The Tale of Cross-eyed Lefty from Tula and the Steel Flea


"The Tale of Cross-eyed Lefty from Tula and the Steel Flea", The Tale of the Crosseyed Lefthander from Tula and the Steel Flea or simply Levsha, variously translated as The Lefthander, Lefty, The Steel Flea or The Left-handed Craftsman is a well-known 1881 skaz (story) by Nikolai Leskov. Styled as a folk tale, it tells a story of a left-handed weapons craftsman from Tula who outperformed his English colleagues by providing a clockwork steel flea they'd made with horseshoes and inscriptions on them.

Synopsis

Tsar Alexander I of Russia, while visiting England with his servant the Cossack Platov, is shown a variety of modern inventions. Platov keeps insisting that things in Russia are much better, until they are shown a small mechanical flea. After his ascension the next tsar, Nicolas I orders Platov to find someone to outperform the English who had created the clockwork steel flea. Platov travels to Tula to find someone to better the English invention. Three gunsmiths agree to do the work and barricade themselves in a workshop. Villagers try to get them to come out in various ways, but no one can get them to come out. When Platov arrives to check on their progress, he has some Cossacks try to open the workshop. They succeed in getting the roof to come off, but the crowd is disgusted when the trapped smell of body odor and metal work comes out of the workshop. The gunsmiths hand Platov the same flea he gave them and he curses them, believing that they have done absolutely nothing. He ends up dragging Lefty with him in order to have someone to answer for the failure.
The flea is given to the czar, to whom Lefty explains that he needs to look closer and closer at the flea to see what they have achieved. He winds it up and finds that it doesn't move. He discovers that, without any microscopes, Lefty and his accomplices managed to put appropriately sized horseshoes on the flea, which amazes the Tsar and the English. Lefty then gets an invitation and travels to England to study the English way of life and technical accomplishments. The English hosts try to talk him into staying in England, but he feels homesick and returns to Russia at the earliest opportunity. On the way back, he engages in a drinking duel with an English sailor, arriving in Saint Petersburg. The sailor is treated well, but the authorities finding no identification on Lefty and believing him to be a common drunkard, send him off to die in a hospital for unknowns.
The sailor, after sobering up, decides to find his new friend, and with the aid of Platov they locate him. While dying, he tells the doctor to tell the Emperor to stop having his soldiers clean their muskets with crushed brick. The message never reaches the Emperor, however, because the war minister tells the doctor to mind his own business. Leskov comments that the Crimean War might have turned out differently if the message had been delivered. The story ends with Leskov commenting on the replacement of good, hard-earned labor and creativity with machines.

Commentary

In his letter to the editor, Leskov mentioned that critics alleged that the story is a retelling of an "old and well-known legend". Leskov retorted that there was nothing of the kind, and the only thing known is a quip "The English made a flea of steel, and our Tula people shod it and sent it back to them".
The language of the story is unique; Leskov coined many folk-flavored neologisms and colloquialisms. Many of them have become common sayings and proverbs.
Both Slavophiles and Westernizers used the story in support of their view.
Leskov himself wrote that the story of Levsha may signify amazing Russian ingenuity and craftsmanship, but it also exposes the Russian society which neglects most talented Russian people, nevertheless Levsha is a patriot and wants to return home, although he sees that in England smart and laborious people live better.

Cultural influence

In 1952, a ballet adaption was developed by Boris Alexandrovich Alexandrov and P. F. Abolimov. In order to maximize the ballet's patriotic message, the story was changed so that the flea keeps its leap and Lefty survives to return home to a love interest. The libretto was thought clumsy by the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party, however, and the ballet was only ever staged twice, in 1954 and 1976.
In 1964, Soviet director Ivan Ivanov-Vano made an animated 42-minute-long film called Lefty that was based on the story.
A live-action film, The Left-Hander, was made in 1986. This version is played several times a day at the Museum of Jurassic Technology.
The book describes a microscope which can magnify up to five million times, similar to actual microscopes that are now being used in nanotechnology. For this reason it is featured in a Nature Physics article from 2007.
In the Russian language, the hero's nickname, Levsha, has become a reference to an exceptionally skilled common-folk craftsman, and the expression "to shoe a flea" has become an idiomatic phrase signifying a craftsman's feat.

Translations into English