The creative history of the N. S. Leskov's novel “The evildoer of Askalon”: the sources, genesis and poetics

The article presents author’s observations of the creative history of N. S. Leskov’s novel “The Evildoer of Askalon”. It has been established that the starting point for writing the story was not Prologue (1642-1643), but an outline in the writer’s notebook made by an unidentified person. In the process of fixing the unknown person kept its concept and plot. Leskov refreshed the fixed story in 1886-1887. On this basis the writer created the 1st edition and included it in the series of The Legendary characters. Following the concept and plot of the borrowed story Leskov edited it. In the center of author’s attention were the images of “some woman” (her appearance became more vital, it emphasized compassion, humility, chastity) and of “a robber” (the author added the situation of his inner transformation using archaisms instead of modern vocabulary). Leskov changed the images order to humanize the Gospel. The writer returned to the edited source in 1888 and produced the 2nd edition titled “The Evildoer of Askalon”. Leskov rewrote the 1st edition into a moral and philosophical novel. The story was to answer the question “what is a good life?”. Such interpretation of the original text caused a further adjustment of images of “some woman”, “merchant”, “great men”, “robber” (endowing the characters with names and biographies). The story was published in 1889 (“Russian idea” № 11 - the 1st version of the 2nd edition). The writer made only minor changes that did not violate the general ideological concept of the work. In 1890 Leskov included the novel (the 2nd version of the 2nd edition) in the Collected edition (SPb., 1890. Vol. 10) with minor stylistic corrections.