The Sense of Touch in Nicholai Leskov’s Literary Representations

Abstract

The aim of this article is to present the sense of touch in the world depicted in selected prose texts of the Russian realist writer Nikolai Leskov, as well as to determine the poetics representative of their hapticism. The author concludes that the tactile sensations described, both active – when Leskov’s characters become the initiators of the haptic – and passive – when the characters are themselves touched – allow the conclusion to be drawn that haptic cognition in each of Leskov’s analysed texts is deeply embedded in the poetics of realism, but that the inclusion of cultural contexts, both folk-mythological and religious, reveals their close association with romantic poetics. In the realm of the description of the tactile sphere of his characters, the writer makes a smooth transition to spirituality, magic and mysticism, combining elements of folk genres with hagiographic literature. Leskov’s presentation of the sense of touch shows the need for the coexistence and balance (in man) of both material haptic cognition and haptic “spiritual” cognition. Also of significance is the interpretation of the hapticism of the main characters by the environment, which reveals the diverse optics of Russian society and becomes an additional element of its characteristics.