From hilarious fiction to tragic reality: the Archpriest Avvakum Petrovič (1620-1682) and his “Autohagiography”. A “Divine Quixote”

Abstract

The “Life of archpriest Avvakum, written by himself “ is an extraordinary book in world literature. Its content is very complex and shows some similarities with “The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote”, in particular the “divine quixotism” of the author and protagonist. Given the impossibility of influence from Cervantes, these points in common, not by sheer chance, reflect, on the one hand, the longing for the Middle Ages and the rejection of the changes wrought by the Renaissance, and on the other, the violence that prevailed in human relations of those hard times.