Now, when everyone frantically rushed to find new ideals instead of destroyed ones, the thoughts and ideas of N. Leskov, whose works, by and large, have not yet reached the "mass" reader, suddenly turned out to be relevant.

Leskov pages are not so easy to overcome, not only because of their uneven style, but also because we, readers, often just "stumble" on "strange" words. As much as the novel "Lefty" by I. S. Leskov has become a textbook, there are also many mysteries lurking here. This is a canopy, and a windmill, and a waterproof, and much,much more. Let's focus on gutta-percha pills, which in the story "use" the "English half-skipper" after the end of his bet (who will drink more) with a Left-handed person: "The doctor ordered him to put him in a warm bath with him, and the apothecary immediately rolled up a gutta-percha pill and put it in his mouth himself, and then both of them took it together and put it on the table." the feather bed and top were covered with a fur coat and left to sweat...

And the English half-skipper got up at the same time the next day, swallowed another gutta-percha pill, ate a chicken and a lynx for a light breakfast, washed it down with erfix, and said:

"Where is my Russian comrade?" I'm going to look for him."

The oddity of this treatment lies in the fact that gutta-percha pills did not exist in nature at all. Gutta-percha, analogs of our rubber, was used to make water hoses, pipes, pumps, and insulation for underwater cables, since the main drawback is that

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gutta-percha was that in the air it quickly dried out and then lost its properties. In medicine, gutta-percha was used for various surgical instruments (probes, catheters) and dental fillings. However, the composition of medicines, and even more so pills, gutta-percha was not included. Therefore, at first glance, it seems that N. S. Leskov in" Lefty " mythical gutta-percha pills emphasizes the futility of treatment.

But the fact is that the healer with a podlekarem treat binge drinking podshkipera, not podshkipera! In the language of the XIX century, there was not only the word podshipper in the meaning of "assistant skipper", but also half-skipper:

"- Beer shto whether? And? Semyon Andreevich asked.

"What's beer?" trash. It won't do to gargle in the morning, " answered Gvozdikov.

"Well, what is it?" What do you have there?" "What is it?" he asked, turning to the kisser.

He turned half-turned to the shelves and, looking at them, began to speak:

- Caraway, wormwood, sweet, French, liqueur, balsam.

"Give me balzana!"

"How much?"

- Give it to everyone.

"Give me half a skipper!" Gvozdikov demanded. The kisser took off the half-damask, shook it, looked at the light, and set it down on the counter.:

"Aniska!"

The word polshkipper in the above excerpt from the story "In the Tarantass" (1862) is clearly used as slang in the sense of "polshtof". But this value allows you to take a fresh look at the textbook text of the story "Lefty": half - skipper is not only the skipper's assistant, but also a symbol of drunkenness in the form of a half-bottle bottle.

If you look at the text from this point of view, it turns out that Lefty on the ship argued not just with the assistant skipper, but with the devil himself, who embodies one of the vices of humanity - drunkenness. Such a combination of meanings involuntarily reminds of the evil genie from the bottle, which can only be locked with a good cork. And half a skipper, like an ordinary wine bottle that is plugged with a cork, is stopped by gutta-percha pills, which here can be understood as a means to stop drunkenness.

However, it is confusing that the half-skipper uses pills twice, while the bottles are corked once. However, as explained by knowledgeable people, if you drink the day before, then in the morning it is necessary to get drunk, hence the idea of a binary action.

Kurgan

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