Help me find my name

September 7, 2006 8:01 AM

Help me find my name...

I read a magazine back around 2000 -- I am 99% sure it was Parabola (but if not my other guesses are Shambala Sun, Tricycle or Sun, maybe) -- and there was an article about a Russian lunatic/saint trickster/fool (I recall he fooled with the czar of the time). At one point "iurodivii" was used and translated as 'Divine Fool' or 'Fool for Christ.' If anyone has the power to find this article, I'd love to see it again. I'd gladly settle for a date and volume number of the publication so I can track it down myself as I presume a full article online would be a bit much to ask for.

I have spent hours looking through the magazines at the library but to no avail. I used this Parabola page to track down the Fool and Trickster issues, but as I read through the articles nothing clicked. See my tags for possible variants to the spelling.

posted by iurodivii to media & arts (7 comments total)

The russian wikipedia article for юродивый gives a couple possible foolish foolish monks!
posted by soma lkzx at 8:08 AM on September 7, 2006

aaaaaaaaaand here he probably is, in english this time! Saint Basil, rebuker of church-bored Ivan the Terrible! I don't know if you specifically need that article or jut information in general, but there you go.
posted by soma lkzx at 8:14 AM on September 7, 2006

Yeah, Basil's a likely suspect. Although from what I understand, fucking with authority figures was a pretty common trait of the holy fools in the Russian church. "He fooled with the czar" might not be a precise enough description to narrow it down to one guy.
posted by nebulawindphone at 8:24 AM on September 7, 2006

Thanks for the English link. Quick and much appreciated! That seems to be him, now if I can track down that particular article...
posted by iurodivii at 8:31 AM on September 7, 2006

Cool question; I'm not seeing your tags.
posted by LobsterMitten at 8:46 AM on September 7, 2006

(if someone in power can edit that, the tags I had listed for this question were: article parabola iurodivii iurodivy yurodivy yurodivii magazine [and we should probably add:] saint_basil)
posted by iurodivii at 9:05 AM on September 7, 2006

I get the impression that "fooling the Czar" is a common theme in Russian folk-lore and humorous fiction, especially since 1917 e.g. Lieutenant Kije.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 12:36 PM on September 7, 2006