Leskov personal life. Nikolai Semenovich Leskov: biography, facts, video

P. Gromov, B. Eikhenbaum. N. S. Leskov: Leskov’s work

M. Gorky, who highly appreciated the work of N. S. Leskov, wrote about him: “This great writer lived away from the public and writers, lonely and misunderstood almost until the end of his days. Only now they are starting to treat him more carefully.” (M. Gorky, Collected Works in 30 volumes, Goslitizdat, vol. 24, p. 235.) Indeed, Leskov’s literary fate is strange and unusual. A writer who raised new, unexplored aspects of Russian life to the heights of great artistic generalizations, who populated his books with a whole crowd of bright, original, deeply national personalities never before seen in literature, a subtle stylist and connoisseur of his native language - he is also these days he is much less read than other writers of the same caliber.

Much in Leskov’s literary fate is explained by the extreme contradictory nature of his creative path. His contemporaries - the sixties from the progressive camp - had quite good reasons to be distrustful of Leskov. The writer, who had recently begun his literary career, became an employee of such a far from advanced organ as the newspaper “Northern Bee” in 1862. This was all the more offensive for his contemporaries because we were talking about a writer of a completely “sixties” type: he had a good knowledge of practical, everyday, business Russian life, he had the temperament, tastes and abilities of a publicist, journalist, newspaperman. The leading magazine of the era, Sovremennik, in its April book of 1862, assessed this journalistic activity young Leskov: “We feel sorry for the upper columns of the Bee.” There, strength is wasted in vain, not only has it not expressed itself and not exhausted itself, but perhaps has not yet found its true path. We think at least that with greater concentration and stability of her activity, with greater attention to her labors, she will find her real path and someday become a remarkable force, perhaps in a completely different way, and not in the one in which she is now struggles. And then she will blush for her top columns and for her shameless verdicts...” Soon after this admonishing appeal from Sovremennik to the young writer, a loud public scandal breaks out - rumors are widely spread that the big fires that occurred in May 1862 in St. Petersburg are a matter of hands of revolutionary-minded students and are associated with the “Young Russia” proclamation that appeared shortly before. V.I. Lenin in the article “Persecutors of the Zemstvo and the Annibals of Liberalism” wrote: “... there is very good reason to think that rumors about student arsonists were spread by the police.” (V.I. Lenin, Works, vol. 5, p. 27.) Leskov speaks with a newspaper article (“Northern Bee”, 1862, e 143 (dated May 30).) in which he demands that the police either refute these rumors , or discover the real culprits and roughly punish them. In the tense political atmosphere of those years, the article was considered provocative by progressive circles. She gave reasons for this by the obvious ambiguity of the author’s social position. Leskov, a man of a tough and hot-tempered temperament, reacted to the incident with violent irritation. As a result, he had to go on a trip abroad in order to calm down himself and wait for the political passions that flared up around his article to subside.

The fate of Leskov was very clearly reflected in the fact that the social force “which cannot tolerate serfdom, but which is afraid of revolution, is afraid of the movement of the masses, capable of overthrowing the monarchy and destroying the power of the landowners” (V.I. Lenin, Works, vol. 17, p. 96.) with a sharp turn of events, with the aggravation of the main historical contradiction of the era, it will inevitably end up objectively in the camp of reaction. This is what happened with Leskov. In 1864 he published the novel Nowhere. Both during the era of the publication of the novel and much later, when Leskov’s social paths had changed greatly, he was inclined to believe that the assessment of the novel by advanced contemporaries was largely based on a misunderstanding.

The writer’s intention was to interpret some of the “nihilists” he portrayed as people who are subjectively honest and sincerely concerned about the fate of the people, but who are mistaken about the course of the country’s historical development (Rainer, Lisa Bakhareva). This “author’s amendment” hardly changes anything in the essence of the matter.

Contemporaries quite rightly saw in the novel maliciously distorted portraits of a number of real persons from the forward camp. The social qualifications of the novel and the conclusions from it were formulated especially clearly and sharply by D.I. Pisarev and V.A. Zaitsev. “In essence, this is poorly overheard gossip transferred to literature,” wrote V.A. Zaitsev about Leskov’s novel. D. I. Pisarev defined the social and ethical conclusions that need to be drawn from the current situation as follows: “I am very interested in the following two questions: 1. Is there now in Russia - besides the Russian Messenger - at least one magazine that would dare to publish on its pages, is there anything coming from the pen of Stebnitsky (Leskov’s pseudonym) and signed with his last name? 2. Is there at least one honest writer in Russia who would be so careless and indifferent to his reputation that he would agree to work in a magazine that adorns itself with Stebnitsky’s stories and novels?” Objectively, the novel “Nowhere” and, probably to an even greater extent, the novel “On Knives”, published by Leskov in the early 70s, are included in the group of so-called “anti-nihilistic” novels of the 60s and 70s, such as “The Troubled Sea” "Pisemsky, "The Haze" by Klyushnikov, "Demons" by Dostoevsky, etc.

For Leskov, difficult years of “excommunication” from the great literature and journalism of the era begin. He does not get along in the reactionary “Russian Bulletin” of Katkov, and the reasons for this should be sought, of course, not in the characteristics of the characters of Leskov and Katkov, but in the objective social sense of further literary work Leskova. Throughout the 70s and especially the 80s, a difficult, at times even painful, revaluation of many of his previous socio-political views took place by the writer. A significant role in Leskov’s ideological self-determination was played by his rapprochement with L.N. Tolstoy. Leskov’s public position in the 80s is not the same as it was in the 60s and 70s. In Leskov’s artistic creativity and journalism of this period, works related to the coverage of the life and everyday life of the Russian clergy aroused particular hostility from the conservative camp. Leskov’s younger contemporary, A. M. Skabichevsky, noted: “A great sensation was caused by the Bishop’s trifles, published in the early eighties, a series of everyday paintings exposing some of the dark sides of the life of our highest spiritual hierarchy. These essays aroused the same storm in the conservative camp as the novel “Nowhere” caused in the liberal camp.”

Before this important turning point, which was associated with the growth of a new revolutionary situation in the country (“the second democratic upsurge in Russia,” as V.I. Lenin said), Leskov collaborated in various small magazines and newspapers of a conservative, dull liberal or indefinite direction. He was not allowed into the “respectable” bourgeois-liberal press. In connection with the increasingly critical tendencies in his work, which led to the appearance of works that sharply and acutely posed a number of pressing issues in the social life of Russia, the attitude towards him on the part of liberal circles should have changed. And here a significant fact occurs, noted by the writer’s son and biographer A. N. Leskov: “Gradually, a curious change of positions is created with a sometimes surprising rearrangement of figures.” (The writer’s son, A. N. Leskov, worked for many years on the biography of N. S. Leskov. Completed before the war, it appeared only in 1954 (Andrei Leskov - “The Life of Nikolai Leskov. According to his personal, family and non-family records and memories") This book is, in its freshness and abundance of facts and liveliness of presentation, an exceptionally valuable work to which we refer readers interested in the biography of the writer.) A. N. Leskov means the fact that it is liberal. - bourgeois magazines such as “Bulletin of Europe” or “Russian Thought” one after another refuse, out of censorship fears, to publish Leskov’s things on their pages because of their excessive critical sharpness. Advanced social and literary circles of the 60s had serious reasons to argue with Leskov; The bourgeois liberals and late populists of the 90s no longer had such grounds, but they continued to do this as if simply by inertia. It was, however, not a matter of inertia at all.

In 1891, critic M.A. Protopopov wrote an article about Leskov entitled “Sick Talent.” Leskov thanked the critic for the general tone of his article, but strongly objected to its title and main provisions. “Your criticism lacks historicity,” he wrote to Protopopov. “Speaking about the author, you forgot his time and the fact that he is a child of his time... I would, writing about myself, call the article not sick talent, but difficult growth.” Leskov was right: without “historicity” it is impossible to understand his work (like the work of any writer). He was right in another way: the whole history of his life and work is a picture of slow, difficult and often even painful growth over almost half a century - from the late 40s to the mid-90s. The difficulty of this growth depended both on the complexity of the era itself , and from the special position that Leskov occupied in it. He was, of course, a “child of his time” no less than others, but the relationship between him and that time took on a somewhat peculiar character. More than once he had to complain about his position and feel like a stepson. There were historical reasons for this.

Leskov did not come to literature from the ranks of that “professional” democratic intelligentsia, which traced its ideological origins to Belinsky, from the social and philosophical circles of the 40s. He grew and developed outside of this movement, which determined the main features of Russian literature and journalism of the second half of the 19th century. Until the age of thirty, his life went in such a way that he could least of all think about literature and writing. In this sense, he was right when he later repeatedly said that he got into literature “by accident.”

Nikolai Semenovich Leskov was born in 1831 in the village of Gorokhov, Oryol province. His father came from a spiritual background: “a great, wonderful smart guy and a dense seminarian,” according to his son. Having broken with the spiritual environment, he became an official and served in the Oryol criminal chamber. In 1848, he died, and Leskov, having left the gymnasium, decided to follow in his father’s footsteps: he entered service in the same criminal chamber. In 1849, he moved from Orel to Kyiv, where his maternal uncle S.P. Alferyev, then a well-known professor at the Faculty of Medicine, lived. Life has become more interesting and meaningful. Leskov entered the service of the Treasury Chamber, but sometimes had the opportunity to “privately” listen to lectures on medicine, agriculture, statistics, etc. at the university. In the story “Product of Nature,” he recalls himself: “I was then still a very young boy and not knew what to define myself for. First I wanted to study science, then painting, and my relatives wanted me to go to serve. In their opinion, this was the most reliable thing.” Leskov served, but stubbornly dreamed of some kind of “living business,” especially since the service itself brought him into contact with the diverse environment of the local population. He read a lot and over the years of his life in Kyiv mastered the Ukrainian and Polish languages. Next to Gogol, Shevchenko became his favorite writer.

The Crimean War began, which Leskov later called “a significant sound of the alarm for Russian life.” Nicholas I died (1855), and that social movement began, which led to the liberation of the peasants and to a number of other consequences that changed the old way of Russian life. These events also affected Leskov’s life: he left the government service and switched to private service - to the Englishman Shcott (his aunt’s husband), who managed the vast estates of the Naryshkins and Perovskys. Thus, to some extent, his dream of a “living business” came true: as Shcott’s representative, he traveled all over Russia - no longer as an official, but as a commercial figure, who, by the very nature of his activities, was in close communication with the people. Many landowners were then busy settling vast areas in the Volga region and southern Russia. Leskov had to take part in this - accompany the settlers and settle them in new places. It was here, during these travels, that Leskov became acquainted with the life of the Russian outback - with the way of life, customs and language of workers, merchants and bourgeois people of the most diverse professions and positions. When he was later asked where he got the material for his works, he pointed to his forehead and said: “From this chest. Here are stored the impressions of six or seven years of my commercial service, when I had to travel around Russia on business; this is the most best time my life, when I saw a lot."

In letters to Shkott, Leskov shared his impressions; Shcott’s neighbor on the estate, F.I. Selivanov, became interested in these letters, who, as Leskov himself later recalled, “began to ask them, read them and found them “worthy of publication,” and he predicted a writer in the author.” So it began literary activity Leskova, initially limited to a narrow range of economic and everyday topics. In 1860, his first articles appeared in the Kyiv newspaper “Modern Medicine” and in the St. Petersburg magazine “Economic Index”: “A few words about doctors of recruiting presences”, “Police doctors in Russia”, “About the working class”, “A few words about seekers commercial places in Russia”, etc. These are not so much articles as essays, rich in factual material and depicting the cultural and economic disorder of Russian life. We are talking about bribes, the low level of officials, all sorts of administrative outrages, etc.

In general, they belong to the then widespread genre of so-called accusatory essays - with the difference that the hand of the future fiction writer is already felt in them. Leskov inserts anecdotes, uses professional jargon, proverbs and folk words, vividly and vividly describes everyday life, and narrates individual scenes and episodes. An accusatory essay often turns into a feuilleton, and sometimes into a story.

In 1861, Leskov moved to St. Petersburg and began collaborating in large magazines and newspapers. He is already 30 years old - and he seems to be making up for lost time: over the years 1861-1863 he publishes a lot of articles, essays, stories and novellas of the most varied content. Here is an article on the death of Shevchenko, and “Essays on the distillery industry,” and an article about Chernyshevsky’s novel “What is to be done?”, and the story “Musk Ox,” and the long story “The Life of a Woman.” All this is distinguished by extraordinary knowledge folk life, and the variety of material, and the courage in posing the most pressing and new questions, and the originality of the literary manner and language. It was clear that this writer had gone through some special school of life and reading, which distinguished him from others. It seemed that Leskov decided to enter into competition with all the major writers of that time, contrasting them with his life experience and his unusual literary language. Gorky noted this characteristic feature of his first works, which immediately attracted the attention of his contemporaries: “He knew the people from childhood; By the age of thirty, he had traveled all over Great Russia, visited the steppe provinces, lived for a long time in Ukraine - in an area of ​​a slightly different way of life, a different culture... He took up the work of a writer as a mature man, superbly armed not with book knowledge, but with genuine knowledge of people’s life.”

However, with all this, Leskov was by no means a mature writer, publicist or public figure during these years: he did not have and could not have had such experience. He himself later said that during these years he was “a person poorly educated and prepared for literature,” and wrote to A.S. Suvorin: “Both you and I came to literature untrained, and while writing, we ourselves were still learning.” Life in the provinces and commercial activities taught him a lot and gave him the opportunity to accumulate enormous everyday, linguistic and psychological material, but he had a very vague idea of ​​​​the intense social, political and ideological struggle of the parties that was taking place then. The time required a precise choice of position, clear decisions, firm principles, clear answers, and Leskov was not prepared for this with any of his life experience , nor education; Meanwhile, he immediately rushed, with his characteristic temperament, into battle - and very soon suffered a failure, which had serious and lasting consequences for him. Defending himself from attacks and accusations of misunderstanding progressive ideas and slandering the progressive intelligentsia, Leskov himself was forced to admit in print: “We are not those writers who developed in the spirit of well-known principles and strictly prepared for literary service. We have nothing to boast about in the past; For the most part, it was gloomy and careless. There are almost no people among us who bear even a faint trace of the circles of Belinsky, Stankevich, Kudryavtsev or Granovsky.” The recognition is very important and characteristic, especially since Leskov is clearly speaking not only about himself, but also about some of his like-minded people or contemporaries (“between us”). By “well-known principles” he means, of course, those advanced ideas and theories that arose back in the forties and led to the creation and formalization of the revolutionary democratic intelligentsia led by Chernyshevsky. Leskov clearly regrets that he developed outside of these ideas and traditions and, thus, did not prepare for “literary ministry”; at the same time, he makes it clear that in comparison with “theorists” and “intellectuals” he has some advantages of his own. In letters and conversations, he sometimes ironically uses the word “intellectual” and contrasts himself with “theorists”, as a writer who has much more and, most importantly, more diverse life experience. He willingly writes and speaks a lot on this topic that worries him, each time trying to highlight what seems to him the strongest side of his position. “I didn’t study the people from conversations with St. Petersburg cab drivers,” he says with some passion, clearly hinting at the capital’s intellectual writers, “but I grew up among the people on the Gostomel pasture... I was one of my own with the people... Journalistic races about the fact that the people I need to study it, I didn’t understand and now I don’t understand. People just need to know how our life itself is, not by studying it, but by living through it.” Or this: “Books didn’t tell me even a hundredth part of what the collision with life told me... All young writers need to leave St. Petersburg to serve in the Ussuri region, in Siberia, in the southern steppes... Away from Nevsky!” Or like this: “I didn’t have to break through books and ready-made concepts to the people and their way of life. Books were good helpers for me, but I was the root. For this reason, I did not join any school, because I did not study at school, but at Sarkakh with Shcott.” Indicative in this sense are his words about Gleb Uspensky - “one of the few of our brethren who does not break ties with the truth of life, does not lie and does not pretend to please the so-called trends.” After the Crimean War and the social changes that took place, Russian life became very complicated, and with it the tasks of literature and its very role became more complicated. People from the outside came to literature, “self-taught” from the provinces, from the bourgeois and merchant environment. Next to the writers who emerged from among the Russian intelligentsia (“developing in the spirit of well-known principles”), life put forward writers of a different type, with different skills and traditions, writers strong in their practical experience, their life connection with the remote provinces, with lower Russia, with the peasantry. , craftsmen and merchants from different regions. Characteristic feature The general situation at that time was the promotion of the “raznochintsy” as a mass figure in the political movement of the era, in the press, in literature. At the same time, we must remember that the “raznochinsky” environment was not at all something homogeneous - its various representatives expressed different, sometimes contradictory, tendencies of a very complex time in general. Therefore, in Leskov’s very entry into literature “from the outside,” in his very formation outside the circle struggle of the 40s, there was nothing strange or unusual for the social life of the 60s. For the period of the 50s and 60s - a period of intensification of the class struggle - this was not only a natural phenomenon, but also inevitable. Under the new situation, voices had to be heard from the localities and people should appear as deputies from the masses. This was all the more necessary because, side by side with social issues, national-historical issues arose in all their severity, complexity and inconsistency - as a consequence of both the Crimean War and social reforms. Thus, the question arose anew about the character of the Russian people, about its national traits and characteristics. This question had to be posed not in the spirit of official “leavened” patriotism that dominated in the Nicholas era and provoked resistance from progressive circles. In this regard, the appearance in the 60s of such a grandiose national-patriotic epic as Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”, which raised social and historical issues, which proposed different solutions to these problems than those proposed by the leading theorists of the era.

It couldn't be any other way. After the Crimean War, and especially after the liberation of the peasants, a contradiction naturally arose in the literary community between the democratism of the advanced journalism of the era and spontaneous democracy. This was a struggle of a completely different type than, for example, the struggle between revolutionary democrats and liberals; it was a complex ideological conflict that arose on the basis of new life contradictions - as a result of that very rapid, difficult, acute breakdown of all the old foundations of old Russia, which Lenin talks about in articles about Tolstoy. The bearers of spontaneous democracy looked at themselves as new heralds life truth, as its missionaries, obliged to acquaint society with all the complexities and contradictions of Russian reality; This was their undoubted historical strength, because they really relied on rich practical experience, on a real connection with certain sections of the people. However, precisely because of its spontaneity, this democracy was subject to all sorts of fluctuations and outside influences. In many ways, opposing themselves to “known principles” and not agreeing with “ready-made concepts”, spontaneous democrats very often - precisely because of their theoretical lack of equipment - fell into the sphere of liberal-bourgeois and even reactionary influences. This was their historical weakness, which often led them to tragic situations and severe ideological crises. Such was Pisemsky, for example, rushing from one camp to another, such was Leskov; Leo Tolstoy was essentially the same - with the patriarchal-village ideals characteristic of him (and this was his special historical strength). Pisemsky and Leskov came from the Russian provinces, from the provincial backwaters - from bureaucratic, commercial and vagabond Rus'.

It was precisely the spontaneous democrats who were characterized by that special “difficult growth” about which Leskov wrote to Protopopov at the end of his life. In Tolstoy, this growth was expressed in the form of sharp crises and turning points - according to the significance of the questions he raised; in Leskov it did not take such forms, but had a similar historical meaning. It was not for nothing that a special kind of spiritual closeness formed between him and Tolstoy in the 80s, which greatly pleased Leskov. “I always agree with him, and there is no one on earth who is dearer to me than him,” he wrote in one letter. This was not an accident: to Leskov, like Tolstoy, what seemed decisive in the life of mankind was not the socio-economic side and thus not the idea of ​​socio-historical reorganization by revolutionary means, but a moral point of view based on the “eternal principles of morality”, on the “moral law” " Leskov said directly: “We need good people, not good orders.”

Lenin showed the importance of Tolstoy as a “mirror” that reflected the strength of “the weakness of the spontaneous movement of the masses; this general historical situation applies to a certain extent to Leskov - taking into account, of course, the differences mentioned above. Lenin says that 1905 brought with it “the end of the entire era that could and should have given rise to Tolstoy’s teachings - not as an individual thing, not as a whim or originality, but as an ideology of the living conditions in which millions and millions actually found themselves during known time." (V.I. Lenin, Works, vol. 17, pp. 31−32.)

Leskov, like Tolstoy, “could and should have given birth” to the same post-reform, but pre-revolutionary era that Lenin speaks of. He, like Tolstoy, reflected the “blatant contradictions” of this era and at the same time revealed a lack of understanding of the causes of the crisis and the means of overcoming it. Hence his “difficult growth” and all those historical misunderstandings from which he suffered so much, but for which he himself created a sufficient number of reasons and grounds. Leskov, like Tolstoy, was repeatedly reproached for his whims and for being original - either regarding the language of his works, or regarding his views. It was not easy for his contemporaries to understand his contradictory and changeable position, especially since with his journalistic articles he often only complicated or complicated its understanding. Critics did not know what to do with Leskov—what social direction to associate his work with. Not a reactionary (although there were objective grounds for accusing him of this), but not a liberal (although he was close to liberals in many features of his worldview), not a populist, but certainly not a revolutionary democrat, Leskov (like Chekhov later) was recognized bourgeois criticism, deprived of a “certain attitude to life” and “worldview”. On this basis, he was included in the category of “minor writers,” from whom much is not asked and about whom one need not dwell much. And so it turned out that the author of such amazing and striking precisely by its originality of things as “The Soborians”, “The Enchanted Wanderer”, “The Captured Angel”, “Lefty”, “The Stupid Artist”, turned out to be a writer who does not have his own independent and honorable place in history of Russian literature.

This was a clear injustice and a historical mistake, testifying to the narrowness of the traditional schemes of liberal-bourgeois criticism. One of the first to rebel against this situation was Gorky, who in some respects felt himself to be a student of Leskov. In his lectures of 1908-1909 (in Capri), Gorky said that Leskov is “a completely original phenomenon of Russian literature: he is not a populist, not a Slavophile, but also not a Westernizer, not a liberal and not a conservative.” The main feature of his heroes is “self-sacrifice, but they sacrifice themselves for the sake of some truth or idea not for ideological reasons, but unconsciously, because they are drawn to the truth, to the sacrifice.” It is in this that Gorky sees Leskov’s connection not with the intelligentsia, but with the people, with the “creativity of the masses.” In an article in 1923, Gorky already decisively stated that Leskov, as an artist, is worthy to stand next to the great Russian classics and that he often exceeds them “in the breadth of his coverage of the phenomena of life, the depth of understanding of its everyday mysteries, and his subtle knowledge of the Great Russian language.”

Indeed, it is precisely these three features of his work that Leskov stands out among his contemporaries. Without him, our literature of the second half of the 19th century would have been very incomplete: the life of the Russian outback with its “righteous people” would not have been revealed with such convincing force and such insight; “one-minded” and “enchanted wanderers,” with his stormy passions and everyday troubles, with his unique way of life and language. There would not be what Leskov himself liked to call a “genre” (by analogy with “genre” painting), and, moreover, this “genre” would not be given so vividly, so intimately, so diversely and so poetically in its own way. Neither Turgenev, nor Saltykov-Shchedrin, nor Ostrovsky, nor Dostoevsky, nor Tolstoy could have done this the way Leskov did it, although this important and characteristic task of the era was present in the work of each of them. Gorky said it well: “He loved Rus', all of it as it is, with all the absurdities of its ancient life.” That is why he entered into a kind of competition or rivalry with each of the named writers. Having started your creative path in the 60s with saturated vital material essays directed against the deformities of the pre-reform system, Leskov quite soon enters into polemics with “well-known principles”, “ready-made concepts”, “schools” and “directions”. Taking the position of “skeptic and little faith” (as Gorky said about him), he persistently depicts the tragic abyss formed between the ideas and hopes of revolutionary “theorists” (“impatients”, as he called them in his own way) and the dense Russia from which he I came to literature myself. In his first story, “The Musk Ox” (1863), he describes the fate of a kind of revolutionary “righteous man,” a seminarian-agitator, “ready to sacrifice himself for his chosen idea.” It is characteristic, however, that this righteous man is not an intellectual or a theorist at all: “ New literature he could not stand it and read only the gospel and the ancient classics... He did not laugh at many of the theories that we fervently believed in at that time, but he deeply and sincerely despised them.” He says about the capital’s journalists: “The chatterers talk, but they themselves don’t know anything... They write stories, stories!.. But they themselves, I suppose, won’t move.” And even this peculiar democrat cannot do anything with the dark peasantry; Convinced of the hopelessness of his experiments, Musk Ox commits suicide. In a letter to a friend, he says: “Yes, now I also understand something, I understand... There is nowhere to go.” - So Leskov’s novel “Nowhere” (1864) was prepared and was born, in which, instead of the Musk Ox, the representative of revolutionary circles, Rainer, was already depicted. After listening to “poeticized stories about the Russian community” and about “the innate inclinations of the Russian people towards socialism,” Rainer goes to Russia. Of all his attempts, nothing comes of it except tragicomic misunderstandings and failures: Russia turns out to be completely different from what he imagined it to be from his stories. In the tense and difficult situation of that time, Leskov’s novel was perceived as a reactionary attack against the revolutionary intelligentsia. The writer himself imagined his plan somewhat differently, but this was not the time to understand individual shades. Whatever the subjective intentions of the author, objectively this novel had a reactionary meaning, because it was aimed at drinking away the advanced social camp of the era. The verdict was pronounced - and that “ literary drama“ Leskov, which left an imprint on his entire literary destiny.

Leskov believed that the complex problems of life in post-reform Russia could not be solved through revolutionary changes. In his artistic work, he sought to reproduce the life of different circles of society, different estates and classes; the result should have been the creation of a broad picture of national life in all the individually unique features of its development. In this way, it seemed to Leskov, contradictions could be discovered that were much deeper and more complex than social contradictions. However, as soon as we begin to look more closely at the artistic practice of early Leskov, we immediately discover in his work an extremely acute presentation of a number of important social problems of the era. This shows with great force the general inconsistency of Leskov’s position. Throughout the 60s, Leskov created a number of “essays” in which the emerging unique artistic system is clearly visible. The basis of this system is a specific formulation of issues of social and national life in their complex relationships. The central social problem of the era is certainly the question of serfdom and the attitude to reforms, and Leskov, as a journalistic writer, cannot and does not avoid expressing his position in this complex set of social contradictions. His story “The Life of a Woman” (in a revised edition - “Cupid in Little Lapotas”) dates back to the early 60s, where the theme of serfdom and reforms is sharply, poignantly and unusually, purely in Leskov’s style. The plot of this “experience of a peasant novel” is a story of tragic love in conditions of serfdom. The tragedy is brought in the finale to the extreme condensation, to an almost Shakespearean aggravation and “cruelty” of dramatic tension, and the source of tragedy is precisely the specificity of the social system and the nature of its basic institutions.

It is significant how Leskov begins, develops and ends his story about an integral and internally unbroken passion that brings its bearers to a bitter and terrible ending. The love of Nastya and Stepan arises in the conditions of a precisely defined social-class environment, everything plays with the colors characteristic of this environment, which are brought to great poetic brightness by Leskov. At the beginning, an outline of the typical life of a peasant family is given. Its individual members see their life path differently. The mother’s submissive position is characteristic - everything should go as it has for a long time. Nastya could be sent to the city, to a store, but this should not be done - there is debauchery and corruption there. She is assigned to the yard. Here my brother, Kostya, intervenes. He is possessed by a frantic passion for profit. Within the serf class itself, differentiation takes place; the fist Kostya appears, which is precisely what appears as such in the epilogue, after the reform. In order to maintain his partnership in the kulak enterprise, in the butter churn, Kostya sells Nastya to the Prokudin family, for the weak-minded Grishka. The landowner family does not interfere; it lives its own terrible class-limited life. It is busily reported that the lady asked for seventy rubles for the transaction, they agreed on forty, and that was the extent of the intervention of the landowner class. Estates live as if autonomously, limiting themselves to the exact designation of direct economic obligations. Mother and Nastya herself obediently agree to the deal. Going to the city seemed debauchery and corruption, to marry a weak-minded person for 40 rubles and a companionship in a butter churn - this is following the patriarchal, ancient class custom. You cannot disobey the head of the family.

Life is densely written everywhere - both at home and in the Prokudin family. Life here is important precisely as a sign of class inviolability. It is precisely described how they have breakfast and lunch, where the old people sleep and where the young people, who and when prepares food during the harvest, who produced what kind of kvass, what the wedding custom is and how they beat a disobedient wife or sister. Everyday life predetermines the entire course of human life: it is not decoration here, but the root cause of all sorrows - as an ugly manifestation of class limitations. Class life is taken in all its extremes, the extremes are expressed so sharply that they become almost eccentric.

The birth of love is also shown among the exact signs of everyday life, but in a completely different artistically colored way. Nastya’s life under this unbearable pressure of anciently established customs, which have turned into ugliness, is tragic. Stepan's life is just as tragic. His drama is simple to the extreme - he has an angry and quarrelsome wife, and it is in no way possible to escape from her under the conditions of an automatically predetermined class framework. Again, a number of accurate everyday sketches show that this is truly impossible. But precisely because life here has already reached the point of absurdity in its predetermination, the living human soul There is no way to put it into these forms. This theme is expressed through song. All Nastya’s emotional impulses result in a song, and Stepan’s too. They are both great singers. The theme of the song runs through the entire “peasant novel”. They sing at Nastya’s wedding, Krylushkin, who heals Nastya from a woman’s illness - hysteria, sings, Stepan, still unknown to Nastya, sings, passing by the punka where she sleeps, the song competition between Nastya and Stepan at their first meeting becomes a love explanation. Song here is also one of the forms of everyday life, folklore, folk art- this is what expresses the “spiritual” in class peasant life. Everyday life in its direct form has become a monstrosity, an eccentricity. An irreconcilable conflict arises between “everyday life” and “song”. This conflict indicates the complete collapse of intra-class relations established once and for all. The song throws Nastya and Stepan into each other's arms. Love here is monolithic, irresistible, it is also taken to the extreme. Captivated by the “song,” these village Romeo and Juliet will stop at nothing to merge in the “song.” And here is a new stylistic coloring of the plot. Stepan is depicted as a fair-haired good fellow with a hat twisted on one side, yearning for life with a dashing homewrecker wife, Nastya is a beauty, yearning “at the mowing window.” The class coloring of the lyrical theme leads to stylization, to “cupid in bast shoes.”

The entire development of the novel up to the climax took place only within the framework of the life of the peasant class and did not go beyond these limits. The goal here was to show that intra-class relations have been historically exhausted, blurred, and brought to the point of absurdity. But events forced Stepan and Nastya to flee. And here the absurdity of inter-class relations and the cruelty of the serfdom system as a whole comes into force. The tragic climax of the plot begins with the fact that there are no passports, you have to turn to “specialists” in forging documents. Covered tragic love the heroes must busily discuss where to get twenty-five rubles in banknotes (namely banknotes - all such details are emphasized in Leskov, especially highlighted) to purchase “residence permits”. The entire subsequent tragedy is determined by the fact that the swindler took twenty-five rubles, but did not give us passports. What follows is a terrible phantasmagoria, again in an everyday way, accurately described by the extreme absurdity of serfdom institutions; the heroes of this phantasmagoria are the police chief, the prison warden, the governor, who “drove the old bribe-takers out of their places and appointed new ones,” members of the council, district police officers, etc. All these heroes, with the methodical method of machine guns, are engaged in installing people who are living in their former place of residence. they can’t there, they are put in prison, punished with canes, sent to prison, etc. In words, the mechanism of social relations of that system, the main feature of which V.I. Lenin saw in the “discipline of the stick,” comes into full force. (V.I. Lenin, Works, vol. 29, p. 387.) The consequences of the work of this mechanism inevitably lead to the fact that the “thinking apparatus” in the heroes has “deteriorated.” The ending is given with utmost accuracy and realistic authenticity: Stepan’s death from typhus in the prison hospital, the death of the distraught Nastya, freezing at night in an open field. Despite the too clear and even deliberately aggravated opposition between the two planes of the work - the personal, lyrical plane and the plane of social life (characteristic of Leskov’s other works of the 60s) - his general concept is extremely holistic. This is explained by the fact that each of these plans embodies the same theme differently. The traditional intra-class situation has a cruel, oppressive effect on the personality of the hero and even the meekest person, if he wants to remain human, forces him to “break out” of the class to “disassociate”. In the second plane - in terms of inter-class relations - the entire enormity of the feudal state falls on the individual. This is precisely the logic of the novel’s composition with its sharp division of the narrative into two layers, two layers of episodes - “personal” and “public”. Characteristic of the terrible ordeals of Stepan and Nastya, first of all, is that they go through a series of unimaginable personal insults, they are treated in a way that a caring owner would not treat animals. The orders of feudal social relations as a whole come into effect only at the moment of catastrophe, but here they already act in relation to the “dispossessed” completely mercilessly. The concept of the novel as a whole is deeply democratic and passionately anti-serfdom. But democracy and anti-serfdom are also special here. Concentrating all the tragedy on the theme of personality, Leskov comes to the conclusion, frankly expressed in the epilogue, that after the reform the whole point is to continue uprooting the remnants of serfdom both in public institutions and, especially, in personal relationships.

For all of Leskov’s subsequent work, the theme of the individual freeing himself from the bonds of class is of extraordinary importance. V.I. Lenin noted, touching on the question of the most striking features of the social situation of the 60s, that it was characterized, among other things, by “a hot war of literature against the senseless medieval constraints of the individual.” (V.I. Lenin, Works, vol. 1, p. 394.) V.I. Lenin connected the very emergence of the problem of personality directly with social processes: “it was post-reform Russia that brought this rise in the sense of personality, self-esteem.” (Ibid.) And in “The Life of a Woman,” of course, such a sharp presentation of questions of personal dignity, a special, even somewhat romantic-tragic emphasis on the theme of personality objectively represents an original Leskovian solution to social problems important for the era.

The story “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” is built on a similar compositional principle. The tragedy of the young merchant's wife Katerina Izmailova is completely predetermined by the firmly established and steadily regulating the life of the individual by the everyday way of life of the merchant environment. The drama of the main situation here, too, lies in the fact that the everyday canon, taken to its logical limit and extreme, explodes itself. The main occupation of Katerina Izmailova is that she walks from room to room and yawns - “Russian boredom reigns here, the boredom of a merchant’s house, from which it is fun, they say, to even hang yourself.” The heroine of the story Leskova is clearly contrasted by the author with Katerina Kabanova from “The Thunderstorm” » Ostrovsky. The heroine of Ostrovsky’s brilliant drama does not blend into everyday life; her character is in sharp contrast with established everyday skills. Kabanikha has to constantly teach Katerina how she should behave in this or that case, and is sadly surprised that none of the teachings work out - there is no way to trim this character with a merchant’s comb. Everything about Katerina Kabanova turns out like this; It is no coincidence that from Boris’s description of her behavior in the church, Kudryash instantly guesses who he is talking about. Based on the description of Katerina Izmailova’s behavior, no one under any circumstances would have determined which young merchant’s wife was being described. The drawing of her image is an everyday template, but a template drawn with such thick paint that it turns into a kind of tragic popular print. Katerina Kabanova is a foreign phenomenon in her environment, a ray of light that broke through from outside and illuminated for a moment all the ugliness of the dark kingdom, testifying to the complete doom of this kingdom. That lightning bolt that brought the death of Katerina Izmailova was born in the dark, dense depths of this very environment.

This lightning strike is caused by love. This love flared up instantly and immediately became irresistible, engulfing the heroine’s entire being. The everyday details of this love are remarkable. A young merchant's wife, walking through the courtyard, among the joking clerks, sees a new clerk - the most witty, the most lackey-polished. A dialogue ensues that immediately turns into a love contest. The love competition between Nastya and Stepan in “The Life of a Woman” was a competition in song, for these heroes themselves were people who, in the conditions of the collapse of old social conditions, preserved the human soul. The love competition between Katerina and the clerk Sergei consists of them testing their strength - first with their fists, then in “sets”. In her love dreams, Katerina Lvovna is haunted by a fat cat, who later appears in reality as a witness to the joys of love. The love dialogues between Nastya and Stepan were structured like a folk song broken into replicas. The love dialogues of Katerina Lvovna and Sergei are perceived as ironically stylized inscriptions for popular prints. The whole movement of this love situation is, as it were, a template condensed to the point of horror - a young merchant’s wife deceives her old husband with her clerk. Only the results are not stereotyped. Captivated by humanly pure love, Nastya wanted to hide with her love, to leave the class framework. The serfdom overtook her and dealt with her in the most disgusting manner. Katerina Kabanova turned out to be unable to hide her love, as provided for by the everyday “morality” of the social environment: her direct and pure nature forces her to throw the truth right in the face of the most typical representatives of the class. Katerina Izmailova, in whom the typical way of loving behavior for the environment is extremely condensed, brought to its extreme expression, does not run away anywhere, but wants to hide her enormously expanded passion, which filled her entire being, while remaining within the confines of the class. It turns out that this is impossible. In order to preserve her social position and her love, Izmailova undertakes an act that is extremely formulaic in its outlines: the poison in traditional fungi comes into effect, after eating which the head of the family, Izmailova’s father-in-law, became ill and went to the next world. The blurring, disintegration of class life is most clearly reflected in the fact that the more carefully Katerina tries to fulfill the everyday ritual of behavior, the more terrible it looks and the more force it falls on the heroine. The murder of the father-in-law is followed by the murder of the husband, then the murder of the nephew. The horror of what is happening is that the murder, mechanically repeated with automatic sequence, increasingly reveals the complete absence of any restraining moral barriers on the part of the heroine. Estate traditional morality is complete immorality. The murder of an innocent child is the culmination of a drama, a catastrophe. The sharp turn of action and the compositional breakdown are carried out in the same form as in the “peasant novel”. What happens - in a different form - is the same thing that happened to Nastya: society intervenes at the very moment when the heroine thinks that she has completely freed herself from annoying class institutions and norms. The very form of public intervention is indicative - the crime is solved by an terribly traditional, inert, patriarchally unceremonious intervention in the life of an individual: a crowd of onlookers leaving the church after Vespers, discussing why Izmailova does not perform the everyday ritual characteristic of the environment - does not go to church, climbs to peek through the window the crack at the very moment of the murder. The heroine is flogged and sent to hard labor. It all culminates in Sergei’s own brazen outrage against the love of Katerina Izmailova. The personality of Katerina Kabanova could not be humiliated in love - Boris also came from somewhere outside, for Kabanova herself he was a ray of light in dark kingdom . Sergei, who aspired to become a merchant, with the collapse of all his plans, turns out to be a vile spiritual lackey. The last grave insult is inflicted on the heroine’s personality in the very center of her spiritual world, in her love. There is nothing left to do and nothing to live with. Izmailova dies, true to herself: she drowns herself and drags her rival into the cold river with her. Izmailova’s violence is another form of the same social pattern as Nastya’s humility and obedience. It testifies to the death, the internal disintegration of the old, feudal social structure. Leskov's two heroines behaved very differently - one humbly, the other violently, but both come to a tragic ending, due to the same historical circumstances. The spiritual fruits of the decomposition of the old foundations are shown in “The Warrior” (1866). The heroine of this story said goodbye to her former, crumbling social environment in complete prosperity and flourishing health. She is also from Mtsensk and also a merchant’s wife, only a small one. Domna Platonovna, after the death of her husband and after the loss of her previous earnings, ended up in St. Petersburg. Here she makes a living by selling lace by hand, but in essence she trades in living goods. The core of the story is the story of Domna Platonovna herself about the black ingratitude of a certain Lekanida, a young intelligent woman who left her husband and found herself in a hopeless situation in St. Petersburg. Through a series of deliberate manipulations, Domna Platonovna drives the unfortunate woman into prostitution. This is the main craft of Domna Platonovna. The most remarkable thing is the fact that Domna Platonovna sincerely considers herself the benefactor of Lekanidka and others like her. The tragedy of Lekanidka, who tried to defend the dignity of her personality, sought love and found herself forced to sell herself in the course of life, is completely incomprehensible to Domna Platonovna. Brought up in a traditional environment and in traditional moral and everyday skills, Domna Platonovna completely got used to the disintegration and decomposition of natural and moral personal ties and norms. Unbridledness, complete immorality of a person living only by carnal and material interests, seems to Domna Platonovna to be the most natural phenomenon, full of inner meaning; such, in her opinion, is human nature. The writer, in his own words, is primarily interested in “what paths she followed and reached her current position and her original convictions about her own absolute rightness and the universal desire for all deception.” Excursions into the Mtsensk past of Domna Platonovna reveal that the life of the patriarchal merchant environment is not much different from the everyday and widespread corruption in the circle of which Domna Platonovna now exists. She, this former life, is given in such a condensed outline because everything about her is already known from “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.” Existence in St. Petersburg quantitatively expanded Domna Platonovna’s experience, mechanically multiplied it, but introduced little new qualitatively. Result life path heroine - universal (moral cynicism. Everything is turned upside down in Domna Platonovna’s mind only in appearance: everything was so dead already in Mtsensk that there was actually nothing to turn over. Domna Platonovna, in her own way, found that very personal freedom from class restrictions that she had strived for Katerina Izmailova At first, this freedom turns into cynicism. The special psychological color of the image of the “warrior” is that she does her disgusting craft with complete pleasure, as if by vocation. In essence, Domna Platonovna really likes to live the way she lives. The following is said about her: “Domna Platonovna loved her work, like an artist: to arrange, assemble, cook and admire the work of her hands - that was the main thing, and behind this there were all sorts of other benefits that a more realistic person would never have overlooked.” “.

Compositionally, the story is divided into parts sharply separated from each other and opposing each other. Like Katerina Izmailova, Domna Platonovna was overtaken by a tragic catastrophe at the very pinnacle of her existence. It is extremely important for understanding the meaning of the story to see how Domna is moving towards disaster. Both Nastya and Katerina Izmailova lived more or less organically within the framework of their social environment until the disaster. They were pushed into a wider circle of socio-historical relations only by the catastrophe itself, predetermined by the life of an internally decomposed class. The reader finds Domna Platonovna completely out of her former everyday life, already in the sphere of general social relations: “the whole of Petersburg” knows her, that is, the most different groups and groups of the ruling classes, and she herself knows the life of the lower social classes. Here, in this sphere of different interests, the tragic climax overtakes Domna. Having cynically denied love, the heroine, having lived to see her gray hair, falls madly in love with a certain twenty-year-old dunce Valerka, who, in turn, is uncontrollably devoted to all St. Petersburg pleasures, such as cards, the circus, vodka, etc., and ends up with Vladimirka. The compositional drawing seems to be inverted; Domna Platonovna ends up where Nastya and Katerina Izmailova started. What is the meaning of this inverted pattern, this seeming vicious circle? The fact is that in inter-class relations the same confusion reigns as in the apparently closed life of classes that are outwardly separated and opposed to each other. Externally, the estates maintain the decorum of their former integrity, strength, and stability. Internally they fell apart, and this is most clearly revealed in inter-class relations. A dispossessed, declassed person returns to where he started. Denying any internal meaningfulness of her personal life, treating Lekanidka’s impulses as a passing whim, Domna Platonovna turns out to be a slave to the needs of her personality, which take on a shameful and even ridiculous form for her.

Domna Platonovna, who denied the very possibility of the existence of human passions and motives free from material interests, ultimately finds herself in the grip of an absolutely uncontrollable and unnatural passion. This ugly, pathetic passion of Domna collides, in turn, with Valerka’s characteristic cynicism, which until recently seemed to Domna to be universal and a completely acceptable law of life. The collapse of outdated old foundations and norms, the absence of new social and personal human connections - all this is disastrous for the human personality. In “Warrior,” perhaps no less acutely than in previous essays, the same questions of the post-reform life of Russia are posed.

All those phenomena discussed in Leskov’s most important works of the 60s find their explanation in the peculiarities of the historical situation, social and public relations. Attentive observers of the era note sharp shifts in public consciousness that characterize the period of preparation and implementation of reforms. So, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin wrote: “Everything at that moment changed, as if by magic, proportions, shapes, and names. What was humiliated yesterday - today rose to the top, what stood yesterday on high - in an instant hid and drowned in that area of ​​​​obscurity and indifference, from which, if it came out again, it was only to sing in unison.” It goes without saying that these shifts are least of all due to the reformist activities of the social elite of the feudal state, who were forced to reform by “the force of economic development that pulled Russia onto the path of capitalism.” (V.I. Lenin, Works, vol. 17, p. 95.) The serf owners were unable to “maintain the old, collapsing forms of economy.” (Ibid.) Associated with this process is the collapse of the old classes - the estates of serfdom and the formation of new classes and new class relationships. Those shifts in social consciousness that are so colorfully described by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin are explained primarily by shifts in class relations, the collapse of old social ties and the formation of new ones. As V.I. Lenin wrote, the works of L.N. Tolstoy reflected historical contradictions, “which determined the psychology of various classes and various strata of Russian society in the post-reform, but pre-revolutionary era.” (Ibid., vol. 16, p. 295.) These same historical contradictions were reflected in Leskov’s work.

Individual artistic feature The writer is that he is most concerned about the processes of disintegration of social ties within the old classes and estates and the issues of “the complete destruction of class divisions.” (Ibid., vol. 6, p. 130.) These processes took place in Russia for a long time and painfully: while “unruly economic development increasingly undermines class foundations,” (Ibid., vol. 5, p. 259.) in the country, at the same time, “everything and everything is imbued with class,” (Ibid.) artificially supported by the ruling classes. During this era, numerous “unbearable” remnants of “pre-reform regulation in Russian life” continued to remain in force (Ibid., vol. 2, p. 489.) and Leskov, with great artistic insight, shows how they affect the fate of an individual seeking to throw off to break free from class shackles and find new forms of human relations in the processes of forming new social ties.

It is with this strong side that it is extremely contradictory. In general, Leskov’s position should be linked to the theme of the search for a “righteous man”, which was so essential for Leskov in the 70s and 80s, the theme of positive principles in Russian life and a positive type of person, re-forming in an era when “everything has turned upside down and is just settling down.” This is how Gorky understood the peculiarity of Leskov’s position in the literature of the 70s and 80s. He saw the valuable quality of Leskov’s creativity in the fact that Leskov was soberly aware of the weak side of populism. Gorky opposed Leskov precisely to the populists, and not to the revolutionary democrats. In this regard, it must be remembered that Gorky’s assessments were polemically sharpened “in defense of Leskov,” and therefore Gorky did not always draw a clear distinction in this case between the progressive, revolutionary tendencies of populism itself and its weak, utopian, liberal-legal sides. When speaking about Leskov and the populists, Gorky most often had in mind precisely the weak sides of populism. Gorky wrote: “When, amid the solemn and somewhat idolatrous liturgy, the heretical voice of a dissenter was heard by a peasant, he aroused general bewilderment and distrust... In Leskov’s stories, everyone felt something new and hostile to the commandments of the time, the canon of populism.”

In this regard, the assessment of Leskov’s artistic heritage made by N. K. Mikhailovsky is extremely characteristic. The largest ideologist of legal populism expressed his final judgment on Leskov’s work in connection with the publication of the second, posthumous edition of the writer’s collected works (1897). He spoke, as he himself admits, only because he considered the assessment of Leskov’s artistic activity in the introductory article by R. Sementkovsky that preceded the publication to be too high. Mikhailovsky stated that, in his opinion, Leskov cannot be placed on a par with the classics of Russian literature of the second half of the 19th century. Mikhailovsky directed the fire of his criticism primarily at the most important features of Leskov’s artistic style. In Leskov the artist, what seems most controversial to Mikhailovsky is “immensity,” the writer’s penchant for overly acute situations and persons. According to Mikhailovsky, “Leskov can be called an “immeasurable writer” in the sense of a writer devoid of a sense of proportion.” This excess “does not indicate the significance of artistic forces and causes obvious damage to artistic truth.” Mikhailovsky accuses Leskov of deviating from artistic truth and realism. The “purely artistic” assessment clearly turns into a socio-political one. According to Mikhailovsky, one must be more sober and calm and give everyone what they deserve, and not shout about contrasts, about contradictions, both in the assessment of people and events. “The same lack of sense of proportion is reflected in Leskov’s predilection for depicting, on the one hand, “righteous people” (he sometimes calls them that), and on the other, villains who surpass all belief. Of our writers, not only first-class, but at least somewhat deserving of a memorable mark in the history of literature, there is not a single one who would so immoderately exalt his favorites and oppress his stepchildren in every possible way. Here aesthetic “immensity” already passes into its parallel in the moral field, which is called the absence of justice.” However, the critic does not dare to insist that the “lack of justice” imputed to Leskov is of a socio-political nature: after all, Leskov’s last works, their general, sharply critical coloring in relation to Russian reality, are still too memorable for the contemporary reader. The critic wants to appear objective and impartial in the eyes of the reader. Therefore, he limits himself to the following dumb phrase: “Natural immensity is inspired by political bitterness,” as a result of which the images and paintings take on a monstrously fantastic character.” The critic puts himself in the position of a defender of the advanced heritage of the 60s, but does not express his thoughts directly and limits himself to an aesthetically derogatory summary: “Leskov is primarily a teller of jokes.”

The true meaning of the demands made by Mikhailovsky is revealed only in the context of his entire article. The fact is that the review of Leskov’s collected works represents the first chapter of a literary review, the second part of which examines Chekhov’s story “Men.” Here the critic focuses his entire attention on the social meaning of the images and paintings created by the writer: he also accuses Chekhov of “exaggeration,” “excess,” and “injustice” in his depiction of the Russian post-reform village, the village of the end of the century. The critic assures the reader that everything in the village is not at all as gloomy as it seems to Chekhov, who allegedly exaggerated the colors too much when depicting the social contrasts of the modern village. He does not like Chekhov’s “excesses” in revealing social contradictions, in showing their severity, their insolubility within the existing conditions. The fact that Chekhov is not inclined to smooth out social contradictions, Mikhailovsky calls the absence of positive principles in the writer’s worldview. In essence, the critic calls Chekhov to a liberal-populist softening of social contrasts. Mikhailovsky's assessment of Chekhov clarifies much in his assessment of Leskov, in whose work the critic finds artistic excess. In fact, in both cases we are talking about the same thing, although from different ends. Mikhailovsky is outraged by the exposure of contrasts, contradictions, the lack of “measure,” “justice” and faith in “peaceful progress.” For accusations of “immensity”, of “lack of justice”, Leskov really gave many arguments throughout his life and career. But Mikhailovsky gives this “immensity” a universally negative meaning, not wanting to see its dual nature. It is clear to every reader of Leskov that Mikhailovsky is unfair towards: Leskov as an artist - the author of "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk", "Warrior" and "Cathedral", the author of "The Man on the Clock" and "The Hare's Heald". These works have their own artistic completeness, their own special artistic measure, which, of course, Leskov, like any great writer, had his own “measure”, inherent only to him.
Author of the article: P. Gromov, B. Eikhenbaum

Unfortunately, it happened that over the course of decades, many literary historians and critics, faced with these obvious violations of “measure” by Leskov (often in matters that in a historical perspective already sound like secondary ones), continued, like Mikhailovsky, not to see the positive side of the “immensity” characteristic of Leskov, which allowed him to reflect many of the contradictions of Russian life with a sharpness and artistic depth unacceptable for either the liberal-populist or the conservative camps of Russian society. Leskov's contemporaries were offended by many of the obvious injustices into which he fell when responding to the events of his current life, the extremes to which he went in assessing them, the excesses from which he was not always able to restrain himself. These features of Leskov’s manner sometimes affected the perception of his contemporaries so strongly that they prevented them from seeing the objective content of the writer’s best works.

Representatives of different public camps had their own, each time special, but by no means random circumstances for Leskov’s rejection. Leskov lived in a very difficult era and followed extremely complex social and artistic paths. This explains the struggle surrounding his work; this also explains the attempts to silence and belittle Leskov, which Gorky spoke about so harshly. In no way did he justify “extremes” and gross mistakes. Leskov, who brought him to the reactionary camp for a time, Gorky points out the fact that in “Nowhere” “the intelligentsia of the sixties was depicted quite maliciously”, that it is “a book, first of all, poorly written, in it one can feel everywhere that the author is too knows little of the people he is talking about.” Regarding the novel “On Knives,” Gorky says that it is “a bad novel in all respects,” “in this novel, nihilists are depicted even worse than in “Nowhere” - ridiculously gloomy, stupid, powerless, as if Leskov wanted to prove that sometimes malice is even more pitiful and poor in spirit than stupidity.” However, Gorky saw the historical role of Leskov as an artist not in these extremes and mistakes of his, but in the desire to show in a multifaceted and realistic way a country “where people of all classes and estates know how to be equally unhappy,” that is, a country where all classes and estates are characterized by processes of disintegration of old social connections and formation of new ones. In connection with Leskov’s portrayal of “new people,” Gorky argued that the writer’s sober mind “well understood that the past is the hump of each of us” and that it was necessary to “throw off the heavy burden of history from one’s shoulders.” In other words, according to Gorky, it turned out that both the “new people” and Leskov were differently characteristic of the same range of social phenomena, for the same historical soil. It is from the writer’s sober awareness of the collapse of old social ties, Gorky believes, that Leskov’s desire to find “righteous people” is born, and “little great people, cheerful great martyrs of love for their sake” appear in his work. But, according to Gorky, Leskov is not looking for his “righteous people” where populist literature was looking for them; he is alien to the “idol liturgy of the peasant,” he is looking for righteous people among “all classes and estates.” Therefore, “Leskov managed not to please everyone: the youth did not experience from him the usual pushes “to the people” - on the contrary, in the sad story “Musk Ox” there was a warning: “if you don’t know the ford, don’t poke your nose into the water”; mature people did not find in him “civic ideas expressed sufficiently clearly; the revolutionary intelligentsia still could not forget the novels “Nowhere” and “On Knives.” It turned out that the writer, who discovered the righteous in every class, in all groups, did not like anyone and remained on the sidelines, in suspicion.” Gorky's approach to Leskov's work is complex and imbued with historical dialectics. Gorky sees Leskov’s weaknesses and sharply condemns them, but he sees them in an organic connection with the positive sides, and therefore, without being embarrassed by the extremes of Leskov’s reactionary antics and sharply condemning them, in the writer’s desire to know and artistically reproduce “Rus, all of what it is” ", in the "breadth of coverage of the phenomena of life, the depth of understanding of its everyday mysteries" he finds a deeply democratic basis for Leskov's creativity.

When the leading press turned out to be closed to Leskov, he began to collaborate in such conservative magazines as Katkov’s “Russian Messenger”, “Russian World”, “Citizen”, etc. But very soon he felt like a complete stranger here, although, of course, for some time and in some respects fell under the influence of reactionary ideas and sentiments. In 1875, he already writes about Katkov as a person “harmful to our fiction”, as a “murderer native literature" Subsequently (in a letter to M.A. Protopopov, 1891) he talks about this sad period like this: “Katkov had a great influence on me, but he was the first to tell Voskoboinikov during the printing of “A Seedy Family”: “We are mistaken: this the person is not ours.” We parted ways (on the view of the nobility), and I did not finish writing the novel. They parted politely, but firmly and forever, and then he said again: “There is nothing to regret - he is not ours at all.” He was right, but I didn’t know whose I was?.. I wandered and returned and became myself - what I am... I was simply mistaken - I did not understand, sometimes obeying influence, and did not read the Gospel well at all.” Characteristic of this late, final assessment of one’s ideological wanderings is the persistent opposition of one’s own paths of social reaction, and no less characteristic is the conclusion: it turns out that the whole point was insufficiently attentive reading of the Gospel, and therefore insufficient concentration on issues of moral improvement of the individual. The weaknesses of Leskov’s historical development appear with great force in this self-assessment, but it is the spontaneous nature of these searches that is most clearly expressed. Undoubtedly, in the entire context of this confession, colored in sad tones, the most expressive, effective and weighty interrogative phrase is: “I didn’t know whose I am?” The sad coloring is probably largely caused by the sad dissatisfaction of the already old writer with the “excesses” and “excesses” of his own reactionary antics. According to the testimony of M. P. Chekhov, the writer’s brother, Leskov advised the young A. P. Chekhov (the continuity of whose work with his own artistic activity Leskov undoubtedly felt quite clearly: “You are a young writer, and I am already old. Write only good, honest and kind things, so that you don’t have to repent as much as I do.”

Finding an imaginary “way out” of the collapse of old social ties in “moral self-improvement” was already characteristic of Leskov during the era of his polemics with the populists. Perhaps this polemic is expressed most sharply in Leskov’s book “The Mysterious Man” (1870). This is the biography of Arthur Benny - the same revolutionary figure whom Leskov portrayed under the name Rainer in the novel “Nowhere”. While defending Benny from unfair suspicions of espionage, Leskov at the same time defended himself from accusations of reactionary behavior. Benny and Nechiporenko “go among the people” - and it is revealed that the “theorists” have complete ignorance of life, everyday life, sorrows and joys, all the customs and everyday habits of ordinary people. Further, the following is said about Benny in Leskov’s book: “In prison, during his imprisonment, Benny read a lot of Russian books out of boredom and, among other things, read all of Gogol. After reading " Dead souls“He, returning this book to the one who delivered it to him, said: “Imagine that only now, when I am being expelled from Russia, I see that I never knew it. I was told that I needed to study it this way and that, and always only one piece of nonsense came out of all these conversations. My misfortunes occurred simply because I did not read “Dead Souls” at the time. If I did this, although not in London, but in Moscow, then I would be the first to consider it an obligation of honor to prove that in Russia there can never be such a revolution as Herzen dreams of.” For Leskov himself " Dead souls“were one of the main, supporting books, a kind of “Russian gospel”. Leskov strives, as it were, to continue the search for Gogol, to go further than where Gogol stopped. No less sharply than Gogol, assessing Russian pre-reform reality, Leskov, like Gogol, seeks correction of real evils in the improvement of the individual, in his moral enrichment and rearmament. This is the conclusion that Leskov draws from his knowledge of Russian life, from his ideological searches and wanderings. Leskov’s artistic practice in the 70s and 80s, as before, turns out to be much broader, contradictory, complex and democratic than one might assume, taking into account only this conclusion. In Leskov’s artistic practice of this period central problem turns out to be a problem " positive hero", "righteous man".

It would be naive to limit this topic in the writer’s creative quest only to the book “The Righteous,” which Leskov, at the end of his life, somewhat artificially constructed from stories from about fifteen years of his life, even introducing a special preface to it. The theme of the “righteous man” in Leskov’s work goes beyond the scope of this book; its origins lie in Leskov’s earliest works of art, and it stretches, refracting in variety, right up to the end of the writer’s life. This theme was expressed sharply and clearly in “The Cathedrals” (1872), followed by “The Sealed Angel” (1873) and “The Enchanted Wanderer” (1873). Leskov is looking for his positive heroes not at all where Gogol, and later Dostoevsky or Turgenev were looking for them, he is looking for them in different strata of the people, in the Russian outback, in that diverse social environment, knowledge of life and attention to which, the ability to penetrate the interests and the needs of which indicate the deeply democratic orientation of Leskov’s creative searches.

First, under the obvious influence of Katkov’s reactionary ideas, he turned to the life of the provincial Russian clergy: this is how the idea of ​​“God’s Houses” arose, from which the “Soborians” with Archpriest Tuberozov in the center emerged. It is clear in connection with everything said above that the general ideological and artistic concept of “Soboryan” - this, according to Gorky’s definition, “magnificent book”, is marked by extreme inconsistency. At the center of the story is a completely unexpected hero - the old provincial Russian priest Savely Tuberose. The old archpriest is characterized by features common to a number of Leskov’s heroes. On the one hand, there are features in him that are firmly associated with a certain everyday environment, he is emphatically “classic,” as is always the case with Leskov, his life path, his skills, customs are unthinkable anywhere except among the Russian clergy. The everyday principle, very clearly and comprehensively outlined, is here the key to the human personality, to psychology, to the peculiarities of mental life - in this sense, the principles of character construction are absolutely no different from those that we saw in “The Life of a Woman” or in “ Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk." At the same time, Savely Tuberozov, no less than Leskov’s other heroes, seems to have “broken out” from his environment. The old archpriest is a black sheep in the circle of people and morals typical of the spiritual environment, the reader learns about this from the very first pages of his “life”. He behaves completely differently from how an ordinary, ordinary Russian priest should behave, and, moreover, he does this literally from the very first steps of his activity. He is a man who “broke out” from the very moment he entered the active life of the class. The bizarre combination of a typically everyday personality with wildness and inflexibility sharply distinguishes the construction of Tuberozov’s character from Nastya or Katerina Izmailova, built according to the same scheme despite all the dissimilarities of these characters. This significant difference is demonstrated by a separate inserted short story - the “demicoton book”, the high artistic qualities of which were especially noted by Gorky. “The Demi-Coton Book” is the diary of old man Tuberozov for thirty years of his pre-reform life (in the book the action takes place in the 60s). The entire “demicoton book” is filled with variants of one life plot - Tuberozov’s continuous clashes with church and partly civil authorities. Tuberozov imagines his activities as civil and moral service to society and people. With horror, the archpriest is convinced that the church itself evaluates its functions completely differently. The church administration is represented as a completely dead bureaucratic organization, seeking above all else the external fulfillment of ossified and internally meaningless rituals and rules. The collision of a living person and a dead class ritual: this is the theme of the “demikoton” book. The archpriest receives, say, a solid official “scolding” for the fact that he dared in one of his sermons to present as an example to follow the old man Constantine of Piso, a man who through his life showed an example of effective philanthropy. The official church is interested in everything except what Tuberozov seems to be the very essence of Christianity; it meticulously monitors the implementation of a dead ritual and cruelly punishes its minister who dares to look at himself as a worker assigned to a living task. It is no coincidence that everything that happens in the “demicoton book” is attributed mainly to the pre-reform era. Leskov suggests that by the era of reforms, the same signs of internal decay appeared among the clergy as in other classes - merchants, peasants, etc.

In the post-reform era, in the 60s, the drama of the “broken out” archpriest developed into a genuine tragedy, the culmination and denouement of which were conveyed by Leskov with enormous artistic power. The obstinate archpriest is becoming more and more violent as social contradictions in the country worsen. Persecuted by both church and civil authorities, the old priest decides to take an unusually bold step (for this social environment, of course): he calls all the officials to church on one of the official service days. provincial town and spiritually “puts the tax collectors to shame”: he delivers a sermon in which he accuses officials of an outwardly official, bureaucratic attitude towards religion, of “mercenary prayer”, which is “disgusting to the church.” According to Tuberozov, the life and daily affairs of the officials gathered in the church reveal that this “mercenary prayer” is not accidental - in their very lives there is not a drop of that “Christian ideal” that Tuberozov himself serves. Therefore, “it would be enough for me to take a rope and drive out with it those who are now selling in this temple.” Naturally, after this, both church and civil punishments fall on Tuberozov. “Don’t bother: life is already over, living begins,” this is how he says goodbye to his archpriest when he is taken away for punishment to provincial town Tuberoses. The social, inter-class norms of the bureaucratic state culminated in Nastya and Katerina Izmailova. The climax of “Soboryan” is the challenge posed by Tuberose to social and inter-class relations. Particularly clear in these parts of the book is the literary analogy persistently pursued by Leskov and by no means accidental for the general concept of “The Council”: the violent archpriest of the old town clearly resembles the central character of the brilliant “The Life of Archpriest Avvakum.”

It is essential for understanding the general inconsistency of ideological and artistic structure“Soboryan” is the fact that the enemies of the frantic truth-seeker Tuberozov are not only spiritual and secular officials representing the administrative apparatus of the autocratic-serf state, but also former “nihilists.” Moreover: the former “nihilists” act together in the book, in alliance with officials in robes and uniforms. Just as in the novels “Nowhere” and especially “On Knives,” Leskov does not show the progressive people of the 60s, but the self-seeking and anarchistic human scum that lives by the principle “everything is allowed” and which is not shy about means to achieve its goals. small goals. Here, in depicting the machinations of officials Termosesov and Bornovolokov, whom Leskov persistently seeks to pass off as former representatives of the advanced social movement of the era, Leskov makes a crude attack against progressive social circles.

This mistake is connected with the general inconsistency of the ideological composition of the “Soboryan”. Leskov does not consider the revolt of Archpriest Tuberozov to be a random and private phenomenon: in this revolt, according to the writer, the general crisis of the serfdom system and the collapse of old class-class ties are reflected. When applied to Tuberozov, it is no coincidence that the book persistently uses the word “citizen”; the rebellious clergyman himself interprets his frantic rampage as an act of civil service, the fulfillment of a public duty that arises before every person of any class group in new historical conditions. The special acuteness of the struggle of Tuberozov with the Termasesovs, Bornovolokovs and Prepotenskys, according to the archpriest and the author himself, is that “the fruit of your loins is already growing,” as Tuberozov puts it, or, in other words, the actions of the Bornozolokovs and Termosesovs seem to Leskov to be one of forms of social crisis, which was also expressed in the pre-reform activities of people like Tuberozov himself. Tuberozov and Bornovolokov are fighting on the same historical ground, different way their actions have the same social prerequisite - the historical crisis of serfdom.

Tuberozov opposes the death and collapse of old social forms and the extremes of “nihilism” with the idea of ​​spiritual originality of national development. According to his thoughts, the particular difficulty of the situation in the post-reform era lies precisely in the search for original ways of national development: “our allegorical beauty, external civilization, was given to us simply; but now, when you need to get acquainted with another beauty, when you need spiritual independence... and this beauty is sitting opposite at her window, how will we get her?” Original paths of national development, according to Leskov, presuppose a sense of unity and organicity of national history. One of the central episodes of “Soboryan” is the episode with the “Plodomasovskys.” dwarfs,” the story of a courtyard man, the dwarf Nikolai Afanasyevich, about his life with the noblewoman Plodomasova. Boyar Plodomasova is presented by Leskov as an original, integral character of the serfdom era. She is smart, and brave, and even kind in her own way. She treated her courtyard dwarf well, but he was never a person, a person, for her. She is ready to marry him for her amusement, she becomes furious when this fails, she showers him with good deeds, but it never occurs to her that the dwarf is not an instrument of her amusement or her good deeds, but an independent person, with his own and quite a complex mental life. The originality of Leskov’s construction here is that the dwarf rebels at the very moment when he, it would seem, is at the pinnacle of prosperity: the noblewoman freed his entire family “from the fortress” and benefited him in every possible way. Even a meek, humble dwarf realizes that these very benefits are a form of arbitrariness, a kind of whim, and that he himself as a person, as a person, is not taken into account. Plodomasova crushed and extremely insulted the dwarf with benefits caused by whim, arbitrariness, which took the form of “good.” The distraught dwarf shouts in the face of his benefactress: “You! So it’s all you, cruel, and therefore you really want to crush me with Your goodness!” Later, after Plodomasova’s death, the dwarf remembers his “benefactor” with tenderness, and the more touched he is, the more terrible it is for the reader. The insulted human dignity only burst into anger for a minute, then the idyll went on. Touching a dwarf is a form of human dehumanization. Further, a peculiar and very sharp change occurs in the ideological concept of the book: it turns out that main problem in the fight against serfdom is the problem of personality, personal dignity. Personal dignity is found only in conscious unity, in connection with national historical development. Archpriest Tuberozov draws the following conclusions from what was told to the dwarfs: “Yes, note to yourself, there is a lot, a lot of poverty in this, but it smelled of the Russian spirit to me. I remembered this old woman, and I felt cheerful and pleasant, and this is my joyful reward. Live, my sirs, Russian people, in harmony with your old fairy tale. A wonderful thing, an old fairy tale! Woe to those who don’t have it in their old age!” Purely personal relationships, a purely personal conflict between the serf owner and the slave - this is one of the forms of the “old fairy tale”. The conflict finds resolution in the moral sphere. And in modern conditions, it is necessary to rely in your struggle on the “old fairy tale”, on the national identity of development, which is the source of the individual’s uniqueness, the source of his moral perfection. Archpriest Tuberozov, in his rebellion against the bureaucratically numb forms of the state church and deadened statehood, relies on Archpriest Avvakum, on the “old fairy tale,” on the “eternal” moral norms developed in the process of national development. His rebellion is a rebellion of a personality, bright, colorful and original, against deadened social norms. Leskov contrasts national and moral problems with social problems—this is the source of the extreme ideological inconsistency of Soboryan. This also explains the presence of reactionary attacks against the advanced social camp on the pages of the book.

The most impressive pages of “The Council” are the story of the tragic death of a violent archpriest, who naturally turned out to be powerless in his lonely struggle with the church and police bureaucracy. Tuberozov’s comrade-in-arms in this struggle becomes deacon Achilla Desnitsyn, who found it “hard to hear the news from our sleepy slumber when a thousand lives burn within him alone.” It is no coincidence that Deacon Achilles is placed in the book next to the tragically self-centered “righteous man” Tuberozov. Deacon Achilles only wears a cassock by mistake and has an unusually comic appearance in it. Above all, he values ​​wild horse riding in the steppe and even tries to get spurs for himself. But this man, living a direct, thoughtless life, with all his simple-minded colorfulness, is also “hurt” by the search for “righteousness” and “truth” and, like the archpriest himself, will stop at nothing in serving this truth. Deacon Achilles, with all his appearance and behavior, no less than Tuberozov, testifies to the destruction of the old class household and moral norms in new era. The comic epic of Achilles' trip to St. Petersburg is by no means comical in its meaning: it is an epic of the search for truth. Achilles and Tuberozov, according to Leskov’s plan, represent different facets of a fundamentally unified national Russian character. The archpriest's tragedy lies in his intransigence. Even after an anti-church sermon in the temple, the matter could have easily been resolved. The church and secular bureaucracy are so rotten in their very essence that the decorum of order is most important to them. It was enough for the archpriest to repent, and the case would have been dropped. But the archpriest who “broke out” from his midst does not bring repentance, and even the death of the archpriest does not force him to repent. The petitions of the dwarf Nikolai Afanasyevich lead to the fact that Tuberozov was sent home, but he still does not repent until his death. In the finale, it was no coincidence that the figures of Plodomasov’s dwarf and the frantic archpriest collided - they represent, according to Leskov, different stages of Russian life. When leaving their environment into the world of inter-class relations, Nastya and Katerina Izmailova found themselves victims of the system that had fallen upon them. Tuberozov holds his fate in his hands to the end and does not reconcile with anything. Compositionally, the book is structured differently than Leskov’s early works. The theme of Tuberozov's rebellion, the theme of inter-class relations, is most developed, within which the bright, unyielding, irreconcilable character of the hero appears most clearly. After the death of Tuberozov, Deacon Achilles wages a fierce battle for his memory in ways characteristic of his personality, as a worthy heir to the daring Zaporozhye Sich, and in this battle his nationally unique character, as the character of a “righteous man” and a “truth seeker,” is also most clearly revealed. In its conclusion, the “magnificent book” turns out to be a book of reflection on the peculiarities and its own * ordinariness national character.

The theme of the “righteous man” is resolved differently in the works that followed “Councils.” Leskov is moving away more and more from the idealization of the “old fairy tale”, his critical attitude towards reality is deepening more and more, and, accordingly, the writer is looking for “righteous people” in a different environment. In “The Sealed Angel” (1873), the heroes are the Old Believers, who are fighting against Orthodoxy, but the story ends with their transition to the fold of the Orthodox Church. This was clearly a stretch. In 1875, Leskov informed his friend from abroad that he had become a “turnover” and no longer burned incense to many of the old gods: “Most of all, I was at odds with churchism, on the issues of which I had read to my heart’s content about things that are not allowed in Russia... I will only say one thing: If I had read everything that I have now read on this subject, and listened to what I heard, I would not have written “The Council” the way they were written... But now I am twitching to write a Russian heretic - an intelligent, well-read and free spiritual Christian.” Here he reports that in relation to Katkov he feels something “that he cannot help but feel.” literary man to the killer of native literature."

As for “The Sealed Angel,” Leskov himself later admitted that the end of the story was “added” under the influence of Katkov and did not correspond to reality. Moreover, in the final chapter of “Pechora Antiquities,” Leskov stated that in fact the Old Believer did not steal any icons and did not carry them across the Dnieper by chains: “But only the following really happened: one day, when the chains were already stretched, one Kaluga mason, authorized by his comrades, during Easter Matins he went from the Kyiv bank to the Chernigov bank in chains, but not for an icon, but for vodka, which was then sold much cheaper on the other side of the Dnieper. Having poured a barrel of vodka, the brave walker hung it around his neck and, having a pole in his hands, which served as his balance, he safely returned to the Kiev shore with his tavern burden, which was drunk here to the glory of St. Easter. The brave march along the chains really served as a theme for me to depict the desperate Russian prowess, but the purpose of the action and, in general, the whole story of “The Captured Angel,” of course, is different, and it was simply fictional by me.” So, behind the “iconographic” plot there is a completely different plot - of a mischievous nature. The combination of this kind of opposites is characteristic of Leskov: next to icon painting there is a love for popular prints, for folk pictures, for manifestations of real Russian prowess. Describing his life in Kyiv, he says: “I lived in Kyiv in a very crowded place between two churches - St. Michael’s and St. Sophia, and there were still two wooden churches there at that time. On holidays there was so much ringing here that it was difficult to stand it, and down all the streets leading to Khreshchatyk there were taverns and pubs, and on the site there were booths and swings.” It is not without reason that this combination is noted and emphasized by Leskov; it is reflected in all his work, including in “Soboryans”: it is no coincidence, as we have seen, that the mighty hero Achilles stands there next to Tuberozov.

This is how Leskov’s “difficult growth” gradually took place. In 1894, he wrote to Tolstoy that now he could not and would not write anything like “The Council” or “The Sealed Angel,” but would willingly write “Notes of the Undressed”; “But this cannot be published in our fatherland,” he added.

The story “The Enchanted Wanderer” (1873) is especially important for understanding the meaning and further movement of the theme of the “righteous man” in Leskov’s work. Here Leskov is already moving away from the church theme: the black earth hero Ivan Severyanich Flyagin, whose appearance is similar to Ilya Muromets, an expert on horses, a “non-lethal” adventurer, becomes a black soil monk only after a thousand adventures, when he had “nowhere to go.” The long and seemingly almost incoherent at first glance is filled with a special and deep meaning - so varied and sometimes even incongruous are the vicissitudes of this human destiny- a story about the travels through the life of Ivan Flyagin. The starting point of these wanderings is the serf, courtyard position of the hero. It is illuminated in a special, purely Leskovian way. Behind the intensification of strange omens and signs of a mysterious “fate” hanging over the future wanderer, the reader sees the bitter truth of serfdom. Ivan Flyagin, at the cost of immeasurable dedication, saved the life of his master, but he can be mercilessly whipped because he did not please his owner’s cat. Leskov does not particularly insist on this topic, the topic of insulted personal dignity, because in this case he is interested in something else, he is interested in the further deepening and development of this same topic. The most important thing is that in the consciousness of Ivan Flyagin there is no supporting point, no thread connecting the individual manifestations of his personality. It is not known how he will act in this or that case - he can act this way or completely differently. The internal blurring of the norms of class life is reflected here by the absence of moral and generally any other criteria of mental life. Chance is the main sign of Ivan Flyagin’s “mental economy” at the beginning of his wanderings. Here is one of the episodes from the beginning of Ivan Flyagin’s wanderings. Ivan guards and nurses the official’s child, whose mother left her husband for a certain officer. The mother would like to take the child with her, Ivan does not give in to any persuasion and is not flattered by any promises. It's happening on seashore, and suddenly Ivan notices that “a light uhlan is walking across the steppe.” This is an officer coming to the aid of his beloved. The only thought that arises in Ivan is “I wish I could play with him out of boredom,” “God willing, we’ll fight for fun.” And Ivan really provokes a brazen fight. But then an official, the father of the child, appears with a pistol aimed at his rival, Ivan grabs the child in his arms, catches up with the officer who has just been mortally insulted by him and his beloved and runs away with them. This is not the voice of conscience suddenly speaking, but pure and, so to speak, consistent and boundless chance, as the only norm of inner life. It is this complete indifference to both good and evil, the absence of internal criteria that drives the wanderer around the world. The randomness of the external vicissitudes of his fate is organically connected with the peculiarities inner world wanderer This type of consciousness itself was created by the collapse of old social ties.
Author of the article: P. Gromov, B. Eikhenbaum

The epic of the wanderer is at the same time (and this is its main theme) a search for new connections, a search for high moral standards. As a result of “walking through torment”, wandering, Ivan Flyagin acquires these high moral standards. What matters is how he finds them. The culmination of the wanderer’s spiritual drama is his meeting with the gypsy Grusha. This meeting is preceded by an extreme degree of spiritual emptiness, expressed in meaningless and wild binges. Ivan Flyagin, who accidentally met a man from the “nobles”, a declassed nobleman-tramp, in a tavern, asks to relieve him of this illness, and he delivers him (the plot of “The Enchanted Wanderer” is generally marked by the features of a fairy-tale epic). The drunkard is a “magnetizer” and pronounces in words the meaning of what is happening to Flyagin. His drinking, as well as the fall of the “magnetizer” himself, is a consequence of emptiness and the loss of old social connections. As the wanderer says, the “magnetizer” “brought the drunken demon away from me, and placed the prodigal one with me.” Flyagin selflessly, with endless readiness to serve another person, fell in love with the gypsy Grusha. In another person, in endless respect for him, admiration for him, the wanderer found the first threads of connections with the world, found in a high passion, completely free from egoistic exclusivity, his personality, the high value of his own human individuality. From here is a direct path to love, even broader and more comprehensive - love for the people, for the homeland. The epic of “walking through torment” turned out to be a drama of searching for ways to serve the homeland. The stranger did not come to the monastery out of vocation, religious fanaticism, or because fairy-tale “fate” decreed it so. He got there because “there was nowhere to go” for a man who had broken out from his midst. He makes speeches that are completely unusual for a monk: “I read in the newspapers that peace is constantly being affirmed everywhere, both in our country and in foreign lands. And then my request was fulfilled, and I suddenly began to understand that what was said was coming closer: “whenever they say peace, all destruction suddenly attacks,” and I was filled with fear for the Russian people...” At the end of the story, Flyagin informs the listeners that he is going to go to war: “ I really want to die for the people.” To the question: “What about you: will you go to war in a hood and cassock?” - He calmly answers: “No, sir; Then I’ll take off my hood and put on my uniform.” This is no longer so much a “story” as an epic, which has a fairy-tale basis: about a hero-hero for whom death is not written in his family, despite constant dangers. From here there is a direct path to “The Non-Lethal Golovan” and to Leskov’s further “righteous men”, who are strong because, without suspecting it, they turn out to be bearers of high moral qualities. It is they, from Leskov’s point of view, who are the creators of Russian life and history, and that is why the writer himself, with such energy and with such passion, “sorts through the little people” in order to find support among them for the future.

Thus, the theme of the “righteous man” in Leskov’s work as a whole is extremely significant. In it, in this topic, the writer’s desire is expressed to find, in the era of the collapse of old social ties, new norms of behavior, morality, and, more broadly, new national self-determination. And from this point of view, the movement, development, change of this theme in Leskov’s artistic work is extremely important and indicative. More and more clearly, the conservative narrow-mindedness that temporarily obscured from Leskov the social significance of the search for a positive hero is disappearing from the image of the “righteous man.” This conservative limitation in a number of cases determined the iconographic and stylized solution to the theme of the “righteous man”, the idealization of “humility” and “submission”, which sometimes bordered on the artistic level (this is especially noticeable in Leskov’s favorite genre of “hagiography” at one time); with sweetness. From this point of view, the replacement of Archpriest Tuberozov by the wanderer Ivan Flyagin quite clearly reveals shifts in the creative consciousness of the writer. For the further development of the topic, the most important thing is that Leskov’s “righteousness” is increasingly democratized. The writer strives to find a “righteous person” in a “broken-out” person of any class, overcoming the limitations of class norms - M. Gorky wrote well about this, who considered such a solution to the problem to be a special advantage of Leskov.

Fundamentally important for Leskov’s democratic tendencies is the fact that “righteousness” is associated in the writer’s mind with the creative attitude of the ordinary Russian person to work, with a kind of “artistry” in work. Ivan Flyagin was already characterized as an artist; True, the question arose about this character trait in terms of the hero’s general attitude to life, the general characteristics of his place and behavior in life. Hence the theme of “charm”, “light”, artistic attitude towards life. This side of Leskov’s formulation of the theme is also preserved in things that specifically demonstrate the labor prowess, scope and artistry of the ordinary Russian person. In this respect, his “Tale of the Tula Oblique Lefty and the Steel Flea” (1881) is very typical of Leskov. Labor virtuosity here becomes genuine art, artistry. But not without bitterness (or perhaps, more accurately, bitter irony) Leskov emphasizes in this masterly work skill the features of eccentricity, almost eccentricity. The result of miraculous labor skill is completely useless, and, clearly demonstrating the creative possibilities, creative imagination, artistic skill of the ordinary Russian person in work, the plot of Leskov’s work shows at the same time how stupidly, irrationally, meaninglessly the life-giving spring of folk talent is used under the existing social system . The plot, which at first glance seemed “eccentric”, “eccentric”, begins to play with bright social colors. But the “eccentricity” itself is not a random color here. After all, it also expresses the same social theme, refers to those “mysteries of Russian life”, which Gorky considered Leskov to be a great master of solving. After all, talent acquires a weird, eccentric form quite naturally; it’s not for nothing that Leskov loves strange people so much, unusual professions(“The Darner”, 1882). In the special conditions of ossified, artificially preserved class life, extreme eccentric forms are taken by following traditional class norms and “breaking out” of them. Leskov’s “eccentrics” and “eccentrics” testify to the writer’s great and varied knowledge of Russian life. Leskov tells a fun and exciting story about how a steel flea is made; the reader must “get infected” - and is “infected” by the cheerful, artistic attitude of the heroes to their work. But at the same time, the reader should feel bitter at the end of the story: the story about senselessly wasted talent is essentially tragic. Leskov’s “grotesque” is filled with deep social meaning here.

Leskov’s movement “to the left”, the saturation of his creativity with critical elements in relation to the reality of autocratic Russia appears very clearly in the story of the Tula craftsman. Therefore, the seemingly mischievous story organically includes the national-patriotic theme, which is so essential for Leskov, which sounds here completely differently than in the things of the late 60s and early 70s. Left-hander, who visited England, asks before his death to tell the sovereign that the British do not clean their guns with bricks: “Let them not clean ours either, otherwise, God bless war, they are not suitable for shooting.” These words were never conveyed to the sovereign, and the narrator adds on his own behalf: “And if they had brought Levshin’s words to the sovereign in due time, in the Crimea, during the war with the enemy, a completely different turn would have taken place.” A simple craftsman is concerned about the interests of the country, the state, the people - and indifference and indifference characterize representatives of the social elite. “The Tale” has the form of a popular print, a stylization, but its theme is very serious. The national, patriotic line of the thing is resolved completely differently than in “Councils.” There it was presented as an “old fairy tale”, was not differentiated socially, and was opposed to “nihilism”. Here it is socially concretized: the social upper classes are dismissive of the national interests of the people, the lower social classes think stately and patriotically. The social and national themes are no longer opposed to each other, they have merged. The merger was achieved by a rather sharply expressed critical attitude to reality by the 1980s.

In another aspect, an equally sharp strengthening of critical tendencies and a new filling of the theme of “righteousness” is reflected in “The Man on the Clock” (1887). Soldier Postnikov, who was standing on duty in the palace guard (the fact that standing is completely meaningless is emphasized), saved a man who was drowning in the Neva opposite the palace. An extraordinary bureaucratic pandemonium arises around this incident, as a result of which the medal “For rescuing drowning people” is awarded to a rogue officer unrelated to the case, and the real savior is punished with two hundred rods and is very pleased that he so easily got out of the bureaucratic machine, which could have completely destroyed him. Very high-ranking secular and clergy were drawn into the analysis of the incident (among them, the figure of the famous reactionary, Metropolitan Philaret Drozdov, is distinguished by his particular virtuosity of satirical treatment), who unanimously approve of the outcome, for “punishment on the body of a commoner is not destructive and does not contradict either the customs of peoples or spirit of scripture"

The theme of "righteousness" here; is overgrown with sharply satirical material, which, in turn, is resolved purely in Leskov’s way - a simple person who has accomplished a feat of goodness without expecting “rewards for him anywhere” has been dealt a huge personal insult, but he is glad, because the autocratic order is so terrible , that the “righteous man” should already rejoice in the fact that he has carried off his feet.

That special ideological approach to the phenomena of social life, which is characteristic of Leskov’s mature work, determines the writer’s original, unique approach to the problems of artistic form. Gorky saw the most important distinctive feature of Leskov - a master of form - in the principles of his solution: the problem of poetic language. Gorky wrote: “Leskov is also a wizard of words, but he wrote not plastically, but through storytelling, and in this art he has no equal. His story is an inspired song, simple, purely Great Russian words, descending one with another into intricate lines, sometimes thoughtfully, sometimes laughingly, ringing, and you can always hear in them a reverent love for people, covertly tender, almost feminine; pure love, she is a little ashamed of herself. The people in his stories often talk about themselves, but their speech is so amazingly alive, so truthful and convincing that they appear before you as mysteriously tangible, physically clear, like people from the books of L. Tolstoy and others - in other words, Leskov achieves the same result, but with a different technique of mastery,” Leskov wants the Russian person to speak about himself and for himself - and, moreover, a simple person who does not look at himself from the outside, as the author usually looks at his characters, He wants so that the reader listens to these people themselves, and for this they must speak and tell in their own language, without the intervention of the author. There should be no third, extraneous person between the hero and the reader; if a special narrator is needed (as in “Lefty”), then he must be from the same professional or exiled environment as the hero. That is why special introductions or beginnings are so characteristic of his works, which prepare the further narration on behalf of the narrator. “The Sealed Angel” begins with a conversation at an inn, where an underground blizzard brought travelers of different ranks and occupations; from this conversation emerges the story of the Old Believer in a manner appropriate to him. In “The Enchanted Wanderer,” the entire first chapter is a preparation for the further story of the black hero about how he “perished all his life and could not die.” The first edition of “Lefty” opened with a special preface (later removed), where Leskov reported that he “wrote this legend in Sestroretsk according to a local tale from an old gunsmith, a Tula native, who moved to the Sister River during the reign of Emperor Alexander the First... He readily recalled old times, lived "according to old faith", read divine books and bred canaries." As it turned out from the special “literary explanation” that was needed in connection with the contradictory rumors about Lefty, there was in fact no such narrator, and Leskov invented the entire legend himself; it is all the more characteristic and significant that he needed such an imaginary narrator.

Leskov himself spoke very clearly and accurately about this peculiarity of his, which so distinguished his works from the then dominant genres of the novel and story: “The writer’s voice training lies in the ability to master the voice and language of his hero and not play around with altos and basses. I tried to develop this skill in myself and, it seems, I achieved that my priests speak in a spiritual way, men speak like peasants, upstarts and buffoons speak with tricks, etc. For myself, I speak in the language of ancient tales and church-folk in purely literary speech... It is quite difficult to study the speeches of each representative of numerous social and personal positions... The 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 eloquent speakers, from holy fools and holy fools. After all, I collected it for many years from words, proverbs and individual expressions, captured on the fly in the crowd, on barges, in recruiting presences 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, not in a literary way.” As a result, Leskov’s language acquired extraordinary diversity and often seemed “pretentious” and “excessive” to his contemporaries. In fact, it reflected the national and historical complexity of Russian life, which attracted Leskov’s main attention and was very important for the post-reform era, the era of revision and restructuring of all intranational, social and international relations.

Leskov’s special “technique of mastery” affects, of course, not only in language and is determined not only by the solution of narrow linguistic problems. The new ideological function of a hero from different strata of the people forces Leskov to solve problems of composition, plot, and character in a new way. We have seen how boldly and in his own way Leskov solves issues of composition already in his early works. The more in-depth Leskov’s approach to the problems of social and national life that concern him, the bolder and more original Leskov solves issues of plot, composition, and characters. Leskov's works often confuse the reader when trying to determine their genre nature. Leskov often blurs the line between a newspaper journalistic article, essay, memoir and traditional forms of “high prose” - a story, a story. This has its own special ideological meaning. Leskov strives to create the illusion of the genuine historical existence of people living in a very diverse social environment, in dramatically shifted historical conditions. Leskov most of all wants to convince the reader of the socio-historical authenticity of sometimes very bizarre individuals, whose “eccentricity” is actually due to the processes of the breakdown of old Russian life and the formation of new forms of it. That is why he so often gives his things the form of a memoir, and the memoirist himself acquires a special function here. He is not just a witness to what is being told about - he himself lived and lives in the same bizarre, unusual socio-historical conditions as those about whom the story is told, the author’s self is included in the circle of heroes not as a direct participant in the plot events, but as if as a person as historically authentic as the heroes themselves. The author here is not a writer generalizing events, but an “experienced person,” a literary character of the same social class as the heroes; in him, in his consciousness and behavior, the same era of historical turning point is refracted as in literary heroes in the proper sense of the word. The author’s function is to remove the “literary mediastinum” and introduce the reader directly into the diversity of life itself. Leskov creates his own special genre of literature, and his work in this direction greatly helped Gorky later, who also sought to write not a “novel” or a “story,” but “life” itself. Traditional literary genres Most often, Leskov does not succeed well. As M. Gorky rightly noted, “Nowhere” and “On Knives” are not only books of reactionary ideological content, but also books that are poorly written, tritely written, bad novels.

It is generally accepted both in Soviet literary criticism and in old journalism and criticism that there has been a more or less sharp change in Leskov’s social position, a change that has been clearly visible since approximately the late 70s - early 80s and has been refracted in various ways in both his creative and life path. writer. In this regard, some biographical facts are of particular public interest; relating to this last period of Leskov’s life. Living from the very beginning of his literary career on magazine earnings, financially poor, Leskov was forced for many years to be a member of the Academic Committee of the Ministry of Public Education, despite a number of humiliating details of promotion and meager pay for extremely labor-intensive activities. However, for Leskov, who was greedy for diverse life experiences and inquisitive about the most diverse aspects of Russian life, this service also had some creative interest: he sometimes published the departmental material that most interested him, subjecting it to journalistic or artistic treatment. It was these publications that aroused the unfavorable attention of such pillars of autocratic reaction as K. P. Pobedonostsev and T. I. Filippov. Lighting that. Leskov’s interpretation of the facts he published was far from coinciding with the intentions and aspirations of government leaders. Dissatisfaction with Leskov's literary activities especially intensified at the beginning of 1883, apparently in connection with Leskov's speeches on issues of church life. The Minister of Public Education I.D. Delyanov was instructed to “bring some sense” to the willful writer in the sense that Leskov would align his literary activities with the types of government reaction. Leskov did not succumb to any persuasion and categorically rejected the attempts of the authorities to determine the direction and nature of his literary work. The question of resignation arose. In order to give the matter a decent bureaucratic appearance, Delyanov asks Leskov to submit a letter of resignation. The writer resolutely rejects this proposal. Frightened by the threat of a public scandal, the confused minister asks Leskov why he needs dismissal without a request, to which Leskov replies: “It is necessary! At least for obituaries: mine and... yours.” Leskov's expulsion from service caused a well-known public outcry. Even more public importance, undoubtedly, there was a scandal that broke out when Leskov, already at the end of his life, published collected works. The publication of a ten-volume collected works undertaken by the writer in 1888 had a double meaning for him. First of all, it was supposed to sum up the results of his thirty-year creative journey, the revision and rethinking of everything he created over these long and turbulent years. On the other hand, having lived after retirement solely on literary earnings, the writer wanted to achieve a certain amount of material security in order to focus all his attention on the implementation of his final creative ideas. The publication was started, and the matter went well until the sixth volume, which included the chronicle “A Seedy Family” and a number of works treating issues of church life (“Little things in bishop’s life”, “Diocesan Court”, etc.). The volume was seized because anti-church tendencies were seen in its content. For Leskov, this was a huge moral blow - there was a threat of collapse of the entire publication. At the cost of removing and replacing things objectionable to the censorship, after much ordeal, the publication was saved. (The part of the volume seized by censorship was apparently subsequently burned.) The collected works were a success and justified the writer’s hopes for it, but the scandalous story with the sixth volume cost the writer dearly: on the day Leskov learned about the arrest of the book, it was his first time , according to his own testimony, there was an attack of illness, which a few years later (February 21/March 5, 1895) brought him to the grave.

The change in Leskov's literary and social position in the last period of his life is also characterized in a certain way by the circle of magazines in which he was published. Magazines that previously turned away from him are interested in his cooperation. Quite often his works turn out to be even overly harsh in their critical tendencies for the liberal press; For this reason, some of his artistically perfect creations never saw the light of day before the revolution, including such a masterpiece of Leskov’s prose as “The Hare Remiz.”

The sharp strengthening of critical tendencies in the last period of Leskov’s work is especially clearly reflected in a whole group of works created by him at the end of his life. A number of lines in Leskov’s artistic work of the 70s and 80s, especially the satirical line, directly leads to this rise of progressive aspirations. Due to the peculiar qualities of his stylistic (in the broad sense of the word) manner, talking about satire as a clear genre variety in relation to Leskov has to be with a certain degree of convention; elements of satire are, to one degree or another, inherent in most of Leskov’s works. And yet you can talk about things that are actually satirical, such as the story “Laughter and Sorrow” (1871). This story, with all the specificity of its genre coloring, is close in many ways to “The Enchanted Wanderer”: its main theme is the theme of accidents in the personal and social fate of a person - accidents determined by the general way of life. In “The Enchanted Wanderer” this theme was dealt with primarily in the lyrical and tragic aspect: “Laughter and Sorrow” give preference to the satirical aspect. Some researchers of Leskov's work come to the conclusion that the satire in Leskov's work is somewhat softened and toothless. This conclusion can be made only by ignoring the specifics of Leskov the satirist’s tasks. The fact is that Leskov never satirically ridicules an entire social institution, institution, or social group as a whole. He has his own way of satirical generalization. Leskov's satire is based on showing a sharp discrepancy between dead canons, norms, establishments of a particular social institution and the vital needs of the individual. As in the lyrical-epic genres, the problem of personality in Leskov’s satirical experiments is the center of the entire ideological construction of the thing.

So, say, in “Iron Will” (1876), the reactionary features of Prussianism are subjected to sharp satirical ridicule: its colonialist tendencies, its wretched “master morality,” its chauvinistic insignificance. But even here, in the work that perhaps most sharply demonstrates the satirical possibilities of Leskov’s talent, the center of the narrative is what Prussianism turns out to be for its bearer as an individual. How more life hits Pectoralis's stupid, wooden principles, the more stubbornly and fiercely he defends these principles. In the end, the hero's complete stifling emptiness is revealed: he is not a person, but a puppet on a leash of meaningless principles.

If you don’t really think about the meaning of Leskov’s satirical task in “Trifles of Bishop’s Life” (1878), then these sketches at first glance may seem completely harmless. It may even seem strange that this book so excited the highest spiritual hierarchy and, by order of spiritual censorship, was delayed in publication and burned. Meanwhile, Leskov’s task here is extremely poisonous and truly satirical in Leskov’s way. With the most innocent look, the author talks about how bishops get sick with indigestion, how they treat prominent officials with selected wines, while almost dancing, how they exercise to combat obesity, how they do good only because the petitioner was able to find a vulnerable place in their likes and dislikes, how petty and funny they quarrel and compete with secular authorities, etc. The selection of small, at first glance, everyday details, skillfully recreating the everyday existence of spiritual officials, is subordinated to a single task. Leskov seems to consistently expose the masquerade of external forms by which the church artificially separates itself from ordinary philistine Russian life. Quite ordinary townsfolk are discovered who are absolutely no different from those who flock the name of spiritual children. Colorlessness, emptiness, the banality of ordinary bourgeois life, the absence of any bright personal life - this is the theme that permeates seemingly innocent everyday sketches. It really turns out to be satire, very offensive to those depicted, but the satire is special. All this is offensive to clergy, first of all, because the reason for the masquerade is quite clearly exposed - special forms of clothing, language, etc. This masquerade is needed because, in essence, an ordinary bishop is absolutely no different from an ordinary tradesman or an ordinary official. There is not even a glimpse of the main thing that the bishop officially represents—spiritual life. The spiritual principle is likened here to a cassock - hidden under the cassock is an ordinary official with indigestion or hemorrhoids. If among Leskov’s bishops there are people with a humanly pure soul and a warm heart, then this relates exclusively to their personal qualities and has nothing to do with their official and professional functions and official social status. In general, Leskov, in his own special ways, exposes the everyday ritual of churchliness, which is in many ways close to the “tearing off of masks” that Leo Tolstoy later carried out so vividly and sharply.

Towards the end of Leskov’s life, the satirical line of his work sharply intensifies and at the same time its internal connection with those big questions of Russian life and Russian national history that the writer resolved in other aspects of his work becomes clear. And from this point of view, the history of his rapprochement and divergences with Leo Tolstoy is important and indicative for understanding his ideological and artistic evolution. Leskov's closeness with Tolstoy at a certain stage of his creative development is in no way accidental. In the very paths of the historical movement of Tolstoy and Leskov there were elements of undoubted similarity, determined by the social position of each of these great artists within a single segment of Russian life saturated with contradictory content. Therefore, in Leskov’s socio-historical and moral quests of the 60s and 70s, one can find many elements that, in the era of a sharp change in Leskov’s views, will organically bring him closer to an even greater degree, already directly and directly with Tolstoy. The writer himself stated the following about this: “Leo Tolstoy was my benefactor. I understood a lot of things before him, just like he did, but I wasn’t sure that I was judging correctly.”

But Leskov did not turn into a Tolstoyan. Moreover, the initial fervor of passion passed, and sobering set in. Leskov speaks ironically about Tolstoyism and especially about Tolstoyans. It is no coincidence that in the late story “Winter Day”, varying several times, an ironic phrase appears in relation to Tolstoy - “the devil is not as terrible as his little ones”; Leskov states directly that he disagrees with Tolstoyism as a totality, a system of views: “he wants, and his son, and the Tolstoyans, and others - he wants what is higher than human nature, which is impossible, because such is our nature.” For Leskov, Tolstoyism is unacceptable as a dogma, as a program, as a utopian recipe for the restructuring of human nature and human relations. If you look closely at the cycle of his last, most socially acute things, you will find that Tolstoy intensified in Leskov the sharpness of his critical view of reality, and this was Tolstoy’s main significance for Leskov’s evolution. In Leskov’s latest works, heroes, in whose behavior there is a noticeable desire to implement those elements in Tolstoyism that Leskov considered valuable and socially necessary, appear as a counterbalance to the pictures of social and everyday decay that he paints, appear as a kind of moral standard by which; forms of life unworthy of human beings are tested and exposed.

A group of Leskov’s latest works - such as “Midnight Owls” (1891), “Improvisers” (1892), “Udol” (1892), “Administrative Grace” (1893), “Pen” (1893), “Winter Day” (1894 ), “Hare Remise” (1894), shows us an artist who not only reveals the untruths of social relations with the objective content of his work, but also consciously fights social evil. In this cycle of works they appear again the most important topics that worried Leskov throughout his entire work - questions of serfdom and its consequences for the life of post-reform Russia, questions of the disintegration of old social ties and the consequences of this disintegration for the human personality, the search for a morally fulfilling human existence in the context of the decomposition of old and the formation of new forms of life, and finally, issues of features of the national-state development of Russia. All these issues are resolved by the writer in a new way, differently than before - the writer’s struggle for progressive paths of socio-historical and national life comes out sharper, more definite and more clearly. The peculiar features of Leskov’s artistic work in these things sometimes lead researchers to underestimate the critical elements contained in them.

Thus, when applied to the story “Midnight Watchers,” one can sometimes hear the opinion that Leskov is giving here a criticism of official churchism that is not very deep in its results. Meanwhile, the content of “Midnight Owls” is by no means exhausted satirical image activities of John of Kronstadt; The writer’s intention is deeper and more complex, and it can only be comprehended by taking into account all the uniqueness of Leskov’s construction, the holistic concept of the whole thing. The activity of John of Kronstadt is not given here by chance against a certain social background; the figure of the famous official religious teacher just as naturally appears surrounded by a number of other, already fictional characters and in the refracted perception of a number of heroes, and only the whole set of relationships characters introduces the writer to the idea. The main character of the story, from whose lips we hear about all the events, is a certain Marya Martynovna, a hanger-on in a rich merchant’s house. She resembles the “warrior” Domna Platonovna with the main features of her spiritual appearance, but this Domna Platonovna is already at a completely different stage of her life’s journey, and the writer has already placed her in a different social context, and the writer draws conclusions about her that are somewhat different than he did about to his early heroine.
Author of the article: P. Gromov, B. Eikhenbaum

Marya Martynovna talks about things that are essentially terrible, but the most terrible thing is the imperturbable, unctuous tone in which she narrates. She talks about how a merchant family has become morally corrupt, how conscience is bought and sold, how moral convictions are traded wholesale and retail. All this happens in the foyer of “paper loss”, “underground banks”, dubious financial transactions, expensive restaurants and brothels. Shown new stage in the life of Russia not directly and directly, but in the perception of Marya Martynovna, and this is what can mislead the inattentive reader. What is important here is precisely the person’s personality and the impact of developed bourgeois relations on it. For Marya Martynovna, nothing is sacred, she is a completely empty soul, unlike Doina Platonovna, she is not an “artist” at all, she is chasing in all this sodom only her own petty gain. Marya Martynovna wants to cure the collapse and decay in the merchant's house with the sermons of John of Kronstadt. The ironic definition of the genre of a thing by the writer himself is “landscape and genre.” The “landscape” and “genre” that are colored in a special way carry a really great ideological and semantic load here. The “landscape” within which the “religious teacher” appears is the Kronstadt hotel. It is given as a trading event where holiness is sold and bought in an organized and systematic manner. “Genre” is a story about the arrival of a “religious teacher” in St. Petersburg. Those thirsty for spiritual healing create a wild stampede on the pier. “Teachers of faith” are torn to pieces, grabbed and put into carriages, and forcibly taken away for the healing of souls. It turns out there is a system to this too. Here, too, there is a joint-stock company - for a reasonable price, “teachers of the faith” can easily be obtained through speculators organized in the company. What happens around religion is literally the same thing that happens in “dungeon banks”, expensive brothels, and other similar institutions.

Finally, the “religious teacher” is brought to the “sick woman.” The sick person turned out to be a young girl, Klavdinka, who does not want to live the way the people around her live. The dialogue between Klavdinka and John of Kronstadt constitutes the climax of the story. Klavdinka justifies his way of life with references to the rationally understood gospel according to Tolstoy. John of Kronstadt, in the name of the way of life that he defends, has to endlessly refute the gospel. John of Kronstadt is presented here as one of the peak, most complete manifestations of the abomination that Marya Martynovna talks about. The most valuable thing here is this comparison: John of Kronstadt is no different from Marya Martynovna, he just as coldly and prudently defends obvious social and moral abomination. Marya Martynovna and John of Kronstadt are put on the same level, as socially and spiritually of the same order. As a result, both were kicked out of the merchant's house: John of Kronstadt was kicked out politely but firmly by Klavdinka, Marya Martynovna, who brought confusion to the merchant family, was kicked out rather impolitely by the owners. Marya Martynovna has not changed her convictions in any way; she continues her activities of pimping, instigating all sorts of abomination, trading in officially organized holiness, no tragedy has happened to her. Domna Platonovna in her finale produces not so much a funny, but a tragic impression. Marya Martynovna remained with all her qualities. Such ulcers cannot be healed individually - this is the conclusion to which the writer leads. Life philosophy universal cynicism of Domna Platonovna spread to wide circles in the disintegrating social elite. It is clear that Klavdinka’s Tolstoyanism is only a moral measure of the fall of the social elite. Leskov's deep democracy has not ceased to be spontaneous. He, as before, compares social decay with abstract moral norms. But he depicts the processes of social disintegration themselves in a broader, sharper, more merciless way. And this is the secret of the distrust of the late Leskov on the part of liberal-bourgeois and liberal-populist circles. In the story “Winter Day” Leskov (paints the same “landscape” and “genre” directly and directly, showing a bourgeois family where young men are sold to old women for money, and old women blackmail their former lovers for the same money. Money obtained in this way In this way, cute young men use it to buy especially profitable shares on the stock exchange. In "Midnight Owls" this type of transaction was interpreted as similar to the official religion. In "A Winter's Day" the love and business troubles of sweet young men and faded ladies are unraveled by a majestic-looking old cocotte, who is at the same time. performs high state-diplomatic functions. Here, the autocratic bureaucratic state itself cooperates with the typical figures of the era of “fall of papers” and “underground banks.” Regarding “Winter Day,” the editor of the liberal-bourgeois “Bulletin of Europe” wrote to Leskov: “...y. "All this is so concentrated in your mind that it comes to your head. This is an excerpt from Sodom and Gomorrah, and I do not dare to bring such an excerpt into the light of day." It is perhaps difficult to explain more openly the reasons for the unacceptability of Leskov’s “excesses” than the liberal Stasyulevich did.

In some important respects, the central position among Leskov’s later works is occupied by “The Corral” and “Improvisers”. Here Leskov sums up the creative themes that worried him throughout his life. “The Corral” is a work of essay type, caused by a specific occasion in public life - the frank statement of one of the members of the “Society for the Promotion of Russian Industry and Trade” in September 1893 that “Russia must isolate itself”, close itself tightly from general historical development. In the genre of an acute political feuilleton, with many highly artistic “memoir digressions” typical of his manner, Leskov shows the objective social, social, class meaning of this kind of theories. Leskov shows to what absurdities and in the name of what reactionaries of various persuasions go in order to justify social inequality. Thus, one of the reactionaries goes so far as to publish a brochure on the superiority of smoking huts over clean ones; the contents of the brochure are retold with purely Leskovian evil irony; “...evil spirits are running out of the chicken hut, and even though the calf and sheep stink, during the fire the whole thing will be pulled out again by the door... And not only does soot prevent any small vipers from being found in the wall, but this soot has very important medicinal properties.” A number of colorful “memoir” sketches show that the darkness of the people, resisting clearly expedient innovations, is caused by their social downtroddenness, that this darkness is artificially maintained by the defenders of serfdom: “the nobles rejoiced at this, because if the peasants of paradise had accepted the benefits of their landowner differently, then this could serve as a harmful example for others who continued to live like obras and dulebs, “in the image of an animal.” Such a seductive example, of course, had to be feared.”

By creating Soboryan, Leskov contrasted national issues with social issues. Now he sees an organic internal connection between these two aspects artistic image reality. In a reactionary way, interpreted “national identity”, what Leskov himself previously called the “old fairy tale”, without which it is difficult for a person to live, is interpreted in the works of the last period of his activity as one of the ideological weapons of serf owners and industrialists, social characters such as the heroes of “Winter day." The “old fairy tale” turned into a “corral”; it turned out to be one of the means of social struggle, one of the methods of social oppression, fooling the people. Leskov makes calculations with his own delusions of the era of the late 60s and early 70s. Its democracy becomes wider and deeper, freeing itself from many biased, one-sided, incorrect ideas and assessments. “The Corral” depicts not only the darkness and downtroddenness of the people. Leskov shows here the extreme degree of decomposition of the social elite. Socialite ladies at a fashionable Baltic resort discovered, in the person of the clever rascal Mifimka, a new “saint” who skillfully freed them from “intimate secrets”. All these secret illnesses and spiritual sorrows of the ladies clearly resemble the moral atmosphere of “Winter's Day”. The darkness of ordinary people is understandable and curable, the darkness of the upper classes is disgusting and testifies to socio-historical degradation.

This same range of issues is generalized and intensified in the story “The Improvisers,” which is stunning in its tragic power. In “The Improvisers” we are also talking about darkness, prejudices, and delusions. But even more sharply than in the "Pen" social origins these delusions, these “improvisations”. Throughout his entire career, Leskov was occupied with the question of “dissoslovnost”, the erosion of old classes - the estates of the serfdom era, and the formation of new social groups in the era between 1861 and the first Russian revolution. “The Improvisers” shows a completely ruined man who has turned into a shadow of a man, into a crazy beggar spreading rumors, “improvisations” about doctors who kill their patients. He does not believe in the “comma”, in the microbe that causes epidemic disease. The real source of these improvisations is in declassification, in the complete loss of human face caused by social deprivation caused by the social process that V. I. Lenin called “de-peasantization.” V.I. Lenin wrote: “The entire post-reform forty years is one continuous process of this de-peasantization, a process of slow, painful extinction.” (V.I. Lenin, Works, vol. 4, p. 396.) Leskov’s “portioned man” is a vivid artistic illustration of this complex and multifaceted process. More sharply than anywhere else in Leskov, the fall of man from the old class framework and the tragic spiritual fruits of this are shown here: “Western writers do not know at all the most perfect people of this kind. A portion man would be a better model than a Spaniard with a guitar. It was not a person, but some kind of moving nothing. This is a dry leaf that is torn from some kind of icy tree, and now it is driven and circling in the wind, and wets it, and dries it, and all this again in order to be driven and thrown somewhere further.” The social elite are also subject to the wildest superstitions, and they are subject to them precisely because they have deprived and turned into nothing the “portioned peasant”, and they cannot pay off their own devastation, corruption and inertia, from the fear of the “comma” with any alms. The main “comma” here, the cause of all troubles, is social: “And that it was precisely she, that same “comma” that we saw and did not recognize, and also shoved bread and two two-kopeck pieces into her teeth, then they suddenly realized or the shopkeeper " The question of the ways of national development of Russia, which always worried Leskov, organically merges here, at the end of Leskov’s work, with questions of social structure. The problem of moral responsibility that arises here, at the sight of a “portioned man”, is also given as a new solution to the problems of moral self-determination of an individual that are so significant for Leskov in conditions “when everything has been turned upside down and is only just settling down.”

Reflection on the historical destinies of the Russian national character could least of all be resolved by Tolstoy’s “improvement of the individual.” Leskov himself understands that his new “righteous men” like Klavdinka from “Midnight Owls” cannot be called in the full sense of the word found images of positive heroes. He is looking for this new positive hero. In “Day in the Dark”, the moral decay of the bourgeois family that Leskov portrays is contrasted with a heroine very close to Klavdinka - the “black sheep” in her circle, Lydia. Almost the author’s conclusion, summarizing the theme of the belts of “righteousness” in Leskov’s work, is the most important remark in Lydia’s dispute with her aunt. The aunt says: “What kind of characters are ripe,” Lydia replies: “Come on, ma tante, what kind of characters are these! Characters are coming, characters are maturing - they are ahead, and we are no match for them, And they will come, they will come! “Spring noise will come, cheerful noise!” So - an expression of faith in the great possibilities of the national Russian character, which will unfold in a forward, progressive social development country and people,” concludes the theme of the search for righteousness in the work of the writer, whose entire path was a path of intense social, moral and artistic quest. The thought about Russia, about the people, about their future was central throughout Leskov’s complex, contradictory creative career, which was replete with brilliant successes and serious failures.

Leskov sought in his work to comprehend the life of different classes, social groups, estates of Russia, to create a multicolored, complex, largely unexplored image of the entire country in one of the most confusing and difficult periods of its existence. . This leads to acute contradictions in his creative path. Leskov’s range of national themes is enormous. His work covers not only various classes, professions and living conditions, but also the most diverse regions of Russia with the peoples inhabiting them: the Far North, Ukraine, Bashkiria, the Caspian steppes, Siberia, the Baltic states. He presents national and social themes not as a “landscape” or as “mores,” but as material for solving large historical and moral problems- to resolve the issue of the fate of Russia. His artistic work found recognition and a kind of continuation and development in the work of two great Russian writers, who were able to use much of his searches and findings in their own way and move on, in accordance with the new historical era. Leskov’s attention to the life of people of different classes, estates, social groups, professions, everyday formations turned out to be very valuable for A.P. Chekhov, who, in slightly different conditions, in his own way, differently than Leskov, sought to create the broadest picture of the life of Russia in its various, mostly not touched upon by anyone except Leskov, manifestations. At the end of his life, M. Gorky, sharing his experience with young writers, wrote: “I think that my attitude to life was influenced by each in their own way - three writers: Pomyalovsky, Gl. Uspensky and Leskov." One must think that for Gorky, the most significant aspects of Leskov’s artistic work were different from those for Chekhov. In historically different conditions and with completely different social positions M. Gorky, as an artist, all his creative life was interested in the complex relationship between class and individual, between class-defined, closed-class, traditionally immobile, and the historical dialectic of the disintegration of old classes and the formation of new ones. Gorky’s images of “broken out” people, “mischievous people”, “eccentrics”, people living “on the wrong street” - with all historical amendments, are probably genetically related to Leskov’s quest in this direction. Thus, the ideological and artistic experience of the writer turned out to be valuable and fruitful in the history of literature, who in his work, as they say on the pages of “The Life of Klim Samgin,” “pierced all of Rus'.”

The most striking and original thing 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 phrases. Leskov greedily grabbed every unexpected or picturesque idiomatic expression. All forms of professional or class language, all kinds of slang words - all this can be found on its pages. But he especially loved the comic effects of vernacular Church Slavonic and puns of “folk etymology.” He allowed himself great liberties in this regard and invented many successful and unexpected deformations of the usual meaning or familiar sound. Other distinguishing feature Leskova: he, like no other of his contemporaries, possessed the gift of storytelling. As a storyteller, he probably ranks modern literature first place. His stories are simply anecdotes, told with tremendous gusto and skill; Even in his big things, he likes to tell a few anecdotes about them when characterizing his characters. This was contrary to the traditions of “serious” Russian literature, and critics began to consider him simply a gay man. Leskov's most original stories are so filled with all kinds of incidents and adventures that to critics, for whom the main thing was ideas and trends, it seemed funny and absurd. It was too obvious that Leskov was simply enjoying all these episodes, as well as the sounds and grotesque forms of familiar words. No matter how hard he tried to be a moralist and preacher, he could not neglect the opportunity to tell a joke or make a pun.

Nikolai 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 drawback was that he did not know how to keep his talent within limits and “overloaded his cart with goods.” 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 Leskov's vision of the world there is no haze, no atmosphere, no softness; he chooses the most garish colors, the harshest contrasts, the sharpest contours. His images appear in the merciless daylight. If the world of Turgenev or Chekhov can be likened to the landscapes of Corot, then Leskov is Bruegel the Elder, with his motley, 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, extraordinary originality, great vices, strong passions and grotesque comic traits - these are his favorite subjects. He is both a servant of the cult of heroes and a humorist. Perhaps one could even say that the more heroic his heroes are, the more humorous he portrays them. This humorous cult of heroes is Leskov’s most original feature.

Leskov's political novels of the 1860s and 70s, which brought him hostility at that time radicals, are now almost forgotten. But the stories he wrote at the same time have not lost their glory. They are not as rich in verbal joys as the stories of his mature period, but in them his skill as a storyteller is already demonstrated to a high degree. Unlike later works, they give pictures of hopeless evil and invincible passions. An example of this Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk(1866). This is a very powerful exploration of a woman's criminal passion and the brash, cynical callousness of her lover. A cold, merciless light pours on everything that happens and everything is told with strong “naturalistic” objectivity. Another great story from that time - Warrior , a colorful story of a St. Petersburg pimp 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

Behind these early stories followed by a series Chronicle the fictional city of Stargorod. They form a trilogy: Old years in the village of Plodomasovo (1869), Soboryans(1872) and Seedy family(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.” Deacon Achilles is a superbly written character, one of the most amazing in the entire portrait gallery of Russian literature. The comic escapades and unconscious mischief of a huge, full of strength, completely unspiritual and simple-minded deacon like a child and the constant reprimands that he receives from Archpriest Tuberozov are known to every Russian reader, and Achille himself became a common favorite. But in general Soboryans the thing is uncharacteristic for the author - too smooth, unhurried, peaceful, event-poor, unleskovsky.

Nikolai Semenovich Leskov is known primarily as a prose writer, the author of many novels, novellas, and short stories. However, he began his creative path with journalism. Coming from the family of a poor Oryol official, Leskov early entered the service of the Oryol Chamber of the Criminal Court, and two years later, in 1849, he moved to the Kyiv Treasury Chamber. The move to Kyiv played an important role in Leskov’s life. He met young professors from Kyiv University who came to the house of his uncle, professor of medicine at Kyiv University S.P. Alferyeva. Young Leskov found himself among university youth, began attending lectures, read a lot, and learned Ukrainian and Polish.

In 1857, Leskov abandoned government service and moved to a private commercial company. The company's affairs required numerous trips around the country, and Leskov, in his own words, “traveled Russia in a wide variety of directions.” The accumulated impressions served as the basis for the writer’s first journalistic experiments, published in 1860 in St. Petersburg Gazette and other publications.

In 1861, Leskov moved to St. Petersburg, and soon to Moscow, where he became an employee of the newspaper “Russian Speech” and at the same time published his articles in “Notes of the Fatherland”, “Book Bulletin” and other magazines. He also collaborated with the newspaper “Northern Bee”, which published P.I. Melnikov (Pechersky), V.I. Dahl, democratic writers V.A. Sleptsov, A.I. Levitov. It was at this time that the official authorities began to be wary of Leskov, and a note from the office of the St. Petersburg police chief “On writers and commoners” stated: “Eliseyev, Sleptsov, Leskov. Extreme socialists. They sympathize with everything anti-government.”

In 1862, the magazine “Vek” published Leskov’s first work of fiction - the story “The Extinguished Case” (later called “Drought”). In the same year, the stories “The Robber” and “In the Tarantass” were published in various publications, and in 1863 - “The Life of a Woman” and “Snarky.” At the first stages of his work, Leskov gave preference to the essay genre, which brought him closer to the writers of the democratic camp. However, fundamental differences between them in their approaches to depicting folk life immediately emerged.

Unlike the writers of the sixties, who called for studying the life of the people, Leskov perceived it as something understandable and close, and contrasted “knowledge” with “study.” Not being a conservative, having hated serfdom in his youth, the writer at the same time did not accept the idea of ​​​​a revolutionary reorganization of life. He expressed his rejection with his characteristic categoricalness and polemical passion not only in journalism, but also in the novel “Nowhere” (1864).

The democratic camp of Russian literature regarded the appearance of the novel as an open challenge and declared war on the writer. D.I. opposed him. Pisarev, V.A. Zaitsev, and later M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin. Leskov was denied access to many magazines. The impulse that prompted the writer to create an anti-revolutionary novel was sincere, and although later he partly regretted his previous desire to resist the “stormy impulse”, which he called “ natural phenomenon”, yet Leskov argued (in a letter to I.S. Aksakov dated December 9, 1881) that in “Nowhere” “there are prophecies - all completely fulfilled.”

The writer experienced his excommunication from the democratic press quite acutely, but he realized that Russia should not have taken a revolutionary path, and consistently embodied this idea in other works - the story “Musk Ox”, the novel “Out-Off” (1865). Leskov would subsequently be accused of reactionary behavior more than once. The situation would be worsened by the appearance in 1872 of his new anti-nihilistic novel “On Knives.” The writer’s goal was not to deny the need for democratic changes, but to reject the forms of their achievement, that scholastic picture of the future that some revolutionary democrats persistently painted. Leskov’s drama was that he, just like the sixties, respected the people, their hard work, patience, wisdom, talent and wanted a better life for them, but unlike representatives of the democratic camp, he did not have ready-made solutions and painfully searched for sources and ways transformation and strengthening of the Fatherland.

Many of Leskov’s works are imbued with faith in the inexhaustible forces hidden in the Russian people, in their national character. He looked for the most striking manifestations of the national spirit in various spheres of Russian life and social strata of Russian society, among peasants, artisans, nobles, etc. His stories “Odnodum” (1879), “Non-Lethal Golovan” (1880), “Man on the Clock” (1887), “Unmercenary Engineers” (1887) and others reflected the writer’s ideas not only about the Russian national character, but also about moral the potential of the individual, the origins of her inner strength, sincerity and purity of spiritual impulses.

M. Gorky wrote that Leskov created “for Russia the iconostasis of its saints and righteous people.” This did not mean the writer’s desire to idealize the Russian people. Leskov revealed the complexity and inconsistency of the characters of his heroes, the interaction of heterogeneous principles in them. Back in 1865, in the story “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk,” he showed the terrible outcome of the heroine’s rebellion, in which, on the one hand, the desire to love and be free, the sincerity of impulses, the awakening of the need to comprehend another person, and on the other, the lack of clear moral guidelines, blind submission to the laws of the environment, selfishness and cruelty.

And in later works Leskov depicts drama internal struggle heroes, emphasizing that its outcome depends on a person’s ability to realize his purpose and find his way in life. The hero of the story “The Enchanted Wanderer” (1873) experienced many trials before he felt the desire to “suffer” for another person, and later “to die for the people....”

One of Leskov’s most significant works was the chronicle novel “Soborians” (1872), where he with great sympathy recreated the original and harmonious world of people to whom faith gave strength. But the writer did not idealize church life (later he would publish “Trifles of Bishop’s Life” (1878) and other works ridiculing the morals of the church elite), he only wanted to emphasize the need for the existence of an ideal, faith, the absence of which, according to the main character of the chronicle, Archpriest Tuberozov, “will destroy Russia.” The idea of ​​“reverence for the deeds of the great ancestors” is also expressed in other chronicle novels by Leskov: “Old Years in the Village of Plodomasovo” (1869) and “A Seedy Family” (1874).

The chronicle genre became one of the main ones in the prose of the writer, who consciously sought to reform the traditional form of the novel, which, in his opinion, did not meet the needs of depiction. real life. In addition, the writer gave preference to such epic genres (stories, essays), which were more consistent with his desire to depict “the little things in life.”

A distinctive feature of Leskov’s author’s style was the ability to combine in his work the affirmation of high moral ideals, depiction of the best features of the national character and criticism of the negative aspects of Russian life (contained both in “Councils” and in a number of other works). Satirical tendencies in Leskov's works have intensified over the years and even opened his way to the pages of the democratic press. It is no coincidence that in 1883 Leskov, who returned to public service in 1874 due to financial difficulties, was again forced to leave it due to the “incompatibility” of literary pursuits with the service. From 1883 to 1894, Leskov wrote a lot, working in a variety of genres (essay, Christmas story, parable, legend, etc.). The last year of his life (1895) was overshadowed by the refusal to publish the story “The Hare Remise”. In February 1895, the writer died of pulmonary edema.

Leskov’s work, which not only reflected the contradictions of Russian life, but also revealed the origins of its revival, showing the originality of the national character and spiritual potential of the people, became an important stage in the formation of the national identity of Russian literature.

Nikolai Leskov Portrait of Nikolai Leskov by Valentin Serov, 1894. Birth name... Wikipedia

Nikolai Semenovich Leskov- Russian writer Nikolai Semenovich Leskov was born on February 16 (February 4, old style) 1831 in the village of Gorokhovo, Oryol province. His grandfather was a clergyman in the village of Leski, Karachevsky district, Oryol province. From the name of the village Leski there was... Encyclopedia of Newsmakers

Nikolay Leskov N. S. Leskov. Drawing by I. E. Repin, 1888-89. Birth name: Nikolai Semenovich Leskov Aliases: M. Stebnitsky Date of birth: February 4 (16), 1831 (18310216) ... Wikipedia

Nikolai Mikhailovich Lyubimov (November 20, 1912, Moscow December 22, 1992) famous Soviet translator, mainly from French and Spanish. State Prize (1978) for participation in the publication of the Library of World Literature in 200 volumes ... Wikipedia

- (November 20, 1912, Moscow December 22, 1992) famous Soviet translator, mainly from French and Spanish. State Prize (1978) for participation in the publication of the Library of World Literature in 200 volumes. Lyubimov translated more... ... Wikipedia

An outstanding writer, at the beginning of his literary career known under the pseudonym M. Stebnitsky. Genus. February 4, 1831 in the Oryol province, in a poor, semi-spiritual, semi-noble family. His father was the son of a priest and only because of his service... Large biographical encyclopedia

Nikolai Semenovich (1831 1895) Russian writer. R. in the village of Gorokhov, Oryol province. in the family of a person from the clergy who had served the rank of nobility. In 1847, after the death of his father and the destruction of all his small property from a fire, he left the gymnasium and entered... Literary encyclopedia

Leskov, Nikolai Semenovich- Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov. Leskov, Nikolai Semenovich LESKOV Nikolai Semenovich (1831 95), Russian writer. Anti-nihilistic novels (“Nowhere”, 1864; “On Knives”, 1870 71); chronicle novels about the Russian province (about the clergy “Soboryan”, 1872; about ... ... Illustrated Encyclopedic Dictionary

Leskov, Nikolai Semenovich, is an outstanding writer, at the beginning of his literary career known under the pseudonym M. Stebnitsky. Born on February 4, 1831, died on February 21, 1895. His father, the son of a priest, served as a noble assessor... ... Biographical Dictionary

Books

• , Nikolai Leskov. “He perfectly felt that elusive thing that is called the soul of the people,” said M. Gorky about the author of the famous “Lefty”, “The Enchanted Wanderer”, “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk”. Original…
• Nikolai Leskov. Small collected works, Nikolai Leskov. He perfectly felt that elusive thing called the soul of the people, M. Gorky said about the author of the famous Lefty, The Enchanted Wanderer, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk...

Nikolai Semenovich Leskov is one of the most amazing and original Russian writers, whose fate in literature cannot be called simple. During his lifetime, his works mostly caused a negative attitude and were not accepted by the majority of progressive people of the second half of the nineteenth century. Meanwhile, Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy called him “the most Russian writer,” and Anton Pavlovich Chekhov considered him one of his teachers.

It can be said that Leskov’s work was truly appreciated only at the beginning of the twentieth century, when articles by M. Gorky, B. Eikhenbaum and others were published. L. Tolstoy’s words that Nikolai Semenovich was “the writer of the future” turned out to be truly prophetic.

Origin

Leskov’s creative destiny was largely determined by the environment in which he spent his childhood and adult life.
He was born in 1831, February 4 (16 according to the new style), in the Oryol province. His ancestors were hereditary clergymen. The grandfather and great-grandfather were priests in the village of Leska, which is where the writer’s surname most likely came from. However, Semyon Dmitrievich, the author’s father, broke this tradition and received the title of nobleman for his service in the Oryol chamber of the criminal court. Marya Petrovna, the writer’s mother, nee Alfereva, also belonged to this class. Her sisters were married to wealthy people: one to an Englishman, the other to an Oryol landowner. This fact will also have an impact on Leskov’s life and work in the future.

In 1839, Semyon Dmitrievich had a conflict in the service, and he and his family moved to Panin Farm, where his son’s real acquaintance with the original Russian speech began.

Education and beginning of service

The writer N. S. Leskov began his studies in the family of wealthy relatives of the Strakhovs, who hired German and Russian teachers and a French governess for their children. Even then, the extraordinary talent of little Nikolai was fully revealed. But he never received a “great” education. In 1841, the boy was sent to the Oryol provincial gymnasium, from which he left five years later with two classes of education. Perhaps the reason for this lay in the peculiarities of teaching, built on rote learning and rules, far from the lively and inquisitive mind that Leskov possessed. The writer's biography includes further service in the treasury chamber, where his father served (1847-1849), and a transfer at his own request after his tragic death as a result of cholera to the treasury chamber of the city of Kyiv, where his maternal uncle S.P. Alferyev lived. The years of stay here gave a lot to the future writer. Leskov attended lectures at Kiev University as a free listener, independently studied the Polish language, for some time became interested in icon painting and even attended a religious and philosophical circle. Acquaintance with Old Believers and pilgrims also influenced Leskov’s life and work.

Work at Schcott and Wilkens

A real school for Nikolai Semenovich was working in the company of his English relative (aunt’s husband) A. Schcott in 1857-1860 (before the collapse of the trading house). According to the writer himself, these were the best years when he “saw a lot and lived easily.” Due to the nature of his service, he had to constantly travel around the country, which provided enormous material in all spheres of life of Russian society. “I grew up among the people,” Nikolai Leskov later wrote. His biography is an acquaintance with Russian life first-hand. This is being in a truly popular environment and personal knowledge of all the hardships of life that befall the common peasant.

In 1860, Nikolai Semenovich returned to Kyiv for a short time, after which he ended up in St. Petersburg, where his serious literary activity began.

Leskov's creativity: formation

The writer's first articles on corruption in medical and police circles were published in Kyiv. They aroused strong responses and became the main reason that the future writer was forced to leave his service and go in search of a new place of residence and work, which is what St. Petersburg became for him.
Here Leskov immediately declares himself as a publicist and is published in “Notes of the Fatherland”, “Northern Bee”, “Russian Speech”. For several years, he signed his works with the pseudonym M. Stebnitsky (there were others, but this one was used most often), which soon became quite notorious.

In 1862 there was a fire in the Shchukin and Apraksin courtyards. Nikolai Semenovich Leskov responded vividly to this event. A brief biography of his life includes such an episode as an angry tirade from the tsar himself. In an article about the fires published in the Northern Bee, the writer expressed his point of view regarding who could be involved in them and what their purpose was. He believed that the nihilistic youth, who never enjoyed his respect, were to blame for everything. The authorities were accused of not paying enough attention to the investigation of the incident, and the arsonists remained undetected. The criticism that immediately fell upon Leskov both from democratically minded circles and from the administration forced him to leave St. Petersburg for a long time, since no explanations from the writer regarding the article written were accepted.

The western borders of the Russian Empire and Europe - Nikolai Leskov visited these places during the months of disgrace. His biography from that time on included, on the one hand, recognition of a writer who was absolutely unlike anyone else, and on the other, constant suspicions, sometimes reaching the point of insults. They were especially evident in the statements of D. Pisarev, who considered that Stebnitsky’s name alone would be enough to cast a shadow both on the magazine publishing his works and on the writers who found the courage to publish together with the scandalous author.

Novel "Nowhere"

His first serious work of art. In 1864, the Reading Magazine published his novel Nowhere, begun two years earlier during a trip to the West. It satirically depicted representatives of the nihilists that were quite popular at that time, and in the appearance of some of them the features of real people were clearly discernible. And again attacks with accusations of distorting reality and that the novel is the fulfillment of an “order” from certain circles. Nikolai Leskov himself was critical of the work. His biography, primarily creative, was predetermined for many years by this novel: his works were refused to be published by the leading magazines of the time for a long time.

The origin of the fantastic form

In the 1860s, Leskov wrote several stories (among them “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk”), in which the features of a new style were gradually defined, which later became a kind of calling card of the writer. This is a tale with amazing, unique humor and a special approach to depicting reality. Already in the twentieth century, these works would be highly appreciated by many writers and literary critics, and Leskov, whose biography is one of constant clashes with leading representatives of the second half of the nineteenth century, will be placed on a par with N. Gogol, M. Dostoevsky, L. Tolstoy, A. Chekhov. However, at the time of publication, practically no attention was paid to them, since everyone was still under the impression of his previous publications. Negative criticism was also caused by the production at the Alexandria Theater of the play “The Spendthrift” about the Russian merchants, and the novel “On the Knives” (all about the same nihilists), because of which Leskov entered into a sharp polemic with the editor of the magazine “Russian Messenger” M. Katkov, where his works were mostly published.

Showing true talent

Only after going through numerous accusations, sometimes reaching the point of direct insults, was N. S. Leskov able to find a real reader. His biography took a sharp turn in 1872, when the novel “The Soborians” was published. Its main theme is the opposition of the true Christian faith to the official one, and the main characters are the clergy of the old days and the nihilists and officials of all ranks and areas, including the church, opposed to them. This novel became the beginning of the creation of works dedicated to the Russian clergy and local nobles who preserve folk traditions. Under his pen, a harmonious and original world emerges, built on faith. The works also contain criticism of the negative aspects of the current system in Russia. Later, this feature of the writer’s style will still open the way for him to democratic literature.

"The Tale of the Tula Oblique Left-Hander..."

Perhaps the most striking image created by the writer was Lefty, drawn in a work whose genre - a guild legend - was determined by Leskov himself during its first publication. The biography of one forever became inseparable from the life of the other. And the writer’s writing style is most often recognized precisely by the story about a skilled master. Many critics immediately seized on the version put forward by the writer in the preface that this work was just a retold legend. Leskov had to write an article about how, in fact, “Lefty” is the fruit of his imagination and long observations of the life of an ordinary person. So briefly, Leskov was able to draw attention to the talent of the Russian peasant, as well as to the economic and cultural backwardness of Russia in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Later creativity

In the 1870s, Leskov was an employee of the educational department of the Academic Committee in the Ministry of Public Education, then an employee of the Ministry of State Property. Service never brought him much joy, so he accepted his resignation in 1883 as an opportunity to become independent. Literary activity has always remained the main thing for the writer. “The Enchanted Wanderer”, “The Captured Angel”, “The Man on the Clock”, “The Non-Lethal Golovan”, “The Stupid Artist”, “Evil” - this is a small part of the works that Leskov N. S. wrote in the 1870-1880s. Stories and the stories are united by the images of the righteous - heroes who are straightforward, fearless, and unable to put up with evil. Quite often, the basis of the works was made up of memories or surviving old manuscripts. And among the heroes, along with fictional ones, there were also prototypes of real people, which gave the plot special authenticity and truthfulness. Over the years, the works themselves increasingly acquired satirical and accusatory features. As a result, stories and novels later years, including “Invisible Trace”, “Falcon Flight”, “Hare Remise” and, of course, “Devil’s Dolls”, where Tsar Nicholas the First served as the prototype for the main character, were not published at all or were published with extensive censorship edits. According to Leskov, the publication of works, always quite problematic, in his declining years became completely unbearable.

Personal life

Leskov’s family life was not easy either. He married for the first time in 1853 to O. V. Smirnova, the daughter of a wealthy and famous businessman in Kyiv. From this marriage two children were born: daughter Vera and son Mitya (died in infancy). Family life was short-lived: the spouses, initially different people, grew increasingly distant from each other. The situation was aggravated by the death of their son, and already in the early 1860s they separated. Subsequently, Leskov’s first wife ended up in a psychiatric hospital, where the writer visited her until his death.

In 1865, Nikolai Semenovich became friends with E. Bubnova, they lived in a civil marriage, but also with her common life didn't work out. Their son, Andrei, remained with Leskov after his parents separated. He later compiled a biography of his father, published in 1954.

Such a person was Nikolai Semenovich Leskov, whose brief biography is of interest to every connoisseur of Russian classical literature.

In the footsteps of the great writer

N. S. Leskov died on February 21 (March 5, new style) 1895. His body rests in the Volkov Cemetery (on the Literary Stage), on the grave there is a granite pedestal and a large cast-iron cross. And Leskov’s house on Furshtadskaya Street, where he spent the last years of his life, can be recognized by a memorial plaque installed in 1981.

The memory of the original writer, who more than once returned to his native places in his works, was truly immortalized in the Oryol region. Here, in his father’s house, the only Leskov literary and memorial museum in Russia is opened. Thanks to his son, Andrei Nikolaevich, it contains a large number of unique exhibits related to the life of Leskov: a child, a writer, a public figure. Among them are personal belongings, valuable documents and manuscripts, letters, including the writer’s class journal, and watercolors depicting Nikolai Semenovich’s home and relatives.

And in the old part of Orel, for the anniversary date - 150 years since his birth - a monument to Leskov was erected by Yu. Yu. and Yu. G. Orekhov, A. V. Stepanov. The writer sits on a pedestal-sofa. In the background is the Church of the Archangel Michael, which was mentioned more than once in Leskov’s works.