Russian writer-ethnographer. Nikolai Semenovich Leskov was born on February 16 (old style - February 4), 1831 in the village of Gorokhovo, Oryol province, where his mother stayed with rich relatives, and his maternal grandmother also lived there. The Leskov family on the paternal side came from the clergy: Nikolai Leskov’s grandfather (Dmitry Leskov), his father, grandfather and great-grandfather were priests in the village of Leska, Oryol province. From the name of the village of Leski the family surname Leskov was formed. Nikolai Leskov's father, Semyon Dmitrievich (1789-1848), served as a noble assessor of the Oryol chamber of the criminal court, where he received the nobility. Mother, Marya Petrovna Alfereva (1813-1886), belonged to a noble family of the Oryol province. Nicholas had six cousins.
Nikolai Leskov's childhood years were spent in Orel and on the estates of the Oryol province belonging to his parents. Leskov spends several years in the house of the Strakhovs, wealthy relatives on his mother’s side, where he was sent due to the parents’ lack of funds to homeschool their son. The Strakhovs hired a Russian, a German, and a French teacher to raise their children. Leskov studies together with his cousins, and is far superior to them in abilities. This was the reason for sending him back to his parents.
In 1841 he entered the Oryol gymnasium, but studied unevenly and in 1846, unable to pass the transfer exams, he began serving as a scribe in the Oryol Chamber of the Criminal Court. In those years, he read a lot and moved in the circle of the Oryol intelligentsia. The sudden death of his father and the “disastrous ruin” of the family changed Leskov’s fate. He moved to Kyiv, under the tutelage of his uncle, a university professor, and began to serve in the Kyiv Treasury Chamber. The influence of the university environment, acquaintance with Polish and Ukrainian cultures, reading A. I. Herzen, L. Feuerbach, L. Buchner, G. Babeuf, friendship with the icon painters of the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra laid the foundation for the writer’s versatile knowledge.
1850 - Leskov marries the daughter of a Kyiv merchant. The marriage was hasty; her relatives did not approve of it. Nevertheless, the wedding took place.
In 1857 Leskov began serving in the private company of a distant relative, the Englishman A. Ya. Schcott. The commercial service required incessant travel, life “in the most remote backwaters,” which gave “an abundance of impressions and a supply of everyday information,” which was reflected in a number of articles, feuilletons, and notes with which the writer appeared in the Kyiv newspaper “Modern Medicine” and in St. Petersburg magazines "Domestic Notes" and "Economic Index" (his printed debut took place here in 1860). Leskov's articles dealt with practical issues and were primarily revealing in nature, which created many enemies for him. During the same period, the Leskovs’ first-born, named Mitya, dies in infancy. This breaks the relationship between spouses who are not very close to each other.
In 1860, Schcott and Wilkens went bankrupt, and Leskov had to return to Kyiv. During his commercial trips, Leskov accumulated a huge amount of material, which made it possible to engage in journalism. He began to implement this project in Kyiv, but his ambitions pushed him to a wider field of activity, and Leskov went to St. Petersburg.
1862 – trip abroad as a correspondent for the newspaper “Northern Bee”. Leskov visits Western Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, and France.
In 1863, the magazine “Library for Reading” published Nikolai Leskov’s story “The Life of a Woman,” then “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” (1864) and “Warrior” (1866). A little later, Leskov made his debut as a playwright. In 1867, the Alexandrinsky Theater staged his play “The Spendthrift.”
In 1864, under the name M. Stebnitsky, Leskov’s novel “Nowhere” was published in the popular St. Petersburg magazine “Library for Reading.” The novel perfectly depicted nihilists who cover up their rotten insides with revolutionary ideas and, in fact, only want to live at the expense of others and do nothing. Nihilism was a very fashionable topic at that time, many wrote about it in different ways, but not a single writer even tried to encroach on the shrines of commoners so evilly and accurately. Naturally, Leskov’s authorship quickly became known, and he was ranked among the reactionaries and agents of the Third Section.
1866 – birth of son Andrei. In the 1930s and 1940s, it was he who for the first time wrote a biography of his father.
In 1874, Nikolai Semenovich Leskov was appointed a member of the educational department of the Academic Committee of the Ministry of Public Education; The main function of the department was “the review of books published for the people.” In 1877, thanks to Empress Maria Alexandrovna’s positive review of the novel “Soborians,” he was appointed a member of the educational department of the Ministry of State Property.
Since the 70s, the topic of nihilism has become irrelevant for Leskov. If it still sounds strongly in “Soboryan”, then in the following works - “The Sealed Angel”, “The Enchanted Wanderer”, “At the End of the World” and others - Leskov’s interest is directed almost entirely towards church-religious and moral issues.
In 1880, Leskov left the Ministry of State Property, and in 1883 he was dismissed without a request from the Ministry of Public Education. He accepted the resignation, which gave him independence, with joy.
In 1881, Nikolai Leskov published his famous “The Tale of the Tula Oblique Left-Hander and the Steel Flea,” which was considered by critics to be a simple recording of an ancient legend.
Gradually, Leskov, in his own words, “breaks with the church.” At the same time, his worldview continued to remain deeply religious. Leskov's sympathies for non-church religiosity, for the Protestant ethic and sectarian movements especially intensified in the second half of the 1880s and did not leave him until his death. Against this background, Leskov becomes close to L.N. Tolstoy. As a result of the publication of a number of artistic and journalistic anti-church works, Leskov falls into final disfavor with the censorship.
Soon, based on plots extracted from the "Prologue" (an ancient Russian collection of lives and tales), Leskov wrote a series of "legends" from the life of the early Christians ("The Tale of the God-pleasing Woodcutter", 1886; "Skomorokh Pamphalon", 1887; "Zeno the Goldsmith", 1890), turning them into an artistic sermon of the “well-read Gospel.” These works, along with many later novels and short stories, permeated with rejection of “church piety, narrow nationality and statehood,” strengthened Leskov’s reputation as a writer of broad humanistic views.
Vegetarianism plays a significant role in Nikolai Leskov’s biography. After meeting L. Tolstoy, Leskov became a convinced vegetarian and published notes on vegetarianism. Nikolai Leskov is the creator of the first vegetarian character in Russian literature (the story “Figure”, 1889), later introducing them into his other works.
March 5 (February 21), 1895 - Nikolai Semenovich Leskov dies in St. Petersburg. The cause of death is an asthma attack, which tormented the writer for the last 5 years of his life. He was buried at the Volkovsky cemetery.
In 1881 N.S. Leskov creates the brilliant tale “Lefty”. Today, the Many-Wise Litrekon will try to briefly and clearly present the main events from this work in order to remind the reader of the plot of the book. It is important to understand that in this article it is presented in detail and accurately according to the work, so that not a single living soul can find fault with your knowledge of the text. If there are 5 minutes left before the lesson, it is better to go to.
(1102 words) Once Emperor Alexander Pavlovich, together with the Cossack Platov, went on a trip to Europe. They saw many wonderful things during the trip, and the Cossack made sure that foreigners could not win the sovereign over to their side. England lay in the path of the heroes. The English masters wanted to captivate the king with various tricks, but the sharp-eyed fellow traveler did everything possible to prevent this from happening.
The British took the Russian guests to the armory of the Kunstkammer, showed them various curiosities that Alexander I really liked, but could not attract Platov, who firmly stood his ground, arguing that even without improved military equipment, our soldiers were able to fight and even drive away Napoleon’s large army , which included twelve nations. The Europeans did not miss the opportunity to demonstrate Mortimer’s gun and pistol to the Tsar and the Cossacks. It turns out that all this exists in Russia (there was even a Tula stamp on the pistol). Although the British boast about their achievements, they do not know what St. Petersburg molvo sugar is.
The only thing they managed to surprise both the Tsar and Platov was a small flea made of blued steel - so small that it could only be seen through a microscope. It came with a key, which you could turn to see her dancing. The British presented this wonder to the Russian Tsar “as a gift”, receiving a decent amount of money. Alexander Pavlovich was pleased and called the English masters the first in the whole world. Platov did not dare to say anything against it, he just took a microscope with him so that the flea could be examined.
It's time to return home. Platov remained unconvinced - he believed that Russian masters lacked training, but at the same time they could do anything, no matter what they looked at, and the sovereign believed that the British had no equal in art.
The tsar died soon after returning to his homeland, and ordered the priest to give the strange flea to Fedot, to whom he confessed before his death, so that he would hand it over to Empress Elizabeth Alekseevna. However, she did not want to deal with this curiosity and passed it on as an inheritance to the new ruler.
When the new king discovered the flea, he was quite surprised by it. They began to look for someone who could explain what it was, and eventually discovered that the “courageous old man” Platov knew about everything. The ruler ordered him to show the miracle to Russian craftsmen, which the Cossack set off to do.
Once in Tula, Platov met three gunsmiths there, including a slanting left-hander, who assured the hero that by the time the Cossack returned from the glorious quiet Don, they would come up with something cunning. As soon as Platov left, the craftsmen went to the temple to pray to the icon of St. Nicholas, the patron saint of trade and military affairs. And upon their return, they immediately got down to business, and without a break they worked harmoniously and persistently while waiting for Platov.
After some time, the Cossack Platov returns with his assistants and finds out that the masters are locked up in the house and do not allow anyone to visit them. Having removed the roof from the hut, the assistants ensured that the craftsmen went outside. When the craftsmen brought out the finished product, Platov could not notice the difference between the flea before the start of work and after it was completed. Angry, he called the Tula craftsmen scoundrels and took with him one of the masters, a left-hander, whom he was preparing to throw into prison if the sovereign did not remember about this assignment related to the flea.
However, the sovereign did not forget about the assignment that he gave to Platov, and demanded from him a story about how our masters showed themselves against the English. For a long time they could not understand what had changed in the flea, because when they started turning her on, she no longer danced. Out of frustration, Platov began to scold the left-hander, but, as it turned out, in vain. It turned out that the Tula masters had shod her! The work was done so skillfully that it could only be seen with the most powerful microscope. And the small nails themselves, which fastened the horseshoes, were made by hand by a left-handed person. The savvy flea was sent to England as a gift and to show that Russian craftsmen are also capable of creating amazing things.
For faithful service, Platov rewarded the left-hander with a hundred rubles, and Count Kiselvrode ordered that the masters be washed, cut, dressed and sent to London.
There, the English for a long time could not extract his secret from the left-hander and were quite surprised to learn that he did not have a higher education, that all he read was the psalter and the semi-dream book. After feeding and drinking him, the foreigners tried with all their might to persuade the left-hander to stay with them - they offered to marry him to an Englishwoman, convert him to their faith, etc. But the master remained adamant.
The left-hander was shown the conditions under which English craftsmen worked - everyone was well-fed and dressed, well-shod so as not to injure their feet, everyone was well trained and everyone had a dry erase board to make calculations. The hero managed to see many strange things, but the main thing he understood was that the British did not clean their guns with bricks, as they did with us, and that made it much easier for Europeans to shoot. Lefty remembered his generals, and he felt so sad that he wanted to go back to his homeland. A storm was approaching at sea, which the cunning English warned the hero about, but the master was adamant - he was sure that fate would still overtake the man one way or another. There is nothing to do - they equipped the left-hander on the road.
It was quite a long swim, the sea was stormy, but despite this, the left-hander continued to sit under the tarpaulin on the deck, waiting for Russia to show up. Then it happened that the hero managed to meet the skipper, who understood Russian, and began to drink with him on a bet to see who could win more. In the end, the skipper almost threw the left-hander overboard, but the sailors noticed this in time and took them both down. After arriving in St. Petersburg, the Englishman went to a house on Aglitskaya Embankment, and the left-hander was sent to the block. The fate of the foreigner turned out to be much happier - he was immediately provided with a bed and medicine, and the poor left-hander was taken for a long time by cabs from hospital to hospital, where they did not admit him without documents, and finally they dropped him off at the common people's Obukhvinsk hospital, where everyone was admitted to die. There he was found by his friend and drinking companion, the captain, who immediately went to Count Kleinmichel, who, however, drove the Englishman away, and then he went to Platov. The old Cossack had already retired, and therefore advised him to contact Commandant Skobelev. He said that the Germans did not know how to treat left-handed illness and referred the Englishman to Dr. Martyn-Solsky. But when the latter arrived where the left-hander was, he was already finished. The master only managed to inform Russian soldiers not to clean their guns with bricks, after which he died. Martyn-Solsky informed Count Chernyshev about this, but he did not even listen. Maybe this is why it was so difficult for the Russians to fight during the Crimean War. But if the Count Doctor had listened and taken into account the words of the left-hander, the war would have taken a completely different turn.
Now in Tula you will no longer meet such masters as Lefty and his fellow gunsmiths. Machines equalized the inequality of talents and talents, but thereby destroyed artistic prowess, which very often exceeded the limit and inspired popular imagination to create such legends. The myth associated with the left-hander is interesting, and his adventures serve as a memory of a bygone era, the spirit of which is quite aptly and correctly captured. It is worth not forgetting about the prowess of Russian craftsmen and the national heroes who are reflected in the folk epic with a “human soul”.
Nikolai Semenovich Leskov is an outstanding Russian writer of the 19th century, whose artistic work was not always fairly assessed by his contemporaries. He began his literary career under the pseudonym M. Stebnitsky.
Brief biography of Leskov
Born on February 4, 1831 in the Oryol province. His father was the son of a priest, but received the nobility due to the nature of his service. The 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 minor clerical worker in the Oryol criminal chamber. Later he went to serve in the Kyiv chamber and supplemented his education with reading. As secretary of the recruiting presence, he often travels to the districts, which enriched his life with knowledge of folk life and customs. In 1857, he entered private service with his distant relative Shkott, who managed the rich estates of Naryshkin and Count Perovsky. Due to the nature of his service, Nikolai Semenovich travels a lot, which adds to his observations, characters, images, types, and apt words. In 1860, he published several lively and imaginative articles in central publications, moved to St. Petersburg in 1861 and devoted himself entirely to literature.
Leskov's creativity
Striving for a fair explanation of the St. Petersburg fires, Nikolai found himself drawn into 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 progressive 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 many positive things in the nihilist movement. For example, civil marriage seemed to him a completely reasonable phenomenon. So accusing him of being retrograde and even of supporting and justifying the monarchy were unfair. Well, here the author, who still writes under the pseudonym Stebnitsky, has, as they say, “bitten the bit” and published another novel about the nihilist movement, “On Knives.” In all his work, this is the most voluminous and the worst work. He himself later could not stand to think about this novel - a tabloid-melodramatic example 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 “Soborians” was published, dedicated to the life of the clergy. 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 everyday life of gray everyday life. One after another, wonderful stories “The Enchanted Wanderer” appear ”, “The Sealed Angel” and others. These works, which made up an entire volume in the Collected Works under the general title “The Righteous,” completely changed public opinion in society towards Leskov and even affected his career, although very slightly. Already in 1883, he resigned and rejoiced at the independence he had received and tried to devote himself entirely to religious and moral issues. Although sobriety of mind, the absence of mysticism and ecstasy is felt in all subsequent works, and this duality affects not only the works, but also the writer’s life itself. He was alone in his work. Not a single Russian writer could boast of such an abundance of plots as exist in his stories. After all, even with the plot twists of “The Enchanted Wanderer,” which the author presents in a colorful and original language, but concisely and succinctly, one can write a multi-volume work with a large number of characters. But Nikolai Semenovich in literary work suffers from such a shortcoming as the lack of a sense of proportion, and this is often takes him away from the path of a serious artist to the path of an entertaining anecdotist. Leskov died on February 21, 1895, and was buried in St. Petersburg.
Nikolai Semenovich Leskov is a writer whose works, according to M. Gorky, should be on a par with the works of L. Tolstoy, I. Turgenev, N. Gogol. All his writings are truthful, since the author knew and understood the life of the people well.
This article provides a brief biography of Leskov, the most important and interesting things about his creative heritage.
Childhood and education
Nikolai Semenovich was born in the Oryol region (years of life - 1831-1895). His father is a minor official who came from the clergy, his mother is the daughter of an impoverished nobleman. He received his first education in the family of wealthy relatives on his mother’s side, and two years later he became a student at a gymnasium in Orel. He always had good abilities, but did not accept cramming and the rod. As a result, based on the results of training, it was necessary to retake exams in the fifth grade, which the future writer considered unfair and left the gymnasium with a certificate. The lack of a certificate did not allow him to obtain further education, and the father got his son a job in the criminal court in Orel. Life dramas will subsequently be resurrected in numerous works of the writer. This is a short biography of Leskov during his childhood and youth.
Service
In 1849, Nikolai Semenovich moved to Kyiv and settled with his uncle, a professor of medicine. It was a time of communicating with university youth, who often visited the teacher’s house, studying languages - Ukrainian and Polish, attending lectures, and getting to know literature on their own. As a result, the formation of spiritual interests and mental development of the young man took place.
The year 1857 also became important for the writer. Leskov, whose biography and work are inextricably linked with the life of the Russian people, moved from public service to private service. He began working in the commercial company of his uncle, A. Shkott, and over the course of several years visited many parts of Russia. Subsequently, this will allow Nikolai Semenovich to say that he studied life “not at school, but on barges.” And personal observations and accumulated material will form the basis of more than one work.
Publicistic activity
Leskov’s subsequent biography and creativity (this will be discussed briefly below) are connected with St. Petersburg and Moscow. In 1961, he left Kyiv and, having moved to the capital, began collaborating with Russian Speech. By this time, Nikolai Semenovich had already acted as a publicist in “Modern Medicine”, “St. Petersburg Gazette”, “Economic Index”. Now the writer’s articles appear in Knizhny Vestnik, Otechestvennye zapiski, Vremya.
In January 1962, Nikolai Semenovich moved to the Northern Bee: he headed the internal life department there. For two years, he covered the most pressing social problems in his articles and entered into disputes with Sovremennik and Den. This is how Leskov’s biography took shape at the beginning of his career.
Interesting facts from his journalistic activities were related to the topic of fires in St. Petersburg (1862). Nikolai Semenovich spoke out regarding the alleged organizers, nihilistic students, and called on the authorities to confirm or refute these data. As a result, he was hit with a lot of criticism both from leading writers, who accused the author of denunciation and slander, and from the government. And the pseudonym M. Stebnitsky, with which he had signed his works until then, became so abusive that the writer had to abandon it.
There is also a note from the office in St. Petersburg, which notes that Leskov “sympathizes with everything anti-government.”
In general, it can be argued that journalistic activity prepared the writer’s further work.
New challenges
Leskov’s biography, a summary of which you are reading, was not simple. After the article about the fires, the writer left the capital. As a correspondent, he went on a trip to Europe, which gave him a lot of interesting information about life in other countries. Leskov also began work on his first novel, “Nowhere,” whose heroes were the same nihilists. The work was not allowed to be published for a long time, and when it finally reached readers in 1964, the Democrats again attacked the writer.
Debut in fiction
A short biography of Leskov the writer dates back to 1962, when the short story-essay “The Extinguished Case” appeared in print. It was followed by the works “The Robber”, “In the Tarantass”, the story “The Life of a Woman” and “Caustic”. All of them resembled an artistic essay, which at that time was popular among commoners. But a feature of Nikolai Semenovich’s works has always been a special approach to depicting people’s life. Many of his contemporaries believed that it should be studied. Nikolai Semenovich was convinced that the life of the people must be known, “not by studying it, but by living it.” Such views, along with excessive ardor in journalism, led to the fact that Nikolai Leskov, whose brief biography is given in the article, found himself excommunicated from progressive Russian literature for a long time.
The story “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk,” published in 1964, as well as “The Warrior,” published two years later, was preferred by writers and critics to be ignored. Although it was in them that the writer’s individual style and humor manifested itself, which later would be highly appreciated by specialists. This is how Leskov’s creative biography took shape in the sixties, a brief summary of which amazes with the amazing stamina and incorruptibility of the writer.
70s
The new decade was marked by the release of the novel “On Knives.” The author himself called it the worst in his work. And Gorky noted that after this work the writer abandoned the theme of nihilists and began creating the “iconostasis of saints and righteous people” of Russia.
A short biography of Leskov of the new period begins with the novel “Soborians”. He was a success with readers, but the opposition of the true Christianity to official Christianity in the work again led the writer into conflict, now not only with the authorities, but also with the church.
And then the author publishes “The Sealed Angel” and “The Enchanted Wanderer,” which were reminiscent of ancient Russian walks and legends. If “Russian Messenger” published the first story without corrections, then disagreements arose again regarding the second. The free form of the work and several plot lines were not understood by many critics at the time.
In 1974, due to his difficult financial situation, Leskov entered the Scientific Committee of the Ministry of Education, where he studied books published for the people. A year later he goes abroad for a short time.
80-90s
The collection of stories “The Righteous”, the satirical works “The Stupid Artist” and “Scarecrow”, rapprochement with Tolstoy, the anti-church “Notes of an Unknown” (not completed due to the ban on censorship), “Midnight Offices”, etc. - this is the main thing he did in the new tenth anniversary of Leskov.
A short biography for children must include a story about the adventures of Lefty. And although many critics believed that the writer in this case simply retold an old legend, today this is one of the most famous and original works of Nikolai Semenovich.
The event was the publication of ten volumes of the writer’s collected works. And here there were troubles: the sixth volume, which included church works, was completely withdrawn from sale, and later reformed.
The last years of the writer’s life were also not very joyful. None of his major works (“Devil's Dolls”, “Invisible Trace”, “Falcon Binding”) were published in the original version. On this occasion, Leskov wrote that pleasing the public is not his task. He saw his purpose in scourging and tormenting the reader with directness and truth.
Biography of Leskov: interesting facts
Nikolai Semenovich was known as a vegetarian and even wrote an article about this. He, according to his own statement, was always against slaughter, but at the same time did not accept those who refused meat not out of pity, but for reasons of hygiene. And if Leskov’s first calls to translate a book for vegetarians into Russian caused ridicule, then very soon such a publication actually appeared.
In 1985, an asteroid was named in honor of Nikolai Semenovich, which speaks, of course, about the recognition of his work by his descendants.
This is a short biography of Leskov, whom L. Tolstoy called the most Russian of the writers of Russia.
- Anti-nihilist writer
Nikolai Leskov began his career as a government employee, and wrote his first works - journalistic articles for magazines - only at the age of 28. He created stories and plays, novels and fairy tales - works in a special artistic style, the founders of which today are considered Nikolai Leskov and Nikolai Gogol.
Scribe, chief clerk, provincial secretary
Nikolai Leskov was born in 1831 in the village of Gorokhovo, Oryol district. His mother, Marya Alferyeva, belonged to a noble family; his paternal relatives were priests. The father of the future writer, Semyon Leskov, entered the service of the Oryol Criminal Chamber, where he received the right to hereditary nobility.
Until the age of eight, Nikolai Leskov lived with relatives in Gorokhov. Later, the parents took the boy to live with them. At the age of ten, Leskov entered the first grade of the Oryol provincial gymnasium. He did not like studying at the gymnasium, and the boy became one of the lagging students. After five years of study, he received a certificate of completion of only two classes. It was impossible to continue education. Semyon Leskov assigned his son as a scribe to the Oryol Criminal Chamber. In 1848, Nikolai Leskov became assistant to the head of the office.
A year later, he moved to Kyiv to live with his uncle Sergei Alferyev, a famous professor at Kyiv University and a practicing therapist. In Kyiv, Leskov became interested in icon painting, studied the Polish language, and attended lectures at the university as a volunteer. He was assigned to work in the Kyiv Treasury Chamber as an assistant to the head of the recruitment desk. Later, Leskov was promoted to collegiate registrar, then received the position of head of the office, and then became a provincial secretary.
Nikolai Leskov retired from service in 1857 - he “he became infected with the then fashionable heresy, for which he condemned himself more than once later... he quit his rather successfully started government service and went to serve in one of the newly formed trading companies at that time.”. Leskov began working at the company "Schcott and Wilkens" - the company of his second uncle, the Englishman Schcott. Nikolai Leskov often went on business to “travel around Russia”; on his trips he studied the dialects and way of life of the country’s inhabitants.
Anti-nihilist writer
Nikolai Leskov in the 1860s. Photo: russianresources.lt
In the 1860s, Leskov first put pen to paper. He wrote articles and notes for the newspaper St. Petersburg Vedomosti, the magazines Modern Medicine and Economic Index. Leskov himself called his first literary work “Essays on the distillery industry,” published in Otechestvennye zapiski.
At the beginning of his career, Leskov worked under the pseudonyms M. Stebnitsky, Nikolai Gorokhov, Nikolai Ponukalov, V. Peresvetov, Psalmist, Man from the Crowd, Watch Lover and others. In May 1862, Nikolai Leskov, under the pseudonym Stebnitsky, published an article in the newspaper “Northern Bee” about a fire in the Apraksin and Shchukin courtyards. The author criticized both the arsonists, who were considered nihilistic rebels, and the government, which could not catch the violators and put out the fire. Blaming the authorities and wishing “so that the teams sent come to the fires for actual assistance, and not for standing”, angered Alexander II. To protect the writer from the royal wrath, the editors of the Northern Bee sent him on a long business trip.
Nikolai Leskov visited Prague, Krakow, Grodno, Dinaburg, Vilna, Lvov, and then went to Paris. Returning to Russia, he published a series of journalistic letters and essays, among them “Russian Society in Paris”, “From a Travel Diary” and others.
Novel "On Knives". 1885 edition
In 1863, Nikolai Leskov wrote his first stories - “The Life of a Woman” and “Musk Ox”. At the same time, his novel “Nowhere” was published in the magazine “Library for Reading”. In it, Leskov, in his characteristic satirical manner, talked about new nihilistic communes, the life of which seemed strange and alien to the writer. The work caused a sharp reaction from critics, and the novel predetermined the writer’s place in the creative community for many years - he was credited with anti-democratic, “reactionary” views.
Later, the stories “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” and “Warrior” with vivid images of the main characters were published. Then a special style of the writer began to take shape - a type of skaz. Leskov used the traditions of folk tales and oral traditions in his works, used jokes and colloquial words, stylized the speech of his heroes into different dialects and tried to convey the special intonations of the peasants.
In 1870, Nikolai Leskov wrote the novel “On Knives.” The author considered the new work against the nihilists his “worst” book: in order to publish it, the writer had to edit the text several times. He wrote: “In this publication, purely literary interests were belittled, destroyed and adapted to serve interests that had nothing in common with any literature.”. However, the novel “On Knives” became an important work in Leskov’s work: after it, the main characters of the writer’s works were representatives of the Russian clergy and the local nobility.
“After the evil novel “On Knives,” Leskov’s literary work immediately becomes bright painting, or, rather, iconography—he begins to create for Russia an iconostasis of its saints and righteous people.”
Maksim Gorky
“Cruel works” about Russian society
Valentin Serov Portrait of Nikolai Leskov. 1894
Nikolai Leskov. Photo: russkiymir.ru
Nikolay Leskov Drawing by Ilya Repin. 1888-89
One of Leskov’s most famous works was “The Tale of the Tula Oblique Lefty and the Steel Flea” of 1881. Critics and writers of those years noted that the “storyteller” in the work has two intonations at once - both laudatory and sarcastic. Leskov wrote: “Several more people supported that in my stories it is really difficult to distinguish between good and evil and that sometimes it’s even impossible to tell who is harming the cause and who is helping it. This was attributed to some innate cunning of my nature.".
In the fall of 1890, Leskov completed the story “Midnight Owls” - by that time the writer’s attitude towards the church and priests had radically changed. The preacher John of Kronstadt came under his critical pen. Nikolai Leskov wrote to Leo Tolstoy: “I will keep my story on the table. It’s true that no one will publish it nowadays.”. However, in 1891 the work was published in the journal “Bulletin of Europe”. Critics criticized Leskov for his “incredibly bizarre, distorted language” that “disgustes the reader.”
In the 1890s, censorship almost did not release Leskov’s sharply satirical works. The writer said: “My latest works about Russian society are very cruel. “The Corral”, “Winter Day”, “The Lady and the Felile”... The public does not like these things for their cynicism and righteousness. And I don’t want to please the public.” The novels “Falcon Migration” and “Invisible Trace” were published only as separate chapters.
In the last years of his life, Nikolai Leskov was preparing a collection of his own works for publication. In 1893 they were released by the publisher Alexey Suvorin. Nikolai Leskov died two years later - in St. Petersburg from an asthma attack. He was buried at the Volkovskoye cemetery.
