SOURCE: Introduction to Nikolai Leskov: Selected Tales, translated by David Magarshack, Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1961, pp. vii-xiii.

In the following introduction to a volume of Leskov's stories, Pritchett discusses Leskov's style, his characters' psychological complexity, and some recurring elements in his tales, which Pritchett identifies as the rootedness of the Russian character, the half-dream or vision, and animal symbolism.

The sound of the lash has always been heard in Russian literary criticism, the lash of the political fanatic or the intemperate doctrinaire. This sound was as common in Tsarist Russia as it is in the Soviet Union and one can only conclude that the Russians find this savagery stimulating, like a birching after the bath. But there is more than one instance in which the lash has stultified and has blinded judgment. A notorious instance is the ostracism of Leskov by Russian critics during his lifetime. He was...