The Enchanted Wanderer and Other Stories

  6. an Old Believer: In 1656–58, Nikon, patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, introduced certain reforms to bring the Church into conformity with current Greek Orthodox practice, and also made corrections in the translation of liturgical texts. These changes were rejected by some, who held to the old ways and thus became known as Old Believers (also Raskolniki, “Schismatics”). In 1666, the Old Believers were anathematized by the Church and deprived of civil rights. Some renounced having priests and sacraments (apart from baptism), as a consequence of their break with the apostolic church; others ordained their own priests and maintained the sacraments; still others even practiced the “rebaptism” of those who joined them. Leskov was especially interested in the Old Believers, who figure prominently in a number of his stories.

  7. Curse the day … die: Job’s wife actually says, “…   curse God, and die” (Job 2:9). In Job 3:3, Job himself curses the day he was born.

  8. A blond head … none can see: Lines from the poem “The Call” (1844), by the Russian poet and prose writer Yakov Polonsky (1819–98).

The Sealed Angel

(1873)

  1. the eve of St. Basil’s: The feast day of St. Basil the Great of Caesarea in Cappadocia (ca. AD 330–379) falls on January 1.

  2. on the stove: The Russian peasant stove was a large and elaborate structure that served not only for heating and cooking, but also for sleeping and even for bathing, as will be seen later.

  3. the old Russian faith: See note 6 to “Lady Macbeth.” “The Sealed Angel” deals in particular with the maintaining of the tradition of icon painting among the Old Believers. Icon painting was beginning to be revived in Leskov’s time and interested him deeply. He claimed to have written “The Sealed Angel” while sitting in the studio of an icon painter in an Old Believers’ quarter in Petersburg.

  4. granary: In the Old and New Testaments, granaries symbolize wealth in general (see, for instance, Luke 12:16–20, the parable of the rich man).

  5. Novgorod or Stroganov icon painters: After the Mongol invasion of Russia in the thirteenth century and the fall of the capital Kiev, the center of Russian artistic culture shifted to the city of Novgorod, where the art of icon painting reached a high point in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The Stroganovs were wealthy merchants from Novgorod who moved further north and brought Novgorod icon painters with them. The Stroganov school was known in particular for its use of bright colors and for its miniature icons, such as the one painted by Sevastian later in “The Sealed Angel.”

  6. Deisises … wet hair: The Deisis, the central section in the iconostasis, is a triple icon representing Christ in majesty between the Virgin and St. John the Baptist. The Savior-not-made-by-hands is an icon depicting the face of Christ imprinted on a towel or cloth. According to legend, Abgar, king of Edessa, wishing to be healed of leprosy, sent his court painter to make an image of Christ, but the painter could not get close enough to do it. Christ then took a towel, wiped his face, imprinting his image on it, and had the towel sent to Abgar, who was healed by it. On some icons of this type, Christ is portrayed with wet-looking hair and beard.

  7. the Indictus … Palekh: The Indictus is the icon of the first feast of the ecclesiastical year, which begins on September 1. The Council of Angels usually portrays the archangel Michael and/or Gabriel holding a round icon of the infant Emmanuel (Christ), surrounded by a host of angels. The Paternity portrays God the Father with the Christ Child on his lap holding a dove. The Six Days usually has six parts illustrating the six days of the creation; another type has six days of the week identified with certain feasts, and sometimes the two are combined. The Healers is a late type of icon (eighteenth or early nineteenth century) portraying various saints and indicating which one heals which disease. The Trinity illustrates the episode in Genesis 18:1–16 in which three angels visit Abraham, considered the first manifestation of God as the Trinity. The town of Palekh was an important center of icon painting from the sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century.

  8. Bezaleel: See Exodus 35:30–35. Bezaleel was one of two men called by God and Moses to build and decorate the sanctuary for the ark of the covenant.

  9. famous stone bridge: Leskov has in mind the suspension bridge over the Dniepr River in Kiev, built in 1849–53, while he himself was living in Kiev.