N. Leskov’s story “Musk Ox” as a reflection of social life...: ingvar_anastas - LiveJournal. Leskov “Musk Ox” - essay “Thirst for light in the works of N. S. Leskov based on the story “Musk Ox”” Musk Ox Leskov summary

“Musk Ox” is a story of twelve chapters. The main character, Vasily Petrovich, nicknamed “Musk Ox” because of his appearance, deserves pity due to his naivety and inconsistency of ideas and actions.

He is only twenty-eight years old, although he looks older. At his age, he had no intention of getting married and never even wanted to hear anything about women. He considered them all fools, and wished that his mother was some kind of sexless creature.

Vasily Petrovich communicated with few people, but if necessary, he could come to his friends without any warning, and behaved in their house as in his own. Most of all, Musk Ox trusted Yakov Chelnovsky, who by nature was a very gentle and kind person. It was in Chelnovsky’s house that the author of the story met Musk Ox.

Vasily Petrovich’s mother dreamed that after graduating from the Kursk seminary, her son would serve as a priest and live with his young wife, but these were useless dreams. Her life ended in an almshouse. And Musk Ox became a monastic novice. Before this, he was still forced to get married in order to be able to get into service in the courtyard. Family life did not work out; it did not live up to his hopes. And the musk ox became a novice.

While serving in the monastery, Vasily Petrovich loved to wander at night, as cell life often bored him.

Soon Musk Ox was expelled from the monastery because he decided to conduct interviews with pilgrims. And he came to his friend, the author of the story, but seeing his mother and sister on the porch, he refused to go into the house to spend the night. The narrator promised to find Muskox a new place where he could work and live. A friend arranged for him to live with his friends in Barkov Khutor. There he oversaw logging in the forest and received a considerable salary.

After some time, Musk Ox committed suicide by hanging. He was not always lucky in life, since he was an extraordinary person who looked for everything, but never found his place in this life. He could give society a lot, but he never saw the desire of society to accept his knowledge. He was not like everyone else, they often laughed at him, not realizing that without such people, the world would be boring. Vasily Petrovich was not afraid to be different, to stand out from the herd.

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Summary of Musk Ox Leskov

N.S.Leskov
Muskox
It feeds on grass, and when there is a lack of it, lichens.
From zoology.
CHAPTER FIRST
When I met Vasily Petrovich, he was already called “Musk Ox”. This nickname was given to him because his appearance was unusually reminiscent of a musk ox, which can be seen in the illustrated guide to zoology by Julian Simashka. He was twenty-eight years old, but looked much older. He was not an athlete, not a hero, but a very strong and healthy man, short, stocky and broad-shouldered. Vasily Petrovich's face was gray and round, but only one face was round, and the skull presented a strange ugliness. At first glance, it seemed to resemble a somewhat Kaffir skull, but, peering and studying this head more closely, you could not fit it under any phrenological system. He wore his hair as if he deliberately wanted to mislead everyone about the figure of his “top floor.” At the back, he cut the entire back of his head very short, and in front, from his ears, his dark brown hair ran in two long and thick braids. Vasily Petrovich usually twirled these braids, and they constantly lay in curled rollers on his temples, and curled up on his cheeks, reminiscent of the horns of the animal in honor of which he received his nickname. Vasily Petrovich most of all owed his resemblance to a musk ox to these braids. However, there was nothing funny in the figure of Vasily Petrovich. The person who met him for the first time saw only that Vasily Petrovich, as they say, was “poorly tailored, but tightly sewn,” and looking into his brown, widely spaced eyes, it was impossible not to see in them a healthy mind, will and determination. The character of Vasily Petrovich had a lot of originality. His distinctive feature was his evangelical carelessness about himself. The son of a rural sexton, who grew up in bitter poverty and, in addition, was orphaned at an early age, he never cared not only about the lasting improvement of his existence, but it seems 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 came in contact, and he usually called everyone else briefly and clearly “pigs.” When Vasily Petrovich didn’t have boots, that is, if his boots, as he put it, “completely opened his mouth,” then he would come to me or to you, without any ceremony he would take your spare boots if they somehow fit his feet , and left his notes for you as a souvenir. Whether you were at home or not, it didn’t matter to Vasily Petrovich: he made himself at home with you, took what he needed, always in the smallest possible quantity, and sometimes when they met he said that he took tobacco, or tea, or boots, and more often it happened that he didn’t say anything about such trifles. He could not stand new literature and read only the Gospels and the ancient classics; he could not hear any conversation about women, considered them all to be fools and very seriously regretted that his old mother was a woman, and not some kind of asexual creature. Vasily Petrovich's selflessness had no boundaries. He never showed any of us that he loved anyone; but everyone knew very well that there was 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 his 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 fervently believed, but he deeply and sincerely despised them.
The Musk Ox did not like conversations, he did everything in silence, and did exactly what you could least expect from him at that moment.
How and why he became friends with the small circle to which I belonged during my short stay in our provincial town, I don’t know. Muskox completed a course at the Kursk seminary three years before my arrival. His mother, who fed him with crumbs collected for the sake of Christ, was looking forward to her son becoming a priest and living in the parish with his young wife. But the son had no thought about his young wife. Vasily Petrovich did not have the slightest desire to marry. The course was over; the mother kept inquiring about the brides, but Vasily Petrovich remained silent and one fine morning disappeared to God knows where. Only six months later he sent his mother twenty-five rubles and a letter in which he notified the old mendicant woman that he had come to Kazan and entered the theological academy there. How he reached Kazan, having traveled more than a thousand miles, and how he got twenty-five rubles - this remained unknown. The musk ox did not write a word to his mother about this. 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 every day, Vasya seemed to have fallen from the sky - he suddenly appeared again in Kursk. They asked him a lot: what is it? How? why did he come back? but we learned little. “I didn’t get along,” Musk Ox answered briefly, and they couldn’t get anything more out of him. Only to one person did he say a little more; “I don’t want to be a monk,” but no one else got anything from him.
The man to whom Musk Ox said more than to everyone else was Yakov Chelnovsky, a kind, good fellow, incapable of hurting a fly and ready to do any service to his neighbor. Chelnovsky was a relative of mine in some distant tribe. It was at Chelnovsky’s that I met the stocky hero of my story.
This was in the summer of 1854. I had to take care of the process that was carried out in the Kursk government offices.
I arrived in Kursk at seven o’clock in the morning in May, straight to Chelnovsky. At that time he was preparing young people for university, gave lessons in the Russian language and history in two women's boarding houses and lived not poorly: he had a decent apartment with three rooms in the front, a sizeable library, upholstered furniture, several pots of exotic plants and a bulldog, Box, with bared teeth, a very indecent bustle and a gait that slightly resembled a cancan.
Chelnovsky was extremely happy about my arrival and made me promise to definitely stay with him for the entire duration of my stay in Kursk. He himself usually spent the whole day running around to his lessons, and I either visited the civil chamber or wandered aimlessly around Tuscari or the Diet. You won’t find the first of these rivers 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 capital without freeing the Seim from its reputation as a river “inconvenient for navigation” .
Two weeks have passed since my arrival in Kursk. There was never any talk about the Musk Ox; I did not even suspect the existence of such a strange beast within our black earth strip, replete with grain, beggars and thieves.
One day, tired and exhausted, I returned home around two in the afternoon. In the hallway I was met by Box, who guarded our home much more diligently than the eighteen-year-old boy who served as our valet. On the table in the hall lay a cloth cap, extremely worn; one dirtiest suspender with a strap tied around it, a greasy black handkerchief twisted into a rope, and a thin hazelnut stick. In the second room, filled with bookcases and rather smart office furniture, a very dusty man was sitting on the sofa. He was wearing a pink calico shirt. and light yellow trousers with worn knees. The stranger's boots were covered with a thick layer of white road dust, and on his knees lay a thick book, which he was reading without covering his head. As I entered the office, the dusty figure cast one quick glance at me and again fixed her eyes on the book. Everything was in order in the bedroom. Chelnovsky’s striped canvas blouse, which he put on immediately upon returning home, hung in its place and indicated that the owner was not at home. I could not guess who this strange guest was, settled down so unceremoniously. Fierce Box looked at him as his man and did not caress only because the tenderness characteristic of dogs of the French breed is not in the character of dogs of the Anglo-Saxon canine race. I went into the hallway again, having two goals: firstly, to ask the boy about the guest, and secondly, by my appearance, to provoke the guest himself to say something. I didn't succeed in either. The hallway was still empty, and the guest did not even look up at me and sat calmly in the same position in which I found him five minutes ago. There was only one remedy left: to directly contact the guest himself.
- You're probably waiting for Yakov Ivanovich? - I asked, stopping in front of the stranger.
The guest looked at me lazily, then got up from the sofa, spat through his teeth, as only Great Russian philistines and seminarians can spit, and said in a thick bass: “No.”
- Whom do you want to see? - I asked, surprised by the strange answer.
“I just came in,” answered the guest, walking around the room and twisting his braids.
- Let me find out with whom I have the honor of speaking? At the same time, I gave my last name and said that I was a relative of Yakov Ivanovich.
“It’s so simple,” answered the guest and again took up his book.
That was the end of the conversation. Abandoning any attempt to resolve the appearance of this personality, I lit a cigarette and lay down on my bed with a book in my hands. When you come from the hot sun into a clean and cool room, where there are no annoying flies, and there is a neat bed, it is unusually easy to fall asleep. This time I learned this from experience and did not notice how the book slipped out of my hands. Through the sweet sleep that people sleep full of hopes and hopes, I heard Chelnovsky reading the boy a notation, to which he had long been accustomed and did not pay any attention to them. My complete awakening took place only when my relative entered the office and shouted:
- A! Muskox! What destinies?
“He’s here,” the guest responded to the original greeting.
- I know that I came, but where did I come from? where have you been?
- You can't see it from here.
- What a joke! How long ago did you deign to come back? - Yakov Ivanovich asked his guest again, entering the bedroom. - Eh! “Yes, you’re sleeping,” he said, turning to me. - Get up, brother, I'll show you the beast.
- What animal? - I asked, not yet completely returning to what is called vigil, from what is called sleep.
Chelnovsky did not answer me, but took off his frock coat and threw on his blouse, which was a matter of one minute, went into the office and, dragging my stranger from there by the hand, bowed comically and, pointing his hand at the stubborn guest, said:
- I have the honor to recommend - Musk Ox. It feeds on grass, and if there is a lack of it, it can eat lichens.
I stood up and extended my hand to Musk Ox, who, throughout the entire recommendation, calmly looked at the thick branch of lilac that covered the open window of our bedroom.
“I’ve already been recommended to you,” I said to Musk Ox.
“I heard this,” answered Musk Ox, “and I am the reveler Vasily Bogoslovsky.”
- What, was it recommended? - asked Yakov Ivanovich. -Have you already met?
- Yes, I found Vasily here... I don’t have the honor to know, how about my father?
“Petrov was,” answered Bogoslovsky.
- It was him, now just call him “Musk Ox.”
- I don’t care what you call me.
- Eh, no, brother! You are a Musk Ox, so you should be a Musk Ox.
We sat at the table. Vasily Petrovich poured himself a glass of vodka, poured it into his mouth, holding it behind his cheekbone for a few seconds, and, having swallowed it, looked significantly at the plate of soup standing in front of him.
- Isn’t there some jelly? - he asked the owner.
- No, brother, no. “We weren’t expecting a dear guest today,” Chelnovsky answered, “and we didn’t prepare it.”
- You could eat it yourself.
- We can eat soup too.
- Gravy boats! - added Musk Ox. - And there’s no goose? - he asked with even greater surprise when the zrazy was served.
“And there is no goose,” the owner answered him, smiling his affectionate smile. Tomorrow you will have jelly, and goose, and porridge with goose fat.
- Tomorrow - not today.
- Well, what should we do? Surely you haven’t eaten goose for a long time? The musk ox looked at him intently and said with an expression of some pleasure:
- You’d better ask how long ago I ate something.
- Well!
- On the evening of the fourth day I ate a kalach in Sevsk.
- In Sevsk?
The musk ox waved his hand affirmatively.
- Why were you in Sevsk?
- I was passing through.
- Where have you been?
The musk ox stopped the fork with which he was dragging huge pieces into his mouth at once, again looked intently at Chelnovsky and, without answering his question, said:
- Have you sniffed tobacco today?
- How did you sniff tobacco?
Chelnovsky and I burst out laughing at the strange question.
- So.
- Speak up, dear animal!
- Your tongue is itching these days.
- Why not ask? After all, I was missing for a whole month.
- Disappeared? - repeated Musk Ox. - I, brother, will not be lost, but I will be lost, so not in vain.
- We are sick of preaching! - Chelnovsky responded to me. - “The hunt is mortal, but the fate is bitter!” In our enlightened age, preaching in marketplaces and haystacks is not allowed; We cannot become priests without touching our wife, like a snake’s vessel, and something also prevents us from becoming monks. But I don’t know what exactly is interfering with this.
- And it’s good that you don’t know.
- Why is it good? The more you know, the better.
- Become a monk yourself, and you’ll find out.
- Don’t you want to serve humanity with your experience?
“Someone else’s experience, brother, is an empty matter,” said the original, getting up from the table and wiping his whole face with a napkin, covered with sweat from the zeal of dinner. Having put down the napkin, he went into the hall and there took out from his coat a small clay tube with a black gnawed stem and a calico pouch; filled his pipe, put the pouch in his pants pocket and headed back to the front hall.
“Smoke here,” Chelnovsky told him.
- You sneeze unevenly. Your heads will hurt.
The musk ox stood and smiled. I have never met a person who smiled as much as Bogoslovsky. His face remained completely calm; not a single feature moved, and a deep, sad expression remained in the eyes, and yet you saw that these eyes were laughing, and laughing with the kindest laughter, with which a Russian person sometimes makes fun of himself and his shortcomings.
- New Diogenes! - Chelnovsky said after the Musk Ox came out, - everyone is looking for the people of the Gospel.
We lit cigars and, lying down on our beds, talked about various human oddities that came to our minds in connection with the oddities of Vasily Petrovich. A quarter of an hour later Vasily Petrovich entered. He put his pipe on the floor by the stove, sat down at Chelnovsky’s feet and, scratching his left shoulder with his right hand, said in a low voice:
- I was looking for air conditioning.
- When? - Chelnovsky asked him.
- Yes, now.
-Who did you look for?
- On the way to.
Chelnovsky laughed again; but Musk-Ox did not pay any attention to this.
- Well, what did God give? - Chelnovsky asked him.
- Not a thing.
- You're such a joke! Who is looking for conditioning on the road?
“I went into the landowners’ houses and asked questions,” Musk Ox continued seriously.
- So what?
- They don’t take it.
- Yes, of course, they won’t take it. Musk Ox looked at Chelnovsky with his gaze and asked in the same even tone:
- Why won’t they take it?
- Because a person who comes out of the blue, without a recommendation, is not taken into the house.
- I showed my certificate.
- And it says: “quite a fair amount of behavior”?
- Well, what then? I, brother, will tell you that this is not because, but because...
“You are the Musk Ox,” Chelnovsky prompted.
- Yes, Musk Ox, perhaps.
- What are you thinking of doing now?
“I’m thinking of smoking another pipe,” answered Vasily Petrovich, getting up and starting to work on his pipe again.
- Yes, smoke here.
- No need.
- Kuri: the window is open.
- No need.
- What do you want, for the first time, perhaps, to smoke your own dubek with me?
“It will be unpleasant for them,” said Musk Ox, pointing at me.
- Please smoke, Vasily Petrovich; I am a accustomed person; For me, not a single dubek means anything.
“But I have that dubek from which he ran away,” answered Musk Ox, leaning on the letter u in the word dubek, and his sympathetic smile flashed again in his kind eyes.
- Well, I won’t run away.
- So you are stronger than the devil.
- For this case.
“He has the highest opinion of the devil’s strength,” said Chelnovsky.
- One woman, brother, only angrier than the devil.
Vasily Petrovich filled his pipe with shag and, releasing a thin stream of acrid smoke from his mouth, brushed off the burning tobacco with his finger and said:
- I’ll start rewriting the problems.
- What tasks? - Chelnovsky asked, putting his palm to his ear.
- Problems, seminar problems, I’m going to rewrite them for now. Well, student notebooks, don’t you understand, or what? - he explained.
- I understand now. Bad job, brother.
- Doesn't matter.
- You’ll earn two rubles a month.
- It’s all the same to me.
- Well, what next?
- Find me the conditions.
- Back to the village?
- It's better to go to the village.
“And you’ll leave again in a week.” “You know what he did last spring,” Chelnovsky said, turning to me. - I put him in his place, one hundred and twenty rubles a year, with everything ready, so that he could prepare one boy for the second grade of the gymnasium. They provided him with everything he needed and equipped the good fellow. Well, I think our Musk Ox is in place! And a month later he grew up again in front of us. I also left my underwear there for my science.
“Well, then, if it couldn’t be otherwise,” said Musk Ox, frowning, and got up from his chair.
- Ask him why it’s impossible? - Chelnovsky said, turning to me again. - Because they weren’t allowed to pluck the boy’s hair.
- Tell another lie! - Muskox muttered.
- Well, how was it?
- It was so that it could not have been otherwise. The musk ox stopped in front of me and, after thinking for a minute, said:
- It was a very special thing!
“Sit down, Vasily Petrovich,” I said, moving on the bed.
- No, don't. “It’s a special matter,” he began again. “The boy is fifteen years old, and yet he is already a nobleman, that is, a shameless scoundrel.”
- That's how it is with us! - Chelnovsky joked.
“Yes,” continued Musk Ox. - Their cook was Yegor, a young guy. He got married and took the sexton’s daughter out of our spiritual beggary. The little boy has already been trained in everything, and let’s clang towards her. But the woman is young, not one of those; complained to her husband, and the husband complained to the lady. She said something to her son, and he again did his own thing. So another time, a third time - the cook again went to the lady, because the wife couldn’t stop seeing the barchuk - again nothing. I was annoyed. “Listen, I tell him, if you pinch Alenka again, I’ll crack you.” He blushed with annoyance; noble blood leaped, you know; flew to his mother, and I followed him. I look: she’s sitting in an armchair, and she’s also all red; and my son writes out a complaint against me in French. As soon as she saw me, she now took his hand and smiled for God knows what. “That’s enough,” he says, my friend. Vasily Petrovich must have imagined something; he’s joking, and you’ll prove to him that he’s wrong.” And I see myself looking sideways at me. My little one went, and she, instead of talking to me about her son, said: “What a knight you are, Vasily Petrovich! Don’t you have a sweetheart?” Well, I can’t stand these things,” said Musk Ox, energetically waving his hand. “I can’t listen to this,” he repeated again, raising his voice, and walked again.
- Well, did you leave this house right away?
- No, in a month and a half.
- And they lived in harmony?
- Well, I didn't talk to anyone.
- And at the table?
- I had lunch with the clerk.
- How about the clerk?
- Just say, at the table. It's nothing to me. You can't offend me.
- How can you not?
- But of course, you can’t... well, what’s the point of talking about it... Only one day after dinner I was sitting under the window, reading Tacitus, and in the people’s room I heard someone screaming. I can’t make out what he’s screaming, but Aleshin’s voice. Barchuk, I think, is truly amused. I got up and went to the people's room. I hear Alenka crying and shouting through her tears: “shame on you,” “you’re not afraid of God,” and other things like that. I see Alenka standing in the attic above the ladder, and my little boy under the ladder, so the woman can’t get down. It's a shame... well, you know, the way they walk... just. And he also teases her: “Climb,” he says, “otherwise I’ll leave the ladder.” Evil got such a hold of me that I went into the hallway and gave him a slap on the wrist.
“So much so that blood gushed from his ear and nose,” Chelnovsky suggested, laughing.
- What kind of growth has grown on his share.
- What do you need, mother?
- Yes, I didn’t look at it after that. I went straight from the personnel room to Kursk.
- How many miles is this?
- One hundred seventy; Yes, even if it’s one thousand seven hundred, it’s all the same.
If you saw Musk Ox at that moment, you would not doubt that he really doesn’t care how many miles he walks or who he slaps, if, in his opinion, this slap should be given.
CHAPTER TWO
The sultry June has begun. Vasily Petrovich came to us carefully every day at about twelve o'clock, took off his calico tie and suspenders and, saying “hello” to both of us, sat down at his classics. So time passed until lunch; after dinner he lit a pipe and, standing by the window, usually asked: “Well, is the condition?” A month has passed since the day when Musk Ox repeated this question to Chelnovsky every day, and for a whole month he heard the same disappointing answer every time. There wasn’t even a place in the veda. Vasily Petrovich, apparently, did not bypass this at all. He ate with an excellent appetite and was constantly in his constant mood. Only once or twice did I see him more irritated than usual; but this irritability had no relation to Vasily Petrovich’s state of affairs. It came from two completely unrelated circumstances. Once he met a woman who was crying loudly, and asked her in his deep voice: “Why are you crying, you fool?” The woman was frightened at first, and then she said that they had captured her son and that tomorrow they were taking him to the recruiting office. Vasily Petrovich remembered that the clerk in the recruit presence was his friend from the seminary, went to see him early in the morning and returned unusually upset. His petition turned out to be unfounded. Another time, a party of young Jewish recruits was driven through the city. At that time, recruitments were frequent. Vasily Petrovich, biting his upper lip and propping his hands on the ferret, stood under the window and carefully looked at the convoy of recruits being transported. The philistine carts pulled slowly; carts, jumping along the provincial pavement from side to side, shook the heads of children dressed in gray overcoats made of soldier's cloth. Large gray hats, moving over their eyes, gave a terribly sad look to their beautiful faces and intelligent little eyes, which looked with longing and, together with childish curiosity, at the new city and at the crowds of bourgeois boys jumping after the carts. Two cooks walked behind.
- Also, tea, is there any mother somewhere? - said one tall, pockmarked cook, coming level with our window.
“Look, maybe there is,” answered the other, putting her elbows under her sleeves and scraping her hands with her nails.
- And I suppose they, even though they are little Jews, still feel sorry for them?
- But what should we do, mother?
- Of course, but only for motherhood?
- Yes, by motherhood, - of course... your own womb... But you can’t...
- Certainly.
- Fools! - Vasily Petrovich shouted to them.
The women stopped, looked at him in surprise, both said at the same time: “Why are you barking, you smooth dog,” and moved on.
I wanted to go and see how they would plant these unfortunate children at the garrison barracks.
“Let’s go, Vasily Petrovich, to the barracks,” I called Bogoslovsky.
- For what?
- Let's see what they will do with them.
Vasily Petrovich did not answer anything; but when I took up my hat; he also got up and walked with me. The garrison barracks, where the moving party of Jewish recruits were brought, were quite far from us. When we approached, the carts were already empty and the children stood in a regular line in two rows. A party officer and a non-commissioned officer checked them out. Spectators crowded around the line. Several ladies and a priest with a bronze cross on a Vladimir ribbon also stood near one cart. We approached this cart. A sick boy of about nine years old sat on it and greedily ate a pie with cottage cheese; the other lay covered with his overcoat and did not pay attention to anything; from his flushed face and from his eyes, which glowed with a painful light, one could assume that he had a fever, or perhaps typhus.
- You are sick? - one lady asked a boy who was swallowing pieces of unchewed pie.
- A?
-Are you sick?
The boy shook his head.
- You are not sick? - the lady asked again.
The boy shook his head again.
“He doesn’t understand konpran-pa,” the priest remarked and immediately asked: “Are you already baptized?”
The child thought for a moment, as if remembering something familiar in the question asked to him, and, again shaking his head, said: “No, no.”
- How cute! - the lady said, taking the child by the chin and lifting up his pretty face with black eyes.
- Where is your mother? - Musk Ox unexpectedly asked, lightly tugging the child by the overcoat.
The child shuddered, looked at Vasily Petrovich, then at those around him, then at the undergrad and again at Vasily Petrovich.
- Mother, where is mother? - repeated Musk Ox.
- Mother?
- Yes, mom, mom?
“Mom...” the child waved his hand into the distance.
- At home?
The recruit thought and nodded his head in agreement.
“He still remembers,” the priest put in and asked: “Are there brooders?”
The child made a barely noticeable negative sign.
- You're lying, you're lying, they don't take one as a recruit. Lie niht gut, neya, the priest continued, thinking by using nominative cases to make his conversation more understandable.

Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov’s story “Musk Ox” tells the story of a “new man” of his time, who is looking for ways to change reality, agitates the people against the rich, and defends the Russian peasant and the poor. At the same time, the story is written in Leskov’s special, easy language, conveying the beauty of Russian life and the simplicity of human relationships.

The narration is told on behalf of the author, who not only talks about his amazing acquaintance with a strange man - Musk Ox, but also indulges in memories from childhood, which, as always, are full of beautiful descriptions, good-natured emotions, and faith in the best.

Vasily Petrovich Bogoslovsky was nicknamed the Musk Ox because of his striking resemblance to the terrible animal. At twenty-eight he looked much older. He could not be called attractive, nor could he be called a hero. But, nevertheless, he was a strong and healthy person, and upon closer acquaintance he aroused constant sympathy with his openness, naivety and good nature.

The acquaintance of the author and Vasily Bogoslovsky happened in a strange way. One summer the author stayed with his cousin. Returning home on a hot day, he found a strange-looking man sitting calmly and reading a book. The man did not react in any way to the newcomer and continued his work with an imperturbable look. It is worth noting that this was the whole point of the Musk Ox. Vasily Petrovich is ready to give everyone his last shirt, but at the same time he expects the same from his friends.

Vasily Petrovich spent the whole summer in the company of his brothers in the hope of getting into “condition”. This is a time of deep conversations, sleepless nights and the growth of true friendships. But as a result, fate takes him on a long journey through monasteries and he disappears from the author’s life for three years. The brothers are sure that he went to look for the meaning of life of the Russian people, to look for justice.

After parting with Vasily Bogoslovsky - the Musk Ox, the author indulges in memories from childhood. And here all the mastery of Leskov’s language is manifested. Description of the life of the monasteries and its novices, communication of ordinary people. Creating colorful pictures of nature allows the listener to plunge into the simple world of life. The author gives the opportunity to learn about robbers, monks, young novices, a little gentleman and his childhood impressions.

Returning home, the author goes to the monastery, where he spent a lot of his childhood. Here he quite by chance meets Musk Ox, who traveled a lot, got married, became disillusioned with the priests and returned to ordinary peasants. And again, the Musk Ox only evokes pity, since his actions, although they have pure motives, are very inconsistent, and therefore have no result.

Nikolai Semenovich Leskov created an image as close to reality as possible. In life, you can often meet people who think “correctly” and feel the spirit of the times correctly, but cannot complete their undertakings. As a result of depicting just such a hero, Leskov significantly weakened the ideological side of the work, but was able to increase the artistic one. The story only benefited from this.

Musk Ox is a peculiar person, but still cannot accept a life in which he has to work for a landowner he hates. Agitation among workers against their employer does not bear fruit. In addition, Leskov indirectly shows that Musk Ox’s hatred of women is not so strong after he met his employer’s wife. The inability to change his life forces Vasily Petrovich Bogoslovsky to end it ahead of time.

Vladimir Vinogradov read the story very “easy,” thanks to which it was possible to emphasize Leskov’s desire to create an artistic, rather than ideological, work. Pleasant timbre and competent intonation allow you to listen to the story “in one breath.”

Who are the heroes of Nikolai Leskov’s novels and stories? Why don’t you see ordinary human behavior in their actions and thoughts? Each of them seems out of this world. They would like to be away from everyone. One of Leskov’s early characters, Musk Ox, should also be included among these. A reader who is not familiar with Nikolai’s work may take the hero he presents as a special case of a misanthrope. Different from those around him, standing out in everything from his appearance to his actions, Musk Ox dared to dream of something of his own, which he could not find anywhere. Therefore, he was disappointed and ultimately acted as only a person who realized the futility of existence could act.

Leskov says he met Musk Ox in 1854, so the story he describes must be taken as what actually happened. And that’s why she stuck in his memory, since Nikolai liked to talk about such people. The musk ox was a remarkable personality. He received his nickname because of his resemblance to the corresponding animal. I think his character was the same as that of a sheep - he won’t touch you until you bother him. However, Musk Ox was reputed to be like a donkey, since he could quit the work assigned to him and refuse to carry it further without explanation. Therefore, they tried to refuse the services of Musk Ox.

The musk ox dared to dream. He imagined Permian Palestine, where he would find a land far from the modern understanding of civilization. He will become his own there, he will be surrounded by pristine nature, and people like him will live there. That's what Musk Ox thought. This is what he hoped for. And his dream will come true if he finds himself outside the habitat of the Russian people. Unfortunately, whether the Palestines of Perm or others are populated by exactly the same people whose company Musk Ox shunned. In truth, Musk Ox did not know what exactly he wanted. He did not understand that he was disgusted by human society in general. He did not want to realize this, continuing to hope for a meeting with his likenesses.

It is impossible not to note the cruelty of the Musk Ox. Being peaceful, he did not refuse to use force against children who did not understand his words. Leskov did not explain this behavior, presenting it as a fact of the quarrelsome nature of the hero he described. Musk Ox without hesitation called all people pigs, and women - fools. Consigned to monasticism, he did not find shelter for his soul there either, preferring to return home. The reader increasingly doubts the adequacy of Musk Ox, not understanding what exactly he wanted from life. And did Musk Ox want anything at all? Leskov did not try to understand this either.

Maybe it's worth comparing the Musk Ox with Quasimodo? Does not work. Quasimodo knew how to love, but Musk Ox preferred to hate absolutely everyone. They have a common destiny, but a different worldview. Therefore, one was partially happy and understood why he lived, while the other was not aware of it, existing to harm people. It becomes clear why the Musk Ox will cool down to reality and end his life’s journey.

Does the reader believe the ending of the story? Throughout the entire narrative, Leskov acts as a detached narrator: “Imagine,” says Nikolai, “I knew one person, he lived in such and such a way, was there and there, acted in such and such a way, and then I I learned that Musk Ox had passed away. That’s the whole story about him.” Whether Musk Ox died of his own or was helped, Leskov did not provide the reader with detailed information about this. An interesting incident was told that pleased the author, which is the only reason he decided to tell about it, otherwise the reader would not have known about the Musk Ox who once lived.

Additional tags: Leskov Musk-ox criticism, analysis, reviews, review, book, Nikolai Leskov Musk-ox analysis, review, book, content, Ovtsebyk

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In the 60s of the last century in Russian literature, as if apart, there was the work of the wonderful Russian writer-storyteller Nikolai Semenovich Leskov. Apart because he did not accept with his soul the aspirations of contemporary literature, marked by nihilistic, revolutionary sentiments. 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, the revolutionary democrats. He considered them “harmless and apolitical, who bear neither fire nor sword.”

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

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, stubbornly seeks 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 Leskov’s hero is nevertheless far from Bazarov, in whose image Turgenev captured the typical mood of the era. The musk ox, perhaps, deserves only pity because of the naivety and inconsistency of his actions and ideas. There are undoubtedly quite a lot of such people in life. Apparently, Leskov proceeded from considerations of bringing the hero as close as possible to reality. As a result, the artistic side of the works was strengthened, but the ideological side was weakened.

Let's return to the Musk Ox. Having exhausted all the possibilities and means of joining life, he left it. Although the story does not at all boil down to polemics with revolutionary democrats, it conveyed thoughts about the futility of the struggle of the “new people” against the injustices of life. In fact, this is not even Leskov’s idea. It has lived since the time when human society began to perceive itself as socially differentiated.

The Musk Ox is endowed with the features of a “Leskovsky” hero, a unique 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 artistic possibilities of the writer.

Leskov’s merit in the process of revolutionary transformations is that, no matter how he related to the ideas of revolutionary democrats, he was objective