The author of the present article deals with the role of the language in the works of the Russian 19th-century prose writer Nikolay Semyonovich Leskov (1831-1895). He is surprisingly one of the triangle of the world novelists of the so-called Golden Age of Russian classical literature formed by Leo Tolstoj and Fyodor Dostoevsky His prose is based on the narrative model of the so-called skaz, i .e. the first-person narration containing a highly individualised language characterizing its bearer. The hierarchy of the language, narration, genre and culture is symbolised by his detailed, non-causal, juxtapositional vision of the world, the axiological ambivalence of human lives.