Les débuts littéraires de Leskov [L'activité journalistique, 1860-mai 1862]

Jean-Claude Marcadé, The beginning of Leskov' s literary career. Journalistic activity. 1860 - May 1862. Whilst pursuing his literary career (1860-1895), N. S. Leskov was at the same time engaged in intense journalistic activity. This would deserve a special study that might reveal Leskov's specific methods and his poetic trend as appear in various report articles, serials, recensions, descriptive notices (ocherk), "notes on society" (obshchestvennye zametki), and critical papers of different kinds. Our present study bears on the articles of N. S. Leskov that had preceded the publication of his first literary works (the three short stories, "Pogasshee delo", "Razboinik", and "V tarantase" dating from 1862). The writer's inspiration corresponds to the spirit of the 1860's: he violently denounces the social blemishes in Russia, proclaims the necessity of instruction, of hygiene, of public morality, of women's emancipation, of a humane attitude towards the down-trodden and the condemned. In these first articles we already find the germs of Leskov's style (verbal creations, hyperboles, humour, satire) and also of certain themes that will later on be developed in literary works. A new light is thus thrown on Leskov's political and literary evolution: it is not that his work became more satirical at the end of his life, it always had this particular trend. At the very beginning, the writer states that literature is not distinct from the problems of society but destined to serve the truth which, however, is not to be looked for in a particular socio-political tendency. This position is at the origin of all the misunderstandings that occurred between Leskov and the representatives of the progressist opinion of his period.