The Old Russian “Tale about a Reveller” as Interpreted by Old Believer Polemicists

Abstract

‘Tale about a Reveller’ is a relic of Old Russian parodic literature based upon a Western European migrant theme. It deals with a sinner who was able to prove that he had as good a right to be in paradise as the Apostles or the biblical Kings. In the 1860s, the tale drew attention of the Popovtsy Old Believers (those who kept church hierarchy) of the Belokrinitsa consent in the course of polemics with Bespopovtsy Old Believers (who rejected priests and churches). The tale belonged to those eschatological and etiological legends in which the Popovtsy saw the very essence of Bespopovtsy’s teachings about Antichrist, which they refuted. Examination of these works was undertaken by the writers of the Belokrinitsa consent: Ilarion Kabanov in 1862 and Mikhail Brilliantov in 1903. The paper shows how the meaning of the literary work was recoded in the interpretation of the Old Believer polemicists. In the framework of completely different ideological and aesthetic approaches, the comic short story was read as a blasphemous heretical text.