The Linguo-Cultural Space of N. S. Leskov Artistic World

Aim. To consider the problem of the linguacultural approach to the work of N. S. Leskov as a writer of “blameless conscience.” An analysis of Leskov’s unique “characters” is conducted in terms of archetype, stereotype, and symbol within the context of the linguo-axiological field of scholarship.

Methodology. The article utilized methods of linguacultural analysis, componential semantic analysis, linguo-cognitive analysis, linguo-stylistic analysis of the speech canvas of a prose text, pragma-stylistic analysis of the word-sign, and interpretive analysis.

Results. The writer’s creative worldview is defined through the prism of their value system, reflected by axiologemes which are concepts of a linguo-cultureme. This linguo-cultureme constructs a paradoxical picture of the character’s personality within the space of Leskov’s fictional world (Musk Ox (Vasily Bogoslovsky) and Odnodum (Alexander Ryzhov)). The paradigm of axiological signs, that are pragmemes and connotationsms, is unified by the object of evaluation, that is the story’s character, and is accompanied by an evaluation format that is embodied by attributive-predicative characteristics. Based on Leskov’s position that “man lives by words,” the article’s verbal means is the “voice” of the character, the narrator, and members of society. The polyphony of these “voices” reflects cultural “polyphony” and thus constructs the axiological “framework” of the “Leskov hero,” who bears the enigma of a “positive” character despite the negative actions depicted by the author. This enigma is resolved by a unique linguacultural portrait of the characters, reflecting the spiritual quest of an ethnic group in its archetypal, symbolic, and stereotypical nature. The meaning of “persistent” and “obstinate” seeker, searching for a “path,” suffering from “faith” and “unbelief,” is unusual for the chosen names (Musk Ox and Odnodum), and this makes it possible to see a very unordinary path of “hatred” toward the rich and the inept agitation of the poor. Filled with multilayered meaning, axiological culturemes (like blazhnoi (‘fool’), chudak (‘eccentric’), etc.) not only allow us to appreciate the originality and strangeness of the “bedonosetc” (‘poor bearer’) and “obnishevanetc” (‘impoverished’) (we use these precedents for characterization) but also to see the character’s linguistic worldview, in which both the revolutionary path and the revolution itself are “read” in the semantic structure of words within the linguistic genius of the Russian writer.

Research implications. The specificity of linguistic images of personality that define its archetype, stereotype, and symbol, as well as its expressive language as the cultural code of the nation and its great writer as a “magician” of language was described through the drawing on the theory of linguo-culture and its unit, that is linguo-cultureme, in an axiological context, and a componential semantic analysis of words, more precisely the “voices” of characters in their polyphonic reality, and a modern linguostylistic approach to text. An attempt is made to provide a contemporary linguo-cultural interpretation of N. S. Leskov’s artistic world.

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