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 is not yet 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.
N.S. Leskov never lost faith in the Russian people, in his ability to overcome all disasters. The writer fancied and saw in the usual turmoil, even “wildness,” of simple Russian life some bright beginnings. This was clearly manifested in “The Enchanted Wanderer,” a story about Ivan Flyagin, the son of a serf peasant woman and a coachman. What is so unusual about the fate and life path of this hero?
Many researchers call Flyagin “a truth-seeker of the Russian land.” In principle, this is a fair definition, but not precise enough. What truth is Flyagin looking for? Can he seek the truth given his impulsiveness and lack of education?
Apparently, Flyagin is a special type, a kind of “nugget”. He is, of course, a seeker, but not of truth as such, but of beauty, the meaning of life. Ivan is a “prayerful” son, that is, a son begged from God. From birth, he is characterized by restlessness, an eternal desire (through failures and “breakdowns”) for a bright, energetically full, “flowery” existence. Hence the “fall” of this hero and, ultimately, the enlightenment of the spirit, the rejection of obscene things.
Fate seemed to test Flyagin on the strength of the sense of goodness and common sense inherent in him. You will “perish many times and never perish” - it was predicted to him back in his adolescence. And so it happened. The hero's whole life is a chain of misadventures, the cause of which was often himself, his thirst for the extraordinary, the play of internal forces that did not find useful use.
Thus, even as a child, Flyagin turned out to be an indirect culprit in a “road” accident, as a result of which the monk died. As an adult, the hero did not avoid adventurous situations (combat with the Tatars near Penza). Because of this, Ivan Severyanovich had to hide in steppe settlements for more than ten years, where he had horsehair implanted in his heel, and he could not walk normally. Many times Flyagin was a victim of gullibility and a destructive passion for the “green snake”... But all the misadventures not only did not weaken his craving for life and perfection, but also strengthened it. Hence the hero’s wanderings, the constant search for something that would satisfy the “spiritual thirst”, the craving for simplicity and the extraordinary. All this explains the accent word in the title of the story - “enchanted”.
The charm of life and beauty is revealed with unusual force in the tavern scene. A fairly drunk Ivan Flyagin gives all his master’s money (five thousand rubles) for a gypsy spell to the beautiful Grushenka: he “swept all his “swans”, that is, large banknotes, under her feet during the dance. In the excitement of the dance, the hero’s soul was inflamed: “Didn’t you, damned one, make both the earth and the sky?” The words are blasphemous and, at the same time, deeply sincere and powerful. “Cursed” in Ivan’s mouth sounds like a description of everything that is beautiful on earth...
In the depths of the hero’s soul, sparks of life, hope, if possible, atonement for “sins”, and his acquisition of truth always shone brightly. And Flyagin found this truth, at least for himself, in relation to the situation in which he found himself after all his wanderings and deprivations. Having no family, permanent place of residence, or specific activities, the hero constantly strives for the better, tries to unravel the “meaning” of life. In the end, he ends up in a monastery, hoping to stop the “restlessness” of his soul there and find the truly beautiful. In this sense, Flyagin reminds us of a “future son” who, after many misadventures, comes to the monastery in order to atone for his “sins” there.
But, once in the monastery, Ivan did not get rid of the torment of his conscience (for the death of Grushenka, for the death of the Tatar monk). He kept imagining that Satan was pursuing him. It was decided to put Flyagin in a “cellar” so that there, through prayers and asceticism, liberation from obsession would come. And so it happened. But at the same time, something else happened: the hero’s incredibly important insight. It was sent down to him to see and understand what others - alas! – has not been given to this day. Since then, our hero was filled with “fear for his Russian people and began to pray... everything about his homeland... and for his people.”
The meaning of the wanderings, the entire life path of Ivan Flyagin, his foresight of the misfortune looming over the people and the fatherland, the foresight that he carried within himself over many years of “misadventure”, usually refers to the purely poetic element of the story. This is seen as fantastic, “wonderful” and therefore seemingly insignificant. But that's not true. Through the lips of Flyagin, Leskov not directly, but in a figurative, “prophetic” form, warned in the 70s of the 19th century: “there is destruction near us.” And the spiritual heroism of Ivan Flyagin is that with all his bitter, but highly dramatic fate, he convinces us: we must act “intelligibly,” with responsibility, with devotion to faith, without throwing away honor and concern for others. The time has come to pose the question this way - the only way! Otherwise – “all-destructiveness”.
The thorny life path of the protagonist, the hardships he suffered, seem to be crowned by this “truth of life” to which he strived. Flyagin needed her just like all people.
The story “The Enchanted Wanderer” presents its reader with the image of a man who cannot be compared with any of the characters in Russian literature. This is the image of a hero who easily merges with any troubles of life. Flyagin Ivan Severyanych or the “enchanted wanderer,” as the author of the story called him, is “charmed” by his own life, in particular, and by the whole world, in general. He accepts life as a gift, a great miracle that has no limits or boundaries. Wherever the hero’s fate takes him, he discovers something new and surprising and, perhaps because of this, is absolutely not afraid of change.
The image of Flyagin absorbed everything Russian. This is a man similar to the hero of ancient epics - huge in stature, open-faced, and his hair is curly and has a noble gray cast. He looks about fifty years old, he is kind, simple-minded and open-hearted to everyone he meets. The fact that Ivan Severyanych cannot get along in one place does not mean that he is fickle or frivolous; this way of life rather suggests that the hero strives to drink the whole world to the dregs. At least as much as he will manage in the years God has given him.
The life of Ivan Severyanych Flyagin
At birth, Flyagin took the life of his mother (he was born with a very large head, for which he received the nickname “Golovan”), but at the same time, he himself seemed invulnerable to death, which he was ready to accept at any moment. The hero holds his horses at the edge of a cliff, almost commits suicide, wins a dangerous fight, escapes from captivity, and avoids bullets during military operations. All his life he walks on the edge of death, but the earth is in no hurry to accept him.
Since childhood, Ivan loved horses and knew how to handle them. But his fate was such that he had to flee and steal horses. Wandering, Flyagin ends up among the Tatars and spends 10 years of his life in captivity (he is captured at the age of 23). After some time, Flyagin entered the army and served in the Caucasus for 15 years. Here he accomplishes a feat, for which he is promoted to officer and given a reward (St. George's Cross). As a result, Flyagin becomes a nobleman. In the end, at the age of about 50, Flyagin entered a monastery (on one of the islands in Lake Ladoga). In the monastery, Flyagin receives a church name - Father Ishmael. Having become a monk, Flyagin also serves as a coachman in the monastery. But even in the monastery, Flyagin does not find peace: he is overcome by demons, and the gift of prophecy is revealed to him. The monks are trying in every possible way to drive out the “evil spirit” from him, but to no avail. Finally, Flyagin is released from the monastery, and he goes to wander around holy places.
Flyagin observes the canons of his own morality, remaining honest in life to others and to himself. On his account, the lives of a monk, a Tatar and a young gypsy were cut short. But not a single one of the wanderer’s misdeeds was born out of hatred or lies, nor was it committed with a thirst for profit or out of fear for one’s own life. The monk died as a result of an accident, the Tatar was killed in battle on equal terms, and the gypsy herself begged to end her unbearable existence. In the story of this unfortunate woman, Ivan took the sin upon himself, thereby freeing the girl from the need to commit suicide.
Ivan Severyanych talks about his life to random fellow travelers during a boat trip. The hero does not hide anything, since his soul is an open book. In the fight for justice, he is cruel, as in the case when he cut off the tail of the master's cat because she got into the habit of strangling his pigeons. But in another situation, Flyagin went to war for a boy whom his loving parents were afraid of losing. The only reason for Ivan’s actions is the natural force that overflows from him. All this power and prowess of a Russian hero is quite difficult to manage. That’s why Ivan Severyanych could not always calculate it correctly. And therefore the hero of the story cannot be called impeccable; he is multifaceted - merciless and kind, smart and naive, daring and romantic.
All episodes of the story are united by the image of the main character - Ivan Severyanovich Flyagin, shown as a giant of physical and moral power. “He was a man of enormous stature, with a dark, open face and thick, wavy, lead-colored hair: his streak of gray 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 of Count A.K. Tolstoy. It seemed that he would not walk around in a cassock, but would sit on his “forelock” and ride in bast shoes through the forest and lazily smell how “the dark forest smells of resin and strawberries.” The hero performs feats of arms, saves people, and goes through the temptation of love. He knows from his own bitter experience serfdom, he knows what it is to escape from a cruel master or soldier. Flyagin’s actions reveal such traits as boundless courage, courage, pride, stubbornness, breadth of nature, kindness, patience, artistry, etc. The author creates a complex, multifaceted character, positive at its core, but far from ideal and not at all unambiguous. The main feature of Flyagin is the “frankness of a simple soul.” The narrator likens him to God's baby, to whom God sometimes reveals his plans, hidden from others. The hero is characterized by a childish naivety of perception of life, innocence, sincerity, and selflessness. He is very talented. First of all, in the business that he was involved in as a boy, becoming a postilion for his master. When it came to horses, he “received a special talent from his nature.” His talent is associated with a heightened sense of beauty. Ivan Flyagin subtly feels female beauty, the beauty of nature, words, art - song, dance. His speech is striking in its poetry when he describes what he admires. Like any national hero, Ivan Severyanovich passionately loves his homeland. This is manifested in a painful longing for his native place, when he is in captivity in the Tatar steppes, and in the desire to take part in the coming war and die for his native land. Flyagin’s last dialogue with the audience sounds solemn. Warmth and subtlety of feeling in a hero coexist with rudeness, pugnacity, drunkenness, and narrow-mindedness. Sometimes he shows callousness and indifference: he beats a Tatar to death in a duel, does not consider unbaptized children as his own and leaves them without regret. Kindness and responsiveness to someone else's grief coexist in him with senseless cruelty: he gives the child to his tearfully pleading mother, depriving himself of shelter and food, but at the same time, out of self-indulgence, he kills a sleeping monk.
Flyagin's daring and freedom of feelings know no bounds (fight with a Tatar, relationship with Sgrushenka). He gives himself over to feelings recklessly and recklessly. Emotional impulses, over which he has no control, constantly break his destiny. But when the spirit of confrontation fades away in him, he very easily submits to the influence of others. The hero’s sense of human dignity is in conflict with the consciousness of a serf. But all the same, a pure and noble soul is felt in Ivan Severyanovich.
The hero's first, middle and last names turn out to be significant. The name Ivan, which appears so often in fairy tales, brings him closer to both Ivan the Fool and Ivan the Tsarevich, who go through various trials. In his trials, Ivan Flyagin matures spiritually and becomes morally cleansed. The patronymic Severyanovich translated from Latin means “severe” and reflects a certain side of his character. The surname indicates, on the one hand, a penchant for a wild lifestyle, but, on the other hand, it recalls the biblical image of a person as a vessel, and a righteous person as a pure vessel of God. Suffering from the consciousness of his own imperfection, he goes, without bending, towards the feat, striving for heroic service to his homeland, feeling the divine blessing above him. And this movement, moral transformation constitutes the internal plot line of the story. The hero believes and searches. His life path is the path of knowing God and realizing oneself in God.
Ivan Flyagin personifies the Russian national character with all its dark and light sides, the people's view of the world. It embodies the enormous and untapped potential of people's power. His morality is natural, folk morality. Flyagin's figure acquires a symbolic scale, embodying the breadth, boundlessness, and openness of the Russian soul to the world. The depth and complexity of Ivan Flyagin’s character is helped by the various artistic techniques used by the author. The main means of creating the image of a hero is speech, which reflects his worldview, character, social status, etc. Flyagin’s speech is simple, full of vernacular and dialecticisms, there are few metaphors, comparisons, epithets in it, but they are bright and accurate. The hero's speech style is connected with the people's worldview. The image of the hero is also revealed through his attitude towards other characters about whom he himself talks. The character's personality is revealed in the tone of the narrative and in the choice of artistic means. The landscape also helps to feel the peculiarities of the character’s perception of the world. The hero’s story about life in the steppe conveys his emotional state, longing for his native place: “No, I want to go home... I was feeling homesick. Especially in the evenings, or even when the weather is good in the middle of the day, it’s hot, the camp is quiet, all the Tatars from the heat fall on the tents... A sultry look, cruel; there is no space; grass riot; the feather grass is white, fluffy, like a silver sea, agitated, and the smell carries on the breeze: it smells like a sheep, and the sun pours down, burns, and the steppe, as if a painful life, has no end in sight, and here there is no bottom to the depth of melancholy... You see for yourself you know where, and suddenly in front of you, no matter how you take it, there is a monastery or a temple, and you remember the baptized land and cry.”
The image of the wanderer Ivan Flyagin summarizes the remarkable features of energetic, naturally talented people, inspired by boundless love for people. It depicts a man from the people in the intricacies of his difficult fate, not broken, even though “he died all his life and could not die.”
The kind and simple-minded Russian giant is the main character and central figure of the story. This man with a childish soul is distinguished by irrepressible fortitude and heroic mischief. He acts at the behest of duty, often on the inspiration of feeling and in a random outburst of passion. However, all his actions, even the strangest ones, are invariably born from his inherent love for humanity. He strives for truth and beauty through mistakes and bitter repentance, he seeks love and generously gives love to people. When Flyagin sees a person in mortal danger, he simply rushes to his aid. Just as a boy, he saves the count and countess from death, but he almost dies. He also goes instead of the old woman’s son to the Caucasus for fifteen years. Behind the external rudeness and cruelty, hidden in Ivan Severyanych is the enormous kindness characteristic of the Russian people. We recognize this trait in him when he becomes a nanny. He became truly attached to the girl he was courting. He is caring and gentle in his dealings with her.
“The Enchanted Wanderer” is a type of “Russian wanderer” (in the words of Dostoevsky). This is a Russian nature, requiring development, striving for spiritual perfection. He searches and cannot find himself. Each new refuge of Flyagin is another discovery of life, and not just a change in one activity or another. The broad soul of the wanderer gets along with absolutely everyone - be it wild Kyrgyz or strict Orthodox monks; he is so flexible that he agrees to live according to the laws of those who accepted him: according to Tatar custom, he fights to the death with Savarikei, according to Muslim custom, has several wives, takes for granted the cruel “operation” that the Tatars performed on him ; In the monastery, he not only does not complain about the fact that, as punishment, he was locked in a dark cellar for the whole summer, but he even knows how to find joy in this: “Here you can hear the church bells, and your comrades have visited.” But despite such an accommodating nature, he does not stay anywhere for long. He does not need to humble himself and want to work in his native field. He is already humble and with his peasant rank he is faced with the need to work. But he has no peace. In life he is not a participant, but only a wanderer. He is so open to life that it carries him, and he follows its flow with wise humility. But this is not a consequence of mental weakness and passivity, but a complete acceptance of one’s fate. Often Flyagin is not aware of his actions, intuitively relying on the wisdom of life, trusting it in everything. And the higher power, before which he is open and honest, rewards him for this and protects him.
Ivan Severyanich Flyagin lives primarily not with his mind, but with his heart, and therefore the course of life imperiously carries him along, which is why the circumstances in which he finds himself are so varied.
Flyagin reacts sharply to insult and injustice. As soon as the count's German manager punished him for his offense with humiliating work, Ivan Severyanych, risking his own life, fled from his native place. Subsequently, he recalls it this way: “They tore me terribly cruelly, I couldn’t even get up... but that would have been nothing to me, but the last condemnation to stand on my knees and beat bags... it was already tormenting me... I just ran out of patience...” The most terrible and intolerable thing for an ordinary person is not corporal punishment, but an insult to self-esteem. out of despair, he runs away from them and goes “to the robbers.”
In “The Enchanted Wanderer”, for the first time in Leskov’s work, the theme of folk heroism is fully developed. the collective semi-fairy-tale image of Ivan Flyagin appears before us in all his greatness, nobility of his soul, fearlessness and beauty and merges with the image of the heroic people. Ivan Severyanich’s desire to go to war is the desire to suffer one for all. love for the Motherland, for God, and Christian desire save Flyagin from death during his nine years of life among the Tatars. During all this time he was never able to get used to the steppes. He says: “No, sir, I want to go home... I feel sad.” What a great feeling is contained in his simple story about loneliness in Tatar captivity: “...There is no bottom to the depths of melancholy... You look, you don’t know where, and suddenly, no matter how much a monastery or a temple appears in front of you, you remember the baptized land and cry.” From Ivan Severyanovich’s story about himself, it is clear that the most difficult of the diverse life situations he experienced were precisely those that most bound his will and doomed him to immobility.
The Orthodox faith is strong in Ivan Flyagin. In the middle of the night in captivity, he “crawled out slowly behind the headquarters... and began to pray... so pray that even the snow under his knees would melt and where the tears fell, you could see the grass in the morning.”
Flyagin is an unusually gifted person; nothing is impossible for him. The secret of his strength, invulnerability and amazing gift - to always feel joy - lies in the fact that he always acts as circumstances require. He is in harmony with the world when the world is harmonious, and he is ready to fight evil when it stands in his way.
At the end of the story, we understand that, having arrived at the monastery, Ivan Flyagin does not calm down. He foresees war and is going to go there. He says: “I really want to die for the people.” These words reflect the main quality of the Russian person - the willingness to suffer for others, to die for the Motherland. Describing Flyagin's life, Leskov makes him wander, meet different people and entire nations. Leskov claims that such beauty of the soul is characteristic only of the Russian person and only the Russian person can demonstrate it so fully and widely.
The image of Ivan Severyanovich Flyagin is the only “through” image that connects all the episodes of the story. As already noted, it has genre-forming features, because his “biography” goes back to works with strict normative schemes, namely the lives of saints and adventure novels. The author brings Ivan Severyanovich closer not only to the heroes of lives and adventure novels, but also to epic heroes. This is how the narrator describes Flyagin’s appearance: “This new companion of ours looked like he could have been 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 Vereshchegin’s wonderful painting and in the poem by Count A.K. Tolstoy.4 It seemed that he would not walk in a cassock, but would sit on his “forelock” and ride in bast shoes through the forest and lazily smell how “the dark forest smells of resin and strawberries.” Flyagin's character is multifaceted. Its main feature is the “frankness of a simple soul.” The narrator likens Flyagin to “babies,” to whom God sometimes reveals his plans, hidden from the “reasonable.” The author paraphrases the gospel sayings of Christ: “... Jesus said: “... I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes”” (Gospel of Matthew, chapter 11, verse 25). Christ allegorically calls people with a pure heart wise and reasonable.
Flyagin is distinguished by his childish naivety and simplicity. Demons in his ideas resemble a large family, in which there are both adults and mischievous demon children. He believes in the magical power of the amulet - “a tight belt from the holy brave prince Vsevolod-Gabriel from Novgorod.” Flyagin understands the experiences of tamed horses. He subtly senses the beauty of nature.
But, at the same time, the soul of the enchanted wanderer is also characterized by some callousness and limitations (from the point of view of an educated, civilized person). Ivan Severyanovich coldly beats a Tatar to death in a duel and cannot understand why the story of this torture horrifies his listeners. Ivan brutally deals with the Countess's maid's cat, who strangled his beloved pigeons. He does not consider unbaptized children from Tatar wives in Ryn-Sands to be his own and leaves without a shadow of doubt and regret.
Natural kindness coexists in Flyagin’s soul with senseless, aimless cruelty. So, he, serving as a nanny for a young child and violating the will of his father, his master, gives the child to Ivan’s tearfully begging mother and her lover, although he knows that this act will deprive him of faithful food and force him to wander again in search of food and shelter . And he, in adolescence, out of self-indulgence, whips a sleeping monk to death.
Flyagin is reckless in his daring: just like that, disinterestedly, he enters into a competition with the Tatar Savakirei, promising an officer he knows to give a prize - a horse. He completely surrenders to the passions that take possession of him, embarking on a drunken spree. Struck by the beauty and singing of the gypsy Grusha, without hesitation, he gives her the huge sum of government money entrusted to him.
Flyagin’s nature is both unshakably firm (he sacredly professes the principle: “I will not give my honor to anyone”) and willful, pliable, open to the influence of others and even suggestion. Ivan easily assimilates the Tatars’ ideas about the justification of a mortal duel with whips. Hitherto not feeling the bewitching beauty of a woman, he - as if under the influence of conversations with a degenerate gentleman-magnetizer and the eaten "magic" sugar - "mentor" - finds himself enchanted by his first meeting with Grusha.
Flyagin’s wanderings, wanderings, and peculiar “quests” carry a “worldly” overtones. Even in the monastery he performs the same service as in the world - coachman. This motive is significant: Flyagin, changing professions and services, remains himself. He begins his difficult journey as a postilion, a rider of a horse in a harness, and in old age returns to the duties of a coachman.
The service of Leskov’s hero “with horses” is not accidental; it has an implicit, hidden symbolism. Flyagin’s changeable fate is like the fast running of a horse, and the “two-stranded” hero himself, who has withstood and endured many hardships in his lifetime, resembles a strong “Bityutsky” horse. Both Flyagin’s temper and independence are, as it were, compared with the proud horse’s temper, which the “enchanted wanderer” told about in the first chapter of Leskov’s work. The taming of horses by Flyagin correlates with the stories of ancient authors (Plutarach and others) about Alexander the Great, who pacified and tamed the horse Bucephalus.
And like the hero of epics who goes out to measure his strength “in an open field,” Flyagin is correlated with open, free space: with the road (the wanderings of Ivan Severyanovich), with the steppe (ten-year life in the Tatar Ryn-sands), with lake and sea space (meeting the narrator with Flyagin on a ship sailing on Lake Ladoga, a pilgrim’s pilgrimage to Solovki). The hero wanders, moves in a wide, open space, which is not a geographical concept, but a value category. Space is a visible image of life itself, sending disasters and trials towards the hero-traveler.
In his wanderings and travels, Leskov’s character reaches the limits, the extreme points of the Russian land: he lives in the Kazakh steppe, fights against the mountaineers in the Caucasus, goes to the Solovetsky shrines on the White Sea. Flyagin finds himself on the northern, southern, and southeastern “borders” of European Russia. Ivan Severyanovich did not visit only the western border of Russia. However, Leskov’s capital may symbolically designate precisely the western point of Russian space. (Such a perception of St. Petersburg was characteristic of Russian literature of the 18th century and was recreated in Pushkin’s “The Bronze Horseman”). The spatial “scope” of Flyagin’s travels is significant: it symbolizes5 the breadth, boundlessness, and openness of the Russian people’s soul to the world.6 But the breadth of Flyagin’s nature, the “Russian hero,” is not at all equivalent to righteousness. Leskov repeatedly created in his works images of Russian righteous people, people of exceptional moral purity, noble and kind to the point of selflessness (“Odnodum”, “Immortal Golovan”, “Cadet Monastery”, etc.). However, Ivan Severyanovich Flyagin is not like that. He seems to personify the Russian folk character with all its dark and light sides and the people's view of the world.
The name Ivan Flyagin is significant. He is similar to the fairy-tale Ivan the Fool and Ivan the Tsarevich, going through various trials. During these trials, Ivan is cured and freed from his “stupidity” and moral callousness. But the moral ideals and norms of Leskov’s enchanted wanderer do not coincide with the moral principles of his civilized interlocutors and the author himself. Flyagin’s morality is a natural, “common” morality.
It is no coincidence that the patronymic of Leskov’s hero is Severyanovich (severus - in Latin: stern). The surname speaks, on the one hand, of a former penchant for drinking and carousing, on the other hand, it seems to recall the biblical image of a person as a vessel, and a righteous person as a pure vessel of God.
Flyagin’s life path partly represents atonement for his sins: the “youthful” murder of a monk, as well as the murder of Grushenka, abandoned by her lover-prince, committed at her request. The dark, egoistic, “animal” force characteristic of Ivan in his youth gradually becomes enlightened and filled with moral self-awareness. In his declining years, Ivan Severyanovich is ready to “die for the people,” for others. But the enchanted wanderer still does not renounce many actions that are reprehensible for educated, “civilized” listeners, not finding anything bad in them.
This is not only limited, but also the integrity of the character of the protagonist, devoid of contradictions, internal struggle and introspection,7 which, like the motive of the predetermination of his fate, brings Leskov’s story closer to the classical, ancient heroic epic. B.S. Dykhanova characterizes Flyagin’s ideas about his fate in the following way: “According to the hero’s conviction, his destiny is that he is a son “prayed” and “promised”, he is obliged to devote his life to serving God, and the monastery should, it would seem, be perceived as the inevitable end of the road , finding a true calling. Listeners repeatedly ask the question of whether predestination has been fulfilled or not, but each time Flyagin avoids a direct answer.
“Why are you saying this... as if you’re not really saying it?
- - Yes, because how can I really say it when I can’t even embrace all my vast flowing vitality?
- - What is this from?
- “Because, sir, I did a lot of things not even of my own free will.”
Despite the apparent inconsistency of Flyagin’s answers, he is strikingly accurate here. “The audacity of calling” is inseparable from one’s own will, one’s own choice, and the interaction of a person’s will with life circumstances independent of it gives rise to that living contradiction, which can only be explained by preserving it. In order to understand what his calling is, Flyagin has to tell his life “from the very beginning.”8 Flyagin’s life is bizarre, “mosaic”, it seems to fall apart into several independent “biographies”: the hero changes his occupation many times, finally, he is twice deprived of his own name (by becoming a soldier instead of a peasant recruit, then by taking monasticism). Ivan Severyanovich can imagine the unity, the integrity of his life, only by recounting it all, from his very birth. This predetermination of the hero’s fate, in subordination and “bewitchment” by some force ruling over him, “not by his own will”, which Flyagin is driven by, is the meaning of the title of the story.
Leskov's story, published in 1873, presents the unusual image of Ivan Flyagin, a Russian wanderer, whose life story is given by himself in the manner of an oral folk tale in a colloquial but surprisingly poetic language.
At the same time, the presentation of the events of the hero’s life, his biography, resembles the canons of the hagiography genre.
The image and characteristics of Ivan Flyagin in the story “The Enchanted Wanderer”
In the work, the image of the main character, although outwardly unpretentious and simple, is ambiguous and complex. The author, studying the deep layers of the Russian soul, seeks holiness in the actions of a sinner, shows an impatient lover of truth who makes many mistakes, but, suffering and comprehending what he has done, comes to the path of repentance and true faith.
Key words that reveal the image of Ivan Flyagin: a deeply religious person, a selfless and simple-minded nature, independence and openness, self-esteem, exceptional physical and spiritual strength, an expert in his field.
Portrait, characteristics and description of the main character
He was remarkable in appearance: heroic in stature, dark-skinned, with thick, curly hair streaked with gray, a gray mustache curled like a hussar, dressed in monastic robes. The author compares his appearance with the simple-minded, kind Russian hero Ilya Muromets from Vereshchagin’s painting. The hero was in his fifty-third year, and in the world his name was Ivan Severyanovich Flyagin.
Ivan's life path
We first meet the hero on a ship sailing along Lake Ladoga to Valaam. Talking with fellow travelers, he tells the story of his difficult life. The brief but frank confession of this handsome monk captivates the listeners.
By origin, the hero belonged to the serf rank, his mother died early, and his father served as a coachman at the stable, where the boy was assigned. Once he saved the count's family from death, risking his life. Miraculously surviving, the boy asks for a harmonica as a reward.
Once, for fun, Ivan whipped a monk who was dozing off in a cart so that he wouldn’t block the road, and he fell asleep under the wheels and died. This monk appeared to him in a dream and announced to Ivan that for his mother he was not only a long-awaited and prayed-for son, but also promised to God, therefore he needed to go to a monastery.
All his life this prophecy haunted him in unexpected situations. More than once he looked into the eyes of death, but neither earth nor water took him.
For mocking a cat that ate his pigeons, he was given a severe punishment: to crush stones for garden paths. Unable to bear the bullying and hardships, he decides to commit suicide. But a gypsy saves his life by persuading him to steal horses and leave with him to live a free life. And Ivan decided to do this, it was so painful for him. The gypsy deceived and cheated, and Ivan, having straightened out false documents for his pectoral cross, goes into the service of a nanny for a master whose wife has abandoned him.
There the hero became attached to the girl, fed her goat's milk, and, on the doctor's advice, began to carry her to the shore of the estuary and bury her sore legs in the sand. The inconsolable mother found the child, and, telling Ivan her story, began to beg him to give her her daughter. But Ivan was relentless, reproaching her for violating her Christian duty. When her partner offers the hero a thousand rubles, he, saying that he never sold himself, spits on the money with disgust, throws it at the soldier’s feet and fights with him. But, seeing the owner running with a pistol, he himself gives up the child and runs away with the one he had just beaten.
Left without documents and money, he again finds himself in trouble. At the horse auction he sees how the Tatars fight for horses, hitting each other with whips, and he also wants to try his hand. In a duel for a horse that was his for only a minute, he survived, but his opponent dies. The Tatars hide him and take him away with them, saving him from the police. So Flyagin is captured by the Gentiles, but a plan to escape is brewing in his mind and one day he manages to carry out his plans.
Returning to his homeland, he helps men buy horses at fairs. And then, thanks to rumor, the prince takes him into his service. Life has come calm and well-fed, only sometimes out of melancholy he breaks into sprees. And in the last exit, fate brings him together with the gypsy Grushenka, who conquered him, and Flyagin, as if spellbound, threw all the money he had at her feet. The prince, having learned about Pear, being carried away by her beauty and singing, brings her to the estate.
Ivan sincerely became attached to this extraordinary girl and looked after her. But when the impoverished prince decided to leave his annoying beloved for the sake of a profitable marriage, Ivan, pitying Grusha, distraught with grief and jealousy, who begged to be saved from her shameful fate, pushes her off a cliff into the river.
Tormented by what he had done, seeking his own destruction, he leaves instead of another recruit to fight in the Caucasus, where he stayed for more than fifteen years. For faithful service and courage he was awarded the Cross of St. George and awarded the rank of officer. Having received a letter of recommendation from the colonel, he gets a job in the capital as a clerk at the address desk, but the work is not for him: boring, without money. But they no longer hire him as a coachman; his noble position does not allow his riders to scold or hit him. He settled down in a booth, where they did not disdain his nobility, to play a demon. But he didn’t stay there either; he got into a fight, protecting the young actress from harassment.
Again, left without shelter and food, he decided to go to the monastery. Having taken the name Ishmael, he fulfilled his obedience in the monastery stable, which he was very pleased with, because he did not need to attend all the services in the church. But his believing soul toils that it is not for him to serve in the temple, he cannot even light a candle properly, he will drop the entire candlestick. And he also killed a cow, accidentally mistaking him for a demon.
More than once he accepted punishment for his negligence. And he began to prophesy war in order to stand up for the fatherland with faith. Tired of this wonderful monk, the abbot sends him on a pilgrimage to Solovki. On his way to a pilgrimage, the enchanted wanderer meets his grateful listeners, to whom he told about the stages of his life’s journey.
Professions in the life of Ivan Flyagin
As a child, a boy is assigned to be a horseman to help control six horses, sitting on one of the first ones. After escaping from the count's estate with the gypsies, she serves as a nanny. In captivity among the Tatars he treats people and horses. Returning from captivity, he helps choose horses at fairs, then works as a horseman in the service of the prince.
After Grushenka’s death, he leaves for the Caucasus under an assumed name, where he serves as a soldier for fifteen years and is promoted to officer for his bravery. Returning from the war, he gets a job as a clerk in an address office. I tried to become a coachman, but they didn’t take me because of my officer rank. Due to lack of money, he becomes an actor, but is kicked out for fighting. And then he goes to the monastery.
Why is Flyagin called a wanderer?
Ivan wandered all his life; he never had the opportunity to lead a sedentary life, find a family and a home.
He is an “inspired vagabond” with an infant soul, whom no one is chasing, he himself runs in search of happiness.
But all his wanderings were aimless; only by going to a monastery did he become a pilgrim, going on pilgrimages to holy places.
What ridiculous things does Flyagin do?
All his actions are dictated by spiritual impulses. Without thinking, he often does ridiculous things. Then he runs away with the officer with whom he first fought, without giving up the child. Then, when he imagines demons, he throws off candles in the church, and accidentally kills a cow in his sleep.
How long did Flyagin spend in captivity?
Ivan falls into a long ten-year captivity among the steppe nomads-Tatars. To prevent him from running away, horse bristles are sewn into his cut heels, thus making him crippled. But they call him a friend and give him wives to look after him.
But he toils that he is not married, that his children are unbaptized, and is eager to return to his homeland. Having seized the moment when only old people, women and children remained on the migration, he runs away.
Can Ivan Flyagin be called a righteous man?
Ivan himself considers himself a terrible sinner and repents for the lives he ruined. But the deaths he caused were without malicious intent: the monk died accidentally, due to his own negligence, the Tatar died in a fair fight, Grushenka was saved from a terrible fate at her request. Will repentance be given to the prince who crippled other people's destinies, to Grushenka's father who sold his daughter, to the Tatars who killed the missionaries?
Ivan is strong in his faith in moral principles, but he is not given Christian humility, and it is difficult to put up with injustice. He is fascinated by life, but having resisted temptations and endured the trials of fate, he finds peace in righteous faith and service. By atoning for his sins, he becomes righteous.
Quote from Flyagin
