A narrative about a young man and the magician: Slavonic versions of a Byzantine story

The article is devoted to the analysis of the “Narrative About a Young Man and the Magician” (also known as a “Homily About Mesites the Magician”), which was part of several Old Russian miscellanea and originated from Greek. The narrative is examined from the standpoint of plot-building issues, with regard to both the original text and the changes that were introduced by the Slavonic translators and editors. The authors reveal a specific narrative structure in which the elements of one set of plot features are mirrored or duplicated in another narrative. They also trace the distinctive features of two different Greek versions reflected in the translations, such as a change in the narrative focus in the original version. A significant feature of one of the Slavonic translations is the adaptation to the Old Russian miscellany (Prolog), of which it happened to be a part. Another feature that must be noted is the appearance of the idea of God's obligation to the righteous in the Slavonic version. A parallel is drawn between this narrative and the “Narrations Useful to the Soul” (a sub-genre of Byzantine hagiography), which contain a tale about the penitent thief. The fate of these texts in both Greek and Slavic literature seems almost the same: they existed in two versions in Greek literature, and both versions of these texts were translated into Slavonic. Later, these translations were included in the Slavonic miscellanea of Prolog and Svodny Paterik. There are also a number of parallels in terms of content, of which the most important one is the discussion of the ways of salvation for laymen considered outside the formal ecclesiastical paradigm that assumes a form of non-typical holiness. Yet despite the similarities in style and partly in content, the “Narrative About a Young Man and the Magician” has a more sophisticated plot than the tale about the penitent thief on account of duplicated plot motifs that align it with the literary narrative genre.