Russian knight, beaten out in battle": character of clergyman in N.S. Leskov's novel-chronicle The Cathedral Clergy in the context of English literature traditions (George Eliot's Scenes of Clerical Life)

The subject of this paper is the question about a similar conception of the character of a clergyman in N.S. Leskov's novel-chronicle The Cathedral Clergy (1872) and George Eliot's cycle of short novels Scenes of Clerical Life (1857). Ideological-aesthetic crossings and Leskov's interest in the creative representation of clerical life allow supposing that the writer could know Eliot's short novels, which were separately published in Russian in the journals Sovremennik ("The Contemporary") and Russkiy Vestnik ("The Russian Herald") in 1860. The mentions of George Eliot's name in Leskov's essays and letters confirm it. The author of the research believes that the importance of the question about the English tradition in The Cathedral Clergy is determined, first of all, by the figure of the main character of the novel-chronicle. It is not just that Leskov was the first Russian writer who placed the character of a clergyman in the centre of an epic thing; his innovation was that this particular character became the focus of spirituality and heroic potential in society for Leskov. The writer sees a simple provincial priest as the main guard of the ideals life of Russian people and Russian state is based on. That is exactly why the motive of fighting, which gets through the whole narrative, is closely connected with the key characters of The Cathedral Clergy, most of all with the character of Saveliy Tuberozov. Leskov could easily find a similar conception in George Eliot's Scenes of Clerical Life: the writer describes numerous hardships of ordinary clergymen's life together with characters' sincere eagerness to improve concerns of the Church and life of their parish, inspire people with high moral values. Incomprehension and dislike from congregation, difficult relations with Church authorities, private troubles indicate that Eliot also successively heroizes a simple provincial priest and makes him a fighter for high ideals. The author of the paper believes that the theme of fighting, which is the most evident in the first and third parts of the cycle, could influence the formation of the conception of a clergyman-fighter, realized in The Cathedral Clergy. Comparative-typological analysis of the works confirms it: both in Eliot's Scenes and in Leskov's novel-chronicle clergymen have to resist hostile circumstances and at the cost of the permanent asperities and grave losses fight for saving what is valuable for them: family and loved ones, faith and ideals, their souls and, in the end, homeland. The typological comparison of The Cathedral Clergy with Scenes of Clerical Life indicates a presence of similar sociocultural characteristics in the life of clergy in Russia and the UK and common problems which the two writers-contemporaries, who considerably influenced the national and European literature, took interest in at that period.

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