The Amazon (novella)
| Author | Nikolai Leskov |
|---|---|
| Original title | Воительница |
| Country | Russia |
| Language | Russian |
| Publisher | Otechestvennye zapiski |
Publication date | 1866 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback & Hardback) |
| Preceded by | Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (1865) |
| Followed by | Old Years in Plodomasovo (1869) |
The Amazon (Вои′тельница; also, The Warrior Woman) is a short novel by Nikolai Leskov, first published in the April (vol.1; No.7) 1866 issue of Otechestvennye zapiski, with a dedication to the painter Mikhaylo Mikeshin whom the author was friends at the time. It featured in Novelets, Sketches and Stories by M.Stebnitsky (vol. 1, 1967) and later The Complete Leskov (1889), in slightly different version. The epigraph - "The whole of my life has been a set of lessons, of which my death is but another one" - comes from lyrical drama Lucius (Люций) by Apollon Maykov (Seneka's words in part 1 of it).[1]
Synopsis
Domna Platonovna, a forceful and industrious woman who seems to be in contact with half of Saint Petersburgh, is in the state of permanent war with the outside world. Supplying people with laces (the major item of her trade) but also with all kinds of services (like setting marriages, not to speak of less formal liaisons) what she gets in return is coarse ingratitude from all quarters. At least that's how she sees it. To illustrate how badly people treat her, she tells the narrator the story of Lekanida Petrovna, a beautiful and sensitive woman who, having left her provincial husband, came to the capital hoping to find her happiness here, and who has been forced into prostitution by none other than Domna Platonovna herself.[2]
The narrator is baffled: the Woman Warrior is by no means vile, she's just misguided, lacking basic ideas about what's right and wrong. Intrigued by whatever circumstances might have turned a human being (she once apparently must have been) into a "fat-hearted" creature full of self-esteem yet so very pathetic, he tries to draw from her some kind of confession, but stories she tells him about her past are comically bizarre and explain little. Some things are for certain, though: the meaning of the word "love" is totally foreign to her. Her only moral defect, as far as she is concerned, is exceptionally sound sleep, and the only sin she's ever committed was inadvertently swapping husbands with her kuma (Russian: godmother) - for which again, her sleeping habits were to blame.
Five years later the narrator, visiting a hospital, recognizes Domna Platonovna in a shabby-looking nurse. She is out of her "business" and on the brink of madness. Now an old woman, she's fallen in love with a 21-year old man (currently in jail for some petty crime) and has given him everything she's ever owned. The whole of the next month she spends praying, asking God to relieve her from what this horrible disease, "love"; then dies - of no particular illness, just from what looks like "life force extinction." Before her death she bequeaths the narrator two things she's been left with - her pillow and a can of jam - to be sent to the one she loved, who still happens to be in jail.[2]
References
- ↑ Bukhstab, I. The Works by N.S> Leskov in 6 volumes. Pravda Publishers, Moscow, 1973. Commentaries. Vol. I. P. 428.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 leskov, Nikolai (1973). "The Amazon". Novellas and Shot Stories. Khudozhestvennaya Literatura. Retrieved 2012-03-01.
External links
- Воительница. The original Russian text.
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