peculiarly accumulated the interpenetration of the views and opinions of the author and the narrator.
The narrator is one of the most important landmarks in a tale, largely determining the aesthetic assessment of events and facts from the point of view of the community, the people. The presence of a narrator distinguishing feature a tale that characterizes it both from the side of content and from the side of form. In a literary tale, in contrast to a folk tale, the narrator not only narrates, but is also involved in the events described. The narrator - the people - the author are inseparable in the tale, they form a single whole. the writer, thus, uses oral skaz speech, a “foreign” verbal manner.
It should be borne in mind that Leskov's narrator is an active person, with a pronounced position. This is revealed both in the character of the narrator and his interpretation of events, and in the richness of his colorful individualized speech.
In this, Leskov is also original. In order to realize this originality, it is important to consider the question of the relationship between Leskov's tale and the tale form of narration.
For Academician V. V. Vinogradov, for example, the problem of narration “was defined as one of the sides of the question of the narrator” (16). In one of his works on style we read: “The tale builds the narrator, but the tale itself is the construction of the writer. Or rather, in the tale the image is given not only of the narrator, but also of the author” (17). But in a tale, the image of the narrator is dominated by another “ actor”- the writer: “It turned out that the writer does not always write, and sometimes only writes down the oral conversation, as it were, creating the illusion of live improvisation. This is how the problem of the 'narrative' appeared” (18). The scientist defines a tale as “a kind of literary and artistic orientation towards an oral monologue of the narrative type”, as “artistic imitation monologue speech, which embodies the narrative plot, as if built in the order of its immediate creation” (19). The tale requires a certain involvement of the writer in the actor's action: “The narrator is the speech product of the author, and the image of the narrator in the tale is a form of the author's literary artistry. The image of the author is seen in him as the image of an actor in the stage image he creates” (20).
B. Eikhenbaum wrote about the skaz form of narration: “By skaz, I mean a form of narrative prose that, in its vocabulary, syntax and selection of intonations, reveals an attitude towards the narrator’s oral speech, fundamentally departs from written speech and makes the narrator as such a real character. The appearance of skaz forms is of fundamental importance. It marks, on the one hand, the transfer of the center of gravity from the plot to the word (from the “hero” to the story of this or that case, event, and so on), and on the other hand, the liberation from the traditions associated with written and printed culture and the return to oral living language.
Leskov himself considered the certainty of speech characteristics to be the main advantage of his works and pointed out this feature of his narrative style: “The writer’s voice setting consists in the ability to master the voice and language of his hero and not stray from altos to basses. In myself, I tried to develop this skill and, it seems, I reached the point that my priests speak in a spiritual way, the peasants speak in a peasant way, upstarts from them and buffoons - with frills, etc. On my own behalf, I speak the language of old tales and church-folk in a purely literary speech. That's why you recognize me now in every article, even if I didn't subscribe to it. It makes me happy. They say I'm fun to read. This is because we all: both my heroes and I myself have my own own voice. It is placed in each of us correctly, or at least diligently. When I write, I'm afraid to go astray: that's why my philistines speak philistine, and lisping-burr aristocrats - in their own way ... Studying the speech of each representative of social and personal positions is rather difficult. This folk, vulgar and pretentious language, in which many pages of my works are written, was not composed by me, but was overheard from a peasant, a semi-intellectual, from rhetoricians, from holy fools and saints ... After all, I have been collecting it for many years according to catchphrases, proverbs and individual expressions caught on the fly in the crowd, in barracks, in recruiting offices and monasteries ... I carefully and for many years listened to the pronunciation and pronunciation of Russian people at different levels of their social status. They all speak to me in their own way, and not in a literary way. It is more difficult for a writer to master the philistine language than the bookish one. That is why we have few artists of the syllable, that is, who own a living, and not literary, speech” (22).
From the above words of Leskov, it can be seen that the use of oral speech, which has specific social and professional shades, is characteristic of skaz forms. that the principle of a tale requires that the narrator's speech be colored not only with intonational-syntactic, but also with lexical shades: the narrator must act as the owner of one or another phraseology, this or that dictionary, so that an orientation to the spoken word is carried out. Under such conditions, the reader's attention moves from the subject, from the concept to the expression itself, to the verbal construction itself, that is, it puts the form before the reader outside the motivation. Leskov, with his exceptional striving for a tangible word, makes extensive use of this means and gives place to rhetoricians who distort words and speak with “frills”. No wonder “folk etymology” is one of the main methods of his tale.
Subsequently, the figure of the narrator was considered by literary critics as one of the most stable and characteristic features of the tale. “Neither in the folk, nor in the literary magic and everyday fairy tale he (the narrator) is not as much an artistic image as in a tale” (23). In other words: a tale is a form of narration on behalf of a narrator who speaks a common language and uses lexical and grammatical constructions that are characteristic of oral speech. But in this case, many works of Russian writers could be included in the tale genre. For example, “How much land does a person need”, “Two old men”, “Candle” and other stories by L.N., Tolstoy, “The Incident” by A.P. Chekhov, “The Good Life”, “The Guest” by I.A. Bunin, “Khan and his son” by M. Gorky and so on. Nevertheless, the named works (their form) are not literary tales.
The narration on behalf of the hero, despite the pronounced individual intonation, does not yet constitute a tale. An example of this is Leskov's "Pearl Necklace" (1885).
In a literary tale, the narrator is the sovereign manager of not only his own fiction, he disposes of all poetic treasures. folk art. Behind such a narrator, a writer skillfully hides. The active authorial principle is found both in the interpretation of the events described, and in the enrichment of the poetic form of plots and images created by once folk storytellers.
In Leskov's tale there is no definite personified narrator, but there is a commonality copyright to all his numerous narrators, to whom he, as if withdrawing himself, gives the floor.
The greatest merit of N.S. Leskov in front of domestic and world literature lies in the fact that he used the oral tale, which existed as a phenomenon of oral folk art, to express the personal consciousness of the narrator and narrator and artistically approved this updated tale, gave it stable signs of a literary genre. This is an undoubted artistic innovation of the writer. In such works as “The Enchanted Wanderer” (1873), “The Darner” (1882), “Lefty” (1882), “The Stupid Artist” (1883) and others, there are basic genre features literary tale: narration on behalf of the hero - the narrator; the widespread use of both reliable event material taken from the life or storehouses of folk memory, and the presence of elements of folklore, in particular, fabulousness, dating back to legends, legends; a clear focus on the colloquial folk language and its stylistic norms.
Oral transmission of events. rumors and past stories are important not only as a kind of reflection of history, they are also valuable in literary terms, when considering the genesis of the Russian literary tale, which rests on a solid eventual, life-based basis. At the same time, the literary tale inherits folklore artistic traditions, dating back to folk legends, legends and other folk poetic genres. In the tale genre, an organic synthesis of folk art and written literature arises, which implies complete possession of folklore material and its poetics.
“In the crucible of time, both the reliable and the unreliable were fused, and in creative laboratory artist, this alloy can no longer be decomposed into its component parts” (24). In one of his stories, Leskov wrote about this: “And I began to remember a whole swarm of more or less wonderful stories and stories that have long lived in one or another of the Russian localities and are constantly passed from mouth to mouth, from one person to another ... All such stories should be dear to literature and worthy of being preserved in its records. These stories, no matter how anyone thinks about them, are a modern continuation of folk art, to which, of course, it is unforgivable not to listen and consider it as nothing. In oral traditions, or even writings of this kind (let us assume that there are the purest writings), the mood of the minds, tastes and fantasies of people of a given time and a given locality is always strongly and vividly indicated. And that this is really so, I am sufficiently convinced of the notes made by me during my wanderings in different places my fatherland.. I really appreciate such stories, even when their historical authenticity does not seem reliable, and sometimes even seems completely doubtful. In my opinion, as fiction or as an interweaving of fiction with reality, they are even more curious” (VII, 450-451).
“More curious” - because they reflected reality in a more complex, multifaceted way, merged the facts of life with their multi-colored, subjective perception, in which a person is reflected.
The pinnacle of Leskov's achievement in the tale, most researchers of the writer's work unanimously consider the famous "Lefty". “The Tale of the Tula Oblique Left-hander and the Steel Flea” is instructive in terms of the very structure of the genre. With all the abundance of unreliable material in it, it is entirely built on genuine historical facts. It is no coincidence that it begins so businesslike and historically specific: “When Emperor Alexander Pavlovich graduated from the Vienna Council ...” (VII, 26). However, historical authenticity and concreteness in depicting the general spirit of the era do not in the least prevent the author from unleashing the full power of his imagination, especially in describing the truly fabulous “jewelry” skill of Tula craftsmen. Leskov, like no one else, was able to brilliantly prove that the merits of a literary tale are not determined only by an arsenal of disparate inventive means and techniques, but are hidden in the genre possibilities, and in speech richness, and in the very features of the tale style. Thanks to Leskov, the literary tale became a full-fledged genre of Russian prose.
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“The forms of N.S. Leskov’s works are extremely diverse, his language is infinitely rich and seems to change from work to work, while remaining characteristic, Leskov’s language.” (24)
Leskov, as it were, avoids the usual forms for literature, even if he writes a novel, he puts in the subtitle “a novel in three books” (“Nowhere”) as a clarifying definition. If he writes a story, then try to somehow distinguish it from an ordinary story - for example, “a story on a grave” (“Dumb Artist”). The remarkable Leskovsky "Lefty" first appeared in 1881 in the magazine "Rus" with the subtitle "Shop Legend", while the actual title is the current subtitle: "The Tale of the Tula oblique left-hander and the steel flea."
Leskov, as it were, wants to pretend that his works do not belong to "recognized literature" and that they are written "in this way" - in between times, written in small forms, as if they belong to the lowest kind of literature. This is not only the result of a “shameful form” characteristic of Russian literature, but also the desire that the reader does not see something complete in his works, does not fully believe him as an author, and thinks out the moral meaning of his work. The uncommonness of Leskov's language, which sometimes includes "non-literary definitions", plays a special role in his works: a kind of warning to the reader not to take them as an expression of the author's attitude to what is being described.
This gives freedom to the reader: he is left alone with the creation of the author. The writer, as it were, relieves himself of a certain share of responsibility, he makes the form of his works "alien", seeks to shift the responsibility for it to the narrator or to the document that he cites. Thus, the author "hides" from the reader.
The language of N.S. Leskov, individual expressions, defined by the writer as “local words”, nicknames or, in the words of D.S. Likhachev, “terms” serve to conceal the author’s personality, his own attitude to the work described in the work.
He speaks in "foreign" words, therefore he does not give any assessment to what he is talking about. Leskov the author hides behind "other people's words", and this "game of hide and seek" is necessary for him: his words are too brightly and colorfully built and used in order to belong to the author, whose creative and educational task is to aspire to interest the reader in interpretation, independent interpretation (not without the help of the author, of course) the moral meaning of what is happening in the work.
In his WORDS - everything: attitude to reality, objects, heroes, life. What is left for the reader if Leskov does not play his game? Just listen obediently. This does not correspond to Leskov's aesthetics, and he gives the fruits of his word creation to the narrators.
It turns out that unusual names objects and phenomena and mysterious definitions and nicknames for the hero are given not by him, N.S. Leskov, but by someone else. And the assessment of what is happening, thus, "heavy load" falls on the reader's shoulders.
But, nevertheless, in the literature there is such a thing as "author's position". And it is quite clearly visible, despite the (apparent) "absence" of the author.
In the works of N.S. Leskov, "linguistic impulses" are strong, and for the reader, they are signals of the author's hand. It is interesting that this impulse is concluded, how. rule, in the word itself, its structure. With Leskov, as perhaps with no other writer, communication with us, readers, is at the linguistic level, at the level of the poetic Russian language, interest in which, according to V.V. Vinogradov, sometimes acquired self-sufficient significance from Leskov.
Let us pay attention to the extremely characteristic device of Leskov's artistic prose - his predilection for creative word formation, for the creation of mysterious "terms" for various objects and phenomena.
Here are variations of foreign words, often ironic, and derivational cripples.
For example, in the "Collections" we meet: "... and the father of the archpriest to the police officer for this ... that, in French, assay-mua, they asked ..." (IV.26); “... I was also drunk<...>so that I want to be Cain...” (IV, 21).
Or in "The Seedy Kind": "... it's better than sometimes boasting, and joli-face" (V, 126);
“... who will use French in front of her<...>she will now apologize and make a besiege ... ”(V, 69).
<...>Somehow they chatter, but there are no real feelings of delicacy. ” Another interesting example, when onomatopoeia of a foreign word becomes appropriate and, moreover, very successful for a given language. speech situation meaning: "<...>"... the revolution is throbbing... it is trembling, trembling..." - and I see that it is already trembling for sure" (V, 145). (26) Or in the “Sealed Angel”: “... the value of strong drinking fermented ...” (IV, 327). Estimation - from the Polish ozet - vinegar.
By the way, Leskov's ironic plays on foreign words are not accidental. They reflect the deep attitude of the writer to the Russian language, advocacy for its purity.
This is another ingenious invention of Leskov. For example, his one-time neologism: "... to captivate him with strangeness ..." (Lefty" (VII, 26)) "Foreign" merges with a completely different word - "strange"; one word plays with a combination of two meanings: "captivated by the oddities of foreign countries."
Only on two pages of the printed text of "Lefty" do we find similar examples:
Candelabria - a combination of two words: candelabrum and Calabria (locality in Italy); nymphosoria - nymph + ciliate; busts - busts + chandeliers; studding - jelly + pudding; public - public + police; buremer - barometer + storm; dolbitsa (multiplications) - dolbit + table; watch with trepeter - repeater (sound battle mechanism) + tremble. This technique is especially clearly seen in Leskov's play on the structure of abstract nouns. The author, as it were, “replaces” one suffix of an abstract noun with another, and by the structure itself suggests to the reader the true meaning of the word resulting from such “crossing”.
For example, in “The Seedy Kind” we read: “... in her expression there was no that sweetness that disposed and attracted to the princess any person who appreciates the noble qualities of the soul in another ...” (V, 136).
From the very structure of the word (abstract suffix -ot-) from the meaning of this statement, we understand that this is rather kindness, colored, moreover, by good looks. The word "cute" serves not so much as a description of the appearance of the princess, but as a conductor of the author's attitude to the character. Moreover, this word alone contains the key to the artistic image, the unique means of creating which Leskov uses is his creative word formation.
We can say the same about the fascination of Akhila Desnitsyn from Soboryan, that is, about the degree of his enthusiasm for the world around him, which makes him attractive to other people and, first of all, by the will of the author, to readers.
According to the same principle, the artistic image of Domna Platonovna from Leskov’s story “The Warrior” is built, which “... through its simplicity and through kindness<...>I saw a lot of grief in the world” (I, 145). In this case, the artistic image is created not only with the help of word formation, but also with the help of a psycho-linguistic device. In psychological questioning, for this signal word, people. as a rule (about 90%), they answer with antonyms.
So, the root -good- here works as a given (constant value), and the suffix -ost- as the author's signal, which does not allow the reader to make a mistake when correlating good with the opposite beginning. Kindness and anger are two components of one indivisible whole. The duality of the structure of the word brings us to the duality of the very character of Domna Platonovna, confirmed by the narrator: “<...>... how “prayer and fasting, and one’s own chastity, and pity for people converge”<...>with matchmaking lies, an artistic inclination to arrange short marriages not for the sake of love, but for the sake of interest”, as “it all made its way into the same plump heart and coexists in it with such amazing consent” (I, 191).
Interestingly, in the author's understanding of the character of Domna Platonovna, "kindness" merges with "malice", and not with other representatives of this synonymous series, for example, with "malice". The author's attitude to the personality of Domna Platonovna lies in this choice: "anger" carries the meaning of impulsiveness, temporality, something passing, while the word "malice" is distinguished by the frightening theme of constancy, the strength of negative energy, contained in its very sound.
This technique can in no way be reduced only to style - jokes, the desire to make the reader laugh. This is both a means of satire, and a device of literary intrigue, and an essential element of plot construction, and an interesting means of creating an artistic image.
Amazing words, skillfully created in the language of Leskov's works in a variety of ways (here, not only education in the spirit of "folk etymology", but also dialectisms - the use of local expressions, sometimes nicknames) also intrigue the reader.
For example, Golovan from the story "Non-lethal Golovan" was a greengrocer - from "potion" - a herbal healer; or "spitting" - yarn consisting of scraps of paper threads; "berdo" - belonging to the loom.
Leskov informs the reader of “terms” and mysterious definitions before he gives material that can fill them with specific content, focusing the reader’s attention on the word, and it is the word that forms the image in the reader’s imagination, influences him, helps to determine in relation to what is happening on intermediate or early stages development of the work.
I.V. Stolyarova in her work “Principles of Leskov’s “insidious satire” draws attention to this amazing feature Leskovian poetics. She writes: “As a kind of signal of attention addressed to the reader, the writer uses a neologism or just an unusual word, mysterious in its real meaning and therefore arousing the reader's interest” (27).
Telling, for example, about the trip of the tsarist ambassador, Leskov pointedly remarks: "Platov rode very hastily and with ceremony ..." (VII, 39). The last word is stressed and pronounced by the narrator with a special meaning. with a "stretch", to use Leskov's expression from his story "The Enchanted Wanderer". Everything that follows in this period is a description of this ceremony, which, as it is already right for the reader, is fraught with something interesting, unusual, and worthy of attention.
Let us illustrate this with the example of nicknames that are introduced by Leskov into the intrigue of the work and “work” in this way. These are riddles that are guessed at the beginning of the work and are solved right there with great pleasure.
About Protazanov Yakov Lvovich from "The Seedy Family" we learn that "<...>his small mouth made his face look like some kind of lively bird, which is why his family called him<...>"chizhik" ...<...>in his mature age he was called “Prince Kiss-Mekvik”, a nickname made up of three English words: kiss me guik (kiss me soon) ”(V, 153).
Here too: "<...>it was the invocative battle cry of the master, either remade by him from the name "Zinovy", or composed of the reduction of two words: Zinka, beat "..." (V, 83). We are talking about Zinovia, nicknamed "Zinobey".
But Foteya from the story "Non-deadly Golovan" "<...>for the variegation of his rags they called him an ermine" (VI, 338).
“The nickname “non-lethal” given to Golovan did not express ridicule and was by no means an empty, meaningless sound - he was called non-lethal due to the strong conviction that Golovan is a special person, a person who is not afraid of death "(VI, 351).
But Leskov is in no hurry to reveal the magic of the names of Akhila Desnitsyn (“Soboryanye”) immediately. In the first chapter, the author gives four nicknames for Akhila: “Inspector religious school, who excluded Akhila Desnitsyn from the syntactic class for "great age" and "poor success" told him: - Eka, you, what a long-folded cudgel!
<...>The rector, on special petitions, considered the former nickname insufficient and called Akhila "a whole load of firewood"<...>Bishop's choir director<...>called him "extraordinary"<...>
The bishop made the fourth<...>and the most weighty of the characteristic definitions to the deacon Achilles<...>. According to this definition, the deacon of Achilles was called "wounded" (IV,6-7).
And although the fourth nickname - "wounded" - is explained in the same first chapter, but in the aggregate, all four nicknames are revealed as the "Cathedral" is read. Explanation of the first nickname “ignites” interest in the meaning of the other three.
But why Nadezhda Stepanovna (“Cathedral”) was called “Esperanza” is not explained either immediately or later. However, this does not require a special explanation: "Esperanza" - from the French esperanse - hope.
N.S. Leskov does not tell about the reason why the hero of the story “Laughter and Sorrow” was nicknamed Philemon. Perhaps from filo - "I love" and mono - one; that is, "monogamous", a constant person, which very accurately characterizes the essence of the protagonist of the story.
Creativity N.S.Leskov has the deepest origins in the oral colloquial tradition. It goes back not only to truly vital characters and events of Russian reality, but also to what D.S. Likhachev calls “talking Russia”.
In the first part of Nowhere, the elements of folk dialect are strong, especially when depicting nature: popular expression, not the river is already drowning, but a puddle ... the savanka river has risen, swelled ... ”The words are taken from the peasant speech:“ large clearings, especially along the vzlobochki ”,“ the roosters puffed up their wings ”,“ the woman, moving her shoulders and understanding, walked into the canopy”, “It was early dusk on the most angry winter day in the yard and a dry blizzard beat mercilessly ... poking your nose into a snow-covered suvolok, from which an icy window looks belmisto.”
The author, however, is not afraid to combine the folk word with a more intellectual word: “Ozimi poured, and the juicy grain quickly grew stronger, bursting the elastic cell of the mustachioed ear”, “... in the gray air, pumped by the low crawling sky, there was a lot of something like that , which had an unpleasant effect on the oxidation of the blood ... ".
The dialect of the village does not wedged in as something alien, but organically merges with the voice of the author: words such as zazhory - snow-covered water in a ravine, pit (from "guzzle" - get stuck, go into the ground); vzlobochki - steep hillocks; dusk - dusk - does not clutter up speech and does not complicate reading, strongly coloring everything that comes into contact with them and creates a folk flavor of the depicted picture.
In the author's language, artlessly simple, but OWN expressions constantly flicker, giving the novel its flavor. It is not said, for example, “morning has come” or “it was dawning”, but “... the room was littered with gray”. The language in this work determines the general "gray" mood of St. Petersburg, thus building the artistic image of the city.
The true language of Leskov in his stories, where specific gravity independent word significant, where the word does not spread, is concentrated in itself, in its own, in the words of A.V. Chicherin, “verbal” life. Leskov's words are pebbles-gems, they form together something whole, but not merged, but composite. A separate expression stands out and shines with its own light” (28). Therefore, both L.N. Tolstoy and M. Gorky constantly spoke primarily and especially about the language of N.S. Leskov. The extraordinary mastery of the language was noted by L.N. Tolstoy on December 3, 1890 in a letter to Leskov. N.S. Leskov was described by M. Gorky as “subtly knowing the Russian language and in love with its beauty”.
In the story "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District" the vocabulary is largely different from that of Leskov's contemporaries.
On the very first pages of the story: “such characters are given”, “black, even blue-black hair”, “she didn’t have to sort out suitors”; and further: “longing, reaching to stupefaction”, “glance”, “grabbed on her bare foot”, “hul”, “something suddenly seemed to become ruddy”, and so on.
It was not in the tradition of the literature of that time that these words were used in this sense, but they were all taken from the popular dialect, the intrusion of which into the language from that moment on is expanding significantly. All of these are living, expressive and perfectly understandable words.
The speech of the characters is in full accordance with the attitude of the author towards them. In any word of Sergei - and a merchant clerk, and a flattering insolent, and a man ready for anything, but most of all - an actor: “Now you notice that I’m thoughtful now<...>Maybe my whole heart sank in baked blood! “And I, too, Katerina Lvovna, have my own heart and can see my torments”; "I'm not like the others<...>I feel what love is and how it sucks my heart like a black snake ... "; “Am I to have you with me in constant love? Is it some kind of honor for you to be a mistress? I would like to be your husband before the holy eternal temple ... so then<...>I could publicly rebuke everyone how much I deserve from my wife with my respect for her ... ”and so on. In Leskov's story "The Sealed Angel" the "linguistic image" of the narrator is very interesting.
From his first words, signs of a village dialect appear: “I’m nothing more than a peasant”, “I’m a bricklayer with handicrafts”, “since childhood”, “they have gone all over Russia”, “now you’re all hushing”, “circle around the neck”. But through this shell of the peasant dialect, the further, the more clearly sophisticated expressions break through in their own way: “a great and plentiful granary”, “and we lived under him in the quietest patriarchy”, “they passed their way with him like the Jews<...>they even had their tabernacle with him”, “do not cut all this splendor”, “You cannot cut it, what kind of art it was in both shrines!”, “the wings are spacious and white as snow.”
Peasant dialect is combined with speech that arose in an artistic and religious environment, involved in ancient art, which grew up on its subtleties and on a great spiritual upsurge. The emotional language wave thrown high by the author in this story leads to the disclosure of the image of the narrator, understanding the duality of his nature (just as the language combines the sophisticated with the rustic), which combines folk innocence and a great upsurge of either joyful or sorrowful experiences caused by the works of the true art.
Leskovsky's "Lefty" captivates the reader with its unusual linguistic significance. In the very first lines, the reader is puzzled by the expression:<..>and always, through his kindness, had the most "internecine" conversations with all sorts of people" (VII, 26). It is curious that A.S. Pushkin remarked about the first of these words: “Internecine means mutel, but does not contain the idea of scolding, dispute” (29).
Pushkin himself used this word only in the sense of internal strife and wars, and the word "strife" in Dahl's dictionary: "in strife, brother raises his hand against brother." But Leskovsky's hero uses his "internecine conversations", playing with the reverse meaning of this inappropriate use of the word.
The artistic image of this hero is entirely woven from "shifters", altered words, which are another bright and original sign of Leskov's language: "hornbeam" instead of "humpback"; "kislyarka" - "kizlyarka"; "valdakhin" - "canopy"; "neramides" - "pyramids"; "mother of pearl" - "mother of pearl"; "tugament" - "document"; "melkoscope" - "microscope"; "pubel" - "poodle"; "double" - "double"; "probability" - "variation"; "Abolon Polvedere" - "Apollo Belvedere".
The author assigned an unusual mission to these "reversals": their function is not at all to convey the "negative polarity" of the image, as it may seem, demonstrating the rudeness or ignorance, "narrowness" of the narrator. With the help of his witty word formation, the author allows the reader to see ingenuity in the narrator and, to use Leskov's expression from his story "The Warrior", "as a Russian person, a little cunning"; the ability to highlight the main thing, the main thing, to see the essence; rationality inherent in a peasant not only at the everyday level, but also at the linguistic level and, of course, inseparable bond of this character with Russian colorful humor, adorned with charming lucklessness.
Speaking about Leskovsky's "terms" that characterize specific characters and serve as a means of consciousness of the artistic image, one cannot but say once again about their specific purpose, about their most essential function - the function of a conductor of a linguistic impulse sent by the author to his reader. These words - "impulses" help the reader to comprehend the author's deep idea, which underlies all the work of N.S. Leskov. This idea is the search for a moral ideal.
Even those of Leskov's "new formations" that are called upon to characterize, roughly speaking, "negative character traits" thanks to artistic modeling, reduce the negative background of this facet of the artistic image; appealing to the linguistic, and therefore spiritual sensitivity of the reader. With their help, the writer gives the reader the opportunity, precisely at the linguistic level, to discern his attempts to rehabilitate the poor fellow "bad", if, of course, in this particular situation this is the author's task.
In any case, N.S. Leskov is true to his aesthetic principle: to go around the subject of the image around, “and not from the side where it is vulgar, meaner and more disgusting.”
An example of this is the image of a priest from the story "The Enchanted Wanderer":<...>this priest is a terrible drunkard - he drinks wine and is not good in the parish, and this report, according to one essence, was fair. Vladyko<...>looked at him and see that this popik is really a “drinker” (IV, 388).
Let us pay attention to the fact that the “terrible drunkard” priest “as if”, and “really” this priest is a “drinker”:
not a drunkard (a person who drinks, an alcoholic); not a drunkard ((colloquial) drunk person); not a drunkard (same as "drunkard"); not a drunkard ((colloquial) contemptuous) the same as a drunkard); not a drunkard (colloquial, diminutive-pejorative); not a drunk person, drunk or drunk, but a drinker. The fact that “zapivashka” is a signal word, in addition to the subjective reader’s perception (which, in general, the author is counting on), also proves that it was chosen from the above synonymous series, or rather, created and selected ( the word is not recorded in dictionaries). Apparently, all the available lexico-semantic variants of this word were not enough for an accurate, figurative expression of the author's thought. Note that in the context it is opposed to the word "drunkard". This word, "zapivashka", is self-sufficient for creating on its basis in the reader's imagination the image of this very priest; besides, in the work, apart from the fact that he is “allegedly a drunkard”, and “actually a drinker”, by and large, nothing is said.
Although there is one more auxiliary detail: he is not a “pop”, but a “priest”. If it speaks about the structure of these words, then it is more than eloquent in the sense that it helps us to accurately determine the attitude of the author himself towards this character. And we see before us an eccentric; a modest, diligent, quiet person, unlucky and a little funny in his unluckyness, touching, with an unlucky life (which is why he is a drinker), most likely kind, and even plus to all this, likeable to the author himself.
In the author's language, one feels empathy not only with the object of ridicule, but also with bitter mockery, a sad smile about human imperfections. Basically, it is a kind, sympathetic "cleansing" laughter, which makes Leskov related to the folk culture of laughter. N.S. Leskov was “intolerant” to any evil and, if we take into account his conviction, one hundred “indulgence to evil very closely borders on indifference to good, and the inability to despise and hate most often lives along with the inability to respect and love”, then those traits of Leskov's personality are clarified, which could not but be reflected in his language, in all his work. This is sincerity, strength, extraordinary color, childish maximalism, Russian enthusiasm and lyricism ...
But the main thing that triumphs in the works of Leskov is kindness. He is a kind, surprisingly kind writer who strives to embody this property of his nature in his favorite characters, to give them positive energy: “... the strength of my talent is in positive types. I gave the reader positive types of Russian people...”.
Favorite heroes of N.S. Leskov, depicted by him with undisguised warmth and sympathy, are eccentric righteous people, namely eccentrics; with its spontaneity, childishness; funny, cute, sometimes unlucky. Not deliberately ideal heroes, who do not always have a chance to become loved, but "true positive Russian types."
The key theme of this remarkable author can unmistakably be called the theme of Russia. The linguistic artistic image of Russia built by the writer is complex and multifaceted. It has a certain duality, nevertheless, it is infinitely harmonious. Let us pay attention to the dual nature of the artistic image of Russia. Russia in the language of the writer appears before us in the image of a Russian hero: huge, strong, daring, though a little clumsy, but very kind. And the vocabulary that defines Russian life and the Russian people in this case carries in itself this theme of the superlative degree, the theme of “heroism”.
Only on a few pages of the story “Laughter and Sorrow” we read: “... life is nowhere so abundant<...>like in Russia" "... this should not be the case<...>nowhere, and even more so in Russia ""... a grandiose, inspiring figure in a boundless<...>wolf coat" "... it was a huge turkey on a large wooden dish..." "... he came with huge bills..." "... we came across a strange story..." "... we found an angry, angry-looking person ... "" ... fearlessness, courage and courage in their most diverse applications ... "" The huge garden of the boarding house served as an immense field ... "" ... huge snowdrifts ... "" .. studied well .. ""... he himself was a big fool, had a huge appetite ..." "... he had no powers of observation ..." "... he prayed<...>and very sweetly and most sincerely" The peasants "... live much more excellently than before." But the writer's language helps us to see another Russia: quiet, provincial, meek, in the words of M.I. Tsvetaeva "touchingly small". We will see this, as if another Russia, turning over the pages of the same story:
“... in front of the carriage that suddenly stopped, a black<...>a strip of towns dotted with red dots ... "Not a small neat town, not a small town, not a godforsaken seedy town, but a bright, pretty town, as if from a Russian lubok pictures, unique in its proud miserliness, or:
“A bay horse was standing at the entrance, harnessed to a small droshky.” .
“... I remember a small station ...” Both “horse” and “drozhechki” and “station” are signal words with an impulse of tenderness for the Russian road - a category not of everyday life in Rus', but of a philosophical one.
Analyzing the means of creating an artistic image in Leskov's works, one cannot but come to the conclusion that everything Leskov did in Russian literature is extremely necessary, significant and bright. Without Leskov, Russian literature would have lost a significant share of its national color and national issues, which largely determine and global importance every writer.
In the artistic manner of Leskov, the WORD plays a very special role. The word of the hero or narrator, "skillful weaving of the nervous lace of colloquial speech" is Leskov's main means of creating an artistic image (30).
In the writer's works, "linguistic impulses" are strong, which are signals of the author's hand for the reader. This impulse is enclosed, as a rule, in the very structure of the word. Leskov, like perhaps no other writer, communicates with his reader at the level of the poetic Russian language.
In the artistic manner of Leskov, an important role is played by the use of the linguistic composition of Ancient Rus'. The very methods of using the Old Russian language and its widespread use make it possible to classify Leskov as an exceptionally peculiar phenomenon of all Russian literature.
His works are imbued with historical legends, folk legends, people's rumors. Leskov created a great variety of socio-psychological types, and for all their brightness, individuality and originality of language, they reveal a certain commonality of style, a certain property inherent in them all to think “in a national key”, “in Russian”.
This "national way of thinking" was reflected in a generalizing artistic form, which is Leskov's literary tale.
Leskov was one of the first to realize that in order to comprehend the spirit of the times, and most importantly, the folk character, a folk tale is a precious material.
NOTES
- Fed N.M. Leskov's artistic discoveries // Leskov and Russian literature. Sat edited Lomunov and Troitsky. M., 1988. P.25.
- Big Encyclopedia / Ed. S.N. Yuzhakova. 4th ed. St. Petersburg, 1903-1904. T.XII. P.382.
- Desktop encyclopedic Dictionary Br. A. and Garnet, M., 1901. T. VI. P.382.
- Dykhanova B.S. "The Sealed Angel" and "The Enchanted Wanderer" by N.S. Leskov. M., 1980. S. 23.; Krasnov P.N. A sensitive artist and stylist, // Trud, 1895. No. 5, P. 449.
- Leskov N.S. Sobr. op. In 11 volumes. T.VII. P.60-61 .M., 1958. Further, the volume and page of the text are indicated by this edition.
- Gorky M. Sobr. op. In 30 tons. T.24. P.236.
- Orlov A.S. The language of Russian writers. M.-L., 1948. S.153.
- Prokofiev N.I. Traditions of Old Russian Literature in the Works of Leskov // Leskov and Russian Literature. Sat. under. ed. Lomunov and Troitsky. M., 1988.S.122.
- Orlov A.S. The language of Russian writers. M.-L., 1948. S.153. (Question about the story.)
- Gorky A.M. Uncollected literary-critical articles. M., 1941. S.88-89.
- Kuskov V.V. The concept of beauty in ancient Russian literature// Problems of theory and history of literature. M., 1971.S.63.
- Prokofiev N.I. Specified essay. P.134.
- Fed N.M. Leskov's artistic discoveries // Leskov and Russian literature. Sat. under. ed. Lomunov and Troitsky. M., 1988. P. 26.
- Gogol N.V. Full coll. op. In 14 volumes. T.8. M., 1952. S.478-479.
- Fed N.M. Specified essay. P.28.
- Vinogradov V.V. Poetics. M., 1926.S.25.
- Vinogradov V.V. Stylistics. theory of poetic speech. Poetics. M., 1963.S.18.
- There. P.25.
- There. P.34.
- Vinogradov V.V. On the theory of artistic speech. M., 1971. S. 118.
- Eikhenbaum B.O. About literature. Works different years. M., 1987.S.413.
- There. pp. 414-415; / Faresov A.I. Against the currents. SPb., 1904. S.273-274.
Leskov is certainly a writer of the first rank. Its significance is gradually growing in our literature: its influence on literature is growing, and readers' interest in it is growing. However, it is difficult to call him a classic of Russian literature. He is an amazing experimenter who gave birth to a whole wave of such experimenters in Russian literature - a mischievous experimenter, sometimes irritated, sometimes cheerful, and at the same time extremely serious, who set himself great educational goals, in the name of which he conducted his experiments.
The first thing I want to draw attention to is Leskov's search for literary genres. He is constantly looking for, trying his hand at new and new genres, some of which he takes from "business" writing, from the literature of magazines, newspapers or scientific prose.
Very many of Leskov's works have genre definitions under their titles that Leskov gives them, as if warning the reader about the unusual nature of their form for "big literature": "autobiographical note", "author's confession", "open letter", " biographical sketch"(" Alexei Petrovich Ermolov ")," fantasy story"("White Eagle"), "public note" ("Big battles"), "small feuilleton", "notes on generic nicknames" ("Heraldic fog"), "family chronicle" ("The seedy family"), "observations , experiments and adventures "(" Hare remise ")," pictures from nature "(" Improvisers "and" Little things of bishop's life ")," from folk legends new build» (“Leon the Butler’s Son (Table Predator)”), “Nota bene to Memoirs” (“Populists and Schismologists in the Service”), “Legendary Case” (“Unbaptized Pop”), “Bibliographic Note” (“Unprinted Manuscripts of Plays by Dead Writers ")," post scriptum"("About the "Quakers""), "literary explanation" ("About the Russian left-hander"), "a short trilogy in a dream» (“Selective grain”), “reference” (“Where are the plots of the play by Count L. N. Tolstoy “The First Distiller” borrowed from”), “excerpts from youthful memories” (“Pechersk antiques”), “scientific note” (“On the Russian icon painting"), "historical correction" ("The incongruity about Gogol and Kostomarov"), "landscape and genre" ("Winter day", "Midnight clerks"), "rhapsody" ("Yudol"), "the story of an official for special assignments" ( "Stinging"), "a bucolic story on a historical canvas" ("Part-timers"), "spiritual case" ("The Spirit of Madame Janlis"), etc., etc.
Leskov, as it were, avoids the usual genres for literature. If he even writes a novel, then as a genre definition he puts in the subtitle "a novel in three books”(“ Nowhere ”), making it clear to the reader that this is not quite a novel, but a novel with something unusual. If he writes a story, then even in this case he strives to somehow distinguish it from an ordinary story - for example: “a story on a grave” (“Dumb Artist”).
Leskov, as it were, wants to pretend that his works do not belong to serious literature and that they are written in such a way - casually, written in small forms, belong to the lowest kind of literature. This is not only the result of a special “shamefulness of form”, which is very characteristic of Russian literature, but the desire that the reader does not see something complete in his works, “does not believe” him as an author, and himself thinks out the moral meaning of his work. At the same time, Leskov destroys genre form of their works, as soon as they acquire some kind of genre tradition, can be perceived as works of "ordinary" and high literature, “Here the story should have ended,” but ... Leskov continues it, takes him aside, passes it on to another narrator, etc.
Strange and non-literary genre definitions play a special role in Leskov's works; they act as a kind of warning to the reader not to take them as an expression of the author's attitude to what is being described. This gives readers freedom: the author leaves them face to face with the work: "if you want - believe it, if you want - no." He relieves himself of a certain share of responsibility: making the form of his works as if someone else's, he seeks to shift the responsibility for them to the narrator, to the document that he cites. He seems to be hiding from his reader.
This reinforces that curious feature of Leskov's works that they intrigue the reader by interpreting the moral meaning of what is happening in them (which I wrote about in a previous article).
If we compare the collection of Leskov's works with some kind of a shop in which Leskov lays out goods, supplying them with labels, then first of all, this shop is compared with a palm tree toy trade or with a fair trade, in which folk, simple elements, "cheap toys" ( tales, legends, bucolic pictures, feuilletons, references, etc.) occupy a dominant position.
But this comparison, with all its relative fidelity in its essence, requires one more clarification.
Lesk's toy shop (and he himself made sure that his works were with a cheerful confusion in intrigue *(( In a letter to V. M. Lavrov dated November 24, 1887, Leskov wrote about his story “Robbery”: “ According to the genre, it is everyday, according to the plot, it is a funny confusion», « in general, a fun read and a true everyday picture of a thieves' city». ))) could be compared with a store that usually bears the name "Do it yourself!". Reader myself must make a toy from the materials offered to him or find the answer to the questions that Leskov poses to him.
If I had to look for a subtitle for a collection of his works in the spirit of Leskov's genre definitions, I would give him such a genre definition: "A literary problem book in 30 volumes" (or 25, - you can't do less). His collected works are a huge problem book, a problem book in which the most difficult life situations are given for their moral assessment, and direct answers are not suggested, and sometimes even different solutions are allowed, but in general it is still a problem book that teaches the reader about active goodness, active understanding people and independently finding solutions to the moral issues of life. At the same time, as in any problem book, the construction of problems should not be repeated often, because this would facilitate their solution.
Leskov has such a literary form invented by him - “landscape and genre” (by “genre” Leskov means genre paintings). Leskov creates this literary form (which, by the way, is very modern - many of the achievements of twentieth-century literature are anticipated here) for the complete elimination of the author's self. The author does not even hide here behind the backs of his narrators or correspondents, from whose words he allegedly conveys events, as in his other works - he is generally absent, offering the reader, as it were, a shorthand record of conversations taking place in the living room (“Winter Day”) or the hotel ("The Midnighters"). According to these conversations, the reader himself must judge the character and moral character of those who are talking and about those events and life situations that, behind these conversations, are gradually revealed to the reader.
The moral impact on the reader of these works is especially strong in that nothing is explicitly imposed on the reader in them: the reader seems to guess everything himself. In essence, he actually solves the moral problem that is presented to him.
Leskov's story "Lefty", which is usually perceived as clearly patriotic, as glorifying the labor and skill of the Tula workers, is far from simple in its tendency. He is patriotic, but not only... Leskov, for some reason, removed the author's preface, which states that the author cannot be identified with the narrator. And the question remains unanswered: why did all the skill of the Tula blacksmiths only lead to the result that the flea stopped “dancing dances” and “doing variations”? The answer, obviously, is that all the art of the Tula blacksmiths is put at the service of the whims of the masters. This is not a glorification of labor, but an image of the tragic situation of Russian craftsmen.
Let us pay attention to another extremely characteristic device of Leskov's artistic prose - his addiction to special words-distortions in the spirit of folk etymology and to the creation of mysterious terms for various phenomena. This technique is known mainly from Leskov's most popular novel "Lefty" and has been repeatedly studied as a phenomenon of linguistic style.
But this technique can by no means be reduced only to style - to jokes, the desire to make the reader laugh. This is also a device of literary intrigue, an essential element of the plot construction of his works. "Words" and "terms", artificially created in the language of Leskov's works in a variety of ways (here not only folk etymology, but also the use of local expressions, sometimes nicknames, etc.), also pose riddles to the reader that intrigue the reader at intermediate stages of development plot. Leskov informs the reader of his terms and cryptic definitions, strange nicknames, etc., before he gives the reader material to understand their meaning, and it is precisely in this way that he gives additional interest to the main intrigue.
Here, for example, is the story "Dead estate", which has a subtitle (genre definition) "from memories". First of all, we note that the very title of the work introduces an element of intrigue, entertainment - what class, and even “dead”, will we be talking about? Then the very first term that Leskov introduces into these memoirs is the "wild fantasies" of the old Russian governors, the antics of officials. Only in the following is it explained what kind of antics they are. The riddle is solved unexpectedly for the reader. The reader expects that he will read about some monstrous behavior of the old governors (after all, they say - "wild fantasies"), but it turns out that we are talking just weirdness. Leskov undertakes to oppose the bad old "war time" to modern prosperity, but it turns out that in the old days everything was simpler and even more harmless. The "wildness" of old fantasies is not at all terrible. The past, opposed to the new, very often serves Leskov to criticize his present.
Leskov uses the “term” “combat time”, but then it turns out that the whole war boils down to the fact that the Oryol governor Trubetskoy was a great hunter of “making noise” (again a term), and, as it turns out, he loved to “make noise” not out of malice, but as a kind of artist, actor. Leskov writes: About the bosses, whom they especially wanted to praise, they always said: "Hunter to make some noise." If he gets attached to something, and makes noise, and scolds as badly as possible, and won't make trouble. All ended with one noise!"Further, the term" insolent "is used (again in quotation marks) and added:" About him (that is, about the same governor.- D. L.),so they said in Orel that he "likes to be daring"". In the same vein, the terms "strain", "upstart" are given. And then it turns out that the governors' quick driving served as a sign of "solid power" and "decorated", according to Leskov, the old Russian cities, when the bosses went "upstart". Leskov also speaks of the erratic driving of the ancient governors in his other works, but characteristically - again intriguing the reader, but in other terms. In Odnodum, for example, Leskov writes: “Then (in the old days.- D. L.)governors traveled "scary", but met them "quiveringly"". The explanation of both terms is made in Odnodum is surprising, and Leskov casually uses various other terms that serve as auxiliary intriguing devices that prepare the reader for the appearance in the narrative of the “haughty figure” of “himself”.
When creating a “term”, Leskov usually refers to “local use”, to “local rumor”, giving those terms a folk flavor. About the same governor of Oryol Trubetskoy, whom I have already mentioned, Leskov cites many local expressions. " Add to that, - writes Leskov, - that the person we are talking about, according to the correct local definition, was "unintelligible"(again term.- D. L.),rude and autocratic - and then it will become clear to you that he could inspire both horror and a desire to avoid any meeting with him. But the common people liked to look with pleasure when “yon sadit”. The men who visited Orel and had happiness (underlined by me.- D. L.),to see the prince riding, it used to be a long story:
- And-and-and, how yon sits down! Agio bydto the whole city rumbles!»Further, Leskov says about Trubetskoy: “ It was the governor from all sides "(again term.- D. L.);such a governor, which are now transferred due to "unfavorable circumstances"».
The last term that is associated with this Oryol governor is the term "spread out." The term is given first to amaze the reader with its unexpectedness, and then its explanation is already reported: “ It was his favorite(Governor.-D. L.)arranging his figure when he had to go, not go. He took his hands “at the sides” or “forth”, which is why the hood and the hems of his military cloak spread out and occupied so much latitude that three people could pass in his place: everyone can see that the governor is coming».
I do not touch here on many other terms associated in the same work with another governor: Ivan Ivanovich Fundukley of Kiev: “exhaustion”, “beautiful Spaniard”, “clerk descends from the mountain”, etc. The following is important: such terms have already been encountered in Russian literature (in Dostoevsky, Saltykov-Shchedrin), but in Leskov they are introduced into the very intrigue of the narrative, serve to increase interest. This is an additional element of intrigue. When in the work of Leskov, the Kiev governor Fundukley (“Dead estate”) is called “the beautiful Spaniard”, it is natural that the reader is waiting for an explanation of this nickname. Other expressions of Leskov also require explanations, and he never rushes with these explanations, counting at the same time that the reader has not had time to forget these enigmatic words and expressions.
I. V. Stolyarova in her work “Principles of Leskov’s “insidious satire” (a word in the tale of Lefty)” draws attention to this remarkable feature of Leskov’s “insidious word”. She writes: " As a kind of signal of attention addressed to the reader, the writer uses a neologism or just an unusual word that is mysterious in its real meaning and therefore arouses the reader's interest. Telling, for example, about the trip of the tsar's ambassador, Leskov pointedly remarks: "Platov rode very hastily and with ceremony..." story "The Enchanted Wanderer"). Everything that follows in this long period is a description of this ceremony, which, as the reader has the right to expect, is something interesting, unusual, worthy of attention.» *{{ Stolyarova I.V. The principles of Leskov's "insidious satire" (a word in the tale of Lefty). // Creativity of N. S. Leskov: Collection. Kursk, 1977, pp. 64-66.}}.
Along with strange and mysterious words and expressions (terms, as I call them), nicknames are also introduced into the intrigue of the works, which “work” in the same way. These are also riddles that are posed at the beginning of the work and only then are explained. This is how even the largest works, such as "Cathedrals", begin. In the first chapter of The Cathedral, Leskov gives four nicknames for Achilles Desnitsyn. And although the fourth nickname, “Wounded,” is explained in the same first chapter, but in the aggregate, all four nicknames are revealed gradually as the “Cathedrals” are read. Explanation of the first nickname only maintains the reader's interest in the meaning of the other three.
The unusual language of the narrator in Leskov, individual expressions defined by Leskov as local, buzzwords, nicknames serve at the same time in the works, again, to conceal the identity of the author, his personal relationship to what is being described. He speaks in "strange words" - therefore, he does not give any assessment to what he is talking about. Leskov the author, as it were, hides behind other people's words and phrases, just as he hides behind his own narrators, behind a fictitious document, or behind some pseudonym.
Leskov is like a "Russian Dickens". Not because he resembles Dickens in general, in the manner of his writing, but because both Dickens and Leskov are "family writers", writers who were read in the family, discussed by the whole family, writers who are of great importance for moral formation of a person, are brought up in youth, and then they accompany them all their lives, along with the best memories of childhood. But Dickens is a typically English family writer, and Leskov is a Russian. Even very Russian. So Russian that, of course, he will never be able to enter the English family in the same way that Dickens entered the Russian. And this is despite the ever-increasing popularity of Leskov abroad and, above all, in English-speaking countries.
There is one thing that brings Leskov and Dickens very close: they are eccentric righteous people. Why not the Leskian righteous Mr. Dick in "David Copperfield", whose favorite hobby was to fly kites and who found the correct and kind answer to all questions? And why not the Dickensian eccentric Nesmertny Golovan, who did good in secret, without even noticing that he was doing good?
But a good hero is just what is needed for family reading. Deliberately "ideal" hero does not always have a chance to become a favorite hero. The beloved hero should be, to a certain extent, the secret of the reader and writer, for a truly kind person, if he does good, always does it in secret, in secret.
The eccentric not only keeps the secret of his kindness, but he also constitutes a literary riddle in his own right, intriguing the reader. The removal of eccentrics in works, at least in Leskov, is also one of the methods of literary intrigue. The eccentric always carries a riddle. Intrigue in Leskov, therefore, subordinates to itself the moral assessment, the language of the work and the "characterography" of the work. Without Leskov, Russian literature would have lost a significant share of its national color and national problematics.
Leskov's work has its main sources not even in literature, but in the oral colloquial tradition, going back to what I would call "talking Russia". It came out of conversations, disputes in various companies and families and again returned to these conversations and disputes, returned to the whole huge family and “talking Russia”, giving rise to new conversations, disputes, discussions, awakening the moral sense of people and teaching them to decide on their own. moral issues.
For Leskov, the whole world of official and unofficial Russia is, as it were, “his own”. In general, he treated all modern literature and Russian social life as a kind of conversation. All of Russia was his native, native land, where everyone knows each other, remembers and honors the dead, knows how to tell about them, knows their family secrets. So he says about Tolstoy, Pushkin, Zhukovsky and even Katkov. He even calls the deceased chief of the gendarmes "the unforgettable Leonty Vasilyevich Dubelt" (see "Administrative Grace"). Ermolov for him is primarily Alexei Petrovich, and Miloradovich is Mikhail Andreevich. And he never forgets to mention them family life, about their kinship with one or another character in the story, about acquaintances ... And this is by no means conceited boasting of "a short acquaintance with big people." This consciousness - sincere and deep - of its kinship with all of Russia, with all its people - both good and unkind, with its centuries-old culture. And this is also his position as a writer.
The writer's style can be seen as part of his behavior. I write "may" because the style is sometimes perceived by the writer as ready-made. Then it's not his behavior. The writer only reproduces it. Sometimes the style follows the accepted etiquette in the literature. Etiquette, of course, is also behavior, or rather, a certain accepted stamp of behavior, and then the style of the writer is deprived of individual traits. However, when the individuality of the writer is clearly expressed, the style of the writer is his behavior, his behavior in literature.
Leskov's style is part of his behavior in literature. The style of his works includes not only the style of the language, but also the attitude to genres, the choice of the "image of the author", the choice of themes and plots, the ways of constructing intrigue, attempts to enter into special "mischievous" relationships with the reader, the creation of the "image of the reader" - distrustful and at the same time simple-hearted, and on the other hand, sophisticated in literature and thinking about social topics, reader-friend and reader-enemy, reader-polemist and reader "false" (for example, a work is addressed to one single person, but is printed for everyone) .
Above, we tried to show Leskov, as it were, hiding, hiding, playing hide and seek with the reader, writing under pseudonyms, as if for random reasons in the secondary sections of magazines, as if refusing authoritative and imposing genres, a writer proud and, as it were, offended ...
I think the answer suggests itself.
Leskov's unsuccessful article on the fire that started in St. Petersburg on May 28, 1862, undermined his "literary position ... for almost two decades" *(( Leskov A.N. The life of Nikolai Leskov according to his personal, family and non-family records and memories. Tula, 1981, p. 141.)). She was perceived as inciting public opinion against students and forced Leskov to go abroad for a long time, and then to avoid literary circles or, in any case, be wary of these circles. He was insulted and insulted himself. A new wave of public indignation against Leskov was caused by his novel Nowhere. The genre of the novel not only failed Leskov, but forced D. I. Pisarev to declare: “Will there be 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 stories and novels by Mr. Stebnitsky "*(( Pisarev D. I. Soch.: In 4 vols. T. 3. M., 1956. S. 263.}}.
All Leskov's activity as a writer, his searches are subordinated to the task of "hiding", leaving the environment he hates, hiding, speaking as if from someone else's voice. And he could love eccentrics - because to a certain extent he identified them with himself. That is why he made his eccentrics and righteous for the most part lonely and incomprehensible ... "Rejection from literature" affected the whole character of Leskov's work. But is it possible to recognize that it formed all its features? No! It was all together: "rejection" created the character of creativity, and the nature of creativity and style in the broad sense of the word led to "rejection from literature" - from literature front row, of course, only. But this is precisely what allowed Leskov to become an innovator in literature, because the birth of a new one in literature often comes from below - from minor and semi-business genres, from the prose of letters, from stories and conversations, from approaching everyday life and everyday life.
