You really should subscribe to Micah Mattixâ??s daily e-mail digest Prufrock. Thereâ??s always something worth reading. Today there are two related pieces. The first is a New Yorker review of Laurus, a new novel about medieval Russia. Excerpt:
A new novel by the Russian medievalist Eugene Vodolazkin, â??Laurus,â? recreates this fervent landscape and suggests why the era, its holy men, and the forests and fields of Muscovy retain such a grip on the Russian imagination. Vodolazkinâ??s hero-mystic Arseny is a protagonist extrapolated from the little that is known about the lives and deeds of the famous holy men. Born in 1440, heâ??s raised by his herbalist grandfather Christofer near the grounds of the Kirillov Monastery, about three hundred miles north of Moscow. He becomes a renowned medicine man, faith healer, and prophet who â??pelted demons with stones and conversed with angels.â? He makes a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He takes on new names, depending on how he will next serve God. The people venerate his humble spirituality. In â??Laurus,â? Vodolazkin aims directly at the heart of the Russian religious experience and perhaps even at that maddeningly elusive concept that is cherished to the point of cliché: the Russian soul.
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