SOURCE: "Solzhenitsyn and Leskov," in Russian Literature Triquarterly, No. 6, Spring, 1973, pp. 478-89.

[In the following essay, Lottridge associates Solzhenitsyn's "Matryona's Home" and "Zakhar-the-Pouch" ("Zahar-Kalita") with nineteenth-century Russian writer Nikolai Leskov's "well-known series of stories about righteous men."]

This article will deal with Alexander Solzhenitsyn's short stories—especially, though not exclusively, with "Matryona's House" and "Zahar-Kalita"—in relation to the works of one of Solzhenitsyn's most important literary predecessors, the great storyteller of Russian literature, Nikolai Leskov.¹ The possibility of a connection between Solzhenitsyn and Leskov is suggested most specifically by the conclusion of "Matryona's House":

We all lived close to her and we didn't understand that she was that very righteous person without whom, according to the proverb, no village stands.

Nor city.

Nor our whole land.²

The proverb mentioned here appears, in a slightly different form, as the epigraph to Leskov's well-known series of stories about righteous men (pravedniki).³ In Leskov, the proverb reads: "Without three righteous ones a city cannot stand." The use of this proverb in the works of the two writers suggests certain important similarities in the suthor's artistic intent.

Leskov's series of stories about righteous men is preceded by an introduction in which the author states his objection to the widespread notion that there is no good to be found in men, especially in Russians; and announces his intention to go and seek righteous men, and not to stop searching until he has found at least those three righteous men without whom no city can stand.⁴ The stories which follow this introduction are purportedly the fruit of his search.

Leskov, both in this introduction and in the stories themselves, stresses the need to seek out righteous men. In the work entitled "A Monastery for Cadets" (a series of character sketches of four righteous men), for example, Leskov begins:

There have been, and there will be, plenty of righteous men among us. It is just that people don't notice them, but if you start to take a good look, they are there.⁵

He then goes on to say that he will describe four righteous men who lived at a time when such men, it is thought, were rare, but of whom, in fact, there were many, just as there are now. One needs only to seek them out.

Similarly, in "Matryona's House" Solzhenitsyn emphasizes the fact that no one recognizes Matryona's righteousness. All her acquaintances and relatives think her a foolish and strange woman and even the narrator, who had lived in her hut for many months, comes to see her righteousness only after her death.

In a somewhat similar way Zahar, in "Zahar-Kalita," first appears to the narrator and his companions as a strange and partly ridiculous figure. It is only at the end of the story that they realize Zahar's thoughtfulness and self-sacrifice, and see him as a positive and impressive man.

Solzhenitsyn does not, of course, announce a Leskovian search through Soviet society for righteous men. But a call to recognize and value such figures as Matryona and Zahar is implicit in the two stories, and the fact that Solzhenitsyn presents as the heroes of these stories people from the backwaters of Russian society, whose virtue remains for the most part unnoticed and unappreciated, opens the possibility for a wider comparison between the righteous men of Leskov and Solzhenitsyn.⁶

Leskov's literary world, in regard to its heroes, was in a sense the opposite of Solzhenitsyn's. Nineteenth century Russian literature was noted for its unproductive or misguided heroes, and it was widely assumed that the predominance of such heroes reflected the lack of morally positive, productive figures in Russian society. Whether, in fact, the major protagonists of Russian fiction through the 1860s represented the superfluous men of Russian society or not is less important than the fact that Leskov and many of his contemporaries felt that they did. Partly in reaction to such protagonists the radical critics of the 1860s postulated their own active, positive hero, of whom Chernyshevsky's Rakhmetov is the prototype. Leskov, who consistently held that art should serve a moral purpose, rejected both the notion of Russian society without positive figures and the possibility of Rakhmetov's as an acceptable alternative. As a result he was impelled to conduct his own search for positive figures, whom he found for the most part in the lower levels and out-of-the-way areas of Russian society. In these everyday and often unnoticed (though often quite colorful) people Leskov found his righteous men, probably the largest group of real positive "heroes" in nineteenth century Russian fiction.

Solzhenitsyn, in contrast, is writing in a literary world in which, until quite recently at least, the Rakhmetovs have been canonized. In reaction to this official literary hero one may find the modernist, alienated anti-heroes of Tertz and Arzhak or of other underground writers. As was Leskov before him, Solzhenitsyn is unable to accept either the predominant, in this case official, hero or the negativistic, anti-heroic reaction to it. Like Leskov, Solzhenitsyn sees life and literature in moral terms. With his Leskovian knowledge of Russia's provinces and backwoods, Solzhenitsyn presents the reader, in the two stories under discussion, with real moral positive heroes, with pravedniki from among the unnoticed and everyday people of Russia.⁷

The connection between Leskov and Solzhenitsyn is based on a combination of elements, none of which, separately, is peculiar to either writer. Both artists have a strong sense of the moral purposes of literature, and both present positive figures from the backwaters of Russian society. In addition, both are concerned with the use of colloquial and otherwise "unliterary" language in their writing. In combination these traits comprise what might be called the Leskovian tradition in Russian literature. Although it is entirely likely that Solzhenitsyn has read Leskov's works, the question of influence is irrelevant here. What is important is that Solzhenitsyn's stories, especially "Matryona's House" and "Zahar-Kalita," may be understood in terms of the tradition of Leskov's writing and thus may be connected with one of the forceful currents in the main stream of Russian literature.⁸

Though "Matryona's House" and "Zahar-Kalita" have been dealt with together thus far, it is important to distinguish their very different protagonists, the more so since Matryona and Zahar take their ancestry in part from two different branches of Leskovian righteous men. Zahar is in the tradition of the numerous eccentric heroes of Leskov's writing. Beginning with Aleksashka Ryzhov, the hero of Leskov's first pravednik story, "One-Track Mind" (Odnodum), and including Golovan ("Deathless Golovan"), Ivan Flyagin ("The Enchanted Wanderer"), Lefty ("The Left-handed Craftsman of Tula and the Steel Flea"), to name but a few, Leskov's fiction is filled with men who combine some if not all of the following traits. They are modern-day epic figures, of heroic stature and strength, with an intense, simple patriotism. Like the legendary heroes of Russian epics they are guardians of their native land and faith. They are often simple, even foolish, and sometimes eccentric to the point of appearing ridiculous. They drink heavily. They have a strong sense of integrity though they are not always honest in the literal sense of the word, and they have a great capacity for self-sacrifice and compassionate thoughtfulness.

Zahar is described as an epic hero (bogatyr'), albeit a fallen one. He is of heroic stature, though a touch too thin for a real giant. He is described first as the guardian or keeper (smotritel') of Kulikovo Field, the battlefield where Russia claimed its first victory over the Mongols. Later he becomes the spirit, the very incarnation of the field and that Russian victory. (As the self-appointed caretaker of the monument he is, in a literal sense, the guardian of his nation's history.) For all that he is a bit ridiculous. He drinks not heroically, but steadily from a flask he carries. He is bedraggled and he complains a good deal. The narrator and his companions are at first inclined to see him as an officious slacker who is unwilling to work at a real job. They take his remarks about the hardship of his self-appointed job as attempts to gain pity and to justify his leaving his "post" to have, as they think, a good time in the village. It is only in the morning, when they discover that he did return and has spent the night in a nearby haystack rather than disturb them that they realize his thoughtfulness and the true degree of his dedication to his country and its history.

Zahar's parting, comforting cry to the narrator is "No-o-o-o! No-o-o-o, I won't leave it like this. I'll go all the way to Furtseva! All the way to Furtseva!" (p. 316) Just as the traditional Russian folk heroes might try to take their grievances all the way to the tsar, so Zahar, in this Soviet variant, threatens to take his complaint about the neglect of Russia's patriotic heritage all the way to the Minister of Culture. (Compare Leskov's left-handed craftsman, whose final message is a patriotic warning for the tsar.)

Of all the righteous giants of Leskov's fiction, Zahar probably bears closest resemblance to Aleksashka Ryzhov. Ryzhov is, as his name suggests, red haired. Zahar, too, is not only red haired, as the reader is told early on in the story; he becomes the "red-haired spirit" (ryzhyi dukh) of Kulikovo Field. Both men carry sacks around with them; both men have a book as their constant companion, Ryzhov the Bible (and later his own book of ideas and quotations) and Zahar his Visitor's Comments book. Each of them (though Ryzhov only at the beginning of his career) takes a job no one else wants and serves as a sort of semi-official. official. Most important, Zahar, like Ryzhov, is an odnodum, a man with a single thought in his head. Ryzhov, through his incessant reading of the Bible, has become something of an old-Testament prophet, obsessed with Christian Socialism. In a similar way Zahar is obsessed with the preservation of Kulikovo Field and its monument. Zahar's "single thought" may be somewhat more limited than Ryzhov's, but within the context of the story he emerges as a positive figure of considerable force.

Finally, both Ryzhov and Zahar live and do their jobs with honesty and dedication on ludicrously small salaries. Their frugality and material sacrifice increase their stature as positive figures.

Zahar also has much in common with one of Leskov's most famous heroes, Ivan Flyagin. Both men are described explicitly as epic heroes (bogatryi), but more important, Zahar's patriotic dedication to his country's history is strongly reminiscent of Flyagin's dedication to his people and his willingness to go and fight for his land.

Matryona Vasilievna, the central figure of "Matryona's House," is a rather different kind of righteous person from Zahar. She does not partake at all of the heroic, nor is she an official of any kind. She has a good deal in common with such self-sacrificing Leskovian heroines as Aza, in the story, "Beautiful Aza" or with Magda, in "Skomorokh Pamfalon," or perhaps with the heroine of Leskov's early novel, The Life of One Woman (Zhitie odnoi baby). The title of the last of these works may provide a key to understanding Matryona as a righteous person, although Leskov's heroine is not one of his pravedniki. The story of Matryona, like the story of Leskov's protagonist, is a zhitie, the story of a life, not in the standard hagiographical meaning of the story of a saint's life, and the miracles he performed, but rather in the more popular sense of the life of trials and loss endured by an innocent and righteous person.

Matryona's life is one of loss, disappointment and privation. Her fiance is apparently lost in the war; she marries his brother only to have her fiance return; she bears six children, all of whom die; her husband is unfaithful; her husband is lost in the next war; she lives alone in poverty; her neighbors and relations take advantage of her good nature and scorn her at the same time.

Despite such a difficult life Matryona does not lose her warmth, simplicity or unselfishness. She is not a saint; she does not perform miracles nor even provide an effective example for others by her devoutness. But she does live in simplicity and genuine warmth, and she helps others whenever they need or ask for it, without the least thought for profit to herself. In fact, her death is in part the result of her habit of helping others, for she did not need to accompany the sleighs full of lumber or try to help repair the coupling when it broke in the middle of the railroad track.

Matryona is far from being without faults. She is not sociable, she is messy, she can be vain about her strength. But her faults are all minor and, curiously, it is not for her faults that her relatives and neighbors criticize her so much as it is for her virtues—her failure to worry about material possessions, money and fashion, and even her simplicity and unselfishness on which they all rely. As for real sins, Solzhenitsyn tells the reader that she had fewer of them then her cat—the cat, after all, killed mice.

Christianity plays a role in "Matryona's House" much like its role in many of Leskov's stories. (From the point of view of Soviet literature, of course, it is in itself striking that Christianity is a natural and not insignificant part of village life.) Matryona is not a devout Christian. In fact, the narrator says that Matryona did not truly believe, and that she was more of a pagan whose faith was mainly superstitious. But in her life she lived the precepts of Christianity more genuinely and fully than the nominal Christians around her. In this she has much in common with Leskovian figures such as Golovan ("Deathless Golovan"), whose religion is essentially practical and not formal, or as Aleksashka Ryzhov (otherwise a very different character). Ryzhov is indifferent to the forms of religion and performs them only because they are expected of him. He dies, "in his faith neither this nor that nor the other," whose Orthodoxy is somehow "doubtful." But in spirit he is an honest and genuine Christain whose life in practice shows him to be a righteous man.

In fact, starting with the mid-1870s Leskov's favorite protagonist was the "spiritual" Christian, the person whose position or activity was equivocal in the eyes of the official Church but who practised in his life the virtues of simplicity and self-sacrifice and was therefore a truer Christian than many more acceptable members of the Church. Matryona is precisely such a person as those Leskovian heroes, and, while such spiritual Christians are not peculiar to Leskov's work—they also appear in Tolstoy's writing, for example—they are so characteristic of Leskov's work as to support the idea of the connection between Matryona and Leskov's pravedniki.

A similar, though more general, connection may be made between the moral choices in Solzhenitsyn's stories, For the Good of the Cause and "An Incident at Krechetovka Station" on the one hand and those in several of Leskov's pravedniki stories on the other. Leskov makes a point of presenting righteous men who serve either in the military or the civil service. In the first chapter of "A Monastery of Cadets," mentioned above, Leskov writes:

And notice that all [the pravedniki he is preparing to describe] are not from the common folk and not from the nobility, but from people in the service, dependent on their jobs, for whom it is more difficult to follow the right . . . ⁹

In many of Leskov's stories a man in the service, often in a lowly official position, is faced with a choice between following the regulations of the service or the demands of his conscience. In the story, "The Pygmy," for example, the hero, a certain Mr. S., is ordered to execute corporal punishment on a prisoner who has been convicted of a serious crime. Mr. S. becomes convinced that the prisoner is innocent, however, and risks his position and career to help him be freed. In one of Leskov's best known stories, "The Sentry," the hero, Postnikov, leaves his guard post at the Winter Palace in order to save a man who is drowning in the Neva, and by doing so risks being sent to Siberia or even being executed. In a similar way the characters in For the Good of the Cause, especially the director of the school, Fyodor Mikheich, and the town Party chairman, Grachikov, are faced with a choice between accepting injustice and being secure in their jobs, or fighting injustice and risking their jobs and security. And Zotov, in "An Incident at Krechetovka Station," faces the choice between keeping quiet about the arrested straggler, Tveritinov, and not arousing the suspicions of the Secret Police, or following his moral promptings and risking becoming suspect in the eyes of the Secret Police.

The last, and perhaps most important, connection to be proposed here between Leskov and Solzhenitsyn (based, again, primarily on "Matryona's House" and "Zahar-Kalita") lies in what might be called the voice of the storyteller.¹⁰ In a highly illuminating and suggestive essay entitled "The Storyteller: Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leskov,"¹¹ the German critic Walter Benjamin suggests several characteristic features of storytelling that are not only typical of Leskov but that may also enrich our reading of "Matryona's House" and "Zahar-Kalita." According to Benjamin, storytelling takes its material from experience that is passed by word of mouth. This experience comes from two sources—from the traveller who has experience of a distant and strange land, and from the man who has learned the traditional stories of his own land and people. At its best, storytelling combines these two possibilities, as it did among the artisan class in the European Middle Ages.

It may seem, at first glance, a long step from this notion to Solzhenitsyn. The narrators of Solzhenitsyn's two stories are, however, travellers. Ignatich, in "Matryona's House" has been in prison camps, has lived in the desert and in the Urals, and has now come back to rural Russia. The narrator of "Zahar-Kalita" is, in a more conventional way, a traveller, for he is a summer tourist and camper. In addition, for Solzhenitsyn's readers, as had been the case for Leskov's, rural Russia, its backwoods and little known places, is in a sense an exotic land, full of charm and strangeness, for all its native Russianness. (In any case, for the storyteller another place is not necessarily a foreign nation.) In this sense, Tal'novo and Kulikovo Field are distant lands figuratively if not literally.

But the rural Russia of Solzhenitsyn's and Leskov's stories also partakes of legendary, timeless Russia—the "legendary" history of the Mongol invasions; the way things have been in Tal'novo time out of mind. In this sense the world of these stories is part of the common heritage of the Russian people, part of their common, ancient experience. Seen in this light, the voice of Solzhenitsyn's stories is that of the ancient storyteller, combining the lore of distant places (even if primarily in the figurative sense) with the lore of the past. In using this voice Solzhenitsyn seems to echo and renew the Leskov of "The Enchanted Wanderer," "The Sealed Angel," "On the Edge of the World," "The Left-Handed Craftsman" and scores of other tales, in which one finds the "distant" world of hitherto undiscovered parts of Russia combined with the lore of the Russian past.

Given this dual basis of storytelling, Benjamin goes on to say that "an orientation toward practical interests is characteristic of many born storytellers." He says:

It [the story] contains, openly or covertly, something useful. The usefulness may, in one case, consist in a moral; in another, in some practical advice; in a third, in a proverb or maxim. In every case, the storyteller is a man who has counsel for his readers . . . Counsel woven into the fabric of real life is wisdom.¹²

Such an orientation toward usefulness characterizes much of Leskov's writing. Sometimes it is practical advice, as, for example, in the left-handed craftsman's message to the Tsar that the Russian army should stop cleaning their cannon with brick for it wears away the bore and, in the event of war, the cannon won't shoot straight. Sometimes it is a moral, as in "On the Edge of the World," in which the reader sees that conversion to Christianity by coercion does more harm than good. Finally it can be the usefulness of a proverb, such as that in the introduction to the stories about righteous men—"Without three righteous ones a city cannot stand." In this proverb is contained counsel for Leskov's readers—do not bewail the lack of good people; rather go and seek them out. And since this counsel is woven into the fabric of real life, both in Leskov's stories and in his life, it partakes of wisdom.

In Solzhenitsyn's short stories, too, the storyteller's orientation toward practical interests is clearly present. His use of the proverb about righteous ones to conclude the story "Matryona's House" clearly indicates Solzhenitsyn's intention that the story be morally useful to the reader. While this usefulness does not involve such clear counsel as it does in Leskov, it surely contains a moral—all of human society depends on people such as Matryona and we would do well not to overlook or scorn them.

Solzhenitsyn's short piece entitled "The Easter Procession," although it lacks many of the other elements of storytelling, also contains a moral in the form of a prophetic concluding statement. After depicting the desecration of the Easter procession by young hooligans, Solzhenitsyn concludes: "Verily, they will turn and trample us all! And those who urged them on to this—they will trample them, too!"¹³ This is less counsel than it is prophecy, but it contains implicit practical advice.

"Zahar-Kalita," too, concludes with counsel for the reader.

That was two years ago. Maybe it is tidier and better cared for there now. But anyway this isn't a piece written on assignment, but it is just that our eternal field, and on it its keeper and red-haired spirit, came to my mind.

And let it be said that it would not be wise for us Russians to neglect that place. (p. 316)

The counsel contained in this concluding warning is practical and patriotic. By bringing history alive in the story—the battle of Kulikovo Field is narrated intermittently throughout the first part of the story—the narrator weaves his counsel into the fabric of real, if historical, life and so imbues his conclusion with the force of wisdom.

Solzhenitsyn's other stories, though they deal with moral questions, have a less clearly practical moral orientation. In a very general way, by acting as a moral witness for his time Solzhenitsyn, in all his writing, shows a certain practical intent. But in terms of the similarity between Leskov and Solzhenitsyn seen as storytellers, "Matryona's House," and "Zahar-Kalita" are the most important Solzhenitsyn's works.

Benjamin goes on to say, in his essay on Leskov and the storyteller, that storytelling is becoming less and less important as a result of techniques of modern communication, which bring distant events and places to us immediately; as a result of the speed and variety of our lives, which do not leave time or inclination for the telling of or listening to stories; and as a result of the modern emphasis on the importance of information, of verifiable fact, rather than of truth or experience. But one of the curious features of Soviet life is that many of its most crucial and dramatic experiences are transmitted and kept alive by word of mouth. It is particularly appropriate, therefore, that the tradition of the storyteller, which connects him so closely with Russian literature's greatest, though by far not only, storyteller, Nikolai Leskov, should provide Solzhenitsyn with the voice in which he offers his counsel, born of his life experience, to his fellow countrymen.

Notes

¹ "Matryona's House" and "Zahar-Kalita" share with the rest of Solzhenitsyn's stories a central concern with moral responsibility and courage. They have, however, several features in common, including their setting in rural Russia, that distinguish them from the other stories. Both are first person narratives in which the narrator is not the central figure. In them the central figure appears to be somewhat foolish or unattractive, and only at the end of the story does her or his positive moral force become fully clear. In these two stories the reader is presented with pictures of unnoticed virtue, while other of Solzhenitsyn's stories revolve around the more public contrast between individual conscience and bureaucratic necessity or callousness. The language in "Matryona's House" and "Zahar-Kalita", in comparison with that of the other stories, is rich and "difficult." In these two stories Solzhenitsyn makes wider use of the devices of skaz narrative than he does in his other stories. Finally, Solzhenitsyn's attraction toward a certain Slavophile and patriotic bias is to be found more clearly, perhaps, in these two stories than in his other short works. Many of these features provide a basis for comparison with Leskov's writing.

² Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Sochineniia, Posev-Verlag, Frankfurt, 1968, 231. Unless otherwise noted, quotations from Solzhenitsyn's works are from this edition. (Translations are mine—SSL).

³ This series, begun in 1879, is generally understood to include the stories "Odnodum," "Sheramur," "Pigmei," "Figura," "Kadetskii monastyr'," "Pilozhenie k rasskazu o kadetskom monastyre," "Russkii demokrat b Pol'she," "Inzhenery-bessrebrenniki," and "Nesmertel'nyi Golovan." Many other stories, such as "Chelovek na chasakh," "Prekrasnaia Aza," "Levsha," and "Ocharovannyi strannik," for example, are often considered part of this series, though they do not formally belong to it. The stories about righteous men (pravedniki) may be found in N. S. Leskov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, A. F. Marks (St. Petersburg, 1902-3), Vols. III-V and XIX. Several of these stories are also included in N. S. Leskov, Sobranie sochinenii (M. 1956-8), Vols. 6 and 8.

⁴ Leskov, Pol. sobr. soch., III, 74-5.

⁵Ibid., 122.

⁶ Leskov and Solzhenitsyn are not, of course, the only writers in Russian literature to find their heroes in the backwaters of Russian life. Many of Leskov's contemporaries, including Tolstoy, presented positive figures from rural, provincial Russia, while in Solzhenitsyn's time the post-Stalinist revival of the short story has been marked by a turn away from the city to rural Soviet Russia and, at the same time, by the use of relatively modest, unheroic protagonists. This emphasis has been, in fact, so striking in the stories of such writers as Kazakov and Nagibin that term villagers, or countrymen (derevenshchiki) has been applied to them. With the publication of "Matryona's House" Solzhenitsyn, too, was identified as belonging to this group. Solzhenitsyn's Matryona and Zahar, however, bear a striking resemblance to many of Leskov's righteous men, a resemblance that does not, for the most part, characterize the protagonists of Solzhenitsyn's fellow writers.

⁷ This is not to imply that Solzhenitsyn alone seeks such a middle course. Many Soviet writers, especially in the 1960s, have sought a middle course between the mechanical affirmation of socialist realism and the alienation of modern anti-heroes. Solzhenitsyn differs from his fellow writers primarily in his unwillingness to settle for a middle ground defined and "permitted" by official authority.

⁸ There are, besides the similarities between their stories, some basic differences. One of the most striking is Solzhenitsyn's lack of leisurely, subtle humorous play of many of Leskov's works, and the presence of a passionate moral intensity that is unmatched in most of Leskov's writing.

⁹ Leskov, Pol. sobr., soch., III, 122.

¹⁰ A connection might be made, in this regard, between the language of "Matryona's House" and "Zahar-Kalita" and the Russian skaz tradition, which owes much to Leskov's influence. (The language of "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" is even more strongly marked by skaz technique.) In both stories the illusion of an oral performance is given not only through the formal device of a first person narrator telling his story, but also through the frequency of words and expressions with a distinctly oral or colloquial past. In "Matryona's House" these words are, approriately, most often characteristic of rural Russia. The language of "Zahar-Kalita" is a blend of colloquial, technical and elevated language, a blend frequently to be found in Leskov's writing (for example, in "The Enchanted Wanderer" or "The Sealed Angel") and one particularly appropriate to the historical, patriotic, folk nature of the material in the story. In both Leskov and Solzhenitsyn the use of colloquial language and the juxtaposition of lexical level is combined with a strong sense of the moral purposes of literature, though verbal play is more fully subordinated to moral concerns in Solzhenitsyn's writing than in Leskov's, in which the language itself sometimes usurps the reader's full attention.

¹¹ Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, (New York, 1969), 83-110.

¹²Ibid., 86.

¹³ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Sobranie Sochinenii, (Posev-Verlag, 1969), V, 237.