Few writers of the nineteenth century used folklore and folk traditions so widely in their work. Deeply believing in the spiritual power of the people, he is nevertheless far from idealizing them, from creating idols, from “idol liturgy for the peasant,” using Gorky’s expression. The writer explained his position by the fact that he “studied the people not from conversations with St. Petersburg cab drivers”, but “grew up among the people” and that “it was not appropriate for him to either raise the people on stilts or put them under his feet.”
Confirmation of the writer’s objectivity can be “The Tale of the Tula Oblique Lefty and the Steel Flea,” which was assessed at one time by critics as “a set of clownish expressions in the style of ugly foolishness” (A. Volynsky). Unlike other fairy tale works by Leskov, the narrator from the folk environment does not have specific features. This anonymous person speaks on behalf of an indefinite multitude, as its unique mouthpiece. There are always various rumors among the people, passed on from mouth to mouth and in the process of such transmission acquire all sorts of conjectures, assumptions, and new details. A legend is created by the people, and it appears in “Lefty” that it is so freely created, embodying the “voice of the people.”
It is interesting that in the first printed editions Leskov introduced the following preface to the story: “I wrote down this legend in Sestroretsk according to a local tale from an old gunsmith, a Tula native, who moved to the Sister River during the reign of Emperor Alexander the First. The narrator two years ago was still in good health and with a fresh memory; he readily recalled the old days, greatly honored Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich, lived “according to the old faith,” read divine books and bred canaries.” The abundance of “reliable” details left no room for doubt, but everything turned out to be... a literary hoax, which was soon exposed by the author himself: “... I composed this whole story in May last year, and Lefty is a person I invented... “Leskov will return to the question of the fictionality of Lefty more than once, and in his lifetime collected works he will completely remove the “preface.” Leskov needed this very hoax to create the illusion that the author was not involved in the content of the tale.
However, with all the outward simplicity of the narrative, this story by Leskov also has a “double bottom.” Embodying popular ideas about Russian autocrats, military leaders, about people of another nation, about themselves, the simple-minded narrator knows nothing about what the author who created him thinks about the same thing. But Leskov’s “secret writing” makes it possible to clearly hear the author’s voice. And this voice will tell that the rulers are alienated from the people, neglecting their duty to them, that these rulers are accustomed to power, which does not need to be justified by the presence of its own merits, that it is not the supreme power that is concerned with the honor and fate of the nation, but ordinary Tula men. They protect the honor and glory of Russia and constitute its hope.
However, the author will not hide the fact that the Tula craftsmen, who managed to shoe the English flea, essentially ruined the mechanical toy, because “they were not good at science,” that they, “deprived of the opportunity to make history, made jokes.”
England and Russia (Oryol region, Tula, St. Petersburg, Penza), Revel and Merrekul, the Ukrainian village of Peregudy - such is the “geography” of Leskov’s stories and tales in just one book. People of different nations enter into the most unexpected connections and relationships here. The “truly Russian person” sometimes puts foreigners to shame, sometimes he finds himself dependent on their “system.” Finding universal humanity in the lives of different peoples and striving to understand the present and future of Russia in connection with the course of historical processes in Europe, Leskov was at the same time clearly aware of the uniqueness of his country. At the same time, he did not fall into the extremes of Westernism and Slavophilism, but maintained the position of objective artistic research. How did a “through-and-through Russian” writer and a man who passionately loved Russia and his people manage to find a measure of such objectivity? The answer lies in Leskov’s work itself.

Story by N.S. Leskov’s “Lefty” is one of the writer’s most popular works. What is attractive here is the combination of folk, folklore origins with the deep thoughts of the author about the essence of the Russian national character, about the role of Russia and Russians in the world. It is no coincidence that this work has the subtitle “The Tale of the Tula Oblique Left-Hander and the Steel Flea.” “Lefty” was imitated as a folk legend, although Leskov later admitted: “I composed this whole story... and Lefty is a person I made up.” To stylize the story as folklore, a narrator was chosen who is very different from the real author both in terms of speech and biography. Readers get the impression that the narrator is the same Tula artisan as the skilled gunsmith Lefty. He speaks completely differently than Leskov, and endows the characters with speech characteristics unusual for their real prototypes. For example, the Don ataman Count Platov, while with Emperor Alexander Pavlovich in England, “ordered the orderly to bring a flask of Caucasian vodka-kizlyarka from the cellar, cracked a good glass, prayed to God on the road fold, covered himself with a cloak and snored so that in the whole house no Englishmen could sleep.” It was impossible." And the same Platov speaks just like a peasant or a craftsman: “Oh, they are dog scoundrels! Now I understand why they didn’t want to tell me anything there. It’s good that I took one of their fools with me.” The emperor himself expresses it no better, in the narrator’s view: “No, am I still a jellyfish? see other news...” The narrator’s own speech is the same, as we have already seen when describing Platov. The author of “Lefty,” having entrusted the story to him, left only footnotes directly behind him, thanks to which readers get the impression of the reliability of the facts underlying the story. The language of the notes is literary correct, almost scientific. Here you can already hear Leskov’s own voice: “Pop Fedot” was not taken from the wind: Emperor Alexander Pavlovich, before his death in Taganrog, confessed to the priest Alexei Fedotov-Chekhovsky, who after that was called “His Majesty’s confessor” and loved to make everyone see this completely random circumstance. This Fedotov - Chekhovsky, obviously, is the legendary “priest Fedot.” But Lefty’s voice in the story is almost indistinguishable in style from the speech of other characters and the narrator. Let us also add that Leskov deliberately gives the popular vowels of the names of famous nobles. For example, Chancellor Count K.V. Nesselrode turned into Count Kisselrode. In this way, the writer conveyed his negative attitude towards Nesselrode’s activities as Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The main character of the story is an uneducated man, not without the shortcomings characteristic of Russians, including friendship with the “green serpent.” However, the main property of Lefty is extraordinary, wonderful skill. He wiped the noses of the “Aglitsky masters”, shod the flea with such small nails that you couldn’t see it even with the strongest microscope. In the image of Lefty, Leskov proved that the opinion put into the mouth of Emperor Alexander Pavlovich was incorrect: foreigners “have such a nature of perfection that once you look at it, you will no longer argue that we, Russians, are worthless with our significance.” Lefty does not succumb to any temptations and refuses to betray his homeland, sacrificing his life to convey: “Tell the sovereign that the British don’t clean their guns with bricks: let them not clean ours either, otherwise, God bless wars, they are not suitable for shooting.” But the officials never conveyed this warning to either the then emperor or his successor, c. as a result of which the Russian army allegedly lost the Crimean War. And when Lefty’s friend “the English half-skipper” states in a wonderful broken language: “Even though he has an Ovechkin’s fur coat, he has the soul of a little man,” the author of the story himself speaks to us. And in the final chapter of “Lefty” Leskov sheds the mask of a simple-minded and illiterate narrator, immediately taking readers from the time of Lefty to the present (the story was created in 1881): “Now all this is already “the affairs of bygone days” and “legends of antiquity,” although and not deep, but there is no need to rush to forget these legends, despite the fabulous nature of the legend and the epic character of its main character. Lefty's own name, like the names of many of the greatest geniuses, is forever lost to posterity; but as a myth personified by folk fantasy; is interesting, and his adventures can serve as a memory of an era, the general spirit of which is accurately and accurately captured.” The image of Lefty, according to the writer, recalls those times when “inequality of talents and talents” mattered, and makes one look with sadness at the present time, when, “while favoring an increase in earnings, machines do not favor artistic prowess, which sometimes exceeded the limit, inspiring folk imagination to compose fabulous legends similar to the current ones.”

Bibliography

To prepare this work, materials were used from the site http://www.litra.ru/

Literature lesson in 6th grade on the topic:

N. S. Leskov. "Lefty."

Lesson topic : Life experienceN. S. Leskova - the basis of his creativity. "Lefty."

Tale as a form of storytelling. Reading Chapters I – III.

The purpose of the lesson :

Subject: show the historical and cultural context of the time, familiarize students with fragments of biography and creativity

N. S. Leskova, tell about the history of the creation of the work, draw

attention to the genre of the work; give an initial idea of ​​the tale genre;

identify the features of the language of the work;

Metasubject : be able to accept and maintain a learning task.

Lesson objectives:

Educational:

Develop skills in individual and group work.

Develop written and oral speech; monologue speech skills.

Develop the ability to highlight the main thing in a work of art, extract the necessary information from the text, and artistic retelling of a separate episode;

Ability to justify your answer.

Educational:

Briefly introduce the biography and work of N.S. Leskov

To develop students’ skills to see a work in the unity of content and form

Develop the ability to analyze text, find genre features and determine genre uniqueness

Educational:

Generate interest in the writer’s work.

Develop self-esteem.

Develop a respectful attitude towards others.

To cultivate feelings of citizenship and patriotism in students through reading and analyzing literary texts;

Lesson type: learning new material;

Lesson equipment – textbook, diagram, illustrations; presentation.

During the classes

Org moment.

Motivation for learning activities.

Name the types of literature.

What does the genre of a work mean?

Is a story a genre or genre of work? The genre and gender is epic.

Update stage.

Do you love fairy tales? What types are they?

How can a tale differ from a fairy tale?

Formulate a topic.

Lesson topic...

Teacher's story .

Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov belongs to the best writers of the 19th century.

The writer himself in his “Autobiographical Note” writes about himself:

“By origin I belong to the hereditary nobility, but young and insignificant. Our family comes from the clergy: my grandfather and his father and grandfather and great-grandfather were all priests. My father “did not become a priest,” stopped his spiritual career, was kicked out of the house by my grandfather, and with 40 kopecks of copper came to Orel, where he became a teacher in the houses of local landowners.

I was born on February 4, 1831 in the village of Gorokhov, where my grandmother lived. We lived in a tiny house, which consisted of one large peasant log house covered with straw.

In the village I lived in complete freedom. With my peers, peasant children, I lived and got along soul to soul. I knew the life of the common people to the smallest detail and understood to the smallest shades how the landowners from the large manor house treated it.

I was undoubtedly gifted with great abilities, I was polite, did not shy away from people, had decent manners, and spoke French at an early age. I studied well at the gymnasium...”

Time passed... In 1847 he entered the service of the Oryol Criminal Chamber, in 1749 he transferred to the Kyiv State Chamber, in 1857 he transferred to a private commercial company and traveled all over Russia on official business. In 1860, he briefly served as an investigator in the Kyiv police, but Leskov’s articles in the weekly “Modern Medicine”, exposing the corruption of police doctors, led to a conflict with his colleagues. As a result of the provocation they organized, Leskov, who conducted the official investigation, was accused of bribery and was forced to leave his service. In January 1861 he moved to St. Petersburg.

He saw life in all its disorder, listened to stories about the joys, but more about the troubles of people of different classes, both rich and poor.

IN 1860 STARTS WRITING AND PUBLISHING ESSAYS ABOUT LIFE.

Later, in response to a newspaper reporter's question: "Where do you get your material for your writing?" - Leskov pointed to his forehead: “From this chest.” Here are the impressions of my commercial service, when I had to travel around Russia on business, this was the best time of my life, when I saw a lot and lived easily.”

Working with the class.

Read on page 225 about how Nikolai Leskov wrote and who was the hero of his works?

Read on page 226 what is Leskov grieving about?

Work in notebooks.

Write it down.

Nikolai Semenovich Leskov (1831, Oryol province - 1895, St. Petersburg)

Heroes of his works - representatives of different classes and the writer says everything in his own way, and not in a literary way; Theytalk about their lives .

And we will see this today, because we will get acquainted with a work that is unusual in its genre.

This is “The Tale of the Tula oblique left-hander and the steel flea”

Write it down.

"Left-handed" or " Taleabout the Tula oblique left-hander and the steel flea" written in 1881,

the idea arose in 1878, when Leskov was staying in the house of a gunsmith in Sestroretsk.

The work is based on the joke “how the British made a flea out of steel, and our Tula people shod it and sent it back to them.”

Skaz is a genre of epic based on folk tales and legends; Skaz - “to tell”, i.e. to tell

The narrator of the tale is a person from the people with his own special speech.

The narrator changes the words so that it is “more understandable” to an illiterate person.

The story is similar to a fairy tale:

extraordinary events happen to the heroes; there are “wonderful” objects;

there is a beginning and an ending; repetitions; dialogues are like in a fairy tale.

A tale differs from a fairy tale in that it is based on real people, places and events:

• Alexander I – Emperor, Matvey - Ataman of the Don Cossacks,

Empress Elizabeth, Emperor Nicholas I,

• Europe, England, Russia, Tsarskoe Selo, Tula, Taganrog, St. Petersburg, Sestroretsk, Don, Orel, Kyiv, Moscow

• The action takes place in Russia and England after the Napoleonic War, after 1812.

  The Congress of Vienna of 1814-1815 is mentioned.

  Trip of Alexander I with Platov to London.

  The Decembrist uprising of 1825, called “confusion,” is mentioned.

  The stage of incorporating what has been learned into the knowledge system.

  01.02.2012 18952 1785

  Lesson 25 N. S. Leskov is an outstanding Russian writer, expert and connoisseur of folk life and folk words. tale "Lefty"

  Goals: provide students with brief biographical information about Leskov; introduce the history of the creation of “Lefty”, begin work on the tale.

  During the classes

  I. Learning new material.

  1. Teacher's opening speech about N. S. Leskov and his work.

  The childhood of Nikolai Semenovich Leskov (1831–1895) was spent, as the writer constantly emphasized, “... among the people themselves,” in the small estate Panino in the Oryol region.

  On the screen - “Autobiographical Note” by N. S. Leskov; the teacher or specially trained students continue reading it.

  <…>“By origin, I belong to the hereditary nobility of the Oryol province, but our nobility is young and insignificant, it was acquired by my father through the rank of collegiate assessor (in tsarist Russia the civil rank was 8 th class). Our family actually comes from the clergy, and there is a kind of honorable line behind it. My grandfather, priest Dmitry Leskov, and his father, grandfather and great-grandfather were all priests in the village of Leski, which is located in the Karachaevsky or Trubnevsky district of the Oryol province. From this village of Leski came our family surname – the Leskovs...

  My father, Semyon Dmitrievich Leskov, “did not become a priest,” but stopped his spiritual career immediately after completing a course of science at Sevsk Seminary. This, they said, seemed to upset my grandfather very much and almost drove him to his grave...

  Kicked out of the house by my grandfather for refusing to enter the clergy, my father fled to Oryol with forty kopecks of copper, which his late mother gave him “through the back gate”...

  With forty kopecks, the father came to Orel and “for bread” was taken into the house of the local landowner Khlopov, from whom he taught children, and must have been successful, because he was “lured” away from Khlopov by the landowner Mikhail Andreevich Strakhov, who was serving at that time Oryol district leader of the nobility...

  In the place of a teacher in Strakhov’s house, my father attracted attention with his wonderful mind and honesty, which was an excellent feature of his entire long-suffering life...

  I was born on February 4, 1831, Oryol district, in the village of Gorokhov, where my grandmother lived, with whom my mother was visiting at that time...

  We lived in a tiny house, which consisted of one large peasant log house, plastered inside and covered with thatch...

  In the village I lived in complete freedom, which I used as I wanted. My peers were peasant children, with whom I lived and got along soul to soul. I knew the life of the common people to the smallest detail and understood to the smallest shades how they were treated from the big manor house, from our “small chicken house”, from the inn and from Popovka...

  My mother’s sister, Natalya Petrovna, a great beauty, was married to M.A. Strakhov...

  The fruit of the marriage between Strakhov and my aunt was six children - three daughters and three sons, of which two were a little older than me, and the third was the same age. And since for their upbringing there were Russian and German teachers and a French woman in the house, and my parents could not keep anything like that for me, I lived with the Strakhovs almost until I was eight years old, and this served me in my favor: I was well-controlled, then he knew how to behave decently in society, did not shy away from people and had decent manners - he answered politely, bowed decently and chatted early in French.

  But with these favorable conditions for my upbringing, some unfavorable things also crept into my soul: I early felt twinges of pride and pride, in which I expressed a great resemblance to my father. I was undoubtedly gifted with greater abilities than my cousins, and whatever difficulties they had in the sciences did not suit me at all. The German teacher Kohlberg had the imprudence to point this out to my aunt, and I began to notice that my successes were unpleasant to her.

  The fact is that, according to the report of the careless but honest Kohlberg, they wanted to “encourage” me for my good behavior and success. To do this, one evening they gathered all the children into the living room. It was some kind of holiday, and there were many guests in the house with children of almost the same age...

  I was ordered to go to the table and receive the award awarded to me by the family council, which I did, greatly embarrassed, especially since I noticed some disapproving smiles from the elders, as well as from some of the children, who obviously knew the evil that had been planned against me. joke.

  Instead of a letter of commendation, they gave me an advertisement for opedeldok *, which I noticed only when I unfolded the sheet and dropped it amid general laughter.

  This joke outraged my childish soul, and I did not sleep all night, constantly jumping up and asking: “Why, why was I offended?”

  From then on, I never wanted to stay with the Strakhovs and asked my grandmother to write to my father so that they would take me. This was done, and I began to live in our poor shack; I considered myself incredibly lucky to have escaped from the big house, where I had been offended without any fault on my part.

  But then, however, I had nowhere else to study, and now I am again returning to the fact that I was taken to the Oryol gymnasium...

  I was terribly bored, but I studied well, although the gymnasium... was conducted very badly, badly...

  I went home three times a year: during the summer holidays, during Christmas time, and during Holy Week with Easter. During this last visit, my father and I always fasted together - which gave me special pleasure, since at this time there was a muddy season and we rode to church on horseback.”

  Question:

  – What do you think the words and expressions mean: “he was taken into the house because of bread”, “decent manners”, “injections of pride”, “good manners”, “kept his speech”?

  To Leskov’s childhood impressions he added the experience of his gymnasium years in Orel, as well as his unforgettable Kyiv years. But the most important step towards his true calling was private service: for three years, the future writer traveled around Russia, accompanying parties of migrant peasants. Therefore, Leskov knew the people well. The impressions of these years formed a unique storehouse of his memory.

  A writer of the future comes to literature as a 35-year-old man, with a rich life path behind him. “He took up the work of a writer as a mature man, superbly armed not with book knowledge, but with genuine knowledge of life” (M. Gorky). His entire previous life prepared him for literary work and the fulfillment of the task that historically fell to him as an artist.

  In terms of the strength of his talent, N. S. Leskov can be put on a par with I. S. Turgenev, F. M. Dostoevsky, L. N. Tolstoy, M. E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, A. P. Chekhov.

  He created such masterpieces as “The Enchanted Wanderer”, “The Captured Angel”, “The Stupid Artist” and many others.

  “The Tale of the Tula Oblique Left-Hander and the Steel Flea” belongs to the masterpieces of Leskov’s creativity” (Yu. Nagibin).

  Leskov, in the first printed editions (1881), prefaced the story with the following “preface”: “I wrote down this legend in Sestroretsk according to a local tale from an old gunsmith, a Tula native, who moved to the Sister River during the reign of Emperor Alexander I. Two years ago the narrator was still in good health and with fresh memory; he readily recalled the old days, greatly honored Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich, lived “according to strict faith,” read divine books and bred canaries. People treated him with respect." But soon the author himself “exposed” himself: “...I wrote this whole story in May last year; and the left-handed person is a person invented by me.”

  Leskov will return to the question of the fictional nature of the left-hander more than once, and in his lifetime collection of works he will completely remove the “preface.” Leskov needed this whole fictitious story to create the illusion that the author was not involved in the content of the tale.

  2. Working with the textbook.

  – What is “skaz”? (p. 306 of the textbook).

  Tale - a genre of epic based on folk tales and legends. The narration is told on behalf of the narrator, a person with a special character and style of speech.

  3. Teacher reading the first three chapters“Tale...”

  4. Analysis of what you read.

  – When and where does the action take place?

  – Select and read quotes characterizing Tsar Alexander Pavlovich, and then Platov.

  Recording quotes in notebooks.

  Alexander Pavlovich:

  “He traveled to all countries and everywhere, through his kindness, he had the most internecine conversations with all sorts of people.”

  “We Russians are no good with our meaning.”

  “The Emperor rejoices at all this.”

  “The Emperor looked at the pistol and couldn’t see enough.”

  “Why did you make them so embarrassed, I feel really sorry for them now.”

  “Please don’t spoil politics for me.”

  “You are the first masters in the whole world, and my people cannot do anything against you.”

  “The Emperor realized that the British have no equal in art.”

  Platov:

  “Platov... didn’t like this declination... And as soon as Platov notices that the sovereign is very interested in something foreign, then all those accompanying him are silent, and Platov will now say: so and so, and we have our own at home no worse, - and what- “He’ll take you away somehow.”

  “...and Platov maintains his expectation that everything means nothing to him.”

  “Platov shows the sovereign the dog, and there on the very bend there is a Russian inscription: “Ivan Moskvin in the city of Tula.”

  “...and Platov argued that ours can do anything, no matter what they look at, but they don’t have any useful teaching... the English masters have completely different rules of life, science and food...”.

  II. Summing up the lesson.

  2) highlight (and write down) quotes characterizing Tsar Nikolai Pavlovich, Platov, left-hander;

  3) prepare an artistic retelling of one of the chapters;

  Download material

  See the downloadable file for the full text of the material.
  The page contains only a fragment of the material.

  Story by N.S. Leskov’s “Lefty” is one of the writer’s most popular works. What is attractive here is the combination of folk, folklore origins with the deep thoughts of the author about the essence of the Russian national character, about the role of Russia and Russians in the world. It is no coincidence that this work has the subtitle “The Tale of the Tula Oblique Left-Hander and the Steel Flea.” “Lefty” was imitated as a folk legend, although Leskov later admitted: “I composed this whole story... and Lefty is a person I made up.” To stylize the story as folklore, a narrator was chosen who is very different from the real author both in terms of speech and biography. Readers get the impression that the narrator is the same Tula artisan as the skilled gunsmith Lefty. He speaks completely differently than Leskov, and endows the characters with speech characteristics unusual for their real prototypes. For example, the Don ataman Count Platov, while with Emperor Alexander Pavlovich in England, “ordered the orderly to bring a flask of Caucasian vodka-kisl from the cellar
  bright, shook a good glass, prayed to God on the travel fold, covered himself with a cloak and snored so much that no one in the whole English house could sleep.” And the same Platov speaks just like a peasant or a craftsman: “Oh, they are dog scoundrels! Now I understand why they didn’t want to tell me anything there. It’s good that I took one of their fools with me.” The emperor himself expresses it no better, in the narrator’s view: “No, am I still a jellyfish? see other news...” The narrator’s own speech is the same, as we have already seen when describing Platov. The author of “Lefty,” having entrusted the story to him, left only footnotes directly behind him, thanks to which readers get the impression of the reliability of the facts underlying the story. The language of the notes is literary correct, almost scientific. Here Leskov’s own voice can already be heard: “Pop Fedot” was not taken from the wind: Emperor Alexander Pavlovich, before his death in Taganrog, confessed to the priest Alexei Fedotov-Chekhovsky, who
  After that, he was called “His Majesty’s confessor” and liked to point out to everyone this completely random circumstance. This Fedotov - Chekhovsky, obviously, is the legendary “priest Fedot.” But Lefty’s voice in the story is almost indistinguishable in style from the speech of other characters and the narrator. Let us also add that Leskov deliberately gives the popular vowels of the names of famous nobles. For example, Chancellor Count K.V. Nesselrode turned into Count Kisselrode. In this way, the writer conveyed his negative attitude towards Nesselrode’s activities as Minister of Foreign Affairs.
  The main character of the story is an uneducated man, not without the shortcomings characteristic of Russians, including friendship with the “green serpent.” However, the main property of Lefty is extraordinary, wonderful skill. He wiped the noses of the “Aglitsky masters”, shod the flea with such small nails that you couldn’t see it even with the strongest microscope. In the image of Lefty, Leskov proved that the opinion put into the mouth of Emperor Alexander Pavlovich was incorrect: foreigners “have such a nature of perfection that once you look at it, you will no longer argue that we, Russians, are worthless with our significance.”

  put into the mouth of Emperor Alexander Pavlovich: foreigners “have such a nature of perfection that once you look at it, you will no longer argue that we, Russians, are worthless with our meaning.” Lefty does not succumb to any temptations and refuses to betray his homeland, sacrificing his life to convey: “Tell the sovereign that the British don’t clean their guns with bricks: let them not clean ours either, otherwise, God bless wars, they are not suitable for shooting.” But the officials never conveyed this warning to either the then emperor or his successor, c. as a result of which the Russian army allegedly lost the Crimean War. And when Lefty's friend "Aglitsky half-skipe"
  “r” states in a wonderful broken language: “Even though he has a sheep’s fur coat, he has a little man’s soul,” the author of the story himself speaks to us. And in the final chapter of “Lefty” Leskov sheds the mask of a simple-minded and illiterate narrator, immediately taking readers from the time of Lefty to the present (the story was created in 1881): “Now all this is already “the affairs of bygone days” and “legends of antiquity,” although and not deep, but there is no need to rush to forget these legends, despite the fabulous nature of the legend and the epic character of its main character. Lefty's own name, like the names of many of the greatest geniuses, is forever lost to posterity; but as a myth personified by folk fantasy; is interesting, and his adventures can serve as a memory of an era, the general spirit of which is accurately and accurately captured.” The image of Lefty, according to the writer, recalls those times when “inequality of talents and talents” mattered, and makes us look with sadness at the present, when, “while favoring an increase in earnings, machines are not favorable
  testify to artistic prowess, which sometimes exceeded the limit, inspiring popular imagination to compose fabulous legends similar to the current one.”