Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov

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Nikolai Leskov ( Serov - portrait from 1894)
Nikolai Leskov signature.svg
Leskov's grave in Saint Petersburg

Nikolai Leskov ( Russian Николай Семёнович Лесков , scientific. Transliteration of Nikolai Leskov Semenovic ; also Lieskow , Ljesskow or Leskov , emphasizing: Leskov * 4 . Jul / 16th February  1831 greg. In Gorochowo, Oryol Governorate ; † February 21 jul . / March 5,  1895 greg. In Saint Petersburg ) was a Russian writer .

Life

Leskow (with an emphasis on the second syllable) was born the son of an official who had only recently been ennobled. His training was initially provided by private tutors, later he attended the grammar school of Oryol , which he left without a degree. After the financial ruin of the family, he began to work as a clerk at the Oryol Criminal Court in 1847. In 1850 he went to Kiev , where he worked as a secretary for the army recruitment agency . In Kiev, an uncle who was a professor of medicine promoted Leskov's further education.

In 1853 Leskow married Olga Smirnowa. The marriage resulted in two children, a son and a daughter. From 1857 he worked for an English trading company, on whose behalf he had to travel a lot, where he got to know large parts of Russia. In 1860 he resigned, left his wife and settled in Petersburg as a journalist. During this time he also began to write and his first stories appeared in magazines. Between 1862 and 1863 he toured Eastern Europe and France. From 1865 he lived with Katerina Bubnowa; their son, Andrei Leskov, later wrote the author's first biography.

In 1874 Leskow accepted a position in the Ministry of Culture. In 1883 he was released there after he had spoken critically about church and state. Even with his literary work, he came into conflict with the state censorship more and more frequently in the following years. Leskow died in 1895 of complications from cancer and was buried in the Volkovo Cemetery in Petersburg .

Services

With his novels Without Way Out and To the Knife , Leskow came into conflict early on with the leading, liberal literary circles. He finally gained recognition through his stories and novels and was considered the most important Russian prose author during his lifetime, alongside Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy . Leskov was a knowledgeable and thoroughly critical observer of Russia. He advocated reform, but opposed any kind of subversive movement. The problematic of most of Leskov's works arises from the uncovering of the contradiction between an unadulterated natural being of man and a distorted one, as it emerges in everyday social activity. Accordingly, the poet did not represent the liberation of man through a liberation of society, but through a turning away from it, which is why he came into irreconcilable opposition to the revolutionary Russian movement. Many of his characters act morally out of a Russian-patriotic or Christian self-image (and consequently get entangled in numerous contradictions). Leskov's special interest was in the Old Believers ' sect , which was forbidden in the Russian Empire , but widespread and which plays an important role in several stories.

His stories and novels are on the one hand realistic and often popular, on the other hand they also have a strong symbolist influence, which is shown by the fact that Leskow took up traditional religious narrative forms such as legend and also liked to interweave mystical or fairytale elements in his fabrics. Leskov's work, which is difficult to translate (the translations by Johannes von Guenther are particularly successful ), is characterized by colloquial language and dialect coloring, which on the one hand succeeded in expanding the Russian literary language and at the same time new aspects of everyday life, especially for ordinary people capture. Literary studies sees a special quality in its style of oral narration ( called Skaz in Russian ).

Works

Novels

  • No way out (Russian Некуда), 1865
  • The passed (Russian Обойдённые), 1865
  • The islanders (Russian Островитяне), 1866
  • Old times in Plodomassowo (Russian Старые годы в селе Плодомасове), 1869
  • Except for the knife (Russian На ножах), 1870
  • The clergy , also the canons , the priests of Stargorod , (Russian Соборяне), 1872
  • Childhood (russ. Детские годы) even wisps (russ. Блудящие огни), 1874
  • A decrepit generation , also the dying generation (Russian Захудалый род), 1874
  • The Devil Dolls (Russian Чёртовы куклы), 1890

stories

Plays

  • The spendthrift. Drama in five acts (Russian Расточитель), 1867

literature

  • Walter Benjamin : The narrator. Reflections on the work of Nikolai Lesskov . In: ders .: Collected Writings , Bd.II. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1991, pp. 438-465.
  • Martina Fuchs: 'Ledi Makbet Mcenskogo uezda': comparative analysis of NS Leskov's story and the opera of the same name by DD Šostakovič. Groos, Heidelberg 1992. (= Groos Collection; 45; Mannheimer contributions to Slavic philology; 4) ISBN 3-87276-661-9 .
  • Wolfgang Girke: Studies on the language NS Leskovs. Sagner, Munich 1969. (= Slavic articles; 39).
  • Johannes Harder: Struggle for people. An interpretation by Nikolai Leskov. Youth service, Wuppertal 1959. (= The conversation; 22).
  • Agnes Luise Hinck:  LESKOV, Nikolaj Semenovič (pseud. M. Stebnickij), Russian writers. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 4, Bautz, Herzberg 1992, ISBN 3-88309-038-7 , Sp. 1536-1543.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  • Robert Hodel : reflections on skaz from NS Leskov and Dragoslav Mihailović. Peter Lang, Bern 1994. (= Slavica Helvetica; 44) ISBN 3-906751-77-5 .
  • Sang-Hun Lee: NS Leskov's legendary poetry as a process of decanonization. Biblion, Munich 2004. ISBN 3-932331-44-3 .
  • Inès Muller de Morogues: 'The problem of féminin' et les portraits de femmes dans l'oeuvre de Nikolaj Leskov. Peter Lang, Bern 1991 (= Slavica Helvetica; 38) ISBN 3-261-04378-4 .
  • Marie Luise Rößler: Nikolai Leskov and his representation of the religious man. Böhlau, Weimar 1939.
  • Gabriella Safran: Rewriting the Jew. Assimilation narratives in the Russian empire. Stanford University Press , Stanford 2000 ISBN 0-8047-3830-0 .
  • Vsevolod Setchkarev: NS Leskov. His life and his work. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1959.
  • Irmhild Christina Sperrle: The organic worldview of Nikolai Leskov. Northwestern University Press Evanston (Illinois) 2002 ISBN 0-8101-1754-1 .
  • Joachim Willems: Mission, Tolerance and Interreligious Learning. Nikolaj Leskov as an orthodox mission theologian. In: Interkulturelle Theologie - Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft 4, 2011, pp. 315–331.
  • Bodo Zelinsky: Novel and Novel Chronicle. Structural studies on Nikolaj Leskov's storytelling. Böhlau, Cologne 1970 (= Slavic research; 10) ISBN 3-412-10970-3 .

Web links

Commons : Nikolai Leskow  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Nikolai Semjonowitsch Leskow  - Sources and full texts (Russian)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ the countless other spellings of his name, also on book covers, see the German National Library under web links
  2. ↑ further archives: restlessness of the spirit / the sentry / the fool / the daughter of consolation / a genius
  3. ↑ Readable a. a. as a PDF on a page of the Zurich University of the Arts
personal data
SURNAME Leskov, Nikolai Semjonowitsch
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lieskow, Nikolai Semjonowitsch; Lyesskow, Nikolai Semjonowitsch; Lesskow, Nikolai Semjonowitsch; Лесков, Николай Семёнович (Russian); Leskov, Nikolaj Semënovič (ru-Latn)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian writer
DATE OF BIRTH February 16, 1831
PLACE OF BIRTH Gorokhovo, Oryol Governorate
DATE OF DEATH March 5, 1895
Place of death St. Petersburg