If Leskov’s character is confronted with the need to kill, he won’t think twice about it. His hands will reach out to the interfering object and, without regret, twist its head. Previously moderately peaceful, they had to understand how to achieve what they wanted. Could Musk Ox start a bloody showdown? Or the woman from Life to chop up the area with a pitchfork? What stopped Leskov was the understanding of the need to adhere to the truth. The musk ox and the woman did not do this, but Lady Macbeth from Mtsensk district killed people in cold blood, because that was exactly what her mental insanity required. Therefore, Leskov needed to show his imagination and reflect on the pages the course of events in such a way that the disturbance in the mental health of the main character immediately became noticeable.
Once upon a time there lived a young girl who suffered from boredom, not knowing any entertainment and therefore suffering. Her husband did not shower her with love; she did not want it from him. What prompted this girl for murder? First of all, fear for the future. Put in an uncomfortable position by her father-in-law, she quickly decided how to eliminate the witness who was interfering with her. This is how another fall from grace occurred, leading to visual and auditory hallucinations. The main character did not return to an adequate state, continuing to commit extravagant acts with a fog in her head. No one can escape from her anymore. She will kill until she is stopped.
The dramatization is increasing. The girl wants to love. She lives for this feeling. But Leskov introduced another side of human madness into the narrative, forcing the main character to fight for the property that was inherited to her. Nikolai imbued the pages with permissiveness. Initially frightened, then bitten by her conscience, the heroine continued to kill without realizing it. There were no thoughts about the future - inspiration guided the process. Only the father-in-law turned out to be the cold-blooded victim; the others lost their lives through their own fault, interfering in the affairs of a woman ready for anything.
We will not justify the initial boredom of the main character and what happened after. The reader did not expect any other plot from Leskov’s work. Crazy stuff on the pages again character living according to internal attitudes of rejection of what is happening to them. No other understanding is required, nor is searching for similar stories in literature. Knowledge of Leskov’s work directly is enough to see the pattern in the actions of the characters he describes.
“Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” is an essay, the reader will say. — Leskov put it in his own words real story. This opinion cannot be disputed. However, knowing Nikolai’s style of presentation, you see everything you expect from his works. The exception is the very fact of murders occurring in the work. Previously, Leskov presented crazy, but still easy-going characters. With Lady Macbeth the situation is different - she killed. It remains to understand the reasons for her behavior, which Leskov did. Among other things, Nikolai added an element of mysticism to the plot, perceived as an ordinary hallucination. And if so, then it will not be possible to deny the main character’s mental health problems.
Leskov did not dissuade Lady Macbeth from her right to illegal activities. She turned out to be a deeply sick person, whose life was ruined by the love feeling imagined by young people. Not understanding how love flows, the main character was ready to take extreme measures to defend it. Love will definitely pass, presenting a person with the fact that the deeds accomplished in vain in the name of love. And here Leskov did not allow Lady Macbeth to fully understand the fleeting nature of love interest, describing what everyone comes to who wants to feel the fullness of life and not think about the consequences of such a desire.
Even though Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk is a beast, she still became the character whose life was honored with an essay by Nikolai Leskov.
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The work was originally a sketch from a series of female portraits, conceived at the end of 1864. In a letter to N. N. Strakhov, an employee and critic of the Epoch magazine, on December 7, 1864, N. Leskov writes: ““Lady Macbeth of our County” is the 1st issue of a series of essays exclusively on typical female characters our (Oka and partly Volga) area. I propose to write twelve such essays..."
As for the remaining essays, the idea of writing remained unfulfilled.
As for “Lady Macbeth...”, then from an essay, according to the original plan of a “local” nature, this work during its creation grew into an artistic masterpiece of world significance.
Katerina Izmailova is a “villain unwillingly,” and not according to subjective data, a killer not by birth, but by the circumstances of her life. Finding herself a slave to her own feelings, Katerina successively overcomes a whole series of obstacles, each of which seems to her to be the last on the path to complete liberation and happiness. The persistence with which the heroine tries to subjugate circumstances to her will testifies to the originality and strength of her character. She stops at nothing, goes to the end in her terrible and, most importantly, useless struggle and dies only after completely exhausting the remarkable reserve of spiritual and vital forces given to her by nature.
Leskov’s light self-irony, expressed in the title of the story, seems to indicate the transfer of Shakespeare’s character to a “lower” social sphere.
At the same time, self-irony is a purely Leskovian feature of social satire, consciously used by the writer, giving it an original coloring within the framework of the Gogolian direction of Russian literature.
Pikhter is a large wicker basket with a bell for carrying hay and other livestock feed.
A quitrent mayor is a peasant headman appointed by the landowner to collect quitrents.
Yasmen Falcon is a daring fellow.
Kitty is a leather tightening bag, purse.
Patericon - a collection of the lives of the reverend fathers.
Throne - a throne, or temple, holiday - a day of remembrance of an event or “saint” in whose name this temple was built.
Forshlag (German) - a small melodic figure (of one or more sounds) that decorates a melody, a trill. Roomy - shared.
Job is a biblical righteous man who meekly endured the trials sent to him by God.
“Outside the window in the shadows flashes...” is a not entirely accurately conveyed excerpt from Y. P. Polonsky’s poem “Challenge”, in the original - not “hollow”, but “cloak”.
Sources:
- Leskov N. S. Novels and stories / Comp. and note. L. M. Krupchanova. - M.: Moscow. worker, 1981.- 463 p.
In subsequent literary years, Leskov continues to develop the problem of the fate of a strong, extraordinary personality in the conditions of “crowded Russian life”, the oppressive influence of life circumstances. He is increasingly attracted to complex, contradictory characters, unable to resist the harmful influence and power over them. surrounding reality and hence subject to moral self-destruction. Leskov observed such characters more than once in everyday Russian reality; they amazed him with their inner power and passion.
Among them is the merchant’s wife Katerina Lvovna Izmailova, nicknamed “from someone else” for the crimes she committed. light words» Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk district. But Leskov himself sees in his heroine not a criminal, but a woman “performing the drama of love,” and therefore presents her as a tragic person.
Katerina’s love attraction for Sergei is born from the boredom that overcomes her, reigning in the “merchant’s mansion with high fences and chained dogs,” where “it is quiet and empty... not a living sound, not a human voice.” Boredom and “melancholy reaching the point of stupor” force the young merchant’s wife to pay attention to “a young man with a daring, handsome face framed by jet-black curls.”
Katerina goes down into the yard solely out of a desire to unwind, to drive away the annoying yawning. The description of the heroine’s behavior on the eve of her first date with Sergei is especially expressive: “having nothing to do,” she stood “leaning against the doorframe” and “husking sunflower seeds.” In general, in the feeling of a bored merchant's wife towards the clerk there is more the call of the flesh than the yearning of the heart. However, the passion that captured Katerina is immeasurable. “She went crazy with her happiness,” and “it became unbearable for her to survive even an extra hour without Sergei.” Love, which exploded the emptiness of the heroine’s existence, takes on the character of a destructive force, sweeping away everything in its path. This becomes obvious when Izmailova's crimes are revealed. No, her inner world is not shocked by the court's decision. Not excited about the birth of a child: “for her there was neither light nor darkness, neither bad nor good, neither boredom nor joy.” Her whole life was completely consumed by passion. She “was now ready for Sergei into fire and water, into prison and to the cross.” Having never known love before, Katerina is naive and trusting in her feelings. Listening to love speeches for the first time, “fogged up” by them, she does not feel the falsehood hidden in them, is not able to discern a given role in the actions of her lover. For Katerina, love becomes the only possible life, which seems to her like “paradise.” And in this earthly paradise, the heroine discovers a beauty hitherto invisible to her: both apple blossom and pure blue sky, and “lunar shine, crushing on flowers and leaves of trees,” and “golden night” with its “silence, light, aroma and beneficial, revitalizing warmth.” On the other hand, the new, heavenly life is full of a pronounced egoistic principle and unbridled willfulness of Katerina, who directly declared to her beloved: “...if you, Seryozha, change me, if you exchange me for anyone or anything else.” “I’m with you, my dear friend, forgive me, I won’t part with you alive.” But how bright and frantic Katerina appears against the backdrop of the colorless lackey Sergei. Unlike her lover, she will not give up her frenzied love either in the pillory or at the prison stage. Readers saw the character of a heroine of incredible strength and meaning, who contained within herself the cause and consequences of love-catastrophe and who drank the cup of such love in full, or, as Leskov said about his Katerina Izmailova, “performing the drama of love.” However, this incredible female character also has an incredibly terrible outcome: a spiritual impasse leading to death without repentance, when Katerina drags her hated rival Sonetka into the water shafts, from which her murdered father-in-law, husband and Fedya look at her.
A.A. Gorelov, teacher edited by V. I. Korovin, note the floor of the collection, op.
A story about the remarkable Russian character and the disastrous consequences of unbridled passion, the first story of a female serial killer in Russian literature.
comments: Varvara Babitskaya
What is this book about?
A bored young merchant Katerina Izmailova, whose violent nature finds no use in the quiet empty rooms of a merchant's house, begins an affair with the pretty clerk Sergei and, for the sake of this love, commits terrible crimes with amazing composure. By calling “Lady Macbeth...” an essay, Leskov seems to be abandoning fiction for the truth of life, creating the illusion of documentary. In fact, “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” is more than a sketch from life: it is an action-packed short story, a tragedy, an anthropological study and an everyday story imbued with comedy.
Nikolai Leskov. 1864
When was it written?
The author's dating is “November 26. Kyiv.” Leskov worked on “Lady Macbeth...” in the fall of 1864, while visiting his brother in an apartment at Kiev University: he wrote at night, locking himself in a room in a student punishment cell. He later recalled: “But when I wrote my Lady Macbeth, under the influence of tense nerves and loneliness I almost reached the point of delirium. At times I felt unbearably creepy, my hair stood on end, I froze at the slightest rustle, which I myself made by moving my leg or turning my neck. These were difficult moments that I will never forget. Since then I have avoided describing such horror" 1 How Leskov worked on “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk.” Sat. articles for the production of the opera “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” by the Leningrad State Academic Maly Theater. L., 1934. .
It was assumed that “Lady Macbeth...” would mark the beginning of a whole series of essays “exclusively of typical female characters of our (Oka and part of the Volga) area”; In total, Leskov intended to write such essays about representatives of different classes twelve 2 - “each in volume from one to two sheets, eight from folk and merchant life and four from noble life. After “Lady Macbeth” (merchant) comes “Graziella” (noblewoman), then “Majorsha Polivodova” (old-world landowner), then “Fevronya Rokhovna” (peasant schismatic) and “Granny Flea” (midwife).” But this cycle was never realized.
The gloomy coloring of the story reflected the difficult mental state of Leskov, who at that time was practically subjected to literary ostracism.
On May 28, 1862, fires broke out in the center of St. Petersburg in the Apraksin and Shchukin courtyards, and markets were burning. In an atmosphere of panic, rumors blamed nihilistic students for the arson. Leskov made an editorial in the Northern Bee, where he called on the police to conduct a thorough investigation and name the culprits in order to stop rumors. The progressive public perceived this text as a direct denunciation; a scandal broke out and "Northern Bee" Pro-government newspaper published in St. Petersburg from 1825 to 1864. Founded by Thaddeus Bulgarin. At first, the newspaper adhered to democratic views (it published the works of Alexander Pushkin and Kondraty Ryleev), but after the Decembrist uprising it sharply changed its political course: it fought against progressive magazines like Sovremennik and Otechestvennye zapiski, and published denunciations. Bulgarin himself wrote in almost all sections of the newspaper. In the 1860s, the new publisher of the Northern Bee, Pavel Usov, tried to make the newspaper more liberal, but was forced to close the publication due to the low number of subscribers. sent the unsuccessful correspondent on a long business trip abroad: Lithuania, Austrian Poland, the Czech Republic, Paris. In this semi-exile, the irritated Leskov writes the novel “Nowhere,” an evil caricature of nihilists, and upon his return in 1864, he publishes it in "Library for reading" The first large-circulation magazine in Russia, published monthly from 1834 to 1865 in St. Petersburg. The publisher of the magazine was bookseller Alexander Smirdin, and the editor was writer Osip Senkovsky. The “Library” was intended mainly for provincial readers; in the capital it was criticized for its protectiveness and superficiality of judgment. By the late 1840s, the magazine's popularity began to decline. In 1856, critic Alexander Druzhinin was called to replace Senkovsky, who worked in the magazine for four years. under the pseudonym M. Stebnitsky, thereby radically worsening his nascent literary reputation: “Nowhere” is the fault of my modest fame and the abyss of the most serious insults for me. My opponents wrote and are still ready to repeat that this novel was written to order III Division The third department of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery was the police department, which dealt with political affairs. It was created in 1826, after the Decembrist uprising, and was headed by Alexander Benkendorf. In 1880, Division III was abolished, and the affairs of the department were transferred to the Police Department, formed under the Ministry of Internal Affairs. ».
How is it written?
Like an action-packed novella. The density of action, the twisted plot, where corpses are piled up and in each chapter a new twist that does not give the reader a break, will become Leskov’s patented technique, because of which, in the eyes of many critics who valued artistic prose ideas and trends, Leskov remained a vulgar “anecdotist” for a long time. “Lady Macbeth...” looks almost like a comic book or, without anachronisms, like a popular print—Leskov consciously relied on this tradition.
In “Lady Macbeth...” the “excessiveness”, pretentiousness, “linguistic foolishness” for which Leskov’s contemporary critics reproached him in connection with “Lefty” are not yet striking. In other words, the famous Leskov tale is not very evident in the early essay, but its roots are visible.
“Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” in our today’s ideas is a story, but the author’s genre definition— essay. At that time, artistic things were also called essays, but this word is inextricably linked in the minds of the 19th century reader with the definition of “physiological,” with journalism, journalism, and non-fiction. Leskov insisted that he knew the people not first-hand, like democratic writers, but up close and personal and showed them what they are. From this author’s attitude grows the famous Leskov tale - according to Boris’s definition Eikhenbaum 3 Eikhenbaum B. M. Leskov and modern prose// Eikhenbaum B. M. About literature: Works of different years. M.: Soviet writer, 1987. , “a form of narrative prose that, in its vocabulary, syntax and selection of intonations, reveals a focus on the narrator’s oral speech.” Hence the lively and different, depending on class and psychology, speech of the heroes. The author's own intonation is dispassionate, Leskov writes a report on criminal events, without giving moral assessments - unless allowing himself an ironic remark or giving free rein to lyricism in a poetic love scene. “This is a very powerful study of a woman's criminal passion and the hilarious, cynical callousness of her lover. A cold, merciless light pours on everything that happens and everything is told with a strong “naturalistic” objectivity" 4 Mirsky D. S. Leskov // Mirsky D. S. History of Russian literature from ancient times to 1925 / Trans. from English R. Zernova. London: Overseas Publications Interchange Ltd, 1992. .
What influenced her?
First of all, “Macbeth” itself: Leskov definitely knew Shakespeare’s play - the four-volume “Complete Collection of Dramatic Works...” of Shakespeare, published in 1865-1868 by Nikolai Gerbel and Nikolai Nekrasov, is still kept in Leskov’s library in Orel; plays, including Macbeth, are dotted with many Leskovian litter 5 Afonin L. N. Books from the Leskov library in the State Museum of I. S. Turgenev // Literary heritage. Volume 87. M.: Nauka, 1977. . And although “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” was written a year before the release of the first volume of this publication, “Macbeth” in the Russian translation by Andrei Kroneberg was published in 1846 - this translation was widely known.
The life of a merchant was well known to Leskov due to his mixed origin: his father was a modest official who received personal nobility by rank, his mother was from a wealthy landowner family, his paternal grandfather was a priest, his maternal grandmother was a merchant. As his early biographer wrote: “He early childhood was under the influence of all these four classes, and in the person of the courtyard people and nannies, he was also under the strong influence of the fifth, peasant class: his nanny was a Moscow soldier, his brother’s nanny, whose stories he listened to - serf" 6 Sementkovsky R. Nikolai Semenovich Leskov. Full collection op., 2nd ed. In 12 volumes. T. I. St. Petersburg: Edition of A. F. Marx, 1897. P. IX-X. . As Maxim Gorky believed, “Leskov is a writer with the deepest roots among the people, he is completely untouched by any foreign influences" 7 Gebel V. A. N. S. Leskov. IN creative laboratory. M.: Soviet writer, 1945. .
In artistic terms, Leskov, who forces the heroes to speak in a folk language that is unique to them, undoubtedly learned from Gogol. Leskov himself said about his literary sympathies: “When I first had the opportunity to read “Notes of a Hunter” by I. S. Turgenev, I trembled all over from the truth of the ideas and immediately understood: what is called art. Everything else, except for another Ostrovsky, seemed to me to be artificial and incorrect.”
With an interest in popular print, in folklore, in anecdote and all kinds of mysticism, expressed in “Lady Macbeth...”, the writer obliged 8 Gebel V. A. N. S. Leskov. In the creative laboratory. M.: Soviet writer, 1945. also to now less famous fiction writers - ethnographers, philologists and Slavophiles: Nicholas Nikolai Vasilyevich Uspensky (1837-1889) - writer, cousin of the writer Gleb Uspensky. He worked for the Sovremennik magazine, was friends with Nekrasov and Chernyshevsky, and shared revolutionary democratic views. After a conflict with the editors of Sovremennik and leaving the magazine, he worked as a teacher, and from time to time published his stories and novellas in Otechestvennye zapiski and Vestnik Evropy. After the death of his wife, Uspensky wandered, performed street concerts, drank a lot and eventually committed suicide. And Gleb Uspensky Gleb Ivanovich Uspensky (1843-1902) - writer. He was published in Tolstoy's pedagogical magazine Yasnaya Polyana, Sovremennik, and spent most of his career working in Otechestvennye Zapiski. He was the author of essays about the urban poor, workers, peasants, in particular the essays “Morals of Rasteryaeva Street” and the cycle of stories “Ruin”. In the 1870s he went abroad, where he became close to the populists. At the end of his life, Uspensky suffered nervous disorders, spent the last ten years in a mental hospital. , Alexander Veltman Alexander Fomich Veltman (1800-1870) - writer, linguist, archaeologist. He served in Bessarabia for twelve years, was a military topographer, and participated in Russian-Turkish War 1828. After retirement, he took up literature - Veltman was one of the first to use the technique of time travel in novels. Studied ancient Russian literature, translated “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign.” The last years of his life he served as director of the Armory Chamber of the Moscow Kremlin. , to Vladimir Dahl Vladimir Ivanovich Dal (1801-1872) - writer, ethnographer. He served as a military doctor, an official on special assignments for the Governor-General of the Orenburg Territory, and participated in the Khiva campaign of 1839. Since the 1840s, he was engaged in literature and ethnography - he published collections of stories and proverbs. For most of my life I worked on " Explanatory dictionary living Great Russian language", for which he was awarded the Lomonosov Prize and the title of academician. , Melnikov-Pechersky Pavel Ivanovich Melnikov (pseudonym - Pechersky; 1818-1883) - writer, ethnographer. He served as a history teacher in Nizhny Novgorod. In the early 1840s, he became friends with Vladimir Dal and entered the service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Melnikov was considered one of the main experts on the Old Believers; he published “Letters on Schism” in magazines, in which he advocated giving schismatics full rights. Author of the books “In the Forests” and “On the Mountains,” novels about the life of the Trans-Volga Old Believer merchants. .
Unlike Katerina Izmailova, who did not read patericons, Leskov constantly relied on hagiographic and patristic literature. Finally, he wrote his first essays under the fresh impression of serving in the criminal chamber and from investigative journalism.
Lubok “Cat of Kazan, mind of Astrakhan, mind of Siberian...” Russia, XVIII century
Lubok “Strands, my spinner.” Russia, around 1850
Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/Getty Images
In No. 1 of "Epoch" - the magazine of the Dostoevsky brothers - for 1865. The essay received its final title only in the 1867 edition of “Tales, Sketches and Stories by M. Stebnitsky,” for which the magazine version was heavily revised. For the essay, Leskov asked Dostoevsky for 65 rubles per sheet and “for each essay, one hundred bound reprints” (author’s copies), but he never received the fee, although he reminded the publisher about this more than once. As a result, Dostoevsky issued a promissory note to Leskov, which the distressed writer, however, never presented for collection out of delicacy, knowing that Dostoevsky himself found himself in difficult financial circumstances.
Fyodor Dostoevsky. 1872 Photo by Wilhelm Lauffert. Leskov's story was first published in Epoch, the magazine of the Dostoevsky brothers
"Epoch" magazine for February 1865
Mikhail Dostoevsky. 1860s.
How was she received?
By the time of the release of Lady Macbeth... Leskov was actually declared persona non grata in Russian literature because of the novel Nowhere. Almost simultaneously with Leskov’s essay in "Russian Word" A monthly magazine published from 1859 to 1866 in St. Petersburg. Founded by Count Grigory Kushelev-Bezborodko. With the arrival in Russian word» editor Grigory Blagosvetlov and critic Dmitry Pisarev, a moderate-liberal literary magazine turned into a radical socio-political publication. The magazine's popularity was largely due to Pisarev's scathing articles. “Russian Word” was closed simultaneously with “Sovremennik”, after Karakozov’s assassination attempt on Alexander II. Dmitry Pisarev’s article “Walk through the Gardens” appeared Russian literature“- from the cell of the Peter and Paul Fortress, the revolutionary critic angrily asked: “1) Is there now in Russia - besides the Russian Messenger - at least one magazine that would dare to print on its pages something coming from the pen of Mr. Stebnitsky and signed his last name? 2) Is there at least one honest writer in Russia who will be so careless and indifferent to his reputation that he will agree to work in a magazine that adorns itself with stories and novels by Mr. Stebnitsky? 9 Pisarev D.I. A walk through the gardens of Russian literature // Pisarev D.I. Literary criticism in 3 volumes. T. 2. Articles of 1864-1865. L.: Artist. lit., 1981.
Democratic criticism of the 1860s, in principle, refused to evaluate Leskov’s work from an artistic point of view. Reviews of “Lady Macbeth...” did not appear either in 1865, when the magazine was published, or in 1867, when the essay was reprinted in the collection “Tales, Sketches and Stories of M. Stebnitsky,” or in 1873, when this publication was repeated. Not in the 1890s, shortly before the writer’s death, when his “Complete Works” in 12 volumes was published by the publishing house Alexey Suvorin and brought Leskov belated recognition from readers. Not in the 1900s, when the essay was published Adolf Marx Adolf Fedorovich Marx (1838-1904) - book publisher. At the age of 21, he moved from Poland to Russia, at first he taught foreign languages and served as a clerk. In 1870 he founded the mass weekly magazine "Niva", and in 1896 - his own printing house, where, among other things, he published collections of Russian and foreign classics. After Marx's death the publishing house became joint stock company, most of the shares of which were bought by publisher Ivan Sytin. in the appendix to "Niva" A mass weekly magazine published from 1869 to 1918 by the St. Petersburg publishing house of Adolf Marx. The magazine was aimed at family reading. Since 1894, free supplements began to be published for Niva, among which collections of Russian and foreign writers were published. Thanks to the low subscription price and high-quality content, the publication became a great success among readers - in 1894, the annual circulation of Niva reached 170 thousand copies. . The only critical response is found in Saltykov-Shchedrin’s devastating article about “The Stories of M. Stebnitsky,” and it sounds like this: “...In the story “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” the author talks about one woman - Fiona and says that she never refused anyone to a man, and then adds: “Such women are very highly valued in robber gangs, in prison parties and social-democratic communes.” All these additions about revolutionaries tearing off everyone’s noses, about Baba Fiona and about nihilistic officials without any connection are scattered here and there in Mr. Stebnitsky’s book and serve only as proof that the author has some special kind of seizures..." 10 Saltykov-Shchedrin M. E. Stories, essays and stories by M. Stebnitsky // Saltykov-Shchedrin M. E. Collected works: in 20 volumes. T. 9. M.: Khudozh. lit., 1970.
"Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk." Directed by Roman Balayan. 1989
Boris Kustodiev. Illustration for “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk”. 1923
“Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” over time was not only appreciated, but also became one of Leskov’s most famous works, along with “Lefty” and “The Enchanted Wanderer,” both in Russia and in the West. The return to the reader of “Lady Macbeth...” began with a brochure, which in 1928 was published in thirty thousand copies by the Red Proletarian printing house in the “Cheap Library of Classics” series; in the preface, the story of Katerina Izmailova was interpreted as “a desperate protest of a strong female personality against the stuffy prison of a Russian merchant house.” In 1930, Leningrad Writers Publishing House A publishing house founded on the initiative of Leningrad writers in 1927. It published books by Konstantin Fedin, Marietta Shaginyan, Vsevolod Ivanov, Mikhail Koltsov, Boris Eikhenbaum. In 1934, the publishing house merged with the Moscow Writers' Association, and on this basis the publishing house "Soviet Writer" arose. publishes “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” with illustrations by Boris Kustodiev (already deceased by that time). After this, “Lady Macbeth...” was republished continuously in the USSR.
However, we note that Kustodiev created his illustrations back in 1922-1923; Katerina Izmailova also had other admirers in the 1920s. So, in 1927, the constructivist poet Nikolay Ushakov Nikolai Petrovich Ushakov (1899-1973) - poet, writer, translator. He spent most of his life in Kyiv, writing poetry, feuilletons, film scripts, and articles about literature. He became famous thanks to the poetry collection “Spring of the Republic”, published in 1927. He translated works of Ukrainian poets and writers into Russian - Ivan Franko, Lesya Ukrainka, Mikhail Kotsyubinsky. wrote the poem "Lady Macbeth", a bloody story of a forester with an epigraph from Leskov, which cannot but be quoted:
You are alive, without a doubt
but why did they bring you?
in a sleepy heap
fears,
shadows,
furniture?
And also the finale:
That's not a forest at the gate,
lady, -
I don’t want to hide, -
then behind us,
lady,
rides
mounted police.
In 1930, after reading Leskov’s essay republished in Leningrad and especially inspired by Kustodiev’s illustrations, Dmitry Shostakovich decided to write an opera based on the plot of “Lady Macbeth...”. After its premiere in 1934, the opera was a wild success not only in the USSR (however, it was removed from the repertoire in January 1936, when the famous article in Pravda - “Confusion instead of music”) was published, but also in the USA and Europe, ensuring the long popularity of Leskov's heroine in the West. The first translation of the essay - German - was published in 1921 in Munich; by the 1970s, “Lady Macbeth...” had already been translated into all the world's major languages.
The first film adaptation of the essay, which has not survived, was the silent film directed by Alexander Arkatov “Katerina the Murderer” (1916). It was followed, among others, by “The Siberian Lady Macbeth” (1962) by Andrzej Wajda, “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk District” (1989) by Roman Balayan starring Natalya Andreichenko and Alexander Abdulov, and “Moscow Evenings” by Valery Todorovsky (1994), which moved the action to modernity, and the British film “Lady Macbeth” (2016), where director William Allroyd transplanted Leskov’s plot onto Victorian soil.
The literary influence of “Lady Macbeth...” is difficult to separate from Leskov’s line in Russian prose as a whole, but, for example, the researcher found an unexpected trace of it in Nabokov’s “Lolita,” where, in his opinion, the love scene in the garden under a blossoming apple tree echoes: “The Net shadows and bunnies, blurry reality, there is clearly from “Lady Macbeth..." 11 , and this is much more significant than the self-evident analogy of Sonnetka and nymphet.”
Lady Macbeth. Directed by William Oldroyd. 2016
"Katerina Izmailova" Directed by Mikhail Shapiro. 1966
"Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk." Directed by Roman Balayan. 1989
"Moscow Evenings" Director Valery Todorovsky. 1994
Is the essay “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” based on real events?
Rather, on observations of real life, which Leskov owed to his unusually varied career for a writer. Orphaned at the age of 18, Leskov was forced to earn his own living and since then served in the Oryol Criminal Chamber, in the recruitment department of the Kyiv Treasury Chamber, in the office of the Kyiv Governor General, in a private shipping company, in the management of estates, in the ministries of public education and government property. Working in the commercial company of his relative, the Russified Englishman Alexander Schcott, Leskov traveled on business to almost the entire European part of Russia. “To this matter,” said the writer, “I owe my literary creativity. Here I received the entire stock of knowledge of the people and the country.” The statistical, economic, and everyday observations accumulated in those years were later sufficient for decades of literary comprehension. The writer himself called “Essays on the distillery industry (Penza province)”, published in 1861, the beginning of his literary activity. "Domestic Notes" Literary magazine published in St. Petersburg from 1818 to 1884. Founded by writer Pavel Svinin. In 1839, the magazine was transferred to Andrei Kraevsky, and the critical department was headed by Vissarion Belinsky. Lermontov, Herzen, Turgenev, Sollogub were published in Otechestvennye zapiski. After some of the employees left for Sovremennik, Kraevsky in 1868 transferred the magazine to Nekrasov. After the death of the latter, Saltykov-Shchedrin headed the publication. In the 1860s, Leskov, Garshin, and Mamin-Sibiryak published in it. The magazine was closed by order of the chief censor and former employee publications by Evgeny Feoktistov. .
Katerina Izmailova did not have a direct prototype, but Leskov’s childhood memory was preserved, which could have suggested the plot to him: “Once an old neighbor, who had lived for seventy years, went to rest under a bush on a summer day black currant, the impatient daughter-in-law poured boiling sealing wax into his ear... I remember how they buried him... His ear fell off... Then the “executioner tormented” her on Ilyinka (on the square). She was young and everyone was surprised what she was like white..." 12 Leskov A. N. Life of Nikolai Leskov: According to his personal, family and non-family records and memories: In 2 volumes. T. 1. M.: Khudozh. lit., 1984. P. 474. - a trace of this impression can be seen in the description of “Katerina Lvovna’s naked white back” during the execution.
Another possible source of inspiration can be seen in a much later letter from Leskov, which deals with the plot of the story Alexey Suvorin Alexey Sergeevich Suvorin (1834-1912) - writer, playwright, publisher. He gained fame thanks to his Sunday feuilletons published in the St. Petersburg Gazette. In 1876, he bought the newspaper “New Time”, and soon founded his own bookstore and printing house, in which he published the reference books “Russian Calendar”, “All Russia”, and the “Cheap Library” series of books. Among Suvorin’s famous dramas are “Tatyana Repina”, “Medea”, “Dmitry the Pretender and Princess Ksenia”. “A tragedy over trifles”: a landowner, having unwittingly committed a crime, is forced to become the mistress of a lackey - her accomplice, who blackmails her. Leskov, praising the story, adds that it could be improved: “She could tell in three lines how she gave herself to a footman for the first time...<…>She developed something like a previously unknown passion for perfume... she kept wiping her hands (like Lady Macbeth) so that she would not smell of his disgusting touch.<…>In the Oryol province there was something of this kind. The lady fell into the hands of her coachman and went crazy, constantly wiping herself with perfume so that she “didn’t smell like horse sweat.”<…>Suvorin's lackey is not felt enough by the reader - his tyranny over the victim is almost not represented, and therefore there is no compassion for this woman, which the author certainly should have tried call..." 13 . In this letter from 1885, it is difficult not to hear an echo of Leskov’s own essay, and he must have known the incident that occurred in Orel from his youth.
Mtsensk. Early 20th century
What is in Katerina Lvovna from Lady Macbeth?
“Sometimes in our places such characters are created that no matter how many years have passed since meeting them, you will never remember some of them without trepidation” - this is how Leskov begins the story about the merchant’s wife Katerina Lvovna Izmailova, whom “our nobles, from someone’s light word, they began to call... Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" This nickname, which gives the title to the essay, sounds like an oxymoron - the author further emphasizes the ironic sound, attributing the expression not to himself, but to the impressionable public. Here it should be noted that Shakespeare’s names were in circulation in an ironic context: there was, for example, Dmitry Lensky’s vaudeville operetta “Hamlet Sidorovich and Ophelia Kuzminishna” (1873), Pyotr Karatygin’s parody vaudeville “Othello on the Sands, or the St. Petersburg Arab” (1847 ) and Ivan Turgenev’s story “Hamlet of Shchigrovsky District” (1849).
But despite the author’s ridicule, which constantly breaks through in the essay, by the end of it, the comparison of the county merchant’s wife with the ancient Scottish queen proves its seriousness, legitimacy, and even leaves the reader in doubt - which of the two is more terrible.
It is believed that the idea for the plot could have been given to Leskov by an incident from his childhood in Orel, where a young merchant’s wife killed her father-in-law by pouring molten sealing wax into his ear while he was sleeping in the garden. As Maya notes Kucherskaya 14 Kucherskaya M.A. About some features of the architectonics of Leskov’s essay “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” // International scientific collection “Leskoviana. Creativity of N. S. Leskov.” T. 2. Orel: (b.i.), 2009. , this exotic method of murder “resembles the scene of the murder of Hamlet’s father from Shakespeare’s play, and perhaps it was this detail that prompted Leskov to the idea of comparing his heroine with Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth, indicating that quite Shakespearean passions could play out in Mtsensk district.”
Again the same Russian boredom, the boredom of a merchant's house, which makes it fun, they say, even to hang yourself
Nikolay Leskov
Leskov took from Shakespeare not only common noun heroines. Here is the general plot - the first murder inevitably entails others, and blind passion (lust for power or lust) launches an unstoppable process of mental corruption, leading to death. Here is a fantastic Shakespearean setting with ghosts personifying a bad conscience, which in Leskov turns into a fat cat: “You are very smart, Katerina Lvovna, arguing that I am not a cat at all, but I am the eminent merchant Boris Timofeich. The only thing that has made me worse now is that all my intestines are cracked inside from my sister-in-law’s treat.”
A careful comparison of the works reveals many textual similarities in them.
For example, the scene in which the crime of Katerina and Sergei is revealed seems to be composed entirely of Shakespearean allusions. “The walls of the quiet house, which had hidden so many crimes, shook from deafening blows: the windows rattled, the floors shook, the chains of hanging lamps trembled and wandered along the walls like fantastic shadows.<…>It seemed as if some unearthly forces were shaking the sinful house to its foundations” - compare with Shakespeare’s description of the night when he was killed Duncan 15 Here and below, Shakespeare's quotations are given from the translation by Andrei Kroneberg, probably the most famous by Leskov. :
It was a stormy night; above our bedroom
The pipe was blown away; rushed through the air
A sad cry and death wheezing;
A terrible voice predicted war,
Fire and turmoil. Eagle owl, faithful companion
Unfortunate times, shouted all night.
The earth is said to have trembled.
But Sergei rushes to run as fast as he can in superstitious horror, cracking his forehead on the door: “Zinovy Borisych, Zinovy Borisych! - he muttered, flying headfirst down the stairs and dragging Katerina Lvovna, who had been knocked down, with him.<…>He flew over us with an iron sheet.” Katerina Lvovna answers with her usual composure: “Fool! get up, you fool! This creepy clownery, worthy of Charlie Chaplin, is a variation on the theme of the feast, where the ghost of Banquo appears to Macbeth, and the lady calls on her husband to come to his senses.
At the same time, however, Leskov makes a curious gender shift in the characters of his heroes. If Macbeth, a capable student, once taught by his wife, subsequently floods Scotland with blood without her participation, then Sergei throughout his criminal career is entirely led by Katerina Lvovna, who “turns into a hybrid of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, and her lover becomes a murder weapon: “ Katerina Lvovna bent down and squeezed Sergeyev’s hands, which were lying on her husband’s, with her hands. throat" 16 . Katerina Lvovna is driven to kill the boy Fedya by perverse self-pity: “Why should I really lose my capital through him? I suffered so much, I accepted so much sin on my soul.” Macbeth is guided by the same logic, forced to commit more and more murders so that the first does not turn out to be “senseless” and his throne is not inherited by other people’s children: “So for the descendants of Banquo / I have desecrated my soul?”
Lady Macbeth remarks that she would have stabbed Duncan herself, “If he / In his dreams had not looked so much like his father.” Katerina Izmailova, sending her father-in-law to the forefathers (“This is a kind of tyrannicide, which can also be considered as parricide" 17 Zheri K. Sensuality and crime in “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” by N. S. Leskova // Russian literature. 2004. No. 1. P. 102-110. ), does not hesitate: “She suddenly turned around to the full breadth of her awakened nature and became so determined that it was impossible to calm her down.” Lady Macbeth, equally determined at first, goes crazy and, in her delirium, cannot wipe imaginary blood stains from her hands. It’s not the same with Katerina Lvovna, routinely washing the floorboards from a samovar: “the stain was washed out without any trace.”
It is she, like Macbeth, who cannot say “Amen,” who “wants to remember the prayer and moves her lips, and her lips whisper: “how you and I walked, sat through the long autumn nights, sent people away from the world with a cruel death.” But unlike Lady Macbeth, who committed suicide due to remorse, Izmailova does not know repentance, and uses suicide as opportunity take your opponent with you. So Leskov, comically reducing Shakespearean images, at the same time forces his heroine to surpass the prototype in everything, turning her into the mistress of her fate.
The county merchant's wife not only stands on a par with Shakespeare's tragic heroine - she is more Lady Macbeth than Lady Macbeth herself.
Nikolai Mylnikov. Portrait of Nadezhda Ivanovna Soboleva. 1830s. Yaroslavl Art Museum
Merchant's wife. Photographer William Carrick. From the series “Russian types”. 1850–70s
How is the women's issue reflected in Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk?
The sixties of the 19th century, when “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” appeared, was a time of heated discussion of women’s emancipation, including sexual emancipation - as Irina Paperno writes, “Women’s emancipation” was understood as freedom in general, and freedom in personal relationships (emotional emancipation and the destruction of the foundations of traditional marriage) was identified with social liberation humanity" 18 Paperno I. Semiotics of behavior: Nikolai Chernyshevsky - a man of the era of realism. M.: New Literary Review, 1996. P. 55. .
Leskov devoted several articles to the women's issue in 1861: his position was ambivalent. On the one hand, Leskov liberally argued that the refusal to recognize a woman’s equal rights with a man is absurd and only leads to “the constant violation by women of many social laws by anarchic" 19 Leskov N. S. Russian women and emancipation // Russian speech. No. 344, 346. June 1 and 8. , and defended women's education, the right to earn a decent living and follow their calling. On the other hand, he denied the very existence of the “women’s issue” - in a bad marriage, men and women suffer equally, but the remedy for this is the Christian ideal of the family, and emancipation should not be confused with debauchery: “We are not talking about forgetting responsibilities, daring and opportunity in the name of the principle of emancipation, leaving your husband and even children, but about the emancipation of education and work for the benefit of the family and society" 20 Leskov N. S. Women’s specialists // Literary library. 1867. September; December. . Glorifying the “good family woman,” the good wife and mother, he added that debauchery “under all the names, no matter what may be invented for it, is still debauchery, not freedom.”
In this context, “Lady Macbeth...” sounds like a sermon by a conservative moralist about the tragic consequences of forgetting the boundaries of what is permitted. Katerina Lvovna, not inclined towards education, nor towards work, nor towards religion, deprived, as it turns out, even of the maternal instinct, “violates social laws in an anarchic way,” and this begins, as usual, with debauchery. As researcher Catherine Jary writes: “The criminal plot of the story is acutely polemical in relation to that model of a possible solution family conflicts, which was then proposed by Chernyshevsky. In the image of Katerina Lvovna one can see the writer’s lively reaction to the image of Vera Pavlovna in the novel “What do?" 21 Zheri K. Sensuality and crime in “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” by N. S. Leskova // Russian literature. 2004. No. 1. P. 102-110. .
Eh, soul, soul! What kind of people did you know that the only way to a woman was for them?
Nikolay Leskov
This point of view, however, is not confirmed by Leskov himself in his review of Chernyshevsky’s novel. Attacking the nihilists - slackers and phrase-mongers, "freaks of Russian civilization" and "trashy pollen" 22 Leskov N.S. Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky in his novel “What to do?” // Leskov N. S. Collected works in 11 volumes. T. 10. M.: GIHL, 1957. P. 487-489. , Leskov sees an alternative to them precisely in Chernyshevsky’s heroes, who “work until they sweat, but not out of the sole desire for personal profit” and at the same time “come together according to their own attraction, without any nasty monetary calculations: they love each other for a while, but then, how it happens, in one of these two hearts a new attachment is kindled, and the vow is changed. In all there is unselfishness, respect for mutual natural rights, a quiet, faithful course on one’s own path.” This is quite far from the posture of a reactionary guardian, who sees in liberal ideas only a sermon of gross sin.
Russians classics of the 19th century centuries have discouraged women from freely expressing their sexuality. Carnal urges inevitably end in disaster: because of passion, Larisa Ogudalova was shot and Ostrovsky’s Katerina Kabanova drowned, Dostoevsky’s Nastasya Filippovna was stabbed to death, Goncharov in a novel on the same theme makes a cliff a symbol of willful passion, there is nothing to say about Anna Karenina. It seems that "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" was written in the same tradition. And he even takes the moralizing thought to the limit: Katerina Izmailova’s passion is of an exclusively carnal nature, a demonic influx in pure form, not covered by romantic illusions, devoid of idealization (even Sergei’s sadistic mockery does not put an end to it), it is the opposite of the ideal of the family and excludes motherhood.
Sexuality is shown in Leskov’s essay as an element, a dark and chthonic force. In a love scene under a blooming apple tree, Katerina Lvovna seems to dissolve in moonlight: “It’s all gilded with these whimsical, light spots, and they flicker and flutter on it, like living fiery butterflies, or as if all the grass under the trees has taken on a lunar net and moves from side to side”; and those around her can hear her mermaid laughter. This image is echoed in the finale, where the heroine rises waist-deep from the water to rush at her rival “like a strong pike” - or like a mermaid. In this erotic scene, superstitious fear is combined with admiration - as Zhery notes, the entire artistic system of the essay “violates the strict tradition of self-censorship in depicting the sensual side of love that has long existed in Russian literature”; the criminal story becomes throughout the text “a study of sexuality in its purest form.” form" 23 McLean. N. S. Leskov, the Man and his Art. Cambridge, Massachusetts; London, 1977. P. 147. Cited. according to K. Zheri. . Whatever opinion Leskov held about free love at different periods of his life, the artist’s talent was stronger than the principles of the publicist.
Boris Kustodiev. Illustration for “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk”. 1923
"Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk." Directed by Roman Balayan. 1989
Does Leskov justify his heroine?
Lev Anninsky notes the “terrible unpredictability” in the souls of Leskov’s heroes: “What kind of Ostrovsky’s “Thunderstorm” is there - here is not a ray of light, here is a fountain of blood gushing from the bottom of the soul; here “Anna Karenina” is foreshadowed - the vengeance of demonic passion; here Dostoevsky’s problematics match - it was not for nothing that Dostoevsky published “Lady Macbeth...” in his magazine. You can’t fit Leskov’s four-time murderer for love into any “character typology.” Katerina Lvovna and her Sergei not only did not fit into the literary typology of characters of the 1860s, but directly contradicted it. Two hardworking, pious merchants, and then an innocent child, are strangled for their own benefit by two traditionally positive heroes - people from the people: a Russian woman, ready to sacrifice everything for her love, “our recognized conscience, our last justification,” and the clerk Sergei, reminding Nekrasov's "gardener". This allusion in Anninsky seems justified: in Nekrasov’s ballad, the noble daughter, like the merchant’s wife Izmailova, comes to admire the curly-haired worker; a playful struggle ensues - “It darkened in the eyes, my soul trembled, / I gave, but did not give, a golden ring...”, developing into love joys. Katerina’s romance with Sergei began in the same way: “No, let me take it like this, the hairstyles,” said Seryoga, throwing out his curls. “Well, get on with it,” answered Katerina Lvovna, cheerfully, and raised her elbows up.”
Like Nekrasov's gardener, Sergei is caught when he sneaks out of his master's garden at dawn, and is then sent to hard labor. Even the description of Katerina Lvovna - “She was not tall, but slender, her neck was as if carved from marble, her shoulders were round, her chest was strong, her nose was straight, thin, her eyes were black, lively, her high white forehead and black, even blue-black hair” - as if predicted by Nekrasov: “Chernobrova, stately, as white as sugar!.. / It became creepy, I didn’t finish my song.”
Another parallel to Leskov’s plot is Vsevolod Krestovsky’s ballad “Vanka the Keymaker,” which became a folk song. “Those nights, in Zinovy Borisych’s bedroom, a lot of wine was drunk from his mother-in-law’s cellar, and sweet treats were eaten, and the hostess’s sugary lips were kissed, and black curls were played on the soft headboard” - as if a paraphrase of the ballad:
There was a lot of drinking there
May you be insulted
And he lived in red
And loving kisses!
On the bed, at the mercy of the princess,
We have it there
And for the breast, the breast of a swan,
It was enough more than once!
In Krestovsky, the young princess and Vanya the key keeper die, like Romeo and Juliet, while in Nekrasov, the noble daughter is the unwitting culprit of the hero’s misfortune. The heroine Leskova herself is evil incarnate - and at the same time a victim, and her beloved turns from a victim of class differences into a tempter, an accomplice, and then an executioner. Leskov seems to be saying: look what it looks like living life in comparison with ideological and literary schemes, there are no pure victims and villains, unambiguous roles, the human soul is in darkness. A naturalistic description of the crime in all its cynical efficiency is combined with sympathy for the heroine.
The moral death of Katerina Lvovna occurs seemingly gradually: she kills her father-in-law, standing up for her beloved Sergei, who was beaten and locked up by him; husband - in self-defense, in response to the humiliating threat, gritting his teeth: “E-them! I can’t stand it.” But this is a trick: in fact, Zinovy Borisovich had already “steamed his master’s darling” with tea poisoned by her, his fate was decided, no matter how he behaved. Finally, Katerina Lvovna kills the boy because of Sergei's greed; It is characteristic that this last - not at all excusable - murder was omitted in his opera by Shostakovich, who decided to make Katerina a rebel and a victim.
Ilya Glazunov. Katerina Lvovna Izmailova. Illustration for “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk”. 1973
Ilya Glazunov. Clerk. Illustration for “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk”. 1973
How and why does Lady Macbeth layer different narrative styles?
“A writer’s voice training lies in the ability to master the voice and language of his character and not stray from altos to basses. ...My priests speak spiritually, the nihilists speak nihilistically, the peasants speak like peasants, upstarts from them and buffoons speak with tricks, etc.,” Leskov said, according to his memoirs contemporary 24 Quote by: Eikhenbaum B. “Excessive” writer (To the 100th anniversary of the birth of N. Leskov) // Eikhenbaum B. About prose. L.: Artist. lit., 1969. pp. 327-345. . - On my own behalf, I speak in the language of ancient fairy tales and church folk in a purely literary speech" In "Lady Macbeth..." the narrator's speech - literary, neutral - serves as a frame for the characteristic speech of the characters. The author shows his own face only in the last part of the essay, which tells about the fate of Katerina Lvovna and Sergei after the arrest: Leskov himself never observed these realities, but his publisher, Dostoevsky, the author of Notes from the House of the Dead, confirmed that the description is plausible. The writer accompanies the “most sad picture” of the convict stage with a psychological remark: “...Whoever is not flattered by the thought of death in this sad situation, but frightened, should try to drown out these howling voices with something even more ugly. A simple person understands this very well: he sometimes unleashes his bestial simplicity, begins to act stupidly, mocks himself, people, and feelings. Not particularly gentle anyway, he becomes extremely angry.” The publicist breaks through in the fiction writer - after all, “Lady Macbeth...” is one of Leskov’s first artistic essays, the polemical lining there is close to the surface: it is no coincidence that Saltykov-Shchedrin only responds to these author’s remarks in the last part in his response, ignoring the plot and style. Here Leskov indirectly polemicizes with the idealistic ideas of contemporary revolutionary-democratic criticism about “ common man" Leskov liked to emphasize that, unlike the people-loving writers of the 60s, the common people know first-hand, and therefore laid claim to the special authenticity of his everyday life: even if his heroes were fictional, they were copied from life.
How you and I walked, spent long autumn nights, sent people away from the world with a cruel death
Nikolay Leskov
For example, Sergei is a “girlfriend” who was expelled from his previous place of service for having an affair with his mistress: “The thief took everything - in height, in face, in beauty, and will flatter you and lead you to sin. And what about fickle, scoundrel, very fickle, fickle!” This is a petty, vulgar character, and his love speeches are an example of lackey chic: “The song is sung: “without a dear friend, sadness and melancholy were overcome,” and this melancholy, I will report to you, Katerina Ilvovna, in my own heart, I can say, is so sensitive that I would take it, cut it out of my chest with a damask knife and throw it at your feet.” Here another servant-killer comes to mind, brought out by Dostoevsky twenty years later - Pavel Smerdyakov with his couplets and claims: “Can a Russian peasant have feelings against an educated person?” - Wed Sergei: “It’s all about poverty, Katerina Ilvovna, as you yourself know, lack of education. How can they understand anything about love properly!” At the same time, the speech of the “educated” Sergei is distorted and illiterate: “Why should I go away from here?”
Katerina Lvovna, as we know, is of simple origin, but she speaks correctly and without pretense. After all, Katerina Izmailova is “a character... that you cannot remember without trepidation”; By the time of Leskov, Russian literature could not yet imagine a tragic heroine who said “tapericha.” Cute clerk and tragic heroine as if taken from different artistic systems.
Leskov imitates reality, but still follows the principle of “shaking, but not mixing”—he appoints different heroes responsible for different layers of existence.
"Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk." Directed by Roman Balayan. 1989
Boris Kustodiev. Illustration for “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk”. 1923
Does “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” look like popular print?
From the ideological wars that overshadowed Leskov’s literary debut and created an artistically dead-end situation, the writer, fortunately, found a practical way out, which made him Leskov: after the directly journalistic and not particularly valuable literary novels “Nowhere” and “On Knives” “he begins to create for Russia an iconostasis of its saints and righteous people” - rather than ridicule unworthy people, he decides to offer inspiring images. However, as I wrote Alexander Amfiteatrov Alexander Valentinovich Amfitheatrov (1862-1938) - literary and theater critic, publicist. Was opera singer, but then left his opera career and took up journalism. In 1899, together with journalist Vlas Doroshevich, he opened the Rossiya newspaper. Three years later, the newspaper was closed for satire on the royal family, and Amphiteatrov himself ended up in exile. Upon returning from exile, he emigrated. He returned to Russia shortly before the revolution, but in 1921 he again went abroad, where he collaborated with emigrant publications. Author of dozens of novels, stories, plays and collections of stories. , “in order to become an artist of positive ideals, Leskov was a man who was too newly converted”: having renounced his former Social Democratic sympathies, attacked them and suffered defeat, Leskov rushed to look among the people not for mummers, but for genuine the righteous 25 Gorky M. N. S. Leskov // Gorky M. Collected works: in 30 volumes. T. 24. M.: GIHL, 1953. . This task, however, came into conflict with his own school of reporting, knowledge of the subject and simply a sense of humor, from which the reader endlessly benefited: Leskov’s “righteous people” (the most shining example) are always at least ambivalent and therefore interesting. “In his didactic stories one can always notice the same feature as in moralizing children's books or in novels from the first centuries of Christianity: bad boys, contrary to the wishes of the author, are written much more lively and interesting than good-natured ones, and pagans attract attention much more Christian" 26 Amphiteatrov A.V. Collected works of Al. Amphitheater. T. 22. Rulers of thoughts. St. Petersburg: Education, 1914-1916. .
A wonderful illustration of this idea is “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk”. Katerina Izmailova is written as a direct antipode to the heroine of another Leskov essay, “The Life of a Woman,” published two years earlier.
The plot there is very similar: the peasant girl Nastya is forcibly given into a despotic merchant family; She finds her only outlet in love for her singing neighbor Stepan, the story ends tragically - the lovers go through the stages, Nastya goes crazy and dies. The collision is essentially the same: illegal passion sweeps away a person like a typhoon, leaving corpses in its wake. Only Nastya is a righteous woman and a victim, and Katerina is a sinner and a murderer. This difference is resolved primarily stylistically: “The love dialogues of Nastya and Stepan were structured as folk song. The love dialogues of Katerina Lvovna and Sergei are perceived as ironically stylized inscriptions for popular prints. The whole movement of this love situation is, as it were, a template condensed to the point of horror - a young merchant’s wife deceives her old husband with her clerk. Not just templates results" 27 .
Boris Timofeich died, and he died after eating mushrooms, as many die after eating them.
Nikolay Leskov
In “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” the hagiographic motif is reversed - Maya Kucherskaya, among others, writes that it is to this semantic layer that the episode of the murder of Fedi Lyamin refers. The sick boy reads in the patericon (which Katerina Lvovna, as we remember, did not even pick up) the life of his saint, the martyr Theodore Stratelates, and admires how he pleased God. The event takes place during the all-night vigil, on the feast of the Entry of the Mother of God into the Temple; According to the Gospel, the Virgin Mary, already carrying Christ in her womb, meets Elizabeth, who is also carrying the future John the Baptist: “When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit” (Luke 1:41). Katerina Izmailova also feels how “her own child turned under her heart for the first time, and there was a cold feeling in her chest” - but this does not soften her heart, but rather strengthens her determination to quickly make the boy Fedya a martyr, so that her own heir will receive capital for the sake of Sergei's pleasures.
“The drawing of her image is an everyday template, but a template drawn with such thick paint that it turns into a kind of tragic splint" 28 Gromov P., Eikhenbaum B. N. S. Leskov (Essay on creativity) // N. S. Leskov. Collected works: in 11 volumes. M.: GIHL, 1956. . And the tragic popular print is, in essence, an icon. In Russian culture, the sublime hagiographic genre and the mass, entertaining genre of lubok are closer to each other than it might seem - just remember the traditional hagiographic icons, on which the face of the saint is actually framed by a comic strip depicting the most striking episodes of his biography. The story of Katerina Lvovna is an anti-life, the story of a strong and passionate nature, over which demonic temptation took over. A saint becomes a saint through victory over passions; in a sense, ultimate sin and holiness are two manifestations of the same great force, which will later unfold in all its colors in Dostoevsky: “And I am Karamazov.” Leskov’s Katerina Izmailova is not just a criminal, no matter how lowly and casually the essayist Leskov presents her story, she is a martyr who mistook the Antichrist for Christ: “I was ready for Sergei into fire, into water, into prison and to the cross.” Let us remember how Leskov describes her - she was not a beauty, but she was bright and pretty: “Straight, thin nose, black, lively eyes, white high forehead and black, even blue-black hair.” A portrait convenient for depiction in a bright and primitively graphic popular print story like “A Funny Tale about a Merchant’s Wife and a Clerk.” But you can also describe the iconographic face.
calculation" 29 Gorelov A. Walking for the truth // Leskov N. S. Stories and Stories. L.: Artist. lit., 1972. .In reality, Katerina Izmailova is devoid of both class prejudices and self-interest, and her fatal actions are given shape by passion alone. Sergei has class and selfish motives, and he alone is important to her - however, socialist criticism needed to read into the essay the conflict between the brave and strong people’s nature and the musty merchant environment.
As literary critic Valentin Gebel put it, “one could say about Katerina Izmailova that she is not a ray of sunshine falling into the darkness, but lightning generated by the darkness itself and only more clearly emphasizing the impenetrable darkness of merchant life.”
She wanted passion to be brought to her not in the form of russula, but with piquant, spicy seasoning, with suffering and sacrifice
Nikolay Leskov
An unbiased reading of the essay, however, does not show an impenetrable darkness in the merchant life described by Leskov. Although the husband and father-in-law reproach Katerina Lvovna for infertility (obviously, unfairly: Zinovy Borisovich had no children in his first marriage, and from Sergei Katerina Lvovna immediately became pregnant), but, as follows from the text, they do not oppress her in any way. This is not at all the tyrant merchant Dikoy or the widow Kabanikha from “The Thunderstorm”, who “gives money to the poor, but completely eats up her family.” Both Leskov merchants are hardworking, pious people; at dawn, after drinking tea, they go on business until late at night. They, of course, also limit the freedom of the young merchant's wife, but they do not eat.
Both Katerinas are nostalgic about the free life as girls, but their memories look exactly the opposite. Here is Katerina Kabanova: “I used to get up early; If it’s summer, I’ll go to the spring, wash myself, bring some water with me, and that’s it, I’ll water all the flowers in the house.<…>And we’ll come from church, sit down to do some kind of work, more like gold velvet, and the wanderers will begin to tell us: where they were, what they saw, different lives, or sing poetry.<…>And sometimes, girl, I’d get up at night - we also had lamps burning everywhere - and somewhere in a corner I’d pray until the morning.” And here is Izmailova: “I wish I could run to the river with buckets and swim in my shirt under the pier or sprinkle sunflower husks through the gate of a passing young man; but here everything is different.” Katerina Lvovna, even before meeting Sergei, understands freedom precisely as the free manifestation of sexuality - the young clerk simply releases the genie from the bottle - “as if demons had broken loose.” Unlike Katerina Kabanova, she has nothing to occupy herself with: she’s not a hunter, she doesn’t think of doing needlework, and she doesn’t go to church.
In the 1867 article “Russian drama theater in St. Petersburg” Leskov wrote: “There is no doubt that self-interest, baseness, hard-heartedness and lust, like all other vices of humanity, are as old as humanity itself is old”; only the forms of their manifestation, according to Leskov, differ depending on the time and class: if in a decent society vices are made up, then among people “simple, soiled, uncontrolled,” slavish submission to bad passions manifests itself “in forms so crude and uncomplicated that it is difficult to recognize there is almost no need for any special observation. All the vices of these people walk naked, just as our forefathers walked.” It was not the environment that made Katerina Lvovna vicious, but the environment made her a convenient, visual object for the study of vice.
Stanislav Zhukovsky. Interior with a samovar. 1914 Private collection
Why did Stalin hate Shostakovich's opera?
In 1930, inspired by the first Leningrad edition of Lady Macbeth... with illustrations by the late Kustodiev after a long break, young Dmitry Shostakovich took Leskov’s plot for his second opera. The 24-year-old composer was already author of three symphonies, two ballets, the opera “The Nose” (after Gogol), music for films and plays; he gained fame as an innovator and hope of Russian music. They were waiting for his “Lady Macbeth...”: as soon as Shostakovich finished the score, the Leningrad Maly Opera Theater and the Moscow Opera House began staging musical theater named after V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko. Both premieres in January 1934 received thunderous applause and enthusiastic press; The opera was also staged at the Bolshoi Theater and was triumphantly presented many times in Europe and America.
Shostakovich defined the genre of his opera as “tragedy-satire,” and Katerina Izmailova is responsible for tragedy and only tragedy, and everyone else is responsible for satire. In other words, the composer completely justified Katerina Lvovna, for which, in particular, he excluded the murder of a child from the libretto. After one of the first productions, one of the spectators noticed that the opera should have been called not “Lady Macbeth...”, but “Juliet...” or “Desdemona of Mtsensk”, - the composer agreed with this, who, on the advice of Nemirovich-Danchenko, gave the opera new name - “Katerina Izmailova”. The demonic woman with blood on her hands turned into a victim of passion.
As Solomon Volkov writes, Boris Kustodiev “in addition to “legitimate” illustrations... also drew numerous erotic variations on the theme of “Lady Macbeth”, not intended for publication. After his death, fearing searches, the family hastened to destroy these drawings.” Volkov suggests that Shostakovich saw those sketches, and this influenced the clearly erotic nature of his operas 30 Volkov S. Stalin and Shostakovich: the case of “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” // Znamya. 2004. No. 8. .
The composer was not horrified by the violence of passion, but glorified it. Sergei Eisenstein told his students in 1933 about Shostakovich’s opera: “In music, the ‘biological’ love line is drawn with utmost vividness.” Sergei Prokofiev characterized it even more harshly in private conversations: “This swinish music—the waves of lust go on and on!” The embodiment of evil in “Katerina Izmailova” was no longer the heroine, but “something grandiose and at the same time disgustingly real, relief, everyday, felt almost physiologically: crowd" 31 Anninsky L. A. World celebrity from Mtsensk // Anninsky L. A. Leskovsky necklace. M.: Book, 1986. .
But this, let me tell you, madam, is that a child can also get sick from something.
Nikolay Leskov
Soviet criticism for the time being praised the opera, finding in it an ideological correspondence to the era: “Leskov in his story drags through old morality and argues as humanist; we need the eyes and ears of a Soviet composer to do what Leskov could not do—to see and show the true killer behind the heroine’s external crimes—the autocratic system.” Shostakovich himself said that he swapped the places of executioners and victims: after all, Leskov’s husband, father-in-law, good people, and the autocracy do nothing terrible to Katerina Lvovna, and in fact are almost absent altogether - in the beautiful silence and emptiness of the merchant’s house, she depicted alone with her demons.
In 1936, an editorial article “Confusion Instead of Music” appeared in Pravda, in which an anonymous author (many contemporaries believed that it was Stalin himself) destroyed Shostakovich’s opera - with this article, a campaign against formalism and persecution of the composer began in the USSR.
“It is known that Stalin was enraged by sexual scenes in literature, theater and cinema,” writes Volkov. And indeed, overt eroticism is one of the main points of accusation in “Tumult”: “The music quacks, hoots, puffs, gasps in order to depict love scenes as naturally as possible. And “love” is smeared throughout the opera in the most vulgar form” - it is no better that, in order to depict passion, the composer borrows “nervous, convulsive, epileptic music” from bourgeois Western jazz.
There is also an ideological reproach there: “Everyone is presented monotonously, in animal guise - both merchants and people. The predatory merchant woman, who gained wealth and power through murder, is presented as some kind of “victim” of bourgeois society.” Here the modern reader is likely to get confused, since the opera was just praised along ideological lines. However, Pyotr Pospelov assumes 32 Pospelov P. “I would like to hope that...” To the 60th anniversary of the article “Confusion instead of music” // https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/126083 that Shostakovich, regardless of the nature of his work, was chosen for a demonstrative flogging simply because of his visibility and reputation as an innovator.
“Confusion instead of music” became an unprecedented phenomenon of its kind: “What was not so new was the genre of the article itself - a hybrid art criticism and the party and government resolution - as much as the transpersonal, objective status of the editorial publication of the main newspaper of the country.<…>What was also new was that the object of criticism was not ideological harmfulness... it was the artistic qualities of the work, its aesthetics, that were discussed.” The main newspaper of the country expressed the official state point of view on art, and the only acceptable art was designated socialist realism, in which there was no place for the “rudest naturalism” and formalistic aesthetics of Shostakovich’s opera. From now on, art was presented with the aesthetic demands of simplicity, naturalness, accessibility, and propaganda intensity - much less Shostakovich: for starters, “Lady Macbeth...” by Leskov himself would not fit these criteria.
Full list of references
The story “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” was published in January 1865. It was published under the title “Lady Macbeth of our County” by the magazine “Epoch”. According to the original plan, the work was to be the first in a cycle dedicated to the characters of Russian women. It was assumed that several more stories would follow, but Leskov never implemented these plans. Probably not least due to the closure of the Epoch magazine, which intended to publish the entire cycle. The final title of the story appeared in 1867, when it was published as part of the collection “Tales, Sketches and Stories by M. Stebnitsky” (M. Stebnitsky is Leskov’s pseudonym).
The character of the main character
At the center of the story is Katerina Lvovna Izmailova, a young merchant’s wife. She married not out of love, but out of need. During five years of marriage, she failed to have children with her husband, Zinoviy Borisovich, who was almost twice her age. Katerina Lvovna was very bored, languishing in the merchant's house, like a bird in a cage. Most of the time she just wandered from room to room and yawned. However, no one noticed her suffering.
While her husband was away for a long time, Katerina Lvovna fell in love with the clerk Sergei, who worked for Zinovy Borisovich. Love flared up instantly and completely captured the woman. In order to preserve both Sergei and her social position, Izmailova decided to commit several murders. Consistently, she got rid of her father-in-law, husband and young nephew. The further the action develops, the more the reader is convinced that Katerina Lvovna has no moral barriers that can hold her back.
Passion for love first completely absorbed the heroine, and in the end it ruined her. Izmailova and Sergei were sent to hard labor. On the way there the man showed his true face. He found himself new love and began to openly mock Katerina Lvovna. Having lost her lover, Izmailova lost the meaning of life. In the end, all she had to do was drown herself, taking Sergei’s mistress with her.
As literary scholars Gromov and Eikhenbaum note in the article “N. S. Leskov (Essay on creativity)”, the tragedy of Katerina Lvovna “is completely predetermined by the firmly established and steadily regulating the life of the individual by the everyday way of life merchant environment" Izmailova is often contrasted with Katerina Kabanova, the heroine of the play “The Thunderstorm” by Ostrovsky. Both women live with unloved spouses. Both are burdened merchant life. Both Kabanova and Izmailova’s lives change dramatically due to illicit love. But in similar circumstances, women behave differently. Kabanova perceives the passion that has gripped her as a great sin and eventually confesses everything to her husband. Izmailova rushes into the love pool without looking back, becoming decisive and ready to destroy any obstacles that stand in her and Sergei’s path.
Characters
The only character (besides Katerina Lvovna) who receives a lot of attention in the story and whose character is outlined in more or less detail is Sergei. Readers are presented with a handsome young man who knows how to seduce women and is distinguished by his frivolity. He was kicked out of his previous job because of an affair with the owner's wife. He apparently never loved Katerina Lvovna. Sergei started a relationship with her because he hoped to get a better life in life with their help. When Izmailova lost everything, the man behaved meanly and basely with her.
The theme of love in the story
The main theme of the story “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” is the theme of love and passion. This kind of love is no longer spiritual, but physical. Pay attention to how Leskov shows the pastime of Katerina Lvovna and Seryozha. The lovers hardly speak. When they are together they are mostly occupied carnal pleasures. Physical pleasure is more important to them than spiritual pleasure. At the beginning of the story, Leskov notices that Katerina Lvovna does not like to read books. It’s also difficult to call Sergei the owner of a rich inner world. When he first comes to seduce Izmailova, he asks her for a book. This request is due solely to the desire to please the hostess. Seryozha wants to show that he is interested in reading and is intellectually developed, despite his low social status.
The love-passion that gripped Katerina Lvovna is destructive because it is base. She is not capable of elevating, spiritually enriching. On the contrary, it awakens in a woman something of an animal, primitive nature.
Composition
The story consists of fifteen small chapters. In this case, the work can be divided into two parts. In the first, the action takes place in a limited space - the Izmailovs’ house. Here Katerina Lvovna’s love is born and develops. After the start of an affair with Sergei, the woman is happy. It's like she's in heaven. In the second part, the action takes place on the way to hard labor. Katerina Lvovna seems to be going to hell, serving a sentence for her sins. By the way, the woman does not repent at all. Her mind is still clouded by love. At first, next to Seryozha, for Izmailova, “and the hard labor path blooms with happiness.”
Genre of the work
Leskov called “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk” an essay. The main feature of the genre is “writing from life,” but there is no information about Katerina Lvovna’s prototypes. Perhaps, when creating this image, Leskov partially relied on materials from criminal cases to which he had access while serving in the Oryol Criminal Chamber.
The genre of the essay was not chosen by the writer by chance. It was important for him to emphasize the documentary nature of “Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk”. It is known that based on real events works of art often have a stronger impact on the public. Apparently, Leskov wanted to take advantage of this. The crimes committed by Katerina Lvovna are more shocking if you think about them as real.
- “The Man on the Clock”, analysis of Leskov’s story