The message about Leskov's work is brief. Nikolai Leskov - biography, information, personal life

In the village of Gorokhovo, Oryol province, in the family of a petty official.

His father was the son of a priest and received the nobility only through his service as a noble assessor of the Oryol Chamber of the Criminal Court. Mother belonged to the noble family of the Alferyevs. Nikolay grew up in the wealthy home of one of his maternal uncles, where he received his early education.

Then he studied at the Oryol gymnasium, but the death of his father and the terrible Oryol fires of the 1840s, during which all the small property of the Leskovs perished, did not give him the opportunity to complete the course.

In 1847, Leskov left his studies at the gymnasium and entered the service of a clerk in the Oryol Chamber of the Criminal Court.

In 1849, he transferred to Kiev as an assistant clerk of the recruiting presence. In 1857, he entered the private service of the Russian Shipping and Trade Society, and then worked as an agent managing the estates of Naryshkin and Perovsky. This service, connected with traveling around Russia, enriched Leskov with a reserve of observations.

Having published several articles in Modern Medicine, Economic Index and St. Petersburg Vedomosti in 1860, Leskov moved to St. Petersburg in 1861 and devoted himself to literary activity.

In the 1860s, he created a number of realistic stories and novellas: "Extinguished Case" (1862), "Stingy" (1863), "The Life of a Woman" (1863), "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District" (1865), "Warrior" (1866), the play "The Spender" (1867), etc.

His story The Musk Ox (1863), the novels Nowhere (1864; under the pseudonym M. Stebnitsky) and The Bypassed (1865) were directed against the "new people". Leskov tried to show the futility and groundlessness of the efforts of the revolutionary camp, created caricatured types of nihilists in the story "The Mysterious Man" (1870) and especially in the novel "On Knives" (1870-1871).

In the 1870s, Leskov began to create a gallery of types of the righteous - powerful in spirit, talented patriots of the Russian land. This theme is devoted to the novel "Cathedrals" (1872), novels and short stories "The Enchanted Wanderer", "The Sealed Angel" (both 1873).

In 1874, Leskov was appointed a member of the educational department of the Scientific Committee of the Ministry of Public Education, and in 1877, a member of the educational department of the Ministry of State Property. In 1880, Leskov left the Ministry of State Property, and in 1883 he was dismissed without a request from the Ministry of Public Education and devoted himself entirely to writing.

Leskov's rapprochement with right-wing social circles belongs to this period: the Slavophiles and the government party of Katkov, in whose journal "Russian Messenger" he was published in the 1870s. Essays from the life of the higher clergy "Trifles of Bishop's Life" (1878-1883) caused displeasure against Leskov in higher spheres, which caused the writer's dismissal "without a petition" from the scientific committee of the Ministry of Public Education.

The motives of the national identity of the Russian people, faith in their creative powers were reflected in Leskov's satirical story "Iron Will" (1876), "The Tale of the Tula Oblique Lefty and the Steel Flea" (1881). The theme of the death of folk talents in Russia was revealed by Leskov in the story "Dumb Artist" (1883).

At the end of his life, intensifying social and national criticism, the writer turned to satire in the works "Zagon" (1893), "Administrative Grace" (1893), "Lady and Fefela" (1894), which sometimes had a tragic sound.

On March 5 (February 21, old style), 1895, Nikolai Leskov died in St. Petersburg. He was buried at the Literary bridges of the Volkov cemetery.

Based on Leskov's story "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District", later the composer Dmitry Shostakovich created the opera of the same name (1934), which was resumed in 1962 under the title "Katerina Izmailova".

In 1853, Nikolai Leskov married the daughter of a Kiev merchant, Olga Smirnova. His wife fell ill with a mental disorder and was treated in St. Petersburg. From this marriage, the writer had a son, Dmitry, who died in infancy, in 1856, a daughter, Vera, who died in 1918.

Nikolai Leskov is called the ancestor of the Russian tale - in this regard, the writer stood on a par with. The author became famous as a publicist with a sharp pen that exposes the vices of society. And later he surprised his colleagues with his knowledge of the psychology, manners and customs of the people of his native country.

Childhood and youth

Leskov was born in the village of Gorohovo (Oryol province). The writer's father, Semyon Dmitrievich, came from an old spiritual family - his grandfather and father served as priests at a church in the village of Leski (hence the surname).

Yes, and the parent of the future writer himself graduated from the seminary, but then worked in the Oryol Criminal Chamber. He was distinguished by his great talent as an investigator, able to unravel even the most difficult case, for which he quickly rose through the ranks and received a title of nobility. Mother Maria Petrovna came from the Moscow nobility.

In the Leskov family, which settled in the administrative center of the province, five children grew up - two daughters and three sons, Nikolai was the eldest. When the boy was 8 years old, his father quarreled strongly with his superiors and, having taken the family, retired to the village of Panino, where he took up agriculture - he plowed, sowed, and looked after the garden.

Relations with young Kolya were disgusting. For five years the boy studied at the Oryol gymnasium, and in the end he had a certificate of completion of only two classes. Leskov's biographers blame the education system of those times for this, which repelled the desire to comprehend science with cramming and inertness. Especially for such extraordinary, creative personalities as Kolya Leskov.

Nicholas had to go to work. The father placed the offspring in the criminal chamber as an employee, and a year later he died of cholera. At the same time, another grief struck the Leskov family - the house with all the property burned to the ground.

Young Nikolai went to get acquainted with the world. At his own request, the young man was transferred to the state chamber in Kiev, where his uncle lived and taught at the university. In the Ukrainian capital, Leskov plunged into an interesting, eventful life - he became interested in languages, literature, philosophy, sat at a desk as a volunteer at the university, spun in the circles of sectarians and Old Believers.

The work of another uncle enriched the life experience of the future writer. The English husband of my mother's sister called his nephew to his company Schcott and Wilkens, the position involved long and frequent business trips throughout Russia. The writer called this time the best in his biography.

Literature

The idea to devote his life to the art of the word visited Leskov for a long time. For the first time, the young man thought about the career of a writer, traveling around the Russian expanses with assignments from the Schcott and Wilkens company - trips gave bright events and types of people who just asked to be written on paper.

Nikolai Semenovich made his first steps into literature as a publicist. He wrote articles "on the topic of the day" in St. Petersburg and Kiev newspapers, officials and police doctors were criticized for corruption. The success of the publications was grandiose, several official investigations were launched.

A test of the pen as an author of works of art happened only at the age of 32 - Nikolai Leskov wrote the story "The Life of a Woman" (today we know her as "Cupid in Lapotochki"), which was received by readers of the Library for Reading magazine.

From the very first works, the writer was talked about as a master who can vividly convey female images with a tragic fate. And all because, after the first story, brilliant, heartfelt and complex essays “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District” and “The Warrior” came out. Leskov skillfully wove individual humor and sarcasm into the presented dark side of life, demonstrating a unique style that was later recognized as a kind of tale.

The range of literary interests of Nikolai Semenovich included dramaturgy. Starting in 1867, the writer began to create plays for theaters. One of the popular ones is "Spender".

Leskov loudly declared himself and as a novelist. In the books "Nowhere", "Bypassed", "On Knives" he ridiculed revolutionaries and nihilists, declaring Russia's unpreparedness for radical changes. Such an assessment of the writer's work after reading the novel "On Knives" gave:

“... after the evil novel “On the Knives”, Leskov’s literary work immediately becomes a bright painting or, rather, icon painting, he begins to create an iconostasis of her saints and righteous for Russia.”

After the release of novels critical of the revolutionary democrats, the editors of the magazines staged a boycott of Leskov. Only Mikhail Katkov, head of the Russky Vestnik, did not refuse to cooperate with the writer, but it was impossible to work with this writer - he mercilessly corrected the manuscript.

The next work, included in the treasury of native literature, was the legend of the masters of weapons "Lefty". In it, Leskov's unique style shone with new facets, the author sprinkled with original neologisms, layered events on top of each other, creating a complex frame. They started talking about Nikolai Semenovich as a strong writer.

In the 70s, the writer was going through difficult times. The Ministry of Public Education appointed Leskov to the post of evaluator of new books - he decided whether publications could be passed to the reader or not, and received a meager salary for this. In addition, the next story "The Enchanted Wanderer" was rejected by all editors, including Katkov.

The writer conceived this work as an alternative to the traditional genre of the novel. The story united unrelated plots, and they are not finished. Critics smashed the "free form" to smithereens, and Nikolai Semenovich had to publish fragments of his offspring in a scattering of publications.

In the future, the author turned to the creation of idealized characters. From his pen came a collection of short stories "The Righteous", which included sketches "The Man on the Clock", "Figure" and others. The writer presented straightforward conscientious people, arguing that he met everyone on the path of life. However, critics and colleagues took the work with sarcasm. In the 80s, the righteous acquired religious features - Leskov wrote about the heroes of early Christianity.

At the end of his life, Nikolai Semenovich again turned to exposing officials, the military, representatives of the church, giving literature the works “The Beast”, “Dumb Artist”, “Scarecrow”. And it was at this time that Leskov wrote stories for children's reading, which were gladly accepted by magazine editors.

Among the geniuses of literature, who became famous later, there were loyal admirers of Nikolai Leskov. considered the nugget from the Oryol hinterland "the most Russian writer", and they elevated the man to the rank of their mentors.

Personal life

By the standards of the 19th century, the personal life of Nikolai Semenovich was unsuccessful. The writer managed to go down the aisle twice, and the second time when his first wife was alive.

Leskov married early, at 22. The chosen one was Olga Smirnova, heiress of the Kiev entrepreneur. In this marriage, a daughter, Vera, and a son, Mitya, were born, who died while still young. The wife suffered from a mental disorder and later was often treated at the St. Nicholas clinic in St. Petersburg.

Nikolai Semenovich, in fact, lost his wife and decided to enter into a civil marriage with Ekaterina Bubnova, who had been a widow for several years. In 1866, Leskov became a father for the third time - his son Andrei was born. Along this line, in 1922, the future ballet celebrity Tatyana Leskova, the great-granddaughter of the author of The Enchanted Wanderer, was born. But Nikolai Semenovich did not get along with his second wife either, after 11 years the couple separated.

Leskov was known as an ideological vegetarian, he believed that animals should not be killed for food. The man published an article in which he divided vegans into two camps - those who eat meat, observing a kind of fast, and those who pity innocent living beings. He referred himself to the latter. The writer called for the creation of a cookbook for Russian like-minded people, which would include "green" recipes from products available to Russians. And in 1893 such a publication appeared.

Death

Nikolai Leskov suffered from asthma all his life, in recent years the disease has worsened, asthma attacks have become more frequent.

On February 21 (March 5, according to a new style), 1895, the writer failed to cope with the aggravation of the disease. They buried Nikolai Semenovich in St. Petersburg at the Volkovskoye cemetery.

Bibliography

• 1863 - "The Life of a Woman"
• 1864 - "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District"
• 1864 - "Nowhere"
• 1865 - "Bypassed"
• 1866 - "Islanders"
• 1866 - "Warrior"
• 1870 - "On knives"
• 1872 - "Cathedrals"
• 1872 - "The Sealed Angel"
• 1873 - "The Enchanted Wanderer"
• 1874 - "The Seedy Family"
• 1881 - "Lefty"
• 1890 - "Damn's Dolls"

The unprecedented talent of Leskov, one of the greatest Russian classic writers, the brightly original, original artistic world he created, neither during the life of the writer, nor for a long time after his death, could not be appreciated. “Dostoevsky is equal, he is a missed genius,” Igor Severyanin’s poetic line about Leskov, until recently, sounded like a bitter truth.

They tried to present Leskov either as a writer of everyday life, or as a storyteller of jokes, or as a verbal “magician”, at best, an unsurpassed “word magician”, etc.

The originality of the writer is primarily associated with his spiritual and moral views, which largely determined the ideological and thematic content of his work, his unique artistic and figurative system, as well as an independent writer's position in various social issues. Leskov was convinced that books should "not only occupy the reader's attention, but give some good direction to his thoughts." The writer associated this “good direction” with Christianity, noting: “I meant<...>the importance of the gospel, which, in my opinion, contains the deepest meaning of life» . “Truth, goodness and beauty” (V, 88) - in this triune formula, Leskov expressed the ideal to which one must strive.

Possessing a rare artistic range, uncommon in the breadth of coverage of the phenomena of reality, the writer managed to aesthetically embody the multicolored fullness of the world. As an epic hero of the Russian epic, Leskov, in his words, “was “burdened” by the knowledge of his native land” (XI, 321), which received a complete artistic expression in the creation of a three-dimensional stereoscopic, sometimes mosaically colorful picture of life in Russia. The writer “through Russian”, who knew the Russian person “into his very depths”, embodied in his heroes - with their speech, attitude, spiritual impulses - all the essential features of the national character. In Leskov's prose, "like no other writer of our land", "a whole world of unprecedented beauty, unique images, sparkling fantasy, a painted, bizarre world, where Russia smells - both sweet and bitter, and tender, and smoky" opens up.

At the same time, Leskov had, in his words, "the consciousness of human kinship with the whole world." Leskov's artistic universe grew out of a close fusion with major achievements in world literature, Russian and foreign socio-philosophical thought. Preachingly affirming his ideals, the writer relied on "a truly universal cultural and moral tradition" . Thomas Mann rightly noted that Leskov wrote "in the most wonderful Russian language and proclaimed the soul of his people in the way that only one other than him did - Dostoevsky."

Leskov entered the literary field in the 1860s, already a mature, mature person with great life experience and a huge stock of worldly observations. Having not completed his education at the Oryol gymnasium, the future writer comprehended “his universities” “self-taught” (XI, 18). At the age of 15, he entered the state service, worked in a small position as a scribe, and already here he learned a lot of lively and interesting material for creativity. Oryol's impressions formed the basis of many of Leskov's works, and it was not by chance that the writer emphasized: "in literature, they consider me an Orlovite."

An inexhaustible source of literary materials was also the work of Leskov in the commercial firm Schcott and Wilkens. Subsequently, in "A note about myself"(1890), the writer recalled that "he traveled to Russia in a variety of directions, and this gave him a great abundance of impressions and a store of everyday information" (XI, 18).

At the beginning of his creative path, Leskov acted as a publicist. He collaborated in various periodicals in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and already the first publications of the "newest Orlovets" attracted the attention of readers with topical issues, lively reliability and volume of knowledge, an honest author's position, and sincere intonation.

It is significant that the very beginning of Leskov's literary work is marked by the setting of a spiritual Christian theme. His first published work was a note<"On the sale of the Gospel in Kiev"> (1860). The author, advocating the spread of the Christian spirit in Russian society, expressed concern that the New Testament, which had just appeared in Russian at that time, was not accessible to everyone because of the high cost of publication. Since then, Leskov thought, spoke and wrote constantly about the "importance of the Gospel" - until his last days. In his declining years, the venerable author admitted that it was "well read gospel"(XI, 509) revealed to him the true path and his human calling.

In his debut publication, Leskov correctly believed that the situation of commercial speculation with the Gospel hindered a wide dissemination of the word of God in an understandable and accessible form. The implementation of this task - to spread the word of God in a form understandable and accessible to everyone - was subsequently the main creative setting of all Leskovsky creativity, which the literary critic M.O. Menshikov rightly called "artistic preaching."

In an effort, in his words, "to shed the light of understanding on the masses," Leskov, a publicist and educator, raised many topics: "About the working class", "A few words about those seeking commercial places in Russia", "Police doctors in Russia", "The question of eradication of drunkenness in the working class”, “Commercial bondage”, “Essays on the distillery industry”, “Russian women and emancipation”, “How do the views of some enlighteners relate to public education”, “Russian people who are “out of work””, “On resettled peasants", "About the writers of the white bone", etc.

In his notes, articles, essays, many of which are still perceived as acutely relevant today, the author not only expressed his own opinion on the burning socio-economic, political, cultural issues, but also addressed the very essence of life in Russia, not for a moment forgetting about responsible position of the "spokesman of truth", called to actively fight against evil, arbitrariness, despotism, ignorance, inertia and other vices.

On May 30, 1862, an article about the St. Petersburg fires, which became ill-fated for Leskov, appeared in the newspaper Severnaya Pchela <«Настоящие бедствия столицы»> . The author of the publication rightly urged the inactive authorities to refute the rumors about arsonists or - if the rumors are not unfounded - to find and punish the villains. However, in the heated political atmosphere of those years, these calls were misinterpreted. Leskov found himself in a position "between two fires." The “Fire Article” provoked severe attacks from the “right” and “left”: Alexander II expressed his disapproval from the ruling camp, radical criticism actually announced a boycott to Leskov. The writer, according to him, was "crucified alive", became a target for ridicule and bullying.

Since then, he has been blazing a “third” path for himself - “against the currents”, looking for a “road opposite to all”. “Not submitting to any party or any other pressures” (XI, 222), Leskov refused “with feigned reverence to carry the tinsel cords of anyone’s direction standard” (XI, 234). " Your solitary position"(XI, 425) the writer emphasized in demonstrative self-characteristics: “The matter is simple: I am not a nihilist and not an autocrat, not an absolutist, and I do not seek my glory, but the glory of the Father who sent me” (XI, 425).

The origins of writing, stated in Leskov's journalism, resulted in his early artistic prose: in the spring of 1862, the stories “ Extinguished business», « Rogue», « In a tarantass».

It is significant that the village priest, Father Iliodor, became the first hero of Leskov's fiction. In the subtitle of his debut work of art "Extinguished business"(subsequently: "Drought") (1862) the author pointed out: From my grandfather's notes. The grandfather of Nikolai Leskov died before the birth of his grandson, but the future writer knew about him from his relatives: “the poverty and honesty of my grandfather, the priest Dimitry Leskov, was always mentioned” (XI, 8). In the character of the hero of "The Drought" much portends the central figure of the novel-chronicle "Cathedrals"(1872) - Savely Tuberozov, whose prototype was directly pointed out by the writer in "Autobiographical note" <1882 - 1885?>: “From the stories of my aunt, I got the first ideas for the novel I wrote “The Cathedral”, where, in the person of Archpriest Savely Tuberozov, I tried to portray my grandfather” (XI, 15). It is important to note that Savely's diary - "The Demicotonic Book" - opens with the date February 4, 1831 - this is Leskov's birthday (according to the old style). Thus, the writer biographically “includes” himself in the cherished text of the diary of his hero, a fearless preacher of the word of God, and shows his kinship and spiritual involvement with the “rebellious archpriest”.

Father Iliodor in The Drought is an equally attractive and powerful artistic image. This is real father for the peasants, living by their needs; disinterested, ready, without any bribe, to sing prayers for rain in order to prevent crop failure and famine; benevolent, sympathetic, paternally caring. But he can be both persistent and angry when he dissuades the peasants from their barbaric pagan plan - to make a candle from a sexton who died from drunkenness in order to stop the drought.

The story was later combined by the author with a story from folk life "Stingy"(1863) under general title "For what have we were sent to hard labor". "Drought" - also prelude to late "rhapsodies" Leskova "Vale"(1892), in which the writer exactly thirty years later showed the same wild ignorance of the "little meaningful" peasant masses - under similar circumstances (the scene is the Oryol province, the time is the famine of the 1840s and 1891).

About the pastoral ministry - “to teach, admonish, reject from every<...>nonsense and superstitions" (1, 114) - reflects the hero of Leskov's debut story. These reflections continue in his first big story "Musk Ox"(1862). The protagonist bears a significant surname - Bogoslovsky - "the bearer of the word of God." The son of a village deacon, who grew up in bitter poverty, having studied at the seminary, abandoned the career of a priest, but did not become an atheist and a nihilist. Sincerely wishing to enlighten the people, Vasily Bogoslovsky at the end of his life regrets that he did not become a clergyman, to whose authoritative word people are used to listening: “ Vaska is stupid! Why aren't you pop? Why did you clip the wings of your word? A teacher is not in a robe - a jester to the people, a reproach to himself, an idea - a pernicious ”(I, 94).

"Musk ox" - Bogoslovsky - "a strange beast within our black earth strip" (I, 34) - written off from life. The prototype of the eccentric hero was Pavel Ivanovich Yakushkin, a well-known folklorist and ethnographer, whose image was included in the poem by N.A. Nekrasov "Who should live well in Russia" under the name "Pavlusha Veretennikov". Subsequently, Leskov dedicated an essay to his countryman “Comradely memories of P.I. Yakushkino (1884).

The naive attempt of the heroes to both the story and the essay to propagate among the people remained unfulfilled. The very “idea” with which they go to the people is unclear: “In readiness<...>it never occurred to anyone to doubt him to sacrifice for the chosen idea, but this idea was not easy to find under the skull of our Musk Ox ”(I, 32). Bogoslovsky is often referred to as a "clown", "eccentric", even a "retired comedian" (I, 88). Yakushkin for men - "someone mummers"(XI, 73). The heroes do not have confidence in the correctness of the chosen path: “Oh, if only I knew what could be done with this! .. I am groping my way” (I, 49).

"New people" - revolutionary democrats in the novel by N.G. Chernyshevsky "What to do?" (1863) - as conceived by the author, they knew where go. Leskov's writer's intuition, who did not share the position of the revolutionary "impatients," told him that this was a tragic path. The fates of his heroes end in a dead end, meaningfully named in the story "Musk Ox" by a word-symbol "nowhere". Convinced that life is ruled by “men of the pocket” (I, 85), like the businessman Alexander Sviridov, Vasily Bogoslovsky comes to the hopeless conclusion: “There is nowhere to go. Everywhere is the same. You can't jump over the Alexandrov Ivanovichs" (I, 85). The hero commits suicide.

The way out of the impasse and the tragedy that lies in wait for a person was outlined in the author's lyrical digression - one of the most poetic fragments of Leskov's artistic world - in describing the impressions of his childhood trips to monasteries, his own first experiences of Orthodox piety, pure, not clouded by corrosive skepticism of faith, communication with the monastic a person who knows that the solution to the meaning of life does not exist outside of God.

The writer continued the study of the issue of social transformations of Russian reality, the problems of the liberation movement in the "polemical" novel "Nowhere"(1864). Here, the tragic word-image, which was previously heard in the Musk Ox, is defiantly placed in the title.

Following Turgenev's novel "Fathers and Sons" (1862), Leskov explores the socio-historical contradictions of a critical era, the problem of nihilism, the clash of "fathers" and "children", conservative and radical environments, "old" Russia and "new people" burning with the desire to reshape the general way of life. The author's task is to "separate the real nihilists from the crazy mongrels who shouted themselves nihilists" (X, 21).

Previously, in the article Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky in his novel What Is to Be Done?(1863) - Leskov sympathetically spoke of "real nihilists" who "patiently move towards their intended goal, caring first of all about the establishment of the broadest honesty in the community" (X, 20). At the same time, the writer mercilessly stigmatized "a rude, crazed and dirty in the soul crowd of empty and insignificant people who distorted the healthy type of Bazarov and profaned the ideas of nihilism" (X, 19).

"Pure nihilists" are represented in "Nowhere" in the images of Wilhelm Reiner (his prototype was Arthur Benny, to whom Leskov dedicated an essay "Mysterious person"- 1870), Lisa Bakhareva, Justin Pomada. These are magnanimous, selfless, heroic natures, ready to sacrifice their own lives for the sake of the ideal of “an unquenchable thirst for light and truth” (4, 159). Reiner died as a martyr. Lisa set out on her journey to be by his side on the day of her lover's execution. Having experienced a severe moral shock, on the way back she caught a cold and died of pneumonia.

The self-proclaimed nihilists with their vulgar profanation of pure ideals, their calls to "drench Russia" can only "clog the path". With such companions, the heroes - romantics of the high moral idea of ​​"the greatest possible good for the greatest possible number of people" (XI, 660) - have nowhere to go. A complete fiasco is suffered by the vulgar poseur and scoundrel Beloyartsev, who organized the House of Concord as a pseudo-model of a socialist hostel. In reality, the Znamenskaya commune of V. Sleptsov, who recognized himself in the image of Beloyartsev, suffered the same failure.

The pamphlet nature of the novel, the similarity of the characters with real prototypes provoked an angry rebuff from radical criticism. The ideological leader of the Russian nihilists D.I. Pisarev (also a countryman of the writer - Orlovets). In the article “A Walk in the Gardens of Russian Literature” (1865), he delivered a guilty verdict to Leskov, which was destined to stick to the name of the writer for a long time: “For twenty years in a row ... I carried vile slander, and it spoiled me a little - just one life...» (XI, 659). The doors of democratic printed publications were closed for Leskov: “After all, there is simply nowhere to stick to the one who wrote “Nowhere”” (XI, 810). For some time he collaborated in the conservative journal Russky Vestnik, whose editor M.N. Katkov subsequently declared about Leskov: "this man is not ours!" (XI, 509). The writer, not without reason, called Katkov "the murderer of his native literature" (X, 412).

Leskov's work is imbued with genuine, non-bookish knowledge of folk life. In a series of articles "Russian Society in Paris"(1863), the author proudly declared: “I did not study the people from conversations with St. Petersburg cabbies, but I increased among the people on the Gostomel pasture<...>so it is obscene to me neither to raise the people on stilts, nor to put them under my feet. I was my own person with the people ”(3, 206 - 207). The childhood of the future writer was spent near the Gostoml river on Panin's farm in the Kromsky district of the Oryol province. It is no coincidence that his first fictional works about folk life, fanned by the folklore-song element, are distinguished by the accuracy of toponymy and ethnography and are subtitled “From Gostomel Memories”: the story “ Mind his own, but damn his own "(1863), "peasant romance" "The life of a woman"(1863) - about beauty, talent, human dignity and the tragic fate of women from the common people. With the word “life”, the author emphasized the height and holiness of the suffering life of his heroine, the Gostomel peasant-songwriter Nastya Prokudina.

Leskov's acute interest in extraordinary, incomprehensible female characters also affected the essays "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District"(1865) and "Warrior" (1866).

In the Russian hinterland - in the county town of Mtsensk, Oryol province - the writer found a character of Shakespearean scale. The nature of "Lady Macbeth" - the merchant's wife Katerina Izmailova, who is passionately in love with the clerk Sergei and committed a series of bloody atrocities and the sin of suicide in the name of this passion, causes amazement and horror: "You can’t put Leskov’s four-time murderer for the sake of love into any typology of characters." Explanations from educational positions - the destructive influence of an inert environment, passions that have gone out of control of the mind - will be clearly insufficient.

Like Dostoevsky, in whose periodical Epoch the story was first published, Leskov plunges into the study of the abyss of good and evil that wage a continuous battle in the human soul. The struggle of angels with demons is especially evident in the scene of the murder of the child heir. Shortly before his death, Fedya invites the "aunt" to read the life of his Angel - St. Theodore Stratilates: "So he pleased God" (I, 127). “Katerina Lvovna propped herself up on her hand and began to look at Fedya moving his lips, and suddenly, like demons, they broke loose from the chain” (I, 125). The demonic principle prevails in the soul of a prudent and fearless criminal, stupefied by her passion, devoid of religious feelings: “she is not afraid of God, conscience, or human eyes” (I, 130).

From the point of view of Christian ideas, evil is steadily leading its carriers to self-destruction. Just as in the gospel parable the demons that entered the pigs rushed into the abyss, so Katerina Lvovna perishes in the abyss of water, dragging her rival with her and forcing the audience of this terrible drama to petrify with fear.

The dramatic intertwined with the comic presented Leskov in "Warrior". The heroine of the essay, Domna Platonovna, is also a former Mtsensk merchant's wife who settled in the capital. This brisk "business woman" devotes herself to "hard work" and leads, in her words, "the most intermittent life" (I, 149). She participates in a mass of small commercial and intermediary transactions: she woo brides and grooms, finds money on mortgage, looks for work as governesses and lackeys, delivers secret love notes to the boudoirs of secular ladies. At the same time, these eternal chores are the need of an active, energetic nature: “I am very envious of the cause; my heart will even leap, as I see what the matter is” (I, 150). Here, a kind of artistry of a gifted character is revealed: she “loved her job as an artist: to compose, collect, cook and admire the works of her hands” (I, 151). “Petersburg circumstances”, where “every person manages even more” and a lot of “deceptions and inventions” (I, 145), evoke a negative attitude of the heroine: “repulsion and only” (I, 146). At the same time, she herself, simple and kind-hearted, is involved in this predatory, cynical world, acting in the low role of a pimp in the story of the young noblewoman Lekanida, who got into trouble, whose mental anguish is incomprehensible to Domna Platonovna.

At the end of her life, she was sent a kind of "retribution" - reckless love for the good-for-nothing guy Valerka half her age, to whom she gave everything she had.

In "The Warrior" for the first time in the work of Leskov, his inimitable skill was fully manifested skaz in which the writer had no equal. The narrative form of free speech, the oral storytelling of the hero - in his voice, in his own manner and with characteristic intonations - is a multifaceted linguistic prism. “Setting the writer’s voice,” Leskov explained, “is the ability to master the voice and language of his hero<...>my priests speak in a spiritual way, nihilists - in a nihilistic way, peasants - in a peasant way, upstarts from them and buffoons - with frills, etc. ” . At the same time, the ability to “speak” through the mouths of one’s heroes becomes the most important artistic way of comprehending the very essence of character, consciousness, human psychology, as well as the deep foundations of national life.

In the mid-1860s, Leskov created two novels on themes from Petersburg life - "Bypassed"(1865) and "Islanders" (1866).

The eternal conflict of good and evil, embodied in the modern world of bourgeois legal institutions, is presented in the only Leskovsky dramatic work "Waster"(1867). Following A.N. Ostrovsky, whose plays Leskov highly appreciated, he acts as a denouncer of the "dark kingdom". The 60-year-old merchant Firs Knyazev is "a thief, a murderer, a corrupter" (I, 443). His antipode - the kind and gentle Ivan Molchanov - appears as a martyr, a victim of despotic arbitrariness. Taking advantage of his position as “the first person in the city” and the venality of the court, the old merchant seeks to have Molchanov recognized as a “malicious spender” and removed “from the right to dispose of his property” (I, 447), which is transferred to the custody of Knyazev. The young man, addressing his torturers, denounces iniquity: You squanderers! .. You squandered your conscience and people squandered all faith in the truth, and for this squandering you all your own and all strangers are honest - posterity, God, history will condemn ... ”(I, 444).

In Lesk's anniversary year, it would be nice to see his undeservedly forgotten play in the repertoires of theaters.

Leskov's critical attitude to the growth of capitalist tendencies, which entailed the fall of ideals, the "mercantilism of conscience", the collapse of human - including family - ties, when everything was "at swords" with each other, was expressed with special artistic force in his work of the early 1870s - x years. Romana "On knives"(1871) this year is also marked by a "round date" - 140 years from the date of creation. However, when re-reading, it does not leave the feeling that you are reading about what is happening in Russia today.

The novel also has a difficult fate. For a long time it was not reprinted, in fact it was banned. Perceived by some as "anti-nihilistic", by others as "anti-bourgeois", in its religious and philosophical basis it embodies primarily the Christian concept of man and the world.

Inattention to the spiritual nature of man, rejection of God, separation from the soil lead to the fact that the former "nihilists" finally reincarnated as bourgeois businessmen, clever adventurers, swindlers, living according to the bestial laws of the struggle for existence. Such are the accomplices in the crimes of Glafira Bodrostina and Pavel Gordanov in Lesk's novel; "vile Jew" and usurer Tishka Kishinsky; his mistress Alinka Figurina, who robbed her own father; unnatural "inter-wise" Iosaf Vislenev; his sister Larisa, obsessed with pride and selfishness.

The architectonics of "On Knives" is akin to Dostoevsky's novel "Demons", created in the same 1871, with its chaotic "demonic" circling of reborn people who have lost their spiritual and moral support. Like a nightmare, criminal intrigues, blackmail, extortion, sudden disappearances, disguises and hoaxes, adultery, a duel, bigamy, suicide, murders are growing in Lesk's novel.

The "demonic" self-destruction of the dark forces is opposed by the bright creative principle of the spiritual and moral world of Christian life. Her ideals are professed by the righteous Alexandra Sintyanina, a man of honor and duty - the “Spanish nobleman” Andrey Podozerov, the priest Father Evangel, the “true nihilist” Major Forov and his caring wife Katerina Astafyevna, the “smart fool” Goodyka, the “Great Martyr” Flora. According to Leskov, selfless love, active kindness, mercy should become not only a guide, but also the norm of human relations, the social and moral regulator of public life. Following these salutary commandments will help to protect oneself from moral corruption, to stay on the edge of the abyss.

The novel "On the Knives" was created almost at the same time as the chronicle "Cathedrals"(1872) (options - " Sweeping water movements», « Bozhedomy"). M. Gorky noted that after the novel "On Knives" Leskov's work "becomes a vivid painting, or rather, icon painting - he begins to create an iconostasis of her saints and righteous for Russia." According to a folk legend, "without the three righteous ones, there is no standing city." The spiritual and moral support of the life of Stargorod (the scene of the "Soboryan") are three clergymen - the "rebellious archpriest" Savely Tuberozov, the meek and humble priest Zakharia Benefaktov and the "Cossack in a cassock" deacon Achilles Desnitsyn (as if the new Achilles is a warrior of Christ). They embody the ideal images of the Orthodox clergy.

Archpriest Savely has a heightened moral sense, civic self-awareness, a powerful active nature: “I am not a philosopher, but a citizen<...>I grieve and suffer without activity” (IV, 69). Constantly feeling the burning of a preaching gift in himself - a lively speech directed from soul to soul, Tuberozov rejects the officially dead and helpfully cautious demand of the church authorities, "so that in sermons he was afraid to do a direct relationship to life, especially about officials." Savely, in his words, “is not a preacher from captivity” (IV, 44). He strives to “plant the seeds of goodness in the souls”, educates the parishioners not in the letter, but in the spirit of Christian ideals, pointing to living examples of selfless love for one’s neighbor (the semi-impoverished Constantine Pizonsky looked after an abandoned baby, became a “feeder of orphans”). Sick of the soul for the fate of the Motherland, Savely Tuberozov is convinced that it is impossible to live "without an ideal, without faith, without respect for the deeds of the great ancestors ... this will destroy Russia" (IV, 183).

For the church, crushed by the state, the “time of words” has passed, deeds are needed. The fearless preacher gathers all those in power in the temple and denounces their "passionless indifference to good and evil", "criminality", "great loss of concern for the good of the Motherland", "neglect of prayer", "reduced to a single formality". Father Savely condemns "mercenary prayer" and "trading in conscience" (IV, 231). The pacified admiration of the “old fairy tale” (IV, 152) of patriarchal life is replaced by internal intensity and dramatic tension.

Tuberozov's sermon, imbued with liberating truth, was perceived by the bureaucratic apparatus as a "revolution" and "rebellion". From this moment on, the life of the disgraced archpriest passes into "life". By the end of the chronicle, all three heroes of the "Stargorod popovka" die. Despite their worries, suffering, torment under the weight of the cross laid on themselves, the "Soboryanye" leave a reverent impression. According to the critic, "an artistic sacrament is performed before the eyes of the reader, bordering on a religious sacrament."

Achieving an “epic balance” in depicting the correlation between the past and the present of Russian life, Leskov increasingly turned to the chronicle genre: “ Old years in the village of Plodomasovo»(1869), " seedy kind» (1874). The free form did not require, as in the novel, “the rounding of the plot and the concentration of everything around the main center. That doesn't happen in real life" (V, 279). On the contrary - "a person's life goes on like a charter developing from a rolling pin, and I will develop it so simply with a ribbon in the notes I offer" (V, 280), - this is how the writer thought about the theory of the genre in the chronicle "Childhood. From the memoirs of Merkul Praottsev»(1874).

In the chronicle "Laughter and Sorrow"(1871), whose first publication was accompanied by a dedication: "To all those who are not in their places and not in their own business,"- Leskov presented his concept of Russian life with its mosaic variegation, a kaleidoscopic change of unpredictable situations, anecdotal "surprises and surprises" that await a person at every step: "every step is a surprise, and moreover, the worst" (III, 383).

In the life of Russia there is no stability, constancy, except for "oppressions". The hero-narrator nobleman Orest Markovich Vatazhkov is discouraged by public hypocrisy, cynicism, lies, violence against the person. The ubiquitous "blue cupid" Postelnikov embodies the prevailing order of the police state with its system of betrayal and provocation. The painful truth is that everything in life is fragile, illogical, absurd, so that it becomes “terrible for a person.” The hero, flogged “accidentally” by mistake, dies at the “building of the new judicial chamber”.

Socio-political, national-historical, religious-moral, philosophical aspects are "embedded" in the system of bipolar coordinates of "laughter and grief". The satire of the chronicle is similar to Gogol's - "through laughter visible to the world and invisible, unknown to him tears." Leskov in his “open letter” to P.K. Shchebalsky emphasized: "My laughter is not the laughter of gloating, but the laughter of sorrow" (X, 550). The writer showed a tragicomic discrepancy between reality and the ideal. It is difficult for a noble nature to escape from the whirlpool of sociological paradoxes and metamorphoses. A person is not able to control his destiny, his aspirations are powerless in the face of a tangled tangle of multidirectional desires and goals of other people.

This is one of Leskov's milestone works. Later he admitted: “I began to think responsibly when I wrote “Laughter and Sorrow”, and since then I have remained in this mood - critical and, according to my strength, mild and condescending” (X, 401 - 402).

The element of the tragicomic - "drama-comedy" as an expression of "the tragic smiles of fate" - was embodied in Leskov's masterpiece " The Enchanted Wanderer"(1873). The writer traced the life story of Ivan Severyanovich Flyagin - a real Russian hero in terms of physical strength and spiritual power. The “Odyssey” of the life path with its various “enchantments” unfolds before the “black-earth Telemachus” (such was one of the variants of the title) like the eternal wandering of a person along the roads of life - “from one guard to another”. Outwardly reminiscent of the epic Ilya Muromets, the “enchanted wanderer” is just as epic: the hero personifies the national experience and the very spirit of the nation, the evolution of the character of a Russian person, his spiritual ascent. In the finale, he becomes a monk. But this is not the end of his journey yet. He wants an epic feat. The last "charm" of the "hero-chernorizet" is "to die for the people."

Ivan Severyanovich's "Saga" - an intricate fairy tale speech in all its multicoloredness - sounds on board a ship sailing along Ladoga. A year before the creation of The Enchanted Wanderer, Leskov wrote a series of "travel notes" "Monastic Islands on Lake Ladoga"(1872) - the result of his journey through the Russian North - the center of Orthodox monasteries. In his imagination, the author tried to reconstruct the life stories of his fellow monks. Why did they run away from worldly fuss? What troubles have you left behind? Whose sins were atoned for? What led them to abandon the world and focus on thoughts of God? The answers to these questions are given in the story "The Enchanted Wanderer", the hero of which confessed his life "with all the frankness of his simple soul."

The deep religious and moral foundations of folk life, the emotional and aesthetic responsiveness of the Russian people were embodied by Leskov in a universally recognized masterpiece " Imprinted Angel"(1873), who "liked both the tsar and the sexton" (XI, 406). This is a unique literary creation in which the icon becomes the main "character". In the same year, Leskov wrote an article "About Russian icon painting", in which he pointed out the great importance of the icon in the life of the people, advocated the revival of Russian icon art. The writer himself in "The Sealed Angel" acted as a skillful "isographer"-icon painter, conveying in the word "indescribable" the marvelous beauty of Russian icons, "the type of face celestial" (1, 423).

The author subtitled his creation "A Christmas Story". However, in terms of volume, it is rather a story, in the detailed plot of which all the rules and canons of the Christmas time genre are observed. The writing skill is so great that genre conventions do not limit, but rather stimulate the artist's imagination and ingenuity. It was precisely this creative approach that Leskov retained even when the Christmas story became a permanent genre in his writing repertoire in the 1880s and early 1890s. The author was proud that it was after his “The Sealed Angel” that Christmas stories “came into fashion again” (XI, 406), that is, the tradition of a whole unique layer of Russian culture began to revive and develop.

In addition, the first experience of the Christmas story influenced not only the literary process (A.P. Chekhov's Easter masterpiece "Holy Night" (1886) - a sketch in Leskov's manner), but also Leskov's further creative searches. It was the "Christmas model" - the genre canvas that originated in The Captured Angel - that was then projected onto many of Lesk's works from the cycles "Christmas Stories"(1886) and "Stories by the Way"(1886).

Indispensable in the Christmas story "miracle" in "The Sealed Angel" is the key word and image. The whole complex of “miracles”, “dives”, “amazing things” in front of the “divine viewers” ​​steadily leads to the main miracle - the fulfillment of the desire “to be inspired together with all Russia”. The breakthrough of the Old Believers' isolation into the big world, the rejection of religious dogmatism, the unification of people of different nationalities, confessions, social status - all these most important results of universal human solidarity are based on Leskov's innermost belief that everything is “the joys of the one body of Christ! He will bring everyone together!" (1, 436). The writer brings the idea of ​​unity, traditional in the Christmas story, out of the narrow framework of the family circle to the level of timelessness, interethnic, universal. This is all the more important because Leskov watched with pain the disintegration of human ties: “with ancestral legends, the connection is scattered, so that everything seems more updated, as if the whole Russian family was brought out only yesterday by a hen under nettles” (1, 424).

However, even in the atmosphere of "vain and hectic times" the writer is animated by faith in the spirituality of man. The icon-painting face of the Angel remained intact under the bureaucratic wax seal. The righteous old man Pamva allegorically predicts the coming "imprinting" of the Angel: "He lives in the human soul, he is sealed with superstition, but love will crush the seal" (1, 439). Do not let the connection between times and generations be broken, restore the “type of high inspiration”, “purity of mind”, which so far “obeys vanity” (1, 425), support “his natural art” (1, 424) - these are the main goals of the author.

The embodiment of the religious and moral ideas of the Russian people about the ideal person - the ideal of perfection given in the Gospel to the Christian: “he who does what is right comes to the light, so that his deeds may be manifest, because they are done in God” (John 3: 21) - is righteous type. The theme of righteousness is the main one in Leskov's work. The idea of ​​the cycle The righteous"(1879 - 1889) crystallized from the very beginning of the artist's career. In almost every of his works, starting from the early ones, types of people of “high standard” of all classes and ranks come to life, which are “pleasant phenomena of Russian life”. In this regard, Leskov is a unique figure in the history of Russian literature. The writer, "as if enchanted, was honored all his life to stand before the miracle of human feat and asceticism, and to the end he understood and grasped this heroic element." The Righteous, written according to an internal task to “justify Russia”, are original, colorful, sometimes bizarre, reproduce the bright phenomena of Russian life.

In the preface to the story Odnodum» (1879) in order to refute the extremely pessimistic statement of A.F. Pisemsky, who announced that he sees only “abominations” in all his compatriots, Leskov announced: “It was both terrible and unbearable for me, and I went to look for the righteous, I went with a vow not to calm down until I find at least a small number of three righteous , without which "there is no degree of standing"" (VI, 642). “We have not translated, and the righteous will not be translated,” the writer claimed in the story "Cadet Monastery"(1880). “They just don’t notice, but if you look closely, they are there.”

Leskovsky righteous embody the ideal of active, active goodness . Self-sacrificing love for one's neighbor, combined with persistent practical work, is the main sign and quality of righteousness. “These are some kind of beacons,” the writer claimed in the essay “ Vychegodskaya Diana (Popadya-huntress)(1883), developing the concept of "heroes and righteous people".

Leskov does not get tired of admiring the characters that keep in themselves special, original and highly moral features, "the living spirit of faith." The characters belonging to the righteous type, as living, full-blooded characters, are endowed with individual uniqueness: each of the characters embodies their own spiritual and substantial principle, reflected in various phenomena of the social and ethical order. Such, for example, are the incorruptibility of the “non-taking quarterly” Ryzhova (" Odnodum"), disinterestedness Nicholas Fermor, the desire for holiness Brianchaninov and Chikhachev (" Unmercenary Engineers”), conscientiousness, nobility, compassion of Persky, Bobrov, Zelensky and father-archimandrite (“ Cadet Monastery”), the spiritual light of the “Russian God-bearers” - clergy (“ Unbaptized pop», « Sovereign Court», « On the edge of the world”), patriotism and left-handed talent ( "The Tale of the Tula Oblique Left-hander and the Steel Flea", where Leskov reaches such heights of skill in patterned fairy tale speech, in which the “Russian spirit” and “Rus smells”, that the translation of this artistic masterpiece into foreign languages ​​​​becomes an insoluble problem). Ready for the feat of selflessness in the name of high philanthropy, the heroes of the stories Peacock», "Pygmy","Russian democrat in Poland", "Non-lethal Golovan", « Toupee artist»,« Man on the clock», "Scarecrow", « Fool","Spirit Sweat", "Figure"and others.

Leskov raises the issue of righteous asceticism to the religious and philosophical level, linking the fundamental principles of religion with the urgent tasks of social life. His "little people with spacious hearts" are not canonical saints, but their "warm personalities" warm life. Righteousness rises "above the line of simple morality", and therefore akin to holiness, - the writer reflected in "Russian antiques"(1879). In the article " Two words about redstocks" (1876) he spoke "of the justification living, active faith, i.e. by faith and works»: "We need feats feats of piety, truth and goodness, without which the spirit of Christ cannot live in people, and without it both words and worship are vain and vain.

Penetrating into the essence of the Leskian artistic phenomenon of righteousness, B.K. Zaitsev, the most Christian writer of the 20th century, emphasized that this is “a hand extended by a person to a person in the name of God”.

In parallel with the stories about the righteous, Leskov created a cycle of "prologue" stories (1886 - 1891) - "Byzantine legends", "tales", "apocrypha" based on the hagiographic stories of the ancient printed "Prologue". Works from the early Christian life of Egypt, Syria, Palestine "Best Prayer", "Beautiful Aza", « Legend of conscience Danila», "The Lion of Elder Gerasim", "Buffoon Pamphalon", "Zeno the Goldsmith"(subsequently - " Mountain") and others, under a kind of decorative and artistic fabric of ancient colors and images, brought the problem of righteousness to the level of interethnic, universal, affirmed timeless religious and moral ideals.

Many of the "Byzantine legends" were created under the influence of the ethical and philosophical views of L.N. Tolstoy, with whom Leskov "coincided". Tolstoy, in turn, wrote about Leskov: "What an intelligent and original person" (XI, 826). At the same time, Leskov did not accept the "extremes" of the "sage of Yasnaya Polyana" and his enthusiastic imitators. Arguing with them in articles "About the face (Tell the sons of disobedience)"(1886), "Afterlife Witness for Women"(1886) Leskov demonstrated "difference" with Tolstoy, the independence of the religious and philosophical position. The essentially Orthodox Leskovian worldview largely determined the originality of the poetics of his later works. So, the allegorical image of the heroine, whose true name is Love, in a fairy tale-parable "Malanya - the head of a lamb"(1888), like the images of many righteous women in the work of Leskov, resembles the compassionate and spiritualized female faces of Russian icons.

in the story About the Kreutzer Sonata(variant title - "Lady from Dostoyevsky's Funeral") - (1890) Leskov entered into a creative dialogue and ideological polemic with Dostoevsky and L. Tolstoy, opposing them to the harsh ethical maximalism with a merciful, divine view of moral problems: “God is your judge in this matter, not me<...>conquer yourself, and do not kill others, making them miserable. In his "artistic teaching" Leskov acted both as a preacher of Christian truths and as a spiritual mentor to his readers.

In cycles of stories from the life of church life "Little things of a bishop's life"(1878 - 1880),"Notes from an Unknown"(1884), superficially perceived as anti-clerical, the writer “cleared the approaches to the temple”, in which, in his opinion, only servants of God who are pure in heart, endowed with the highest spirituality, should serve. Leskov criticized not the idea of ​​the Church, but people who consider themselves involved in it, but who are far from its ideals. “Sweeping the trash” (XI, 581) from the church, the author of “The Trifles of Bishop’s Life” created at the same time “reassuring” images of the Russian Orthodox clergy, which were a “pain reliever” for Leskov, who suffered deeply at the sight of internal church “disorders”.

In 1889, the printed volume VI of the Collected Works of Leskov, which included "Trifles of Bishop's Life", was banned and sentenced to burning. Previously for essay "Priest's mess and parish whim"(1883) the writer was dismissed from service in the Ministry of Public Education. Censorship continued to pursue Leskov. “I have a whole portfolio of forbidden things,” said the writer.

In the last years of his life and work - from 1891 to 1894 - Leskov creates works openly directed against the ruling "elite", severely denouncing Russian "sociality": "Midnight", "Vale","Improvisers", « Corral", « product of nature», "Winter day", "Lady and fefola", "Administrative Grace", "Hare Remise". The strengthening of the socio-critical pathos of Leskov's later stories and novels is connected primarily with the creative "striving for the highest ideal" (X, 440). Following Tertullian, Leskov was convinced that "the soul is by nature a Christian" (XI, 456). Therefore, it is not surprising that works full of bitterness and sarcasm are illuminated from within by the light of Divine truth. Significant are the words of Aunt Polly in "Rhapsody" Vale" (1892): "We must rise!" (IX, 298).

The hero of Leskov's "farewell" story "Hare Remise"(1894) Onopriy Peregud sees "civilization" in the satanic spinning of "playing with boobies", social roles, masks. Universal hypocrisy, demonic hypocrisy, a vicious circle of deceit and violence against a person is reflected in Peregudov's "grammar", which only outwardly seems to be the delirium of a madman and ends with a prayer "for all": "Have pity on everyone, Lord, have pity!" (IX, 589).

Leskov, on a new spiritual and aesthetic level, summed up the themes and problems that he developed throughout his writing career. The spiritual insight of the hero in the finale of "Hare Remise" marks the heightened spiritual vigilance of the author himself.

At the same time, the story requires a thorough deciphering, since the writer himself warned that it contains “delicate matter”, that everything is “carefully disguised and deliberately confusing” (XI, 599 - 600).

In the “pen” of life, Leskov felt the urgent need for positive principles. He built his own artistic model of the world: the path from malice, apostasy, betrayal, spiritual and moral decay, the breakdown of human ties - to atonement for guilt through repentance and active goodness, following the ideals of the Gospel and the testament of Christ: "Go and continue not to sin" ( John 8:11), to unity "in the name of God who created all."

In recent years, Leskov has been moving from the voluntary duty of “sweeping rubbish from the temple” to the realization of his high creative vocation to artistic preaching. So, in the story Offended at Christmas"(1890), he urges the reader, together with the author, to join the search for truth: “Reader! be kind: intervene and you in our history<...>consider with whom you choose to be: with the lawyers of the law of various words or with the One who gave you the "words of eternal life" ... "

Leskov is a writer of "a shameless conscience", which required a special kind of spiritual vocation and creative creation. “Literature is a difficult field that requires a great spirit,” he said. Despite the critical pathos caused by an ardent desire to see their homeland “closer to goodness, to the light of knowledge and to truth” (XI, 284), each Leskov line is characterized by “hidden warmth” (this was the title of one of Leskov’s later articles with the epigraph: "Latent heat cannot be measured."

The peculiarity of Leskov’s work is such that behind the concrete historical facts of Russian reality, timeless distances always appear in him, spiritual perspectives open up, “the fleeting face of the earth” is correlated with the eternal, enduring. “I think and believe that “all of me will not die,” Leskov wrote a year before his death, on March 2, 1894, “but some kind of spiritual post will leave the body and continue eternal “life” (XI, 577).

Alla Anatolyevna Novikova-Stroganova , doctor of philological sciences, professor

Oryol

NOTES

Leskov N.S. Sobr. cit.: In 11 volumes - M .: Goslitizdat, 1956 - 1958. - T. 11. - S. 233. Further references to this edition are given in the text. A roman numeral denotes a volume, an Arabic numeral denotes a page.

Leskov A.N. The life of Nikolai Leskov: According to his personal, family and non-family records and memories: In 2 volumes - M .: Khudozh. lit., 1984. - T. 1. - S. 191.

Leskov N.S. Full coll. cit.: In 30 volumes - V.3. - M.: TERRA, 1996. - S. 206. Further references to this edition are given in the text with the designation of the volume and page in Arabic numerals.

Nagibin Yu. About Leskov // Nagibin Yu. Literary reflections. - M.: Sov. Russia, 1977. - S. 75 - 100.

Cit. Quoted from: Leskov A.N. Decree. op. - T.2. - S. 349.

Afonin L.N. Word about Leskov // Creativity N.S. Leskova: Scientific works. - T. 76 (169). - Kursk, 1977. - S. 10.

Edgerton W. Almost unsolvable problem: translation of Leskov's prose // Leskoviana. Bologna Editrice Clueb, 1982.

Leskov N.S. Russian antiques (From the stories about the three righteous people) // Weekly new time. - 1879. - September 20. - No. 37 - 38.

Zaitsev B.N.S. Leskov (to the 100th anniversary of his birth, notes of 1931) // Aurora. - 2002. - No. 1. - S. 81.

Faresov A.I. N.S. Leskov in recent years // Picturesque Review. - 1895. - March 5. - No. 10.

Leskov N.S. Sobr. cit.: In 3 volumes - M .: Khudozh. lit., 1988. - T. 3. - S. 205.

The most striking and original in the literary work of Nikolai Semenovich Leskov is the Russian language. His contemporaries wrote and tried to write in an even and smooth language, avoiding too bright or dubious turns. Leskov greedily grabbed every unexpected or picturesque idiomatic expression. All forms of professional or class language, all sorts of slang words - all this can be found on its pages. But he was especially fond of the comic effects of colloquial Church Slavonic and the puns of "folk etymology." He allowed himself great liberties in this regard and invented many successful and unexpected deformations of the usual meaning or habitual sound. Another distinguishing feature of Leskov: he, like no other of his contemporaries, possessed the gift of storytelling. As a storyteller, he, perhaps, occupies the first place in modern literature. His stories are mere anecdotes, told with colossal gusto and skill; even in his big things, he likes to characterize his characters by telling a few anecdotes about them. This was contrary to the traditions of "serious" Russian literature, and critics began to consider him just a Gaer. Leskov's most original stories are so filled with all sorts of incidents and adventures that the critics, for whom the main thing was ideas and trends, seemed ridiculous and absurd. It was too obvious that Leskov simply enjoys all these episodes, as well as the sounds and grotesque faces of familiar words. No matter how hard he tried to be a moralist and preacher, he could not neglect the opportunity to tell an anecdote or pun.

Nikolay Leskov. Life and legacy. Lecture by Lev Anninsky

Tolstoy loved Leskov's stories and enjoyed his verbal balancing act, but blamed him for the oversaturation of his style. According to Tolstoy, Leskov's main shortcoming was that he did not know how to keep his talent within limits and "overloaded his cart with good things." This taste for verbal picturesqueness, for the rapid presentation of an intricate plot, is strikingly different from the methods of almost all other Russian novelists, especially Turgenev, Goncharov or Chekhov. In Leskovsky's vision of the world there is no haze, no atmosphere, no softness; he chooses the most flashy colors, the roughest contrasts, the sharpest contours. His images appear in merciless daylight. If the world of Turgenev or Chekhov can be likened to the landscapes of Corot, then Leskov is Brueghel the Elder, with his colorful, bright colors and grotesque forms. Leskov does not have dull colors, in Russian life he finds bright, picturesque characters and paints them with powerful strokes. The greatest virtue, outrageous originality, great vices, strong passions and grotesque comic features are his favorite subjects. He is both a servant of the cult of heroes and a comedian. Perhaps one could even say that the more heroic his characters, the more humorously he portrays them. This humorous cult of heroes is Lesk's most original trait.

Leskov's political novels of the 1860s and 70s, which brought him hostility at the time radicals are now almost forgotten. But the stories he wrote at the same time did not lose their glory. They are not as rich in verbal joys as the stories of the mature period, but they already show his skill as a storyteller to a high degree. Unlike later works, they give pictures of hopeless evil, invincible passions. An example of this Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District(1866). This is a very powerful exploration of a woman's criminal passion and her lover's brazen, cynical callousness. A cold, merciless light is shed on everything that happens and everything is told with strong "naturalistic" objectivity. Another great story of that time - Warrior , a colorful story of a St. Petersburg procuress who treats her profession with delightfully naive cynicism and is deeply, completely sincerely offended by the “black ingratitude” of one of her victims, whom she was the first to push onto the path of shame.

Portrait of Nikolai Semenovich Leskov. Artist V. Serov, 1894

These early stories were followed by a series chronicle fictional city of Stargorod. They make up a trilogy: Old years in the village of Plodomasovo (1869), Cathedral(1872) and seedy kind(1875). The second of these chronicles is the most popular of Leskov's works. It is about the Stargorod clergy. Its head, Archpriest Tuberozov, is one of Leskov’s most successful images of the “righteous man”. The deacon of Achilles is a superbly written character, one of the most marvelous in the entire portrait gallery of Russian literature. The comical escapades and unconscious mischief of a huge, full of strength, completely soulless and simple-hearted like a deacon's child, and the constant reprimands that he receives from Archpriest Tuberozov, are known to every Russian reader, and Achilles himself has become a common favorite. But in general Cathedral the thing is uncharacteristic for the author - too even, unhurried, peaceful, poor in events, non-Leskovian.

Leskov Nikolai Semenovich is an outstanding Russian writer of the 19th century, whose artistic work was not always fairly evaluated by his contemporaries. He began his literary activity under the pseudonym M. Stebnitsky.

Leskov's biography briefly

Born February 4, 1831 in the Oryol province. His father was the son of a priest, but by the nature of his service he received the nobility. Mother was from a poor noble family. The boy grew up in the rich house of his maternal uncle and studied at the Oryol gymnasium. The death of his father and the loss of a small fortune in the terrible Oryol fires of the 40s did not allow him to complete the course. At the age of 17, he began serving as a small clerical worker in the Oryol Criminal Chamber. Later, he goes to serve in the Kiev Chamber and replenishes his education with reading. As a secretary of the recruiting presence, he often travels to the counties, which enriched his life with knowledge of folk life and customs. From 1857, he entered the private service of his distant relative Shkott, who managed the rich estates of Naryshkin and Count Perovsky. By the nature of his service, Nikolai Semenovich travels a lot, which adds to his observations, characters, images, types, well-aimed words. In 1860, he published several lively and imaginative articles in the central publications, moved to St. Petersburg in 1861, and completely devoted himself to literature.

Creativity Leskov

Striving for a fair explanation of the fires in St. Petersburg, Nikolai found himself embroiled in an ambiguous situation, due to ridiculous rumors and gossip, he was forced to go abroad. Abroad, he wrote a great novel "Nowhere". In this novel, which caused a flurry of indignant responses from the advanced Russian society, he, adhering to liberal sanity and hating any extremes, describes all the negative aspects in the movement of the sixties. In the indignation of critics, among whom was Pisarev, it was not noticed that the author noted a lot of positive things in the nihilist movement. For example, civil marriage seemed to him quite a reasonable phenomenon. So accusing him of retrograde and even of supporting and justifying the monarchy were unfair. Well, here is the author, who is still writing under the pseudonym Stebnitsky, which is called "bitten the bit" and published another novel about the nihilist movement "On the Knives". In all his work, this is the most voluminous and the worst work. He himself later could not bear to think about this novel - a tabloid-melodramatic sample of second-rate literature.

Leskov - Russian national writer

Having finished with nihilism, he enters the second, better half of his literary activity. In 1872, the novel "Soboryane", dedicated to the life of the clergy, was published. These Stargorod chronicles brought great success to the author. The author realizes that his main literary vocation is to find a bright, colorful spot among the daily routine of gray everyday life. Wonderful stories appear one after another "The Enchanted Wanderer ”, “The Sealed Angel” and others. These works, which made up a whole volume in the Collected Works under the general title “The Righteous”, completely changed public opinion in society towards Leskov and even affected his career, however, very slightly. Already in 1883, he resigns and rejoices at the independence he has received and tries to devote himself entirely to religious and moral issues. Although the sobriety of the mind, the absence of mysticism and ecstasy is felt in all subsequent works, and this duality affects not only the works, but also the life of the writer. He was alone in his work. Not a single Russian writer could boast of such an abundance of plots that exist in his stories. Indeed, even at the plot twists of The Enchanted Wanderer, which the author expounds in a colorful and original language, but concisely and succinctly, one can write a multi-volume work with a large number of heroes. But Nikolai Semenovich in literary work sins with such a drawback as the lack of a sense of proportion, and this often leads him from the path of a serious artist to the path of an entertaining anecdote Leskov died on February 21, 1895, and was buried in St. Petersburg.