Leskov: The Overlooked Genius
23 hrs. 36 min.
Language
Russian
Author
Maya Kucherskaya
Author
Maya Kucherskaya
Narrator
Vladimir Levasheov
Narrator
Maya Kucherskaya
Description
Igor Severyanin called him a “overlooked genius” — and that’s exactly what he wrote: “Equal to Dostoevsky, he is a overlooked genius. / An enchanted wanderer of the catacombs of language!” And indeed: everyone knows “Lefty,” but Leskov’s prose is read far too little and far too poorly—often only at school, by force. And Leo Tolstoy called him a writer of the future! The future has already arrived: it’s high time to rediscover this most underrated nineteenth-century classic, an unsurpassed storyteller and essayist, a prose writer whose experiments with language anticipated the avant-garde experiments of the early twentieth century. A person, as Chekhov put it, who looked both like a refined Frenchman and like a church deacon—someone who didn’t fit any templates.
His guide through this astonishing life was the writer and philologist Mayya Kucherskaya. Her biography of Nikolay Leskov stands right on the boundary between documentary and artistic prose: it is both a careful study and a personal message of love.
We present to you the audiobook version.
“Lescov’s life, which contained the death of a little son, his wife’s madness, unfair dismissal from public service, years of persecution, and rejection by contemporaries—could easily have turned into a tragedy. But everything in it somehow always slid into vaudeville, into an everyday scandal. Not because Leskov lacked scale—time changed, and his hero changed with it. Where people once rebelled, shot at each other, died in duels over a single word, where they held noisy friendly feasts, now there was only a filthy tavern and loud drunkenness. Instead of a duel, only a murky brawl among people from the middle ranks could flare up; instead of the old battles, petty squabbles would spread.
All his life, Leskov searched intensely for what could be opposed to this, what could serve as support—and he found it in one thing: the golden icon-painted sky, eternity, the beauty of a gentle and wise soul, and the treasure-house of the native language.”
His guide through this astonishing life was the writer and philologist Mayya Kucherskaya. Her biography of Nikolay Leskov stands right on the boundary between documentary and artistic prose: it is both a careful study and a personal message of love.
We present to you the audiobook version.
“Lescov’s life, which contained the death of a little son, his wife’s madness, unfair dismissal from public service, years of persecution, and rejection by contemporaries—could easily have turned into a tragedy. But everything in it somehow always slid into vaudeville, into an everyday scandal. Not because Leskov lacked scale—time changed, and his hero changed with it. Where people once rebelled, shot at each other, died in duels over a single word, where they held noisy friendly feasts, now there was only a filthy tavern and loud drunkenness. Instead of a duel, only a murky brawl among people from the middle ranks could flare up; instead of the old battles, petty squabbles would spread.
All his life, Leskov searched intensely for what could be opposed to this, what could serve as support—and he found it in one thing: the golden icon-painted sky, eternity, the beauty of a gentle and wise soul, and the treasure-house of the native language.”
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