Nikolai Leskov’s Eccentric Wanderers and the Tradition of Religious Wandering in Russia

Abstract

The motif of travel has always been popular, and the metaphor of life as a path remains extremely powerful. Both seem to be especially important within Christian culture because of the image of Christ the Wanderer, who “has no place to lay his head”, an image that influenced the growing popularity of pilgrimages and religiously motivated wandering. The latter became particularly widespread in Russian culture and resulted in numerous representations of wandering people in Russian art and literature. In my article, I focus on literary representations of wanderers in the oeuvre of Nikolai Leskov, whose works are abundant with these types of characters. I argue that the writer portrays his wanderers as ambivalent eccentrics who combine elements characteristic of diverse types of travelers, both religious and secular. To prove my hypothesis, I combine traditional literary analysis of Leskov’s texts with the examination of cultural and religious practices of Russian wandering. As I demonstrate, the complexity and multifacetedness of the writer’s wanderers correspond with Russian reality, where the boundary between pilgrims and vagrants was also blurred.

1. Introduction

Travels, pilgrimages, journeys, voyages, and expeditions have always been extremely popular literary motifs, and the metaphor of life as a path remains one of the most powerful. The interconnection of moving in space and in time found its expression in the chronotope of the road, proposed by Mikhail Bakhtin in his essay “Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the Novel”, in which he called the concept of “the road”, one of the most important configurations of time and space, present in almost all literary works (Bakhtin 1981, p. 98). The road “is a particularly good place for random encounters” (Bakhtin 1981, p. 243), where spatial and temporal paths of various people intersect; it is also a metaphor for the hero’s life course and the course of his soul that approaches God or moves away from him (Bakhtin 1981, p. 244).

The idea of a man as homo viator and the concept of one’s life perceived in terms of constant journey, or pilgrimage, although present in culture from ancient times, became especially popular in the Christian world in the Middle Ages, together with the growing popularity of pilgrimages. This image was rooted in the Bible, more precisely in the Epistle to Hebrews, where the author characterizes Christians as those who “do not have an enduring city” in this world but are in the constant expectation of “the city that is to come” (Heb. 13:14). The first descriptions of Christian pilgrimages date back to the 4th century, and the destination for these pilgrimages was the Holy Land; later, Rome and Santiago de Compostela joined as destinations representing the most important spiritual centers of the medieval West.

However, as Maribel Dietz demonstrates, during Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, before the era of pilgrimages, other kinds of religious itinerancy were more common among Christians (Dietz 2005, p. 2). Of particular note is wandering, which, unlike pilgrimage, consisted of traveling without any geographical destination. Wanderers were just devoted to being in movement, and the road itself was their aim, as a means for spiritual search and development. The motives behind leaving one’s home and choosing a life of movement could be diverse—escape from the mundane and social pressures, a wish to imitate Christ as the Wanderer who “has no place to lay his head” (Luke 9:58), or an expression of the idea of homelessness as an intrinsic feature of every Christian. Traveling also mirrored the wanderer’s internal journey towards God and his spiritual progress (Dietz 2005, pp. 2–3).

The tradition of pilgrimage was adopted in Kievan Rus’ soon after Christianization in 988, and numerous pilgrims traveled to Jerusalem despite the dangers and longevity of the journey. Very often, on the way to the Holy Land, they stopped in Constantinople and at Mount Athos; thus, these locations became other important destinations for medieval Orthodox pilgrimages (Nazarenko and Guminskii 2019). However, while pilgrimages remained an important tradition within Russian Orthodoxy, religiously motivated wandering became even more popular, to the extent that some researchers claim it typical for Russian piety (Lassan 2008; Dorofeev 2023).

Consequently, the image of a wanderer is one of the most common images in Russian culture and literature. It has frequently been discussed by scholars who focus on diverse aspects of Russian wandering. In fact, this phenomenon began to attract the attention of Russian ethnographers in the second half of the 19th century, with works by Izmail Sreznevskii (Sreznevskii 1862), Aleksandr Veselovskii (Veselovskii 1872), Sergei Maksimov (Maksimov 1877), and many others. Their research interest focused mainly on diverse categories of wandering beggars and tradesmen, exploring their daily lives, secret languages, songs, and customs. In recent scholarship, various types of spiritual journeys are analyzed in historical (Kornilov 1995) as well as ethnographic and anthropological works, such as those by Marina Gromyko and Aleksandr Buganov (Gromyko and Buganov 2000, pp. 130–56), Tatiana Shchepanskaia (Shchepanskaia 2003), or Tatiana Bernshtam (Bernshtam 2005, pp. 311–52). Other researchers, such as Sergei Il’in, Elena Ivanova, and Valentina Maslova, analyze it from the linguacultural point of view as an image, a concept, and a value (Il’in 2012; Ivanova 2014; Maslova 2015), while Igor Smirnov, Rafael Burkhanov, and Daniil Dorofeev emphasize its spiritual and sociocultural dimensions (Smirnov 2005; Burkhanov 2012; Dorofeev 2023). There are also papers that provide a comparative approach and examine Russian wandering in its European context (Hajnady 1993; Dorofeev 2010; Dorofeev 2022), as well as articles devoted to representations of wanderers in the works of individual authors. However, there are still several gaps regarding the research on the image of the wanderer in Russian literature; one of these gaps can be found in the oeuvre of Nikolai Leskov (Leskov 1956–1958). His numerous and diverse travelers have not been yet examined systematically, although they have been mentioned in more general studies, such as Hugh McLean’s (1977) or Beata Trojanowska’s (2008) monographs, or in connection with the analysis of the writer’s most famous representation, that is “The Enchanted Wanderer” (“Ocharovannyi strannik”) (Grimstad 1998; Neustroev 2007; Ranchin 2017; Seliazniova 2022).

Thus, my article strives to fill this gap and examine wanderers portrayed in Leskov’s literary works, such as “The Musk-Ox” (“Ovtsebyk”), “The Enchanted Wanderer”, “The Sealed Angel” (“Zapechatlennyi angel”), “Deathless Golovan” (“Nesmertel’nyi Golovan”), and several others. I put the writer’s representations in the broad context of Russian wandering, mainly religious, and examine diverse, often opposite tendencies that influenced and shaped them. As I argue, Leskov’s portrayals of wanderers are ambivalent from the very beginning of his literary career and combine elements characteristic of images of religious wanderers akin to pilgrims and homeless, usually illegal vagrants, often motivated by the search for easy money. As I posit, these features were also common for many wandering people of Russia, which makes Leskov’s representations so typical despite their peculiarity.

In order to achieve my goal, I provide both a traditional literary analysis of the writer’s literary texts and a short survey of the cultural and religious practice of Russian wandering. This approach will enable me to demonstrate Leskov’s embeddedness in this tradition in all its richness and variety.

2. Pilgrims, Wanderers, and Vagrants of Russian Roads and Russian Culture

The tradition of pilgrimages, adopted in Rus’ soon after its Christianization, quickly gained popularity and was adjusted to the local specificity. This process became especially significant after the Islamic conquest of the Holy Land and the fall of Constantinople in 1453, which stimulated the development of spiritual journeys to Russian shrines, such as Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra, Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, Valaam monastery, Kazan Virgin Monastery, Optina monastery, etc. Along with the traditional pilgrims with specific destinations and clear religious intentions, Russian roads were also peopled with other kinds of traveling individuals, including vagrants and wanderers. These two categories often overlapped with blurred boundaries; however, after serfs lost the last of their migratory privileges and vagrancy was criminalized in 1649, they became more distinct, as pilgrims and wanderers were supposed to have on them documents which confirmed that they were allowed to leave their domicile (Gentes 2008, p. 187; Seliazniova 2022, p. 211).

Wandering and vagrancy intermingled again in the early 18th century after the Petrine reforms. These reforms formalized and rationalized religious life and subordinated it to state control; at the same time, they also sought to eradicate vagrancy and mendicancy by means of de-sanctifying the poor, “so that ‘holy fools’ once appreciated as recipients for pietistic almsgiving now became deviants and louts who had to be excised from society” (Gentes 2008, p. 188). However, as Peter’s reforms were highly controversial and caused much opposition, wandering became a spontaneous reaction to them—a search for a living faith and a fleeing from the hierarchical order (Dorofeev 2023, p. 344). Its most extreme manifestation was observed within the Old Believers—the former members of the Russian Orthodox Church who opposed the liturgical reforms introduced by Patriarch Nikon and, in 1666, were excommunicated, which led to the schism within the Church. Thenceforth they were persecuted by both ecclesiastical and lay authorities, which made them particularly prone to various forms of religious wandering. For example, one of the Old Believers’ sect beguny (“runaways”) believed that being in constant motion, without any official documents and any contacts with the authorities—whom they considered the representatives of the Antichrist—was the only way to avoid evil. Therefore, the 18th century witnessed the growth of both wandering and vagrancy combined inseparately together, which was conditioned mainly by Peter subordinating religion to the state and sanctioning state persecutions of religious dissenters.

The 18th century also witnessed a developing interest in hesychasm in the Russian Empire, with the Philokalia translated into Slavonic by Paisii Velichkovskii. And, as Daniil Dorofeev argues, the hesychastic tradition influenced not only the monastic life and, especially, the revival of the elders (starchestvo), but was also crucial for religious wanderers, which can be seen in the famous Way of the Pilgrim (Dorofeev 2023, p. 344). This book, originally entitled Candid Narratives of a Wanderer to his Spiritual Father (Otkrovennye rasskazy strannika svoemu dukhovnomu ottsu), was first published anonymously in 1881 in Kazan’ by the hegumen Paisii (Erin), and very quickly became extremely popular, so that by 1884, it had its fourth release, edited by the St Feofan the Recluse, who was a famous preacher and spiritual authority. It was written probably in the 1850s by an unknown author, and it told the story of a young Russian peasant from Orel governorate who became a wanderer after losing his house in a fire and suffering the death of his wife (Ipatova 2014, pp. 89–90).

The image of the main character, who is also the narrator of the book, embodies the most characteristic traits of a Russian religious wanderer. We do not know his name; he calls himself “a wanderer” and is called so by others. He does not have any final and fixed destination, although he visits several sanctuaries, such as Kyiv, and he wants to travel to Jerusalem at the end of his life. However, the most important part of the story is his inner spiritual journey, which is connected with his wish to understand the words from the apostle Paul’s epistle to Thessalonians about “praying without ceasing” (1Thess. 5:17). He is definitely a wanderer, as he travels legally, with all documents needed, and he carries only a small bag containing some biscuits, the Bible, and a single-volume edition of Philokalia. He constantly practices the Jesus prayer, which gradually transforms him, and his spiritual development influences other people he meets on his way. Way of the Pilgrim describes both the spiritual path of the wanderer and social attitudes towards him: he is treated with respect and hospitality, invited for meals and spiritual discussions, and asked about his experience while traveling. This demonstrates his social function as a person who brings news and information from distant zones, especially valued in those times when people tended to spend their whole lives in one place.

According to the book Wandering Russia for Christ Sake (Brodiachaia Rus’ Khrista radi, Maksimov 1877) by Russian 19th-century ethnographer Sergei Maksimov, there were several types of wanderers: people collecting donations for parochial churches and monasteries; those who were visiting sanctuaries; a variety of mendicants; and, finally, fraudsters who pretended to travel with religious motivation, but actually used it as a method for making easy money (Maksimov 1877). Interestingly, Maksimov unifies all these diverse types of wanderers and vagrants under one umbrella term which combines the idea of vagabondage (brodiazhestvo—see Gentes 2008, p. 184) and spiritual inspiration. The latter is expressed with the characteristic wording “Khrista radi” (“for Christ”), also used when speaking about a specific, slightly non-conformist type of piety and sanctity, that is, a fool for Christ (yurodivyi Khrista radi). In this regard, it seems especially intriguing that despite the popularity of religious wandering in Russia, the category of a “saint wanderer” does not exist. Nevertheless, among Russian saints, one can find those who were known for their wandering life, such as Ksenia of Saint Petersburg (born between 1719 and 1730, deceased about 1802), although she was officially canonized as “a fool for Christ” (Dorofeev 2023, pp. 347–48).

Maksimov’s observations demonstrate very clearly that the border between religious and secular wandering (or even vagrancy) was, in fact, very blurred. The popularity of wandering influenced people’s positive attitude towards wanderers, who were treated with respect as those who imitated Christ and deserved hospitality, and were the source of news and information (Shchepanskaia 2003, pp. 315, 434–35). This treatment attracted fraudsters who could sell false relics and devotional items, simulate disability, and steal valuable items. These monetary pursuits also became a source of income for wandering blind beggars, popular not only in Russia, but in the Slavic world as a whole (kaliki perekhozhiye, or dziady in Polish). They often traveled in groups, playing instruments, such as the hurdy-gurdy, and singing religious songs, very often based on apocryphal writings (called dukhovnye stikhi in Russian, psalma in Polish) (Maksimov 1877, pp. 223–30). As Tatiana Shchepanskaia observes, peasants usually distinguished between religious wanderers and illegal vagrants, treating them accordingly (Shchepanskaia 2003, p. 429). Yet, there were still numerous travelers with ambiguous identities and dual motivations.

In the second half of the 19th century, the concept of wandering as an activity typical of Russian peasants inspired the Russian intelligentsia, especially those who were associated with the Russian Populist movement (narodniki). They strove to emulate peasants’ lives in order to get closer to them and be more successful in their revolutionary agitation. One means of achieving this was traveling long distances on foot. However, this way of life could be perceived as more akin to vagrancy, as in the case of the writer Nikolai Uspenskii (1837–1889), who embarked upon the life of a tramp artist in the last eight years of his life, or Maksim Gorkii (1868–1936), who traveled on foot across the Russian Empire for five years, doing various jobs and socializing with Russian vagrants and wanderers.

The situation was different in the case of Lev Tolstoi (1828–1910). After his religious conversion in the 1870s, he became an adherent of the idea of simplicity, which he understood as becoming closer to common people in one’s food, clothes, and way of living. This made him travel long distances on foot several times in his life. For example, he traveled thrice from Moscow to his estate in Iasnaia Poliana, covering about 200 km. However, the best-known journey was his last when, at the age of eighty-two, he left his home with the intention of renouncing the aristocratic way of life and spending his last years as a simple wanderer. The bad weather and the writer’s old age weakened his health, and he fell ill, dying of pneumonia after ten days on the way, at the small railway station Astapovo, on 20 November 1910 (Falenkova 2012, pp. 44–5).

3. Nikolai Leskov’s Eccentric Wanderers

Wandering (albeit not the religious type) was also one of the most popular literary motifs, beginning with ancient Greek literature, through the picaresque novel, to Romanticism. In medieval Rus’, there existed a special literary genre of khozhenie (or khozhdenie), which at first depicted pilgrimages undertaken mainly by monks and later transformed into a secular travelogue (Nikolukin 2001, pp. 1168–69). The figure of the wanderer reappeared in early Romanticism and continued to be a prominent theme in Russian 19th-century literature, in poetic and prose works of Aleksandr Pushkin, Fedor Tiutchev, Fedor Dostoevskii, Maksim Gorkii, and numerous other writers. They represented various kinds of wanderers, from Romantic rebels seeking poetic truth (Hajnady 1993, pp. 17–18; Dorofeev 2022, pp. 46–47) to highly realistic portrayals focusing on bodily feelings of discomfort, such as hunger, thirst, and cold. Even in the last case, the spiritual component was extremely important in the way the character was created.

The representation of wanderers is especially frequent in the literary oeuvre of Nikolai Leskov, which may be because the writer himself had a solid experience of traveling. In his youth, he was employed for three years as a commercial agent in the trading company “Scott & Wilkins”, owned by Alexander Scott, the husband of his aunt. During this period, he traveled a lot across European Russia, getting first-hand experience of authentic Russian life and the material for his future literary works. These business trips enabled him to meet and observe diverse types of wanderers. It also influenced the compositional aspect of his numerous stories, which begin with the primary narrator meeting other people on the road, and one of them telling the story of his life.

Leskov depicts wanderers in such works as “The Musk-Ox”, “The Sealed Angel”, “Deathless Golovan”, and, most importantly, “The Enchanted Wanderer”. His characters are usually highly ambivalent and complex, which is at least partially due to their borderline status between wanderers and vagrants. Beginning with his early works, the writer presents their identity as uncertain and fluent. For example, in his debut story, “The Case that was Dropped” (“Pogasshee delo”, Leskov 1862), it is a wandering man, either an ex-soldier or a peddler (“ne to soldat, ne to korobeinik”) (Leskov 1862, p. 139), who advises the peasants to dig out the body of a deceased sexton in order to stop the drought. This advice turns out to be fatal, as the act is counted against the peasants as both sacrilege and criminal offense, and they are put at risk of being exiled to Siberia. In “The Robber” (“Razboinik”, 1862), a secondary narrator tells the story of his encounter with a stranger who is described as either a vagrant (runaway soldier) or a brigand.

The figure of a wanderer is especially important in “The Musk-Ox” (1862). The main hero of the story, Vasilii Bogoslovskii, is portrayed as a wayfarer whose constant discontent with social reality chases him from one place to another in the quest for meaning. On the one hand, because of his clerical background and seminary education, he reads only the Gospel and ancient classics; in his travels, he visits monasteries and Old Believers’ villages, demonstrating interest in their spirituality. On the other, he interprets the Gospel in a peculiar way, emphasizing its appeal for social justice and trying to instill a sense of class antagonism in the people with whom he talks (“He’d started to interpret the Gospel according to his lights, and I might tell you, it wasn’t any honest sort of interpreting, but just his own daft notions. All about the publican and poor Lazarus, or who can get through the eye of the needle and all that—you get me?—and he kind of turned it all against me … I am, if you please, in his reckoning ‘a merchant—a money-grabber, and the tillers of the soil must dot me one” (Leskov 1944, p. 70). His attempt to propagate revolutionary ideas among the people makes him close to the Russian Populists’ idea of “going to the people”, which seems especially true given the failure of his mission. His revolutionary ideas are not understood by Russian peasants, and Vasilii Bogoslovskii ultimately commits suicide.

The hero’s similarity to Populists is intensified by his resemblance to Pavel Iakushkin, a famous Russian ethnographer, who collected folklore, journeying all over Russia as a traveling salesman. Leskov was Iakushkin’s acquaintance and used him as a prototype for creating the appearance and character of Bogoslovskii (McLean 1977, pp. 105–7). However, differently from Iakushkin’s secular aims, Bogoslovskii maintains some relation to religion, as he bases his social teaching on the Gospel. Thus, his wandering is situated between the sacral and secular realms, which makes his figure so ambiguous.

After a short break, Leskov returned to representing wanderers at the beginning of the 1870s, which was, for him, the time of his own search for positive heroes. One of those works was “The Sealed Angel” (1873), telling the story of the cooperative of Old Believer stonemasons and their favorite icon of the Archangel Michael, confiscated and defaced by government officials. The stonemasons travel across Russia from one job to another, and their path is described in religious terms as a sacral wandering. The narrator compares it to the forty-year journey of the Jews from Egypt to Israel: “We traveled about from job to job with him just as the Hebrews of old wandered in the wilderness with Moses, and we even had our own tabernacle with us and we never parted from it” (Leskov 1984, p. 8). The icons that they always carry with them give an impression of a pilgrimage, which is emphasized by the narrator’s observation that the angel from the icon seemed to precede and accompany them, bringing them luck in finding good jobs and living in harmony with each other.

At the same time, the travel of the stonemasons turns out to be a path for their spiritual development, too. Along this way, they meet temptations, misfortunes, and obstacles, the most agonizing of them being the loss of the icon. These circumstances strengthen their faith and, at the same time, widen their spiritual and mental horizons, which eventually results in them joining the Orthodox Church. This conclusion is described in the story in terms of the final destination towards which the Old Believers are led by God and the angel. However, before comprehending this truth, the narrator of the story has to walk his own path in one more wandering, in which he and young Levontii are searching for the iconographer who is expected to paint a copy of the icon. This path is at the same time a geographical and a spiritual one, as they meet both unworthy Old Believers and the near saint Elder Pamva from the Orthodox Church. His kindness and meekness greatly impact them and result in Levontii joining the Orthodox Church before his death. Thus, while they begin their journey with confidence in the path of life that is given to them by family tradition, its final result is spiritual change (Stoliarova 2012, pp. 200–2).

Hence, in “The Sealed Angel”, wandering is conceptualized as a constant spiritual search and growth. Its ultimate destination remains unidentified, even if those on the way think they know it. However, in the story as a whole, it is not considered to be a random erring but rather a journey completed under the leadership of God, who defines the goal according to his will. The idea of finding the pattern and the goal behind seemingly random moving around makes Leskov’s work very close to the Orthodox understanding of religious wandering.

The situation is different in another text of the same year, namely “The Enchanted Wanderer”. The title of this story has received various interpretations, especially regarding the epithet “enchanted”. Beginning with Leskov’s contemporaries, it was understood as either the main hero Ivan Fliagin’s submission to God’s will and perceiving his life as a path to God or as the state of being bewitched under the spell of an evil force. The first interpretation implied his free choice, while the second one recognized him as passive and inert, which seems much more convincing, especially because Fliagin himself embraces this interpretation, when telling his listeners: “so many things that I’ve done haven’t been done of my own free will” (Leskov 1965, p. 84). Literary scholars often underline the intentional ambivalence and ambiguity of the title, which demonstrates the hero’s sensibility to the beauty of the world and, at the same time, his susceptibility to evil (Ranchin 2017, pp. 417–18). The second component of the title, “wanderer”, is understood both in its literal and metaphorical meanings, as Fliagin’s story combines geographical traveling across the Russian Empire with his spiritual journey, acquiring life experience, learning about God and love, as well as penance for the sins committed earlier (Trojanowska 2008, pp. 242–43).

However, Fliagin is much more ambivalent and complex than the simple-hearted protagonist of “The Sealed Angel”, and his journey is not an easy or trivial one. The primary narrator of the story meets him on board a boat heading to Valaam monastery, and is instantly captivated by his appearance. He is a man of giant stature and exudes the aura of someone meant to gallop on horseback through the forests, reminiscent of a Russian hero (bogatyr’). Despite this, Fliagin is dressed in the humble garb of a novice or monk, viewing the monastery as his ultimate destination, intended and predicted for him since his birth. He was a prayed-for son, born to his mother who had been childless for several years and prayed to God for a child, which is a popular hagiographic motif rooted in the Bible, with the best-known example being Hannah and her son Samuel (1 Samuel 1). Yet, Fliagin’s story, told by the hero himself, full of unexpected plot twists, resembles more a picaresque novel than a hagiography. In fact, as numerous researchers have pointed out, the story is highly intertextual, as it combines hagiographic, folkloristic, and traditional literary motifs, and follows the structure of a literary journey, both Russian and Western European, with the influence of Laurence Sterne’s tradition (Stoliarova 1978, p. 129; Neustroev 2007, p. 5).

The reasons which pushed the character to wander are also diverse. The hero tends to explain his life path in religious terms, as a prayed-for child promised to God, who was meant to become a monk from birth. More precisely, his unwillingness to embrace his destiny turned him into a wanderer. However, his wandering was also a predetermined part of his fate, as foretold by the monk whom he killed out of youthful carelessness and unconscious cruelty: “Many times will you be near unto death but you will not perish until the appointed hour and then you’ll remember your mother’s promise and become a monk” (Leskov 1965, p. 90). These words emphasize the duality of Fliagin’s path, which combines the resistance against Providence with the same Providence protecting and leading him to his final destination. This ambivalence, characteristic of Leskov’s method of creating literary characters, may be to a certain extent juxtaposed with the fate of Saul (future Apostle Paul), especially with the image of “kicking against the goads” (Acts 9, 5).

Nevertheless, we should remember that this explanation is provided by Fliagin himself, who cannot be considered a reliable narrator. Therefore, his wandering has dual motivations, both mystical and rational, and we cannot tell which of them is “real”. In fact, there are several factors that initiated his journey, and contributed to its continuation. First of them was Fliagin’s feeling of injustice, when, after mutilating a cat that belonged to the countess’s maid, he was condemned to flogging and hammering stones into the paths of his master’s garden, despite the fact that several months earlier he saved the count’s life. His grudge and desperation made him susceptible to the Gypsy’s proposal to join his gang and run away. Thus, Fliagin’s journey began as an illegal act of vagrancy by a runaway serf and thief using a false passport. This status is confirmed in the text numerous times by expressions such as “tramps” or “half tramps” used to refer to other people in the same category.

Fliagin’s vagrancy is primarily a result of his misdeeds: it started with mutilating the cat and escalated to killing a Tatar man, which forced the hero to flee to the steppe with the Tatars to escape justice. However, ten years spent there, far from his homeland, may be considered a turning point in his journey and the beginning of his movement towards his destiny, and not an escape from it. He is still far from being a pious wanderer, but we can observe that religious motivation becomes stronger. From this point, Fliagin’s life begins to involve more and more acts of sacrifice and compassion, such as helping the young Gypsy woman Grusha or enrolling in the army in place of a newly met peasant, Petr Serdiukov. He still commits morally dubious acts, such as forced baptism of Tatar people based on frightening them with fireworks, or killing Grusha at her request; however, he gradually begins his path towards repentance and redemption. Yet, his decision to enter the monastery is rather practical than religious, as he has nowhere else to go and no means to earn money. Moreover, even after becoming a monk, Fliagin remains an ambivalent character, mainly because of the constant devilish temptations that trouble him, as well as his readiness to leave the monastery and go fight in the war. He also remains a wanderer, as he reveals to his listeners that he is on his way to Solovki Monastery.

Fliagin’s ambivalence is noted by numerous researchers. For example, Andrei Ranchin demonstrates that in the hagiographic code, Fliagin is characterized both as a hero and an anti-hero, and the narration about his journey is built upon numerous discrepancies and contrasting tendencies (Ranchin 2017, pp. 414, 438). The duality of the protagonist is also observed by Knut Andreas Grimstad, who underlines that Fliagin combines seemingly opposite and incompatible traits, emerging both as a villain and a benefactor (Grimstad 2007, p. 169). According to Olga Seliazniova, some of these ambivalences may be explained by the hero’s social status as a vagrant. Vagrancy, defined as a legal term for a person traveling without documents, in 19th-century Russia was considered a serious offense against civil order. Vagrants were often considered suspicious and untrustworthy individuals who tended to exploit Christian goodwill by simulating disabilities, which puts under question not only Fliagin’s final monastic status (Seliazniova 2022, pp. 211, 215), but also his self-fashioning as a promised son and, indeed, his entire narrative. However, as I demonstrated earlier, the border between wandering and vagrancy was so blurred in 19th-century Russia, that, in my opinion, these two statuses were not mutually exclusive. Moreover, Leskov as a writer was known for his preference for concealing his opinion through the use of unreliable narrators (Likhachev 1981, p. 145). The ambiguous figure of Fliagin as a wanderer–vagrant was ideal in this role.

The Valaam monastery became the setting of several other of Leskov’s literary works featuring representations of wanderers. In the travel sketch “The Monastic Isles on Ladoga Lake” (“Monasheskie ostrova na Ladozhskom ozere”, 1873), the writer depicts his real journey, undertaken in 1872. Together with descriptions of the everyday life of the monastery dwellers and picturesque images of the surrounding nature, Leskov presents several portrayals of diverse types of wanderers traveling to the shrine. These portrayals are mainly ironic, as the majority of pilgrims emerge as interested exclusively in the external, superficial demonstrations of the faith, such as rites and miracles. This, in turn, excludes any spiritual change and growth, central to Leskov’s conception of wandering. However, there are also a few “religious romantics”, full of poetry and deep faith, for whom the pilgrimage is also a spiritual path of search and inner change (Łukaszewicz 2019, pp. 436–37).

Another story located in Valaam monastery is “Pavlin” (1874). Its composition is once more typical for Leskov’s texts, with the embedded narrative and secondary narrator. The story of the already deceased main hero, Pavlin Pevunov, is told to the primary narrator by a man met during the narrator’s visit to the monastery. Pavlin, who served for a long time as a doorman in a wealthy gentry house in Petersburg, at an older age, left the city and wandered for many years, and, at the end of his life, took monastic vows. Importantly, the decision to set off on the road was a result of a moral shock caused by his wife’s adultery and was connected with the hero’s gradual spiritual transformation (Petrova 2011, p. 109). Wandering is the final episode of his life, and the story focuses on his previous experience as a doorman; however, it is only after embarking on the journey that the hero begins to change.

While Pavlin’s life ends with wandering, the path and twelve years of solitary travel undertaken at the age of fourteen shape the character and the worldview of Aleksandr Ryzhov, the main hero of the story “Singlethought” (“Odnodum”, 1879). He is not a traditional wanderer, as his travel is related to his work as a postman who covered long distances between two provincial towns in the Kostroma governorate. However, his perpetual traveling influences his further life. As Fryderyk Listwan observes, the real, geographical road is the main factor that defines his spiritual development and spiritual path, because he is left on his own and has a lot of time to read the Bible and reflect (Listwan 1988, p. 73). His atypical wandering prepared him for his life among people, just like in the case of hermits or prophets who used to spend several years in solitude before embarking on public activity.

With time, Leskov’s attitude towards diverse types of wanderers was aggravated, and he perceived them increasingly as fraudsters, full of superstition, sloth, and chicanery (McLean 1977, p. 359). This approach aligned with the writer’s increasing skepticism towards shallow religious practices centered on rituals and irrational beliefs that were not grounded in the Bible and Gospel ethics. Wanderers, who had always been a significant part of Russian popular religiosity, came under criticism as they were seen as bearers of values and traditions that Leskov found intolerable, at least in his literary works, despite being a man with mystical orientation in his personal life (Łukaszewicz 2019, pp. 459–60). He already gave glimpses of those characters in his sketches, “The Monastic Isles on Ladoga Lake”. Then, in “Deathless Golovan” (1880), Leskov depicts pilgrims and wanderers arriving for a religious feast (probably the canonization of Tikhon of Zadonsk). They are presented as a mob, with numerous of them faking illnesses in order to pay less for accommodation, receive alms, or even pickpocket in the crowd. The narrator calls them “empty men” (pustotnye liudi) and describes their nefarious activities, such as robbery and pickpocketing, as well as unscrupulously interpreting dreams and selling various “miraculous” objects, including fabricated relics. One of them, Fotei, who fakes being paralyzed and miraculously healed, later turns out to be a runaway soldier and “a scoundrel” (negodiai). Thus, his social status changes from that of a respectable wanderer to the one of an illegal vagrant, wanted by the authorities.

A critical approach to religious wandering was particularly evident in Leskov’s journalistic articles from the late 1870s to the early 1880s, such as “About Clerical Mendicancy” (“O klirovom nishchebrodstve”, 1876), “Russian Demonomaniacs” (“Russkie demonomany”, 1880), “From Life. The Jerusalem Elixir” (“Iz zhizni. Ierusalimskii eleksir”, 1882), or “The Vagrants of the Ecclesiastical Ranks” (“Brodiagi dukhovnogo china”, 1882). His criticism focuses on travelers who are supposed to collect donations for their parochial churches and monasteries, and who often engaged in fraudulent activities, such as selling devotional items of questionable quality and origin. Leskov is very skeptical about the idea of mendicancy in general, as he doubts its purposefulness as well as the appropriate moral level of the clerical collectors. He discusses the latter in “The Vagrants of the Ecclesiastical Ranks”, a historical essay based on an authentic 18th-century document. The essay presents wandering monks as runaways who are likely to commit criminal offenses. In “Russian Demonomaniacs”, Leskov portrays Father Bogolep, a former monk who travels from one monastery to another. He was expelled from them for breaking monastic rules, such as heavy drinking or having relationships with a nun. His stories about devilish temptations he had suffered are akin to Ivan Fliagin’s narrative in “The Enchanted Wanderer”, showcasing the evolution of Leskov’s perspective on religious wanderers from fascination to skepticism. In his journalism of the discussed period, he claims that wandering mendicants discredit the Church, spread superstitions, and take advantage of the trust and piety of simple people (Łukaszewicz 2019, pp. 449–68).

4. Conclusions

The analysis of Nikolai Leskov’s several literary works, written and published over twenty years, demonstrates the variety of types of wanderers, pilgrims, and vagrants represented in his texts. Beginning with the writer’s first works, these types of travelers are intermingled with each other, and this diversity and inseparability corresponded with Russian reality, with its often blurred boundaries between religious and secular wandering, as well as between wandering and vagrancy. In Leskov’s oeuvre, one can distinguish various periods that differ in the way he depicts wanderers, with the peak of his interest in their identity dating to the 1870s. At the beginning of that decade, two of his most iconic representations of wanderers were written: the deeply spiritual one in “The Sealed Angel” and the more ambivalent one in “The Enchanted Wanderer”.

Both in his earlier and later works, Leskov pays attention to diverse motivations for wandering, both religious and secular. He demonstrates how inseparable they were, which corresponds with the observations made by the ethnographer Sergei Maksimov in his book Wandering Russia for Christ’s Sake, published in the second half of the 1870s. This correspondence proves Leskov’s deep knowledge of the life of Russian people of diverse social statuses and occupations, even if he maintains the perspective of a member of the educated upper class.

However, for Leskov, wandering is not just a social, cultural, and religious phenomenon. His wayfarers constitute a part of the road narrative, which tells the story of people in motion. The road in his works includes both geographical and metaphorical aspects, the latter being the character’s life path, inextricably linked with the change that the traveling person undergoes. This happens with many of Leskov’s characters, like the bishop who tells his story in “At the Edge of the World” (“Na kraiu sveta”, 1875), or the narrator in “Years of Childhood (From the Reminiscences of Merkul Praottsev)” (“Detskie gody (Iz vospominanii Merkula Praottseva)”, 1876). In the case of wanderers, this change is a religious, or at least a spiritual one, as demonstrated in my analyses. Soundly rooted in Russian soil, Leskov’s wanderers also possess many universal traits, as the journey has always been one of the most popular motifs in world literature. Thus, the peculiarity of the author’s representations, their Russianness, does not exclude a more general outlook, related to the concepts of journey and quest in their multifacetedness and variety.