Among the galaxy of famous Russian writers, he differs, perhaps, the greatest commitment to the Russian national tradition. The writer’s inner conviction that everything beautiful and exciting must be sought and found in his native land has vivid confirmation in the written works. His heroes are invariably "little great people." The characters are simple but surely bright: eccentrics and the righteous, rebels and wanderers. In modern language, a writer cannot be “calculated” as a narrator, to understand his innermost, personal attitude to what is stated. He is both mocking and delighted, ironic and simple, sublime and consistent. Such is the writer from God - Nikolai Semenovich Leskov. The summary of the story “Left-handed” (however, literary critics call creation a story), upon reading, convinces: the work is both an artistic and authentic retelling of real events.
The story was created by the writer on the basis of a story turned by folk tellers into a legend. Here is a summary. Leskov's “Lefty” begins with the acquisition in the English Kunstkamera by Emperor Alexander I of a technical miracle - a miniature dancing flea. They marveled at the technical miracle and forgot. But the next king, Nicholas I, who ascended the throne after the sudden death of his father, which happened near Taganrog, is paying attention to him. The sovereign sends the Cossack Platov to the Tula masters, urging them to create the impossible on behalf of the tsar’s name - to surpass the art of foreigners. Three masters, having prayed in front of the icon of St. Nicholas and having taken a flea from Platov, are locked in the house of an oblique Left-handed person and - here it is, a real miracle.
We continue to retell the summary. Leskova “Lefty” is a work that gradually “narrows” the narrative to the description of steps on the “Aglitsky land” of a single character - a unique self-taught person. The master from Tula deserved this “voyage”, because he was able to mobilize all his skills and “give his best” to work. This is very artistically shown by the writer. Platov, having accepted the flea from the hands of the Lefthander, at first only notices that the mechanism is not working. In anger, he "flutters" the commoner. However, on the advice of the latter, using a "small scope", he notices horseshoes on the legs of a steel insect. And when the master reports that each horseshoe is marked with its stigma and is fastened with nails made by Levsha himself, then Platov understands that the task set by the Tsar brilliantly completed. From this moment on, the story acquires great documentary.
What idea becomes obvious if you do not even set out the entire work, but only its brief content? Leskova's “Lefty” is a story imbued with the pain of a writer that runs through the “between the lines” stating that Man has never been a value to our Motherland, whatever it may be. This is bitterly, with laughter and with tears, Nikolai Semenovich tells us in the language in which the contemporaries of the Lefthander would retell this story. (Leskov called his creative style based on facts “to assemble the mosaic.”) Is this idea relevant for the Russian land today? You will understand this if you try to honestly answer yourself the question of whether it is easy for our master craftsman, not speculating, not reselling, but working on conscience, to be successful and prosperous.
Let's get back to the Lefty. Masters dress up and with the delegation sent by ship to England. What is the behavior of this, in essence, commoner, forced to perform a representative "sovereign" function? What does not even brief summary hide? Leskova “Lefty” is a patriotic creation about the dignity of a hero who behaves with no dignity anywhere. On the one hand, Western artists are confounded - the level of the Russian master exceeded their own by an order of magnitude. But on the other, here he is accompanied by success and recognition, the British appreciate the masters, they promise him assistance if he decides to marry and settle on Foggy Albion. Left-handed people show industrial manufactories, trying to impress him. But in Russian he does not bow his head before foreign wonders. However, the guest's inquiring gaze catches useful organizational and technical innovations.
Longing for the Motherland wins, the craftsmen are sent to St. Petersburg, he is accompanied by a British skipper. Along the way, men argue on a bet "who gets drunk whom." Already in the city on the Neva River, inadvertently removing the insensitive Lefty from the ship (apparently, they simply dumped him like a sack), they mortally smash his head, then send him to a common medical treatment house for the dying. When in the morning, a sober skipper found his Russian friend at death, he hastened for help.
What will we see as we continue to study the summary? Leskova “Lefty” is a story reliably indicating the names of historical figures who are indifferent to ordinary people who bring glory to Russia. They are not interested in “some man”: the excited Englishman hurries for help to Count Kleinmichel first, then to Platov, then to commandant Skobelev, but everywhere he is faced with arrogant indifference. The latter sends a doctor for pro forma, but he is useless - the Lefty is leaving.
The last words of the master are addressed to the sovereign. His advice is quite sensible: he recommends, according to the English experience, that the Russian military should stop spoiling the guns by cleaning their trunks with bricks. (How relevant this is on the eve of the Crimean company!) It's sad. Lost the pearl. A simple man from the people has done a great service to his native land. He became a legend, raised the prestige of Russia (which the counts and princes could not afford), he benefited everyone except himself. They reacted to him as consumers. As always: they did not save, did not support, like Vysotsky, like Bashlachev ...
On the example of the story “Lefty” we once again see: a writer, a master of works of small forms, demonstrates no less than the authors of epic novels, the multilayered, non-linear dynamics of the plot. His speech is always lively, popular. The writer reverently treats the word, he believes that if you can’t serve Truth and Good with your pen, literature is not for you.
The main thing that bribes Nikolai Semenovich is that he firmly believes in the future renewal of the country, as well as in the fact that the true Russian character will be the key to it.