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“In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.”

— Leo Tolstoy1

Tolstoy’s desperate command in the quote above is perfectly suited to the challenges of the early 21st century. In an era that idolizes wealth and power, that inundates us with vile proclamations such as “time is money,” and that defines ‘maturity’ and ‘responsibility’ in terms of economic prosperity (while denying that its pursuit has caused global climate change and massive inequality), the need to “cease our work and look around” is imperative. Of course, in the prevailing economic paradigm of global capitalism, this is a foolish act. But ‘fools’ have been trying to help us see through illusions from the beginning of time.

In this small but powerful collection of folk tales, you will meet Ivan and come to see how his actions, though considered foolish by many, help to unveil the reality behind the world’s illusions and offer a glimpse of a different way of being. These stories draw on an ancient, archetypal motif, present in almost every culture, but known within Christendom as the Holy Fool. Often understood as a type of prophet, the Holy Fool veers sharply away from the status quo, embracing the seemingly ridiculous in order to reveal deep truths.

Holy Fools in Tolstoy’s Russia, known as “yurodivy,” were known for putting on eccentric displays of poverty, theatrical protest, and public nakedness, and yet were revered as divinely possessed devotees of Christ. A most beloved yurodivy, Basil the Blessed, for whom a cathedral in Moscow is named, is just one of many fools venerated in orthodox Christian traditions. These folks walked a thin line, serving people yet shunning recognition. They used a kind of performative madness to undermine any “respectability politics” and called into question the very notion of sanity.2 As barefoot monks who scavenged for food, they illuminated the stigmas of poverty and the crimes of the mighty.

The practice of using foolish actions as a foil for societal dysfunction is certainly not original to these Russian holy men and women, but appears in cultural mythologies, folktales, religious figureheads, and festivals across the globe and throughout time. Wes Nisker suggests that Holy Fools rise from the fringes of society, but end up shaping the hearts of the great religions.3 He includes Lao Tzu, Buddha, and Christ within their number. They each cherish an uncompromising commitment to live according to their deepest convictions, even if that means shirking social obligations and rejecting hierarchical structures. Nisker goes on to elaborate on the nuances of this tradition of “crazy wisdom” that ushers in absurdity, rebellion, and reversal through many types of holy foolery.

In Nisker’s book, The Essential Crazy Wisdom, we meet and learn about the distinctive characters of Clown, Jester, Trickster, and Holy Fool. The Clown is familiar to us as the laughable buffoon with ridiculously exaggerated features and actions. The Clown’s awkward stumbling mirrors our own frailty and ineptitude, seeding doubt in the midst of our misplaced confidence. The Jester is a master of wit and playful mockery, uniquely positioned to speak truth to power. Tasked with entertaining the king’s court, he often finds himself in influential roles, compelling the ears of the elite. The Trickster is a boundary crosser who recreates worlds through transgressive actions; he breaks taboos, challenges concepts of right and wrong, and introduces new or competing paradigms. Each of these characters critique the prevailing socio-political framework; they poke, they prod, and they play, thereby calling dominant narratives into question. The last of these characters, however, the Holy Fool, completely obliterates the paradigm by acting outside of it. His presence beyond accepted systems and symbols casts doubt not only on their power, but also on their very existence. He turns the world upside down and inside out.

The “powers that be” cannot allow such rebels to thrive, and thus these four expressions of “crazy wisdom” are in constant danger of being either destroyed or domesticated. The Church and State have utilized both strategies, working, on one hand, to discredit, demonize, or even outlaw Holy Fool outliers, or, alternatively, to co-opt them through appropriation and commodification. But despite proliferated attempts by the Church, the State, and the ruling class to eradicate these figures and their legacies, folk traditions worldwide have preserved these archetypal powers. Nisker writes:

“The four archetypes share an uncanny ability to escape the trouble they inevitably get themselves into: the clown gets bopped, the trickster is dismembered and blown apart, the jester may have his head cut off by the king or be hit by rotten fruit thrown from the audience, and the great fool is about to fall off a cliff or be martyred by an angry mob. But just when it seems that all is lost, they rise again, recovered and whole, even from death. (The dismembered Coyote reassembles, Jesus Christ rises into everlasting life.) Because of their humor or their innocence, or because their revelations are so important, these crazy wisdom characters are immortal.”4

The Holy Fool’s message is recurrent throughout history, not because it is allowed a seat at the table of empire, but because those under the table or banished to the margins choose to celebrate it and keep it alive. (Notably, however, the fool is often given a seat of honor within indigenous and earth-honoring cultures, whose traditions involve sacred clowns and mythologies that revere the tricksters.)

Tolstoy’s interest in the notion of “crazy wisdom” is evident in the way he approaches the telling of these folk tales. Tolstoy’s spiritual awakening and radicalization process came through his reading of scripture, and particularly the gospel story, which inspired and rooted his anarchist views. Tolstoy’s subsequent analysis around nonviolence influenced other Holy Fools, such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. His Christian anarchism set itself against the institutions of both the Church and the State. Guardian writer Giles Fraser writes: “He was a thorn in the side of organized religion and, even more so, a vigorous opponent of the state. For Tolstoy, the state was one great big protection racket, a monopoly of organized violence demanding money for a false promise of security. For by the raising of armies its citizens organize for war and yet also make themselves a target for attack. Thus the ‘Christian’ state is a contradiction in terms.” 5 These bold stances stemmed from Tolstoy’s reading of the gospel, which led him to despise hierarchical structures and power imbalances.

Let us remember, Tolstoy’s subversive tale of Ivan the Fool (a peasant hero of Russian folklore6) was dreamed and embellished inside an imperial context. Tolstoy published this tale in 1886. Twenty-five years earlier, 20 million serfs were emancipated from a feudal system by the liberal reforms of Emperor Alexander II, which led to a surge of radical social analysis and revolutionary action. Two decades later, and five years before Ivan the Fool was published, Emperor Alexander II was assassinated, and imperial power transferred to his son Alexander III. This new tzar was an anti-Semitic nationalist who reversed his father’s initiatives through repressive action; he forced the widespread adoption of one language and a solitary orthodox religion in order to squelch revolutionary unrest. The Russian Orthodox Church, awash in state power, officially excommunicated Tolstoy in 1901.

Tolstoy connected the wisdom of these folk tales to the subversive wisdom of the gospel, which, according to Tolstoy’s reading, indicated that there should be no ruler. In the story of Ivan the Fool, Ivan’s brothers, tempted by money and military power, seem destined to have the upper hand. Yet innocent Ivan, with his simple and unsuspecting ways, defeats the treacherous “devils” and gains a position of power as the fool king. The moral of these tales suggests that if there has to be a ruler, then it needs to be someone who doesn’t have money, doesn’t have an army, allows anybody in, helps his brothers even after they transgress, and rewards the meek. It is the world turned upside down. It is no spoiler to share that Ivan triumphs within this story; that is the way of most fairy tales. But we would be amiss to simplify this narrative into a children’s morality tale and neglect its nuanced political implications.

In many folk tales, including the ones in this volume, the fool is pitted against characters who act as personifications of the dominant culture. It is important, therefore, to unpack the narrative function not only of Ivan’s brothers, but also of the devil and his servants, the imps. The Christian church after Constantine derived many of its images of the Devil from ancient pagan representations of animal gods, in order to seed mistrust and doubt in those traditions. We think it is better to understand the “devil” and his “imps” in Tolstoy’s tales as personifications of systemic injustice. Walter Wink’s work on the biblical “principalities and powers” helps us see the spiritual significance of political and societal institutions and their role in the personal and political oppression.

In Ivan’s adventures, we can glimpse the truth that “personal redemption cannot take place apart from the redemption of our social structures,” as Wink writes.7 He goes on to say: “The gospel, then, is not a message about the salvation of individuals from the world, but news about a world transfigured, right down to its basic structures.”8

Ivan the Fool, like many other old folk tales, carries a legacy of longing for another world and offers an invitation for another way to be. We are grateful to be able to lean into these stories and listen again to the wisdom of the fool!

Tevyn East and Jay Beck

April 2018

Philadelphia

1. Leo Tolstoy, What is Art? & Wherein is Truth in Art? (Meditations on Aesthetics & Literature) trans. Aylmer Maude, Louise Maude, Nathan Haskell Dole, & Isabel Hapgood (Musaicum Books, June 21, 2017), Kindle Edition.

2. Eugene Vodolazkin, “Russian ‘Umberto Eco’ demystifies the Holy Fool” Russia Beyond, June 6, 2013, https://www.rbth.com/literature/2013/06/06/russian_umberto_eco_demystifies_the_holy_fool_26401.html

3. Wes Nisker, The Essential Crazy Wisdom (Toronto: Ten Speed Press, 2001), 54.

4. Wes Nisker, The Essential Crazy Wisdom (Toronto: Ten Speed Press, 2001), 31.

5. Giles Fraser, “Tolstoy’s Christian anarchism was a war on both church and state.” The Guardian, Jan, 21, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2016/jan/21/tolstoy-war-peace-christian-anarchism-church-state.

6. Andrei Sinyavsky, Ivan the Fool: Russian Folk Belief: A Cultural History (London/Moscow: GLAS New Russian Writing, 2007).

7. Walter Wink, Unmasking the Powers: The Invisible Forces That Determine Human Existence (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 98.

8. Walter Wink, The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium (New York: Doubleday, April 1998), 36.