The fate of the flask in the story The Enchanted Wanderer. The theme of the tragic fate of a talented Russian man in the story N

At the center of the school study of Leskov’s work is the story “The Enchanted Wanderer,” the main character of which will be discussed further. “He was a man of enormous stature, with a dark, open face and thick, wavy, lead-colored hair: his gray streak was so strange. He was dressed in a novice cassock with a wide monastic belt and a high black cloth cap... This new companion of ours looked like he could be over fifty years old, but he was in the full sense of the word a hero, and, moreover, a typical, simple-minded, kind Russian hero, reminiscent of grandfather Ilya Muromets in the beautiful painting by Vereshchagin and in the poem by Count A.K. Tolstoy,” This is how Ivan Severyanich Flyagin appears before the readers. From the very first lines, the author makes it clear that his hero is the true son of his people, the one who has long been considered their protection and support) “Russian hero.” He is fifty-three years old, and behind him is a whole life full of adventures, anxieties, and wanderings. Born a serf, Ivan Severyanych was a coachman for his master and a runaway serf) was a horse thief and nanny of a “school girl”; he lived among the Tatars for ten years, obeying their customs, but when he returned to his homeland, he was punished for escaping from serf captivity and released to freedom; killed the woman he loved, served as a soldier under a false name; awarded the St. George Cross for bravery and promoted to officer, he was forced to serve as a “demon” in the theater, and finally, “left completely homeless and without food,” he went to a monastery.

Flyagin’s whole life has been spent on the road, he is a wanderer, and his wanderings are far from over. And if we detach ourselves from all the external vicissitudes of his fate, then his life’s path is the path to faith, to that worldview and state of mind in which we see the hero in the last pages of the story: “I really want to die for the people.” This path does not begin from birth or even from the moment of independent life. The turning point in Flyagin’s fate was his love for the gypsy Grushenka. This bright feeling became the basis for the moral growth that Ivan Severyanich undergoes. Before meeting his love, he, having germs of goodness in his soul, was often very cruel. By chance, out of “postilion mischief,” having killed a monk, constipated Savakirei to death because of a lawsuit with a horse, Ivan Severyanych does not particularly think about it, and thoughts about the people he killed do not often visit him. But even when the nun he killed appears to him in a dream, “crying like a woman,” Flyagin does not perceive this as something terrible and unusual, but calmly speaks to him, and upon waking up, “forgets about all this.” And the point here is not that Ivan Severyanich’s character is cruel, it’s just that his moral sense has not yet been developed in him, but love helped to grow humanity in his soul.
At the very first meeting, the beauty of Grusha strikes Ivan Severyanych to the very heart: “I see various gentlemen repairers and factory owners I know, and I just recognize rich merchants and landowners who are hunters of horses, and among all this public a gypsy walks like this... you can’t even describe her as a woman, but as if like a bright snake, she moves on her tail and bends her whole body, and from her black eyes she burns with fire... “Here it is, I think, where the real beauty is, what nature calls perfection”” (136-137). And then Pear, bought by the “fickle” prince for fifty thousand and almost immediately abandoned by him, finds genuine spiritual, friendly sympathy in the prince’s servant. “You are the only one who loved me, my dear dear friend” (163), she will say to Ivan Severyanych before her death. It was not the love of a man for a woman, but the Christian love of a brother for a sister, full of selfless compassion. Love is “angelic,” as they call it in the story “The Immortal Golovan.” Flyagin kills Grusha to save him from a grave sin: suicide and the murder of the child that she carried under her heart, the murder of the treacherous prince and his young wife. The heartbreaking scene of Ivan Severyanych’s farewell to Grusha can be called the culmination of the moral layer of the story, because everything previous in Flyagin’s life was “crossed out” by this holy love, and the hero becomes different, builds his life according to different, moral laws. This Christian love of man for man, “a high passion, completely free from selfishness,” showed the hero his further path - “the direct path to love, even broader and more comprehensive, love for the people, for the Motherland. The moral feat of self-sacrifice performed by Ivan Severyanich for the sake of Grushenka is the first in a series of manifestations of perseverance, heroism and self-denial. This includes the salvation of the only son of the old Serdyukovs from soldiery, and fifteen years of service “for the faith” in the Caucasus under someone else’s name, performing the most dangerous tasks, and great prophecies in the monastery about the coming war, and the desire to “die for the people.” Great sacrificial love for one person laid in the soul of Ivan Severyanych love for all people, for his people, responsibility for his fate: “And I was filled with fear for my Russian people and began to pray for all others.” He began to exhort with tears, pray, they say, for the subjugation of every enemy and adversary to the king’s tray, for all destruction is near us. And I was given tears, wonderfully abundant!” I kept crying for my homeland.”

Ivan Severyanych fell in love with “an individual person” and only then “mankind in general,” and this is exactly the path that anyone who follows the commandments of Christ should follow. Perhaps it was precisely this ability to intuitively guess the right path of good and follow it that Leskov had in mind when, in the last lines of the story, he spoke about God, “hiding his destinies from the smart and reasonable and only sometimes revealing them to babies” (179). Despite his physical and spiritual heroism, Ivan Severyanych Flyagin is a baby, “fascinated” by life and its poetry, the world around him and its endless beauty. In the story, Ivan Severyanych is more than once called a “fool”, they check whether he is “not damaged in his mind”, he is a person who is not very educated, far from book wisdom, but endowed with deep spirituality, the paths of familiarization with the highest secrets of existence were opened to him,” Ivan Severyanich is wise at heart, and this is his strength. A “pure heart”, a rich spiritual world, combined with a child’s view of life, not clouded by either science or “theories that float in the air”, allow Leskov’s hero to “see God”, see all the beauty of the world and be enchanted by it. Flyagin has an amazing gift for describing everything that is dear to his soul: his native village on holiday, and Grushenka, and the beautiful mare Dido: “we bought from the factory the mare Dido, young, golden bay, for an officer’s saddle, She was a wonderful beauty “: a pretty head, pretty eyes, ... a light mane, a chest that sits deftly between the shoulders, like a boat, and a flexible waist, and legs in white stockings are light, and she tosses them around as she plays,” His descriptions are full of sincere feeling and true poetry, Flyagin’s attitude to the Christian religion is childishly naive, direct and practical. In his hope for liberation from captivity, Ivan Severyanych often resorts to God: “.. and you begin to pray.. and you pray.. you pray so much that even the snow will melt under your knees, and where the tears fell, you will see grass in the morning,” Such faith is limitless, but it is not fanatical, Leskovsky’s hero does not allow himself to be carried away by any myths, no matter how authoritative they may be, Any concepts are tested by the practice of life itself, Sometimes Ivan Severyanych experiences doubts and stops praying, but he never stops believing,
Wise and naive, strong and meek, accustomed to responding to all life events with the heart, and not with the constructs of the mind, who grew up on Russian folk soil and became
personification of the nation, the “enchanted wanderer” parted with us on the way, on the eve of
new roads. The story ends on a note of quest, “carries a victorious optimistic beginning”, faith in the sincere wealth of the Russian people and in their strength to overcome the obstacles too often encountered on their historical path.

Essay - Russian character and the fate of the people in the story “The Enchanted Wanderer”

Reading the works of Nikolai Semenovich Leskov, you invariably note the originality and bright originality of this writer. His language and style are completely unique and are in amazing harmony with the plot of a particular work. His works are equally original in content.

Their main theme is the spiritual life of the country and people. The main thing for the writer is to study the life of Russia, reflect on its past and future. But, unlike Ostrovsky, Nekrasov and Tolstoy, Leskov focuses on depicting the destinies of individual people.

The heroes of his works are Russians in the full sense of the word. They are real heroes, their destinies are inextricably linked with the fate of the entire people.

This is Ivan Severyanych Flyagin (“The Enchanted Wanderer”). Before us is a story about the life of a common man, rich in adventures and unusual situations. However, with a more thoughtful reading, behind the simple, everyday narrative, one can see a deep study of the fate of an entire people. Ivan Severyanych is honest and impartial in his judgments about himself. Therefore, the reader has the opportunity to comprehensively evaluate this hero, his positive and negative qualities.

Flyagina had to endure a lot: the lord’s anger, Tatar captivity, unrequited love, and war. But he emerges from all trials with honor: he does not humiliate himself before his masters, does not submit to his adversaries, does not tremble before death and is always ready to sacrifice himself for the sake of truth. He never, under any circumstances, betrays his convictions, principles and faith.

Ivan Flyagin is a deeply religious person, and faith helps him remain himself. After all, he did not accept the Muslim faith in captivity, although this could have made his life much easier. Moreover, Ivan tries to escape, fails and escapes again. Why is he doing this? After all, not a better life awaits him in his homeland. Ivan Severyanych’s answer is simple: he was homesick, and it’s not right for a Russian person to live among the “busurman”, in captivity. God always lives invisibly in the soul of the “enchanted wanderer.”

And Ivan ends his journey in the monastery as a novice. This is the only place where he finally finds peace and grace, although at first demons got into the habit of tempting him: at the sight of people in Ivan Severyanych, “his spirit rose,” recalling his former troubled life.

Ivan Severyanych follows where fate takes him and surrenders entirely to chance. He does not have any kind of life planning. And this, Leskov believes, is characteristic of the entire Russian people. Ivan Flyagin is alien to any selfish act, lies and intrigue. He openly talks about his adventures, without hiding anything or brightening up anything in front of his listeners. His, at first glance, chaotic life has a special logic - there is no escape from fate. Ivan Severyanych reproaches himself for not immediately going to the monastery, as promised by his mother, but trying to find a better life, having known only suffering. However, wherever he strived, wherever he was, there was always a line in front of him that he never dared to cross: he always felt a clear line between righteous and unrighteous, between good and evil, although some of his actions sometimes seemed strange. So, he escapes from captivity, leaves his unbaptized children and wives, not at all regretting them, throws the prince’s money at the feet of the gypsy, gives the child entrusted to him to the mother, while taking him away from the father, kills the abandoned and disgraced woman whom he loves. And what is most striking about the hero is that even in the most difficult situations he does not think about what to do. He is guided by some intuitive moral feeling that never lets him down. Leskov believed that this innate righteousness is an integral feature of the Russian national character.

The so-called “racial” consciousness is also inherent in the Russian person, with which Ivan Flyagin is fully endowed. All the hero’s actions are permeated with this consciousness. While being held captive by the Tatars, Ivan does not forget for a minute that he is Russian, and with all his soul strives to return to his homeland, finally escaping. No one ever told him what to do or how to act. Sometimes his actions seem to be completely illogical: instead of his will, he asks the master for a harmonica, because of some chicks he ruins his prosperous life on a landowner’s estate, he voluntarily joins the recruits, taking pity on the unfortunate old people, etc. But these actions reveal before the reader that boundless kindness, naivety and purity of the wanderer’s soul, which he himself is not even aware of and which helps him to overcome all life’s trials with honor. After all, the soul of a Russian person, according to Leskov’s deep conviction, is inexhaustible and indestructible.

Then what is the reason for the unfortunate fate of the Russian people? The writer answered this question, revealing the reason for the tragic fate of his “enchanted wanderer”: the Russian man does not follow the path intended for him by God, but, having lost his way once, he cannot find the way again. Even at the beginning of the story, the monk, crushed by horses, predicts to Ivan: “...you will die many times and will never die until your real death comes, and then you will remember your mother’s promise for you and will go to the monks.” And in these words the writer embodies the fate of all of Russia and its people, who are destined to endure many sorrows and troubles until they find their only, righteous path leading to happiness.

The story “The Enchanted Wanderer” by Nikolai Semenovich Leskov was written in 1872-1873. The work was included in the author’s cycle of legends, which was dedicated to the Russian righteous. “The Enchanted Wanderer” is distinguished by its storytelling form - Leskov imitates the characters’ oral speech, filling it with dialectisms, colloquial words, etc.

The composition of the story consists of 20 chapters, the first of which is an exposition and a prologue, the next are a narrative about the life of the main character, written in the style of a hagiography, including a retelling of the hero’s childhood and fate, his struggle with temptations.

Main characters

Flyagin Ivan Severyanych (Golovan)– the main character of the work, a monk “in his early fifties”, a former coneser, telling the story of his life.

Grushenka- a young gypsy who loved the prince, who, at her request, was killed by Ivan Severyanych. Golovan was unrequitedly in love with her.

Other heroes

Count and Countess- the first bajars of Flyagin from the Oryol province.

Barin from Nikolaev, for whom Flyagin served as a nanny for his little daughter.

Girl's mother, who was nursed by Flyagin and her second officer husband.

Prince- owner of a cloth factory, for whom Flyagin served as a coneser.

Evgenya Semenovna- the prince's mistress.

Chapter first

The ship's passengers "sailed along Lake Ladoga from Konevets Island to Valaam" with a stop in Korel. Among the travelers, a notable figure was a monk, a “hero-monkorizets” - a former coneser who was “an expert in horses” and had the gift of a “mad tamer.”

The companions asked why the man became a monk, to which he replied that he did a lot in his life according to his “parental promise” - “all my life I died, and there was no way I could die.”

Chapter two

“Former Coneser Ivan Severyanych, Mr. Flyagin,” in abbreviated form, tells his companions the long story of his life. The man was “born into a serfdom” and came “from the courtyard people of Count K. from the Oryol province.” His father was the coachman Severyan. Ivan’s mother died during childbirth, “because I was born with an unusually large head, so that’s why my name was not Ivan Flyagin, but simply Golovan.” The boy spent a lot of time with his father at the stables, where he learned to care for horses.

Over time, Ivan was “planted as a postilion” in the six, which was driven by his father. Once, while driving a six, the hero on the road, “for fun,” spotted a monk to death. That same night, the deceased came to Golovan in a vision and said that Ivan was the mother “promised to God,” and then told him the “sign”: “you will die many times and you will never die until your real death comes, and you then you will remember your mother’s promise for you and you will go to the monks.”

After a while, when Ivan traveled with the count and countess to Voronezh, the hero saved the gentlemen from death, which earned him special favor.

Chapter Three

Golovan kept pigeons in his stable, but the countess’s cat got into the habit of hunting for birds. Once, angry, Ivan beat the animal, cutting off the cat’s tail. Having learned about what had happened, the hero was given the punishment “flogged and then out of the stable and into the English garden for the path to beat pebbles with a hammer.” Ivan, for whom this punishment was unbearable, decided to commit suicide, but the gypsy robber did not allow the man to hang himself.

Chapter Four

At the request of the gypsy, Ivan stole two horses from the master's stable and, having received some money, went to the “assessor to announce that he was a runaway.” However, the clerk wrote the hero a vacation note for the silver cross and advised him to go to Nikolaev.

In Nikolaev, a certain gentleman hired Ivan as a nanny for his little daughter. The hero turned out to be a good teacher, took care of the girl, closely monitored her health, but was very bored. One day, while walking along the estuary, they met the girl’s mother. The woman began to tearfully ask Ivan to give her her daughter. The hero refuses, but she persuades him to secretly bring the girl to the same place every day, secretly from the master.

Chapter Five

During one of the meetings on the estuary, the woman’s current husband, an officer, appears and offers a ransom for the child. The hero again refuses and a fight breaks out between the men. Suddenly an angry gentleman appears with a pistol. Ivan gives the child to his mother and runs away. The officer explains that he cannot leave Golovan with him, since he does not have a passport, and the hero will end up in the steppe.

At a fair in the steppe, Ivan witnesses how the famous steppe horse breeder Khan Dzhangar sells his best horses. Two Tatars even had a duel for the white mare - they lashed each other with whips.

Chapter Six

The last to be brought out for sale was an expensive Karak foal. Tatar Savakirei immediately came forward to arrange a duel - to fight with someone for this stallion. Ivan volunteered to act for one of the repairmen in a duel with the Tatar and, using “his cunning skill,” he “flogged” Savakirei to death. They wanted to capture Ivan for murder, but the hero managed to escape with the Asians to the steppe. There he stayed for ten years, treating people and animals. To prevent Ivan from running away, the Tatars “bristled” him - they cut off the skin on his heels, put horse hair there and sewed up the skin. After this, the hero could not walk for a long time, but over time he learned to walk on his ankles.

Chapter Seven

Ivan was sent to Khan Agashimola. The hero, as under the previous khan, had two Tatar wives “Natasha”, from whom they also had children. However, the man did not have parental feelings for his children, because they were unbaptized. Living with the Tatars, the man missed his homeland very much.

Chapter Eight

Ivan Severyanovich says that people of different religions came to them, trying to preach to the Tatars, but they killed the “misaners”. “An Asian must be brought into the faith with fear, so that he shakes with fright, and they preach to them God of peace.” “An Asian will never respect a humble God without a threat and will beat preachers.”

Russian missionaries also came to the steppe, but did not want to ransom Golovan from the Tatars. When, after a while, one of them is killed, Ivan buries him according to Christian custom.

Chapter Nine

Once people from Khiva came to the Tatars to buy horses. To intimidate the steppe inhabitants (so that they would not kill them), the guests showed the power of their fire god - Talafa, set the steppe on fire and, until the Tatars realized what had happened, disappeared. The visitors forgot the box in which Ivan found ordinary fireworks. Calling himself Talafa, the hero begins to scare the Tatars with fire and forces them to accept the Christian faith. In addition, Ivan found caustic earth in the box, which he used to etch away the horse bristles implanted in his heels. When his legs healed, he set off a large firework and escaped unnoticed.

Coming out to the Russians a few days later, Ivan spent only one night with them, and then moved on, since they did not want to accept a person without a passport. In Astrakhan, having started drinking heavily, the hero ends up in prison, from where he was sent to his native province. At home, the widowed pious count gave Ivan a passport and released him “on quitrent.”

Chapter Ten

Ivan began going to fairs and advising ordinary people how to choose a good horse, for which they treated him or thanked him with money. When his “fame thundered through the fairs,” the prince came to the hero with a request to reveal his secret. Ivan tried to teach him his talent, but the prince soon realized that this was a special gift and hired Ivan for three years as his coneser. From time to time the hero has “outs” - the man drank heavily, although he wanted to end it.

Chapter Eleven

One day, when the prince was away, Ivan again went to the tavern to drink. The hero was very worried, since he had the master’s money with him. In the tavern, Ivan meets a man who had a special talent - “magnetism”: he could “bring drunken passion from any other person in one minute.” Ivan asked him to get rid of his addiction. The man, hypnotizing Golovan, makes him get very drunk. Already completely drunk men are thrown out of the tavern.

Chapter Twelve

From the actions of the “magnetizer,” Ivan began to see “disgusting faces on legs,” and when the vision passed, the man left the hero alone. Golovan, not knowing where he was, decided to knock on the first house he came across.

Chapter Thirteen

The gypsies opened the doors to Ivan, and the hero found himself in yet another tavern. Golovan stares at a young gypsy, the singer Grushenka, and spends all the prince’s money on her.

Chapter fourteen

After the help of the magnetizer, Ivan no longer drank. The prince, having learned that Ivan had spent his money, at first became angry, but then calmed down and said that for “this Grusha he gave fifty thousand to the camp,” if only she would be with him. Now the gypsy lives in his house.

Chapter fifteen

The prince, arranging his own affairs, was at home less and less often with Grusha. The girl was bored and jealous, and Ivan entertained and consoled her as best he could. Everyone except Grusha knew that in the city the prince had “another love - one of the nobles, the secretary’s daughter Evgenya Semyonovna,” who had a daughter with the prince, Lyudochka.

One day Ivan came to the city and stayed with Evgenia Semyonovna, and on the same day the prince came here.

Chapter sixteen

By chance, Ivan ended up in the dressing room, where, hiding, he overheard the conversation between the prince and Evgenia Semyonovna. The prince told the woman that he wanted to buy a cloth factory and was going to get married soon. Grushenka, whom the man had completely forgotten about, plans to marry off to Ivan Severyanich.

Golovin was busy with the affairs of the factory, so he did not see Grushenka for a long time. Returning back, I learned that the prince had taken the girl somewhere.

Chapter Seventeen

On the eve of the prince's wedding, Grushenka appears (“she rushed out here to die”). The girl tells Ivan that the prince “hid him in a strong place and appointed guards to strictly guard my beauty,” but she ran away.

Chapter Eighteen

As it turned out, the prince secretly took Grushenka into the forest to a bee, assigning three “young, healthy single-yard girls” to the girl, who made sure that the gypsy did not run away. But somehow, playing blind man's buff with them, Grushenka managed to deceive them - and so she returned.

Ivan tries to dissuade the girl from suicide, but she assured that she would not be able to live after the prince’s wedding - she would suffer even more. The gypsy woman asked to kill her, threatening: “If you don’t kill me,” she said, “I will become the most shameful woman in revenge for all of you.” And Golovin, pushing Grushenka into the water, fulfilled her request.

Chapter nineteen

Golovin, “not understanding himself,” fled from that place. On the way, he met an old man - his family was very sad that their son was being recruited. Taking pity on the old men, Ivan joined the recruits instead of their son. Having asked to be sent to fight in the Caucasus, Golovin stayed there for 15 years. Having distinguished himself in one of the battles, Ivan responded to the colonel’s praises: “I, your honor, am not a fine fellow, but a great sinner, and neither earth nor water wants to accept me,” and told his story.

For his distinction in battle, Ivan was appointed an officer and sent to retire with the Order of St. George in St. Petersburg. His service at the address desk did not work out, so Ivan decided to become an artist. However, he was soon kicked out of the troupe because he stood up for a young actress, hitting the offender.

After this, Ivan decides to go to a monastery. Now he lives in obedience, not considering himself worthy of senior tonsure.

Chapter Twenty

At the end, the companions asked Ivan how he was doing in the monastery, and whether he had been tempted by a demon. The hero replied that he tempted him by appearing in the image of Grushenka, but he had already completely overcome it. Once Golovan hacked to death a demon who had appeared, but it turned out to be a cow, and another time, because of demons, a man knocked down all the candles near the icon. For this, Ivan was put in a cellar, where the hero discovered the gift of prophecy. On the ship, Golovan goes “to pray in Solovki to Zosima and Savvaty” in order to bow to them before his death, and then gets ready for war.

“The enchanted wanderer seemed to again feel the influx of the broadcasting spirit and fell into quiet concentration, which none of the interlocutors allowed themselves to be interrupted by a single new question.”

Conclusion

In “The Enchanted Wanderer,” Leskov depicted a whole gallery of bright, original Russian characters, grouping images around two central themes – the theme of “wandering” and the theme of “charm.” Throughout his life, the main character of the story, Ivan Severyanych Flyagin, through his travels, tried to comprehend “perfect beauty” (the charm of life), finding it in everything - now in horses, now in the beautiful Grushenka, and in the end - in the image of the Motherland for which he is going go to war.

With the image of Flyagin, Leskov shows the spiritual maturation of a person, his formation and understanding of the world (fascination with the world around him). The author portrayed before us a real Russian righteous man, a seer, whose “prophecies” “remain until time in the hand of one who hides his destinies from the smart and reasonable and only sometimes reveals them to babies.”

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Composition

Throughout his career, Leskov was interested in the theme of the people. In his works, he repeatedly addresses this topic, revealing the character and soul of the Russian person. At the center of his works are always noble people with unique destinies. Strength, spontaneity, spiritual purity and kindness are the main features of Ivan Severyanich Flyagin, the hero of the story “The Enchanted Wanderer.” We meet him during the author's travels around Lake Ladoga. The author notes Flyagin’s similarity with the legendary hero of epics Ilya Muromets: “He was a man of enormous stature, with a dark, open face and thick, wavy, lead-colored hair: his gray hair was so strangely cast... he was in the full sense of the word a hero, and, moreover, a typical, simple-minded, kind Russian hero, reminiscent of grandfather Ilya Muromets..."

This is a kind of key to understanding this image. Ivan Flyagin firmly believes in the unshakable power of predestination and all his life he is looking for his place among people, his calling. His life is a search for harmony between originality, the elemental strength of the individual and the demands of life itself, its laws. There is a deep meaning in the wandering itself; the motive of the road becomes the leading one. “You can’t outrun your path,” says Flyagin. Each stage of his life's journey becomes a new step in moral development. The first stage is life in the manor's house. A youthful mischief is alive in him and... in the excitement of driving fast, without meaning to, he kills an old monk who accidentally met him, who fell asleep on a cart of hay.

At the same time, young Ivan is not particularly burdened by the misfortune that has occurred, but the murdered monk appears to him every now and then in his dreams and pesters him with his questions, predicting for the hero the trials that he still has to endure. Ivan feels in his soul that someday he will have to atone for this sin, but he brushes aside these thoughts, believing that the time to atone for his sins has not yet come.

But at the same time, he is faithful and devoted to his masters. He saves them from imminent death when traveling to Voronezh, when the cart almost falls into the abyss. He does this not for the sake of some personal gain or reward, but because he cannot help but help those who need his help.

The second stage is raising a girl. Behind the external rudeness is hidden the enormous kindness inherent in the Russian people. Serving as a nanny, he takes the first steps in mastering the world of his own and others’ souls. For the first time he experiences compassion and affection, for the first time he understands the soul of another person. When he encounters the girl’s mother, two feelings fight within him: the desire to give the child to the mother and a sense of duty. For the first time, he makes a decision not in his favor, but out of mercy and gives the child away. Then fate throws Ivan into captivity among the Tatars for ten years. Here new feelings are revealed to him: longing for his native land and hope for return. Ivan cannot merge with someone else's life or take it seriously. Therefore, he always strives to escape and easily forgets his wives and children. In captivity, he is oppressed not by the wretchedness of his material life, but by the poverty of his impressions. Russian life is incomparably fuller and richer spiritually. “Sultry look, cruel; there is no space; the grass is riotous, the feather grass is white, fluffy, like a silver sea is agitated, and the smell carries on the breeze: it smells like sheep, and the sun pours down, burns, and the steppes, as if life is painful, have no end in sight, and here there is no bottom to the depth of melancholy... You can’t see for yourself you know where, and suddenly, out of nowhere, a monastery or temple will appear in front of you, and you will remember the baptized land and cry.”

Memories return Flyagin to holidays and everyday life, to his native nature. And the opportunity to escape presented itself to him. He reached his native land, and Holy Rus', to which he so yearned, met him with whips. Flyagin almost dies from drunkenness, but an accident saves the hero and turns his whole life upside down, giving it a new direction. Thanks to his meeting with the gypsy Grusha, the “wanderer” discovers the “beauty of nature, perfection,” the magical power of talent and feminine beauty over the human soul. This is not passion, but a shock that elevates the human soul. The purity and greatness of his feeling is that it is free from pride and possessiveness.

He lives not only for himself, but also for another person. He himself realizes that this love has reborn him. To save the soul of his loved one, he helps Grusha commit suicide by pushing her off a cliff into the river. After the death of a loved one, there is a road again, but this road is to people for the atonement of sin. Ivan becomes a soldier, changing his fate with a man he has never seen, taking pity on the grief-stricken old men, whose son is threatened with conscription. Service in the Caucasus becomes another test for him. After his feat at the crossing, he is forced to talk about himself, to reveal his “former existence and rank.” He himself makes a harsh judgment on himself and his past life, realizing himself as a “great sinner.” Ivan Severyanovich grew spiritually, bearing personal responsibility for his life before God and people.

At the end of the story, Ivan Flyagin becomes a monk. But even the monastery will not be a quiet haven for him, the end of his journey. He is ready to go to war, because he “really wants to die for the people.” The image of the “enchanted hero” created by the author contains a broad generalization of the people’s character and shows the main idea, the moral meaning of a person’s life - to live for others, giving all of himself, all his strength, talent, opportunities to his neighbors, his people, his land.

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The life of N. S. Leskov was difficult and painful. Misunderstood and unappreciated by his contemporaries, he received blows from right-wing critics as not being loyal enough and from the left, the same N.A. Nekrasov, who could not help but see the depth of the writer’s talent, but did not publish it in his Sovremennik. And Leskov, the wizard of words, weaved patterns of Russian speech and lowered his heroes into those abysses in which Dostoevsky’s heroes painfully existed, and then raised them to heaven, where the world of Leo Tolstoy was.

He paved a path in our prose that connected these two geniuses. This is especially noticeable when you dive into the structure of the story “The Enchanted Wanderer.” Ivan Flyagin, whose characteristics will be presented below, either descends into the underworld, or soars to the heights of the spirit.

Hero's appearance

Leskov presents the enchanted wanderer as a typical Russian hero. He is enormous in stature, and the long black cassock and high cap on his head make him even larger.

Ivan is dark-skinned, over 50. His hair is thick, but streaked with lead grey. In stature and power, he resembles Ilya Muromets, the good-natured hero from Russian epics. This is what Ivan Flyagin looks like, whose characterization will reveal the connection between the external and the internal, his wanderings and the dynamics of his development.

Childhood and first murder

He grew up in a stable and knew the temperament of every horse, knew how to cope with the most restive horse, and this requires not only physical strength, but strength of spirit, which the horse will feel and even recognize in a child as its owner. And a strong personality grew up, who was morally somewhat undeveloped. The author tells in detail what Ivan Flyagin was like at that time. His characterization is given in the episode when he, just like that, from the fullness of his strength, which he had nowhere to use, playfully killed an innocent monk. There was just a swing of the whip, with which the eleven-year-old boy hit the monk, and the horses bolted, and the monk, falling, immediately died without repentance.

But the soul of the murdered man appeared to the boy and promised that he would die many times, but would still become a monk without perishing on the roads of life.

Rescue of the noble family

And right there next to Leskov, like stringing beads, tells a story about the exact opposite case, when, again without thinking about anything, Ivan Flyagin saves the lives of his masters. His characteristics are courage and daring, which the fool does not even think about, but again simply acts without any thought.

God led the child, and he saved him from certain death in a deep abyss. These are the abysses into which Leskov immediately throws his character. But from a young age he is completely unselfish. Ivan Flyagin asked for an accordion for his feat. The characteristics of his subsequent actions, for example, refusing a lot of money for the ransom of a girl with whom he was forced to babysit, will show that he never seeks benefits for himself.

Second murder and escape

Quite calmly, in a fair fight, he killed (and it was a dispute over who would beat whom with a whip), as if it was supposed to be, the Tatar Ivan Flyagin. The characteristics of this act show that 23-year-old young Ivan has not matured enough to evaluate his own actions, but is ready to accept any, even immoral, rules of the game that are offered to him.

And as a result, he is hiding from justice among the Tatars. But in the end, he is in captivity, in a Tatar prison. Ivan will spend ten years with his “non-religious saviors” and will yearn for his homeland until he runs away. And he will be driven by determination, endurance and willpower.

Test of love

On his life's journey, Ivan will meet a beautiful singer, the gypsy Grushenka. She is so beautiful in appearance that Ivan is breathtaking from her beauty, but her spiritual world is also rich.

The girl, feeling that Flyagin will understand her, tells her simple, eternal girlish grief: her beloved played with her and abandoned her. But she cannot live without him and is afraid that she will either kill him along with his new lover, or commit suicide. Both frighten her - this is not Christian. And Grusha asks Ivan to take the sin on his soul - to kill it. At first Ivan was embarrassed and did not dare, but then pity for the girl’s unrequited torment outweighed all his doubts. The strength of her suffering led to Ivan Flyagin pushing Grusha into the abyss. The characteristic of this act is the special side of humanity. Killing is scary, and Christ’s commandment says: “Thou shalt not kill.” But Ivan, transgressing through her, reaches the highest level of self-sacrifice - he sacrifices his immortal soul to save the girl’s soul. While he is alive, he hopes to atone for this sin.

Becoming a soldier

And here again chance confronts Ivan with someone else’s grief. Under a false name, Ivan Severyanych Flyagin goes to war, to certain death. The characteristics of this episode in his life are a continuation of the previous one: compassion and sacrifice lead him to this act. What's highest? To die for the fatherland, for the people. But fate protects him - Ivan has not yet passed all the tests that she is going to send him.

What is a sense of life?

A wanderer, a wanderer, a wanderer, Ivan is a seeker of truth. For him, the main thing is to find the meaning of life associated with poetry. The image and characterization of Ivan Flyagin in the story “The Enchanted Wanderer” enable the author to embody the dreaminess characteristic of the people themselves. Ivan conveys the spirit of seeking truth. Ivan Flyagin is a wretched man who has experienced so much in his life that it would be enough for several people. He takes upon his soul countless sufferings, which take him to a new, higher spiritual orbit, in which life and poetry are united.

Characteristics of Ivan Flyagin as a storyteller

Flyagin-Leskov's tale is deliberately slowed down, as in an epic, thoughtful song. But when the forces of events and characters gradually accumulate, it becomes dynamic and impetuous. In the episode of bridling a horse that even the Englishman Rarey cannot handle, the method of storytelling is dynamic and sharp. Descriptions of horses are given in such a way that folk songs and epics are recalled. The horse in chapter 6 is compared to a bird that does not fly by its own strength.

The image is extremely poetic and closes with Gogol’s bird-troika. This prose should be read declamatory, slow, like a prose poem. And there are many such poems. What is the episode at the end of the 7th chapter worth, when the tormented wanderer prays so that the snow under his knees melts, and where the tears fell, grass appears in the morning. This is said by a lyrical poet - a passion-bearer. This and other miniatures have the right to a separate existence. But those inserted by Leskov into the larger narrative give it the necessary coloring, an enriching reflection.

Characteristic plan of Ivan Flyagin

When writing an essay, you can be guided by this brief plan:

• Introduction - an enchanted wanderer.
• Character's appearance.
• Wandering.
• Amulet for life.
• "Sinfulness" of Ivan.
• Immeasurable heroic forces.
• Hero's traits.

In conclusion, it should be said that N.S. Leskov himself walked the earth as an enchanted traveler, although he saw life in all its multilayeredness. The poetry of life was revealed to N. S. Leskov in contemplation and reflection, in the word. Perhaps the key to “The Enchanted Wanderer” is F. Tyutchev’s poem “The Lord send your joy...”. Re-read and ponder the pilgrim's path.

The epithet “enchanted” increases the sense of poetry of the figure of the traveler. Enchanted, captivating, bewitched, driven crazy, conquered - the range of this spiritual quality is great. For the writer, the enchanted wanderer was a characteristic figure of a person to whom one could entrust part of one’s dreams, making him the spokesman for the cherished thoughts and aspirations of the people.