Leskov "Musk Ox" - essay "Thirst for Light in the works of N. Leskov based on the story "Musk Ox""

Leskov Nikolai Semenovich

N.S. Leskov

It feeds on grass, and with a lack of it, lichen.

from zoology.

CHAPTER FIRST

When I met Vasily Petrovich, he was already called "Musk Ox". This nickname was given to him because his appearance unusually resembled a musk ox, which can be seen in the illustrated guide to zoology by Julian Simashka. He was twenty-eight years old, but he looked much older. He was not an athlete, not a hero, but a very strong and healthy man, small in stature, stocky and broad-shouldered. Vasily Petrovich's face was gray and round, but only one face was round, and the skull was strangely ugly. At first glance, it seemed to resemble a somewhat Kaffir skull, but, peering and studying this head closer, you could not bring it under any phrenological system. He wore his hair in such a way as if he deliberately wanted to mislead everyone about the figure of his "upper floor". At the back, he cut the entire back of his head very short, and in front of his ears, his dark brown hair went in two long and thick braids. Vassily Petrovich used to twirl these braids, and they constantly lay rolled up rollers on his temples, and curled up on his cheeks, resembling the horns of the animal in whose honor he received his nickname. Vasily Petrovich most of all owed his resemblance to a musk ox to these pigtails. In the figure of Vasily Petrovich, however, there was nothing funny. The person who met him for the first time saw only that Vassily Petrovich was, as they say, "badly tailored, but tightly sewn," and looking into his wide-set brown eyes, it was impossible not to see in them a healthy mind, will and decisiveness. The character of Vasily Petrovich had a lot of originality. His distinguishing feature was evangelical carelessness about himself. The son of a rural deacon, who grew up in bitter poverty and, moreover, was orphaned at an early age, he never cared not only about the lasting improvement of his existence, but it seems that he never even thought about tomorrow. He had nothing to give, but he was able to take off his last shirt and assumed the same ability in each of the people with whom he got along, and he usually called everyone else briefly and clearly "pigs". When Vasily Petrovich did not have boots, that is, if his boots, as he put it, "opened his mouth completely," then he would go to me or to you, without any ceremony, take your spare boots if they somehow climbed on his leg , and left his marks to you as a keepsake. Whether you were at home or not, it was all the same to Vassily Petrovich; boots, and more often it happened that he did not say anything about such trifles. He could not stand new literature and read only the gospel and the ancient classics; he could not hear any conversation about women, considered them all without exception fools, and very seriously regretted that his old mother was a woman, and not some kind of sexless creature. Vasily Petrovich's selflessness knew no bounds. He never showed any of us that he loved anyone; but everyone knew very well that there is no sacrifice that the Musk Ox would not make for each of his relatives and friends. It never occurred to anyone to doubt his readiness to sacrifice himself for the chosen idea, but this idea was not easy to find under the skull of our Musk Ox. He did not laugh at many of the theories in which we then passionately believed, but deeply and sincerely despised them.

Musk Ox did not like conversations, did everything in silence, and did exactly what you could least expect from him at the given moment.

How and why he became friends with the small circle to which I also belonged during my short stay in our provincial town, I do not know. The musk ox completed a course at the Kursk seminary three years before my arrival. His mother, who fed him with the crumbs collected for the sake of Christ, was impatiently waiting for her son to become a priest and live in the parish with his young wife. But the son had no thought of a young wife. Vasily Petrovich did not have the slightest desire to marry. The course was over; mother kept inquiring about the brides, but Vassily Petrovich was silent, and one fine morning he disappeared to no one knows where. Only six months later he sent his mother twenty-five rubles and a letter in which he informed the begging old woman that he had come to Kazan and entered the local theological academy. How he reached Kazan, breaking off more than a thousand miles, and how he got twenty-five rubles - this remained unknown. The musk ox never wrote a word to his mother about it. But before the old woman had time to rejoice that her Vasya would someday be a bishop and she would then live with him in a bright room with a white stove and drink tea with raisins twice a day, Vasya seemed to have fallen from the sky - unexpectedly, unexpectedly appeared again in Kursk. Many asked him: what is it? How? why did he come back? but learned little. "He didn't get along," the Musk Ox answered shortly, and nothing more could be obtained from him. Only to one person did he say a little more; "I don't want to be a monk," and no one else got anything from him.

The man to whom the Musk Ox told more than anyone else was Yakov Chelnovsky, a kind, good fellow, incapable of hurting flies and ready for any service to his neighbor. Chelnovsky was brought to me by a relative in some distant tribe. It was at Chelnovsky's that I met the stocky hero of my story.

It was in the summer of 1854. I had to take care of the process, which was carried out in the Kursk government offices.

I arrived in Kursk at seven o'clock in the morning in the month of May, directly to Chelnovsky. At that time he was preparing young people for the university, gave Russian language and history lessons in two women's boarding houses and lived not badly: he had a decent three-room apartment from the front, a hefty library, upholstered furniture, several pots of exotic plants and Box's bulldog, with bared teeth, a very indecent bustle and a gait that slightly looked like a can-can.

Chelnovsky was extremely delighted at my arrival and made me promise to stay with him for the entire duration of my stay in Kursk. He himself used to run around the whole day to his lessons, while I now visited the civil chamber, then wandered aimlessly around Tuskari or the Sejm. You will not find the first of these rivers at all on many maps of Russia, and the second is famous for its especially tasty crayfish, but it gained even greater fame through the lock system built on it, which absorbed huge capitals without freeing the Seim from the reputation of the river, "inconvenient for navigation" .

In the 60s of the last century, in Russian literature, as if apart, there was the work of the remarkable Russian writer-storyteller Nikolai Semenovich Leskov. Especially because he did not accept with his soul the aspirations of his contemporary literature, marked by nihilistic, revolutionary moods. He was against nihilism. He criticized Chernyshevsky's novel What Is to Be Done? Leskov did not evaluate the heroes of this novel in the same way as, for example, revolutionary democrats. He considered them "harmless and apolitical, who carry neither fire nor sword."

Thus, in the conditions of the then struggle for the ideals of the revolutionary democrats, Leskov did not rely on their ideas and on any ideas in general. Unique case! What is this? Pure artist? Misunderstanding the aspirations of society? I think the reasons were much more complicated. The writer, like all progressive society, sought to resolve the painful problems of reality, but he did it in his own way. Naturally, dislike for politicking affected his work.

Already in the early story "The Musk Ox" the strengths and weaknesses of the writer's work were revealed. The hero of the story, Vasily Bogoslovsky, is stubbornly looking for ways to change reality. At first it seemed to me that there was something in him from "new people" like Turgenev's Bazarov. He, just like the "new people", is honest, hates parasitic nobles, persistently agitates the people against the rich and defends the poor.

But the Leskian hero is nevertheless far from Bazarov, in whose image Turgenev captured the typical moods of the era. The musk ox, perhaps, deserves only pity because of the naivety and inconsistency of his actions and ideas. In life, of course, there are many such people. Apparently, Leskov proceeded from considerations of precisely the maximum approximation of the hero to reality. As a result, the artistic side of the works was strengthened, but the ideological side was weakened.

Let's go back to Musk Ox. Having exhausted all the possibilities and means of introduction to life, he left it. Although the story does not at all boil down to a polemic with revolutionary democrats, thoughts about the futility of the struggle of the "new people" against the injustices of life were pierced in it. In fact, this is not even Leskov's idea. It has been living since the time when human society began to realize itself as socially differentiated.

The musk ox is endowed with the features of a “Leskovian” hero, a peculiar person, somehow attractive, accepting the suffering of the people, at the same time sympathetic to the author himself and distant from him, which expands the writer’s artistic possibilities.

Leskov's merit in the process of revolutionary transformations is that, no matter how he relates to the ideas of revolutionary democrats, he objectively shows the throwing of people who are not yet ready to accept progressive ideas. He also portrayed the selflessness of these heroes, reaching the point of self-denial, the sacrifice of the representatives of the new generation, who, in his opinion, "have nowhere to go."

Assessing his past, Leskov writes: “I wandered and returned, and became myself - what I am. Much of what I have written is really unpleasant for me, but there is no lie anywhere - I have always and everywhere been direct and sincere ... I was simply mistaken - I did not understand, sometimes I obeyed the influence ... "

Leskov saw his mistake in the fact that he wanted to "stop the stormy impulse," which to him, wise by experience, would already seem like a "natural phenomenon."

Knowing well the works of Leskov, I have no doubt that, despite all his delusions and erroneous views, humanism and inner spontaneous democracy, “thirst for light” were always excellent qualities of this artist.

Already in the early story "Musk Ox" the strengths and weaknesses of the writer's work were revealed. The hero of the story, Vasily Bogoslovsky, is stubbornly looking for ways to change reality. At first it seemed to me that there was something of “new people” in him, such as Turgenev's Bazarov. Just like the “new people”, he is honest, hates parasitic nobles, persistently agitates the people against the rich and defends the poor.

Let's go back to Musk Ox. Having exhausted all the possibilities and means of introduction to life, he left it. Although the story does not at all boil down to a polemic with the revolutionary democrats, thoughts about the futility of the struggle of the “new people” against the injustices of life were pierced in it. In fact, this is not even Leskov's idea. It has been living since the time when human society began to realize itself as socially differentiated.

The musk ox is endowed with the traits of a “Leskovian” hero, a peculiar person, somehow attractive, accepting the suffering of the people, at the same time sympathetic to the author himself and distant from him, which expands the writer’s artistic possibilities.

The merit of Leskov in the process of revolutionary transformations is that, no matter how he relates to the ideas of the revolutionary democrats, he objectively

N.S. Leskov

It feeds on grass, and with a lack of it, lichen.

from zoology.

CHAPTER FIRST

Musk Ox did not like conversations, did everything in silence, and did exactly what you could least expect from him at the given moment.

It was in the summer of 1854. I had to take care of the process, which was carried out in the Kursk government offices.

The story of N. S. Leskov "The Musk Ox", as a reflection of the social life of Russian society in the 60s, XIX century

The social and literary life of Russia in the sixties of the last century was marked by one of the most important events in the history of Russian society. The progressive forces of that time suffered an ideological split, the consequences of which are felt to this day. The general democratic camp of the Russian public broke up into moderate liberals and revolutionary democrats. With the commonality of goals, both those and others, the views on the development of society, and, consequently, on the ways of its change, were diametrically opposed.
If the revolutionary-minded democrats called for a revolutionary transformation, then the moderate liberals leaned towards the evolutionary path of improving life. The most prominent spokesmen for these two democratic camps were the journals Sovremennik and Otechestvennye Zapiski. Until recently, the assessment of these directions was rather unequivocal: the revolutionary aspirations for the reorganization of the world were seen as the only true ones in public life, and their literary and journalistic expressions always turned out to be “correct” and were the most advanced than other views on history and methods of changing it.
Even from the time of M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, the epithet “liberal” still bears the meaning of an unworthy social phenomenon, rooted in reactionary renegade. At the same time, using this term, publicists of the 60s. in polemical fervor, they completely ignored his modern (at that time) meaning of a “gradualist”, i.e., a person who did not share the views on the forced path of development of society. At times, the vulgarly exaggerated use of the term "liberal", and besides, "moderate", directly meant a "reactionary", living according to the principle "in relation to meanness." Such an unacceptable confusion of different concepts under one and the same term closed the democratic, positive goals of the moderate liberals (in particular, I. S. Leskov) of the 60s, putting them on a par with the retrograde reactionary serf-owners.
The polemical battles that unfolded in connection with the split that emerged, captured all the thinking strata of Russian society. Sovremennik had to contend with Russkiy Vestnik, Otechestvennye Zapiski, Moskovskiye Vedomosti, and many other time-based publications. Again, the voices of writers and critics of the “gradualists” found themselves on the same side of the barricade with terry reactionaries (N.N. Katkov and others), which aggravated the public’s negative attitude towards moderate liberals.
Even the fact that the journalism of the so-called liberals (and N. S. Leskov adjoined precisely this wing of social thought) did not save the situation showed itself from the very best side: convincing argumentation, the ability to rely on real facts of social life, the firmness and consistency of the defended truths , humor.
Leskov's own fate develops in such a way that he comes to fiction from journalism, through the difficult ups and downs of his own fate. The events associated with the feuilleton “A Few Words about Doctors of Recruiting Presences” (Modern Medicine, 1860 N 36) under the pseudonym Freishits and the article “Police Doctors in Russia”, N 48, 1860, directly and quite negatively affect the fate of the writer. (As in the subsequent and notorious article about the St. Petersburg fires).
As a journalist and critic, N.S. Leskov left a great and remarkable journalistic legacy: in particular, articles on the social significance of literature and art; about Russian literature; about theater, painting; a variety of literary portraits and recollections.
And in the dispute between the revolutionary democrats and the moderate liberals, N. S. Leskov took an active part. His article “On the remarkable, but not beneficial trend of some modern writers” in the weekly Russkaya Speech and Moskovsky Vestnik, 1861, N 52 (pseudonym V. Peresvetov), aimed at the “nihilism” of some speeches of the Sovremennik magazine, so seriously exposed idealized pseudo-“populism” and the inability and unwillingness of individual publicists of that time to delve into the essence of the issues raised, which caused an immediate and sharp rebuff from the Russkoye Slovo magazine, and the journalistic activity of Leskov himself, in Fatherland Notes, was noted by Chernyshevsky in the manuscript of the “second collection "Polemical beauties" in the "List of persons whose polemical articles against Sovremennik (...) are happy to publish Sovremennik on their pages."
The views of N. S. Leskov, as a “gradualist”, were by no means based on armchair speculative conclusions about the development of society and good dreams, but were built on examples from life, common sense and real knowledge of Russia. Now one can only regret that the public, blinded by the catchiness of phrases and the carnival brilliance of the intentions of the revolutionary democrats, was unable to discern the true "fruits" of this path. It is noteworthy that life, which provided food for the writer's work, only confirmed what Leskov the publicist was talking about.
Artistic ideas and real events were in contact. The literature of N. S. Leskov is a true touchstone of reality, highlighting and emphasizing those key points on which the views of the writer about the state of affairs in contemporary society were based.
For society as a whole, the philosophical significance of artistic reflection, knowledge of reality has always seemed to be a higher level of comprehension of being than journalism that is operational in terms of responding to events. Everything that is momentary, random, atypical, caught in the perspective of journalism must pass the test of time, and only after passing through the crucible of artistic embodiment does it crystallize into images that create this or that time, this or that era. Only the fundamental, the typical remains.
They are perceived in different ways and meaningful in different ways: the theoretical sophistication of a publicist about a phenomenon and the same phenomenon reflected by means of art. The falsity of incorrect arguments and conclusions in a work of art cannot be hidden by moralizing and other theoretical syllogisms.
Being a real creator, Leskov already at a relatively early stage of his work was able to artistically show the true state of affairs in the field of revolutionary and pseudo-revolutionary activity in Russia at the end of the 19th century. The novel “Nowhere” and “On Knives” has not yet been written, but in 1863, the story “Musk Ox” appears before the reader (Leskov himself defines this work as a story). The hero of the work, Vasily Petrovich Bogoslovsky (nicknamed "Musk Ox") is a man of high moral principles. To illustrate this, the writer introduces several characteristic-accentological episodes into the fabric of the narrative, where such features of the Musk Ox as decency, honesty, directness, a sense of compassion for people are fully revealed (the scene of the conflict between the Musk Ox and the barchuk in a noble estate; the hero’s meeting with a party of young Jewish children -recruits).
The meaning of Bogoslovsky's life is to serve people: "... My people, my people! What would I not do to you? .. My people, my people! What would I not give you? .. - with these words Vasily Petrovich in chapter three defines their ethical and moral purpose.
Traditionally, researchers consider the image of the Musk Ox as a kind of conglomerate of a commoner, a populist, a forerunner of revolutionaries who has not yet realized the “correct” way of fighting for the freedom and happiness of the people, and therefore is failing on the path of individual preaching. From this position, both B. Yu. Troitsky and I. V. Stolyarova consider the image of the Musk Ox. The last researcher, relying on the conclusions of literary critics who preceded her, gave a certain quintessence of Bogoslovsky's characteristics, concisely expressed in two theses: the first is the Musk Ox - the bearer of humanism and revolutionism.
Strange: if this is an associative pair, then the conflict of what other concepts in the soul of the hero leads him to his own death?
With regard to such a combination, a case comes to mind that occurred during the meeting of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin, with the then minister, fabulist Ivan Ivanovich Dmitriev in the Moscow English Club, when I. I. Dmitriev pointed out to the poet the strangeness of the combination of words in the name “Moscow English Club”, to which A. S. Pushkin laughed and replied: - And there is even stranger, Your Excellency: "Imperial philanthropic society."
This terminological confusion and deep semantic shift comes from the time when everything good and progressive was attributed only to the words "revolution", etc., and everything negative to their antonyms.
The second thesis: the ideological impasse of the hero and the subsequent suicide. The emphasis in this thesis is placed on the ideological dead end of the hero himself, turning a blind eye to the dead end of the ideas of the revolutionary "impatients", i.e. the dead end of the general idea of using the revolution to those historical moments when evolution is necessary for the good of the cause. For the sake of truth, it is worth mentioning that Russian reality also knew the other extreme in the choice of means of social development, this is the so-called theory of little benefit, as well as the theory of reasonable egoism of the French materialists of the 18th century - Holbach, Helvetius, Diderot, whose adept and preacher was Chernyshevsky. What is worse for society - the constant revolutionization of reality or the constant emphasis on evolution - is difficult to judge, although the fruits of the revolutionary upheavals of the 17th year of the last century echo in the 21st century. It is not accidental now that certain circles of society tend to see the root of all the troubles of our time in unreasonable revolutionism, which still comes from democrats-raznochintsy. From the height of our time, it is objectively easier to judge the positions of the thinkers of the last century, but do not judge, and you will not be judged. But as a lesson in cautioning against going too far, it's never too late to accept.
It is difficult to disagree with the statement of N. S. Leskov about the presence of common sense in the works of literary critics of that time: “We probably ended with Belinsky ... Dobrolyubov and Pisarev were very readable, but they were “oracles of common sense and reason” , of course, were not.
In my opinion, the conclusion about the subjects of the struggle of the Musk Ox (in the image of Alexander Ivanovich, as this opponent) is determined by researchers tendentiously. One of the arguments in defense of the emerging class of capitalists, as a force that the revolutionary-minded individualist Bogoslovsky cannot cope with, is a quote from his letter to the author of the story: “... There is nowhere to go. Everywhere everything is the same.
Yes, capitalism, with its stranglehold of the entrepreneur, poses a certain threat to the good dreams of the “happy ones” of mankind, but in none of the works did we meet an attempt by literary critics, based on the narrative, to analyze the goals that the Musk Ox aspired to and the dangers that he foresees. But the writer directly gives the answer to the question posed in chapter three, in the program monologue of the protagonist:
"... Troubled days are coming, troubled. The hour must not be delayed, otherwise false prophets will come, and I hear their damned and hated voice. In the name of the people they will trap and destroy you ...".
Such a subtle psychologist and stylist as I. S. Leskov could not carelessly treat his own text and, without any purpose, put a relatively long monologue with sincere, sore spiritual questions into the mouth of the taciturn and reserved Vasily Petrovich.
Until recently, the object of stigmatization was (and sometimes remains) the class of exploiters, and it naturally followed from this that the hero of the story, faced with the first representatives of capital, de facto lost to them. “Having found himself in an ideological impasse, being an honest and whole person, he commits suicide.” - writes I. B. Stolyarova, turning a blind eye to the fact that the categories of "honesty" and "integrity of character" are the concepts of ethics and with ideology they can be at different poles of the human soul. There are many examples of moral scoundrels, but with very firm ideological principles. We have to talk about the discrepancy between the moral ideals at the heart of the ethical beliefs of the Musk Ox and Alexander Sviridov, but not about their social opposition. Sviridov has no fear of what for the Musk Ox is equal to fiery hell: "the coming false prophets" with their "in the name of the people" catching and destroying people.
In addition to these sociological approaches to the story "The Musk Ox", all researchers, without exception, point to the artistic perfection of the work. This is undeniable. Chapter Four is a completely independent and original essay about the monastic places of the Oryol province, where the writer conveys not only the appearance of the holy places, but also the spirit and beauty of the nature around them with a rich language palette.
Novices of one of the monasteries lead their stories about marvelous divas, about robbers almost folklore, their speech is like the speech of fairy-tale characters who appeared in the real world and fascinated the narrator in his childhood. In passing, it should be noted, as an artistic feature, that narration in the first person is one of the most difficult forms, along with a tale, masterfully worked out by N. S. Leskov.
The monologues and dialogues of the Musk Ox in chapter three are inimitable in their power of expression; in them, in these thoughts and sufferings, this ascetic of serving people is revealed.
In the genre decoration of the story, N. S. Leskov did not bypass the epistolary, examples of which serve not only as an excellent example of the beauty of the syllable (Chapter 10), but also serve to better reveal the artistic and ideological concept of the work (Chapter 12).
Such stylistic mastery of the author becomes even more significant, if we do not forget that the story "The Musk Ox" is the work of the beginning of the creative path of Leskov the writer. Large literary forms will still be created by him, the brilliant “iconostasis” of the righteous is still ahead, and Leskov will thereby leave one of the most significant traces in Russian literature, standing, in terms of the depth of disclosure of the Russian national character, rightfully on a par with such great writers and his contemporaries like F. M. Dostoevsky and L. N. Tolstoy.

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Gorelov A. A. Leskov and folk culture. L., 1988. pp. 54-60;
There. p. 85;
Leskov N. S. Collected works. in 5 vols. T. 2, M., 1981. p. 24;
Troitsky V. Yu. Leskov is an artist. M., 1974.; Stolyarova I.V. In Search of the Ideal. Creativity N.S. Leskov. L., 1978;
A. S. Pushkin in jokes. Bitter. 1990. p. 7;
Leskov N. S. Literary rage - Historical Bulletin, 1883, T. XII, pp. 155-156;
Leskov N. S. Sobr. op. in 5 vols. T. 2. M., 1981. p. 56;
There. page 24;
Stolyarova I.V. In Search of the Ideal. Creativity N. S. Leskov. L., 1978. p. 47.
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References:

1. Leskov N. S. Collected works. in 5 volumes. T.2. M., 1981.
2. Leskov N. S. On literature and art. L., 1984.
3. Gorelov A. A. N. S. Leskov and folk culture. L., 1988.
4. A. S. Pushkin in jokes / Comp. L. Rytov. Gorky-N. Novgorod. 1990.
5. Stolyarova I. V. In search of an ideal. Creativity N. S. Leskov. L., 1978.
6. Troitsky B. Yu. Leskov-artist. M., 1974.