The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories - Softcover

Leskov, Nikolai Semyonovich

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0898751950 ISBN 13: 9780898751956

Publisher: University Press of the Pacific, 2001

Synopsis

The few short stories collected in this volume portray old-world Russia with the motley composition of its society, the authentic minutiae of everyday life, and the complexity of human relations. A gallery of characters from all walks of life pass before our eyes: the petty bourgeoisie, merchants, priests, servants, minor officials, and the elite. Life's riddles intrigued the author, and he attempted to solve these riddles by giving the floor to his heroes and letting them tell their own story. In the "Enchanted Wanderer", in "The Make-up Artist" and many other of his stories, the author only starts the narrative and then let his heroes carry on with it. Each Leskov's characters has his own inimitable personality, his own face and voice, and tells everything about himself in an ingenuously natural way.

In "Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk" (1865) we are taken into the world of a merchant-class family of that period with its crude moral of slavish obedience and its killing boredom. By a whim of fate, a passionate, impulsive woman, whose strength of character can be well likened to that of Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth, finds herself in this bleak world. This story suggests that is indeed a freakish world where the finest aspirations become so perverted, and people, who are full of strength and passionate vitality, come to such bad end.

"The Enchanted Wanderer" (1873), describes the life of Ivan Severyanovich Flyagin, a serf peasant, and his wanderings about the towns and villages of his native land.

"The Sentry" (1889) was written in an entirely different manner. The main character here is Postnikov, a private who has rescued a drowning man. He is one of those men with an obsessive responsiveness to the needs of others and a simple-hearted readiness for self-sacrifice.

'The Old Genius" (1884) is base in one such anecdote. With subtle irony the author tells the story of the rascally aristocrat who has to hide from this creditors and of the "old genius" who gets the better of a crook and recovers the poor old woman's modest savings.

The story of Lefty who had "shoed a flea" has long been a popular legend in Russia, and Lefty himself a symbol of brilliant craftsmanship. Till the end of his days Lefty remembers his homeland, and all he wants is to help his countrymen before he dies. But his wish is not come true.

About this title

Review:

"I don’t know why Nikolai Leskov is not better known: he’s one of the best... You don’t just feel the falling snowflakes and smell the hay – you glimpse where God might be" (Sara Wheeler Observer)

"Nikolai Leskov is one of the greatest and most popular of the wonderful group of Russian storytellers who flourished in the nineteenth century" (New York Times Book Review)

"Serious criticism ignored him but his tales succeeded instantly with the public... No-one catches so truthfully the diversity of national character of his time. His variety is astonishing... Leskov has both feet in life" (V.S. Pritchett)

"On Lady Macbbeth of Mtensk: 'Short, sharp and shocking novel...It is a strikingly modern work, a sort of souped-up Madame Bovary in which the anti-heroine, the bored provincial housewife Katerina Lvovna Izmailova, is gripped by an excessive passion for a seductive farmhand. She's hardboiled as any Chandler dame as her ardour for her low-born lover takes her down a jet-black road of cruelty and murder'" (Sunday Telegraph)

"Nikolai Leskov fully deserves the privilege of standing in line with such makers of Russian literature as Tolstoi, Gogol, Turgenev and Goncharov. In power and beauty, Leskov's talent cedes only a little to the talent of any one of these men I have named - the creators of the Holy Bible of the Russian land - but in breadth of exposition, in depth of understanding of life's riddles, and in knowledge of the Russian language, he very often surpasses his predecessors and fellow writers" (Maxim Gorky)

Book Description:

The award-winning translators of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky now bring us a Russian writer ripe for rediscovery whose earthy and singular stories, have never before been properly translated into English

About this edition

• Publisher: University Press of the Pacific
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0898751950
• ISBN 13: 9780898751956
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 356