The image of Lefty in a tale. The fate of a talented person in Russia. The fate of a master in Russia (Left-handed) A story about the tragic fate of a left-handed person

N. S. Leskov shows the tragic fate of the master in Russia, “Lefty”. The main character of the work, distinguished by his talent, turns out to be unnecessary in his country, for the benefit of which he wanted to create and work.

Plot

Lefty and other Tula masters were entrusted with an important task for the country - to prove that in Russia there are masters no worse than foreign ones. The heroes managed in a short period of time to shoe a flea, which was made by the British and which was admired by the former Emperor Alexander I.

Lefty went to present his work in London. The British were surprised and delighted by the savvy flea. Highly appreciating Lefty's talent, they asked him to stay and work for them. But main character refused, realizing that he could not live without his homeland.

On the way home, Lefty and the English representative fell ill. Upon arrival of his companion, Lefty was immediately taken away and treated, but he himself was left to die by indifferent people. The ending of the main character's life is truly tragic: returning to his homeland to work for its good, the useless Lefty dies. Such is the fate of a great professional.

Main character

Lefty is a master of his craft. Fate rewarded him with enormous talent, which he could not realize in a country in which there was no Special attention creativity. The hero could have taken advantage of the British offer and stayed to work for them, then his talent would have been appreciated. Lefty is a true patriot who does not want to leave his homeland. The only problem is that the state and authorities great person, who was able to prove the skill of the Russian people, is simply not needed. The writer raises the topic of indifference to talented people.

Generalization

Lefty has a real Russian character, this collective image, which has absorbed the best features of the Russian people. Therefore, revealing the tragic fate of the master Lefty, N. S. Leskov wants to demonstrate not only the life of one person, but the life of all creative people in Russia. The fate of professionals in their field who turn out to be completely unnecessary for their own state is truly tragic. Everything is aggravated by the fact that Lefty in N. S. Leskov’s tale is valued abroad as a master, but in his own country he is treated with indifference. The authorities do not value those people who can do truly valuable things, they only admire the deeds of foreigners, as did Alexander I, who did not believe in the abilities of the Russian people.

Thoughts about rejection and even open mockery in Russia of smart, talented, but belonging to the lower class individuals were among the most important topics that worried the writer Nikolai Leskov. In one of his letters, he once noted that a simple, hard-working and at the same time immensely talented man in our country is taken for granted, something that will always be there and something that makes no sense to patronize.

Leskov categorically disagrees with this trend, believing that any person has the right to have normal living and working conditions, and a talented person working at full capacity for the benefit of his homeland has a doubly right to this. His tale “Lefty” is just some kind of proof of the tragic fate of the Russian people and the need for drastic changes.

In the tale, the true defenders of the glory of their homeland are the craftsmen from Tula, who managed to shoe a flea, and who, in a talent competition with the British, were able not only to demonstrate their boundless talent, but also to maintain dignity and a sense of patriotism.

Lefty is one of the Tula masters, whom it was decided to take with him to the sovereign, and then to Europe in order to demonstrate his work. He accomplished the impossible, but does not become arrogant and accepts the need to meet with the sovereign as a working moment. He comes to the meeting in his old clothes. He did not try to flatter the emperor, did not try to please him, he spoke quietly, calmly and simply, as best he could. Everyone around was amazed at this simplicity, trying to hint at the need to be more helpful. Lefty, of course, understood that the ruler of the country was standing in front of him, but this did not in any way affect the manner of his communication. He treated everyone modestly and respectfully, be it the sovereign or his fellow worker. For Lefty, all people are equal.

Indeed, manners and expensive clothes are insignificant in front of true talent: clothes can wear out, manners can be forgotten in certain situations, but talent will always remain with a person.

Lefty, thanks to his ingenuity and golden hands, reached the emperor and abroad, became a very unhappy person. In fact, his new environment did not understand him at all. And the temporary increased attention to a man is only ostentatious. They washed him in the bathhouse, changed his clothes and took him with them to London. But he spends the entire journey without eating a bite and maintains his strength only with Platov’s sour milk. The Emperor publicly kisses Lefty, but does nothing to make his life better or even truly thank him for what he has done.

In contrast to the Russians, the British show humane care for Lefty and strive to create all the conditions for him have a good travel. Compatriots do not see in the master a person who is worthy of even a drop of respect; for them he is a slave, obliged to do all this. The British invite Lefty to join them, promising decent work and remuneration. But despite this, our master dreams only of Russia, and longs to return home as soon as possible. In your dark closet.

He returned to St. Petersburg in a sick state, as he had been drinking all the way on a bet with the skipper. However, upon arrival, the skipper is sent to the hospital, where he is quickly brought to his senses. O simple man, Lefty drags himself all night with exceptional carelessness from the doors of one hospital to another, and, without receiving proper help, dies. A man who glorified his country, instead of honor and respect, received complete indifference. Left-handed people were not accepted in hospitals because he did not have a document or money.

But Lefty was not mentally broken until the very last minute of his life: he was only worried about how to convey the information that the British did not clean their guns with bricks, and this made them last longer. He turned out to be the only wise man with an open soul, the only patriot of his country among the masses of heartless people who had lost the purity of their souls in the pursuit of fame and material wealth.

The tale of Lefty who shoed a flea became a legend, and Lefty himself became a symbol of the boundless talent of the ordinary Russian person, often oppressed and forgotten.

In the tale, the true arbiters of events aimed at exalting the glory of Russia are Lefty and his comrades - those Tula masters to whose art they entrust the English wonder. It is they who demonstrate by their behavior true dignity, calm firmness of spirit, and a full consciousness of national responsibility. Thinking over the current situation, they judge it, not allowing any overlap of assessments in one direction or another: “... the English nation is also not stupid, but rather cunning, and art in it has a lot of meaning. Against her -

They say, “you have to take it after thinking and with God’s blessing.”

Such behavior, free from empty vanity, contrasts especially sharply with the pettiness of the motives of the Russian tsars.

In this turn of the plot, the writer’s favorite thought about “little great people” who, standing apart from historical events, decide the historical destinies of the country. “These are straightforward and reliable people,” Leskov will speak of them with respect and warmth in his later story “The Man on the Clock,” coming closer to L. Tolstoy in his assessment of the democratic masses.

However, this highly respectful attitude of the writer towards the Tula masters does not at all exclude gentle irony towards them in the tale. Leskov is far from idealizing the people's capabilities here; he soberly assesses them. The writer took into account the role of socio-historical circumstances that limit the creative powers of the people, imposing on many Russian inventions the stamp of buffoonish eccentricity or practical incongruity.

From this point of view, for understanding the general meaning of the tale, it is fundamentally important” that the very result of the “relentless”, selfless and inspired work of the Tula masters is fraught with an “insidious” duality of impression: they really manage to create a miracle - to forge a “nymphosoria”. And yet their superiority is not absolute. An eye-savvy flea can no longer “dance.” The “improved” English wonder turns out to be hopelessly broken at the same time.

In the development of the plot, this unfortunate moment for the prestige of Russian invention receives its specific explanation, which is important for understanding the general idea of ​​the tale. As the English rightly judge, the Russian masters, who showed an amazing audacity of imagination, obviously did not know “calculation of force,” and Lefty has to agree with this: “There is no doubt about this,” he says, “that we have not gone too far in the sciences...”

Thus, in the depiction of the amazing work of Tula masters, which simultaneously elevates them above their overseas rivals and reveals their well-known weakness, Leskov’s bitter, alarming thought about Russian ignorance, which cruelly oppresses and fetters great forces, expresses itself, alien to any conciliatory and apologetic tendencies and the capabilities of the people, dooming them to a series of defeats and setbacks.

The question of what a Russian person can do immediately entails other equally important questions in Leskov’s tale: how does this person live, does he, like the English masters, have “absolute circumstances” for the development of his talent, what attitude does he have towards himself? faced by those in power, how his fate turns out.

True, neither the narrator nor Lefty himself, who have become accustomed to a certain order of things that has long been established in Russia (contrasting with the one that Platov and Lefty saw in England), ask themselves these questions, but the writer takes special measures to ensure that they inevitably became inevitable in the minds of his readers.

Telling, for example, with what “ceremony” Platov rode, fulfilling the sovereign’s order, Leskov paints the figures of “whistling” Cossacks, who sit on both sides of the coachman’s beam and throughout the entire journey constantly shower their driver with whip blows “These incentive measures were in effect before It was successful that nowhere could the horses be kept at any station, and a hundred races always jumped past the stopping place.

The narrator himself does not emphasize such details; he speaks about them casually, casually, as if by the way. However, all these “little things” of Russian life included in his narrative - the ingenious cutting of the coachmen, Platov’s rude swearing at the Tula masters, the almost arrest of Lefty, who was being taken to St. Petersburg in the front of Platov’s wagon, the haste of his departure to England - all these are phenomena of one thing order, accumulating in themselves the general spirit of Russian life of Nicholas's times with its unbridled autocracy of some and lawlessness of others, a spirit that inspires the author with the most bitter feeling.

Saturated with the sad details of the death of Lefty, the last chapters of the story even more persistently focus the reader’s attention on the situation of the individual in Russia, where “it’s scary for a person.” A talented master, an artist of his craft, deeply devoted to his fatherland, dies forgotten by everyone in the corridor of the Obukhov hospital for the poor, without having time to serve his country. last advice. Such a conclusion to the plot, which contains a bitter paradox, enhances the sound of the humanistic theme of the tale - the tragic fate of a talented person in Russia, doomed to waste away a lot of opportunities without worthy use.

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The image of Lefty in a tale. The fate of a talented person in Russia

The true champions of the glory of Russia are the Tula masters who savvy the English flea - Lefty and his comrades - who display dignity, fortitude, and a sense of national responsibility in their competition with the British..

In this turn of the plot, the author’s favorite thought about “little great people” who, “standing aside from the main historical movement,” decide the historical destinies of the country is expressed.

I. Glazunov. Lefty

Physical defects emphasize Lefty's skill: squint and poor command right hand do not prevent the hero from shoeing a steel flea invisible to the eye. Lefty's squint is also a kind of sign, a seal of outcaste and rejection.

Tula gunsmiths are endowed with a true awareness of their capabilities and the capabilities of overseas craftsmen.

Platov's impatience and irritability betrays his uncertainty about the success of his mission. The writer shows Platov not so much as ferocious and menacing, but as pathetic and funny. His anger is similar to anger, ready to fall on the perpetrators of the trouble that threatens him.

Pay attention to chapter 7. What is in the tale contrasted with Platov’s fussiness and anger?

Disregard for the individual, and first of all for the individual common man, whose work, courage and talent, according to the writer’s conviction, makes Russia strong, very often borders on crime. Leskov reproduces all the circumstances as something ordinary, familiar, a universal norm of life.