«Современные записки» о «неканонизированном» писателе Н.С. Лескове

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to answer the questions: how the publications of the magazine Current Notes considered the work of N. S. Leskov and why his name appeared on the pages of this magazine mainly "in special cases". Current Notes magazine was published from 1920 to 1940 in Paris, the city that became the capital of Russia’s culture in the period of "national dispersal". The readers and authors of the magazine recognized its unique role as "the guardian of legacy" and "treasure house of Russian culture". The magazine included several sections related to the issues of literature, arts, philosophy, economy, political and social life, there were also permanent columns titled Culture and life, Literary criticism and bibliography. The numerous publications were devoted to the history of Russian classical literature, with the main focus on Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky. However, the editorial board considered Current Notes as "general literary political" rather than "special historical literary" magazine. For this reason, the name of Nikolai Leskov appeared in the materials occasionally mostly "in special cases". The author of the novel The Cathedral Folk (Soboriane) is mentioned in the work of D. I. Chizhevsky, in some reviews of academic studies and books, articles on the new editions of the classical novelists. The special jubilee publications in the magazine on the occasion of the hundredth birthday of Nikolai Leskov written by P. M. Pilsky. The analysis of the content of the mentioned materials is the subject of this article.