Anna Andreevna Kryukova,
Postgraduate Student, Syktyvkar State University named after Pitirim Sorokin, Syktyvkar, Russia, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
“Theodora’s Walking Through the Air Ordeals” as Part of the Pechora Lists of the “Life of Basil the New”
DOI: 10.31518/2618-9100-2023-2-11
The article is devoted to “Theodora’s Walking through the air ordeals”, one of the eschatological visions read as part of the unique monument of medieval literature “The Life of Basil the New”. We have attracted four Pechora lists to the study. In three of them, “Theodora’s Walk” is read as part of the full text of the “Life” (IRLI, UC 180, IRLI, UC n. 65 and NB SSU named after Pitirim Sorokin, UC p. 33), and in one – IRLI, UC 22 – as an independent work. This last list is of particular value, since it was created by the famous Pechora scribe I.S. Myandin. Analysis of the content and composition of “Theodora’s Walk” showed that this vision refers to the works of “minor” eschatology, has a clear structure and plot, which can be attributed to traditional literary plots containing all the necessary elements. Textual analysis has shown that in the full-text lists “Theodora’s Walk” contains the same number of motifs that coincide in these lists in content, but have a number of textual differences. At the same time, the lists of UC 180 and UC n. 65 are closer to each other in the text, and the list of UC p. 33 differs from them, from which we can conclude that UC 180 and UC n. 65 probably go back to one common protograph, and UC p. 33 to another. Comparison of the “Theodora’s Walk” from the full-text Pechora lists with the texts of the first and second Russian editions of the “Life of Basil the New” showed that they all belong to the second Russian edition, quite different from the first Russian edition in content and text. At the same time, the lists of UC 180 and UC n. 65 probably go back to the protograph, which in text is close to the version of the Russian edition reflected in the list of the RSL, No. 1782 (XVII century), and the list of UC p. 33 – to the protograph, a close variant reflected in the list of the RNB, C.II.8, No. 36 (1794). The list of IRLI, UC 22, created by I.S. Myandin, differs significantly from other Pechora lists of “Walking” at the level of content: of the 196 motives identified during the analysis of the available lists, only 37 are read in it. At the same time, the text of the preserved motifs has been significantly reduced. In addition, some compositional permutations are found in the list of UC 22. These observations testify to the purposeful editorial work of I.S. Myandin on the text of the “Walking”, which allows us to consider the list of UC 22 as a special Myandin edition of the “Walking of Theodora”. The textual features of the Myandin list indicate that it is closest to the list of the NB SSU, UC p. 33, however, the presence of readings that bring it closer to the other two Pechora lists does not allow us to consider UC p. 33 as the direct protograph of the Myandinsky edition. The establishment of the protographs of all four Pechora lists is the further purpose of our study.
Publishing: 28/02/2023
The article has been received by the editor on 13.01.2023
How to cite: Kryukova A.A. “Theodora’s Walking Through the Air Ordeals” as Part of the Pechora Lists of the “Life of Basil the New” // Historical Courier, 2023, No. 2 (28), pp. 129–141. [Available online: http://istkurier.ru/data/2023/ISTKURIER-2023-2-11.pdf]
Links: Issue 2 2023
Keywords: “Theodora’s walk”; Pechora lists; I.S. Myandin; vision; life