Name, case and fate in N. S. Leskov’s “Christmas Stories”

Abstract

The article analyses the poetics of N.S. Leskov’s “Christmas Stories”. They reproduce the colourful sketching of real everyday life and worldly kaleidoscope of “veritable incidents” and at the same time they are very densely gap-filling by different cases, coincidences, mess, unexpected turns, drawing, deceptions, substitutions, impostors, werewolves et cetera. The writer is attentive to the phenomena through that the mystery of life intrudes in everyday life. Artistic world of Leskov is lot closely connected with “new” prose of the boundary of 19–20 centuries than it seemed until now.