The Organic Worldview of Nikolai Leskov

Irmhild Christina Sperrle

North Western University Press, 2002 - Literary Criticism - 288 pages

Although little studied in the West, Nikolai Semenovich Leskov (1831-95) is accorded a place among major nineteenth-century writers in his native Russia. Irmhild Christina Sperrle's The Organic Worldview of Nikolai Leskov draws on previously unavailable archival and primary sources to offer English-speaking readers the opportunity to appreciate the work of this neglected author.Leskov remarked to his contemporary Anatolii Faresov, "People talk about my 'language, ' about its colorfulness and its national traits; about the richness of my plots, about my condensed way of writing, about 'similarity' and so on, but they do not notice the most important thing". It is this "most important thing", Leskov's consistent thematic adherence to an "organic" philosophical model, that Sperrle traces and elaborates here. Focusing on movement and transformation in "an organic manner" -- a manner in which death and rebirth alternate and condition each other -- Sperrle develops Leskov's notion of organicity and explores his relationship to the organic tradition in philosophy and literature. Her reading of key texts among his more than five hundred works entails a close look at Leskov's ideas about the Divine as freedom of belief, about truth as a continual renewal of previously held theories, and about death in both a physical and a spiritual sense. She examines Leskov's vexed relation to Tolstoyan ideas and shows how the notion of heresy -- as a questioning rather than rejection of authority -- is a crucial element in his worldview and his work.

Contents

• Introduction: 3
• Chapter One Leskovs Organic Worldview: 24
• Chapter Two Leskov Tolstoy and the Three Questions: 73

About the author

Sperrle teaches in the modern language department at Pace University. She co-authored a bibliography of Nikolai Leskov's literature that was published in Russia and is also the editor of the Pocket Russian-English, English-Russian Dictionary.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Organic Worldview of Nikolai Leskov; Studies of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University; Studies in Russian Literature and Theory; Studies of the Harriman Institute
• Author: Irmhild Christina Sperrle
• Publisher: North Western University Press, 2002
• Original from: the University of Michigan
• Digitized: Apr 18, 2008
• ISBN: 0810117541, 9780810117549
• Length: 288 pages
• Subjects: Biography & Autobiography / Medical; Literary Criticism / European / Eastern; Literary Criticism / General; Literary Criticism / Russian & Former Soviet Union