This is Season 2, Episode 3: Ilya Muromets and Nightingale the Outlaw

When Ilya Muromets had left his hearth and home, he had been little more than a peasant son, unrefined, uncultured: a barefooted booby. But he came home a brave warrior, dressed in shining mail and sparkling greaves. His helm, all in gold, caught the gleam of the sun. At his elbow a mace swung to and fro; at his left side the sword of Svyatogor the Great. And his right gripped a spear made of the trunk of a tree.

He came home to his mother, to his father, and he fell on his knees before them a third time. “Let me go, my dear mother and father. Bless me now, to be Russia’s new guardian!”

But his father grew angry, and his mother began to weep. “No, Ilyusha, we won’t give you our blessing to go. Stay with us here. We are old and decrepit. Lead us both by the hand until death take us. Only then will we give you the blessing you seek.”

But Ilya would not rest with the words of his folk. “Was it for this that I went to the holy hills to learn from the greatest? Was it for this that Svyatogor himself blew his dying breath of might into my lungs? Was it for this that he gave his sword so great, so that it might molder in an attic while I sit in a parlor? Did my strength, did my might grow for 30 years as in a cocoon, so that I could hide behind my mother’s skirts?”

And his father sighed, and his mother sighed. They bent over double, they cried a bit more, but no longer did they withhold their blessing from a son who had outgrown them. Only seven days they begged of him, to remain with them for a final week of fading joys. No sooner did the sun rise on the eighth morning that Ilya jumped up, put on his mail, dressed his horse in Svyatogor’s armor. He tested his mace, he twirled his spear, he sharpened Svyatogor’s mighty sword. He put a new string on his bow. He struck his warrior shield, and it rang like a bell on Pascha night.

Now it wasn’t a willow whose branches drooped to the river, nor the fallen leaves that carpet the forest in the fall, but it was a son who fell before his father, a warrior before his mother, begging a final good word. And this time Ilya’s father waxed generous with his words.

“God forgive you all the sins you may have committed, my son, both known or unknown in the doing. My blessing I bestow on all deeds of valor and virtue, but not a single evil deed will I bless. Serve valiantly your mother, our Rus. Cherish the calling of the bogatyr. Never bow and scrape before a prince, nor raise yourself proudly over a peasant. Never give way to the enemy though it cost you your hide. Be a guide and protector of the weak, the orphans, the smallest children. Be the keeper of all the Orthodox people.”

Efrosinya Alexandrovna shed a final tear as her son rode through the town to the goggling eyes of his fellow villagers. After all, they had not seen him ride in his full warrior garb.

It was only in the wide plain that Ilya’s sorrow came to haunt him. He saw his mother’s face. He felt her tears, hot on his own face. And he stopped at that moment to stand on the hot earth of his home land.

“I swear,” he said, “for the sake of my weeping mother, that I will not pull my sword from its sheath, that I will not come off my horse, that I will not string an arrow to my bow, that I will not even dismount from this moment until I come to the great city of Kiev.”

Soon Ilya came to a parting of the ways. From one road, three branched out in different directions. At the center, at the parting, stood a waystone. On it, etched in white, were the following words: “All three roads lead to Kiev. The straight road will take the rider seven days, but it has fallen into disrepair. 30 years it will take the rider now. The other two roads will only take two years.” Ilya rode straight.

Soon he entered a dark wood, and the road seemed to disappear in black mud and green, festering bog land. Ilya’s horse could barely take a step without tripping or getting stuck fast. Ilya sat on his horse and wondered. After all, he had promised his mother that he would not get off his horse until he reached Kiev, the great city. But if he didn’t get off his horse, they would never make it. “Forgive me, mother dearest. I made a promise to you, I did, but not for some fancy do I now dismount. I only do it in the greatest need.”

And he got off his horse and led it by the bridle as he uprooted trees and tossed them across the worst of the boggy bits. He even built a few bridges while he was at it, and soon he had gotten through the swamp and found himself within shouting distance of the city Chernigov. That beautiful city, though, it was shut tight, for all around it a host of enemies seethed and swirled. Already they had scaling ladders prepared, already their arrows were being covered in fiery pitch, already they had felled trees to break the gates of the city down.

Ilya sat on his horse and wondered. After all, he had promised his mother that he would not shed blood, that he would not unsheathe his sword until he came to Kiev, the great city. “Forgive me, mother dearest. I made a promise to you, I did, but not for some fancy do I unsheathe my great sword now. I do it for the children of Chernigov.”

And Ilya Muromets fell upon that host like a bolt of lightning. Soon that army was nothing more than a mound of bodies piled as high as the white walls of Chernigov. Then Ilya pushed the great gates of the city open and walked in. It was quiet as the grave. At the top of the hill, inside the great city, Ilya saw a church with white walls and golden domes. He hastened to enter it even as the sun began to set on that once-beseiged city.

The church was packed full of men, armed but white-faced. The priest served at the altar, and they all bowed their heads in frightened prayer. Ilya stood through the service, crossing himself as the rites demanded, but he couldn’t wait for it to end before raising his voice to the congregation.

“O men of Chernigov, you cowards! To pray before battle is good, but better it would have been had you let your swords and your maces do your praying for you. Look, your enemies are vanquished even as you languished here behind the doors of the church!” And the wonder of Chernigov city was very great as they saw the mound of the fallen.

“Stay with us, Ilya Muromets!” they said to him. “Gold we will give you, silver, as much as you like. Only be our war leader. Stay with us! Protect us!” And as they said this, they brought him three great goblets of gold, encrusted with jewels.

“Fie on you!” answered Ilya Muromets. “I need none of your silver! Not an ounce of your gold. It would be great dishonor for me to remain among you, for my calling is to go to great Kiev city.”

“But you cannot go to Kiev,” they retorted. “Have you not heard? There is but one road to the capital city, but at the outflow of the river Pochai, Nightingale the Outlaw, son of Rachmat, has made his nest of thievery. On seven oaks does he sit, on 40 stumps. 40 warrior sons he has to do his bidding, and his daughter, Maria Soloveyovnya, is the worst of the lot. Do not go to Kiev, the great city, for surely you will perish on the way!”

“Ha! I may as well return to hide behind my mother’s skirts if I should listen to these words,” said Ilya, and he rode on towards Kiev as the sun set.

Next morning, as the dust rose to meet the sun, Ilya approached the vile nest of Nightingale the Outlaw, son of Rachmat, sitting on his seven oaks, his 40 stumps. Nightingale saw the coming of the warrior, and he laughed to himself. “Ha! Here comes another one,” he said.

And Nightingale began to whistle like a bird, he began to growl like a beast, he began to hiss like a snake. At the force of that sound, the trees bowed down to the earth itself; the wind rushed, pinning even the beasts of the field down to the earth. Ilya Muromets sat, straight-backed, on his horse, as though they were nailed to the ground, but soon even his great warrior horse fell to one knee.

“Why, you bag of grass! You useless fodder for wolves,” said Ilya Muromets. “Why did I raise you? Why did I feed you, if you would bow down at the first sign of danger?” Ilya sat on his poor horse, and still he wondered, even in the midst of that roaring, the whistling and the hissing. After all, he had promised his mother that he would not put an arrow to the bowstring until he came to Kiev, the great city. “Forgive me, mother dearest. I made a promise to you, I did, but not for some fancy do I now set my arrow to the bowstring. I do it for all the people of Russia.”

Then he pulled his bowstring all the way to his right ear. “Fly, my arrow. Fly true. Pierce into Nightingale’s right eye, come out his left nostril. Go now. Serve me well.” And the arrow flew straight, and it pierced Nightingale’s right eye, and it came out his left nostril. Nightingale fell, silent, to the bare earth. Ilya took him and chained him to the saddle of his great war horse. Then he rode on, on toward the great city of Kiev.

As he rode, the 40 sons of Nightingale, son of Rachmat, saw the dust in the distance of a rider approaching them. “Look, mother!” they said as one. “Our father, the outlaw, is bringing back another foolish peasant warrior of that pathetic Rus, chained to his saddlebags.”

But the wife of Nightingale, Akulina Shokhanovna, had eyes like a hawk. She saw how it truly was. “No, my sons. It is the other way around! It is your father who is chained to the saddle! Hurry now! Grab your weapons! Save your father from that foolish warrior!”

And they did. All 40 of them, bristling, armed to the teeth, rushed at Ilya Muromets on their horses of the plains. But as they approached, Nightingale himself called out to them, “No, my sons! Don’t attack this good warrior of the Rus. Gather all the gold we have, all the silver, all the mother-of-pearl. Buy back my freedom, for you are no match for this great man!”

Then the sons of Nightingale, the wind no longer in their sails, rushed to gather the greatest ransom the world has ever seen.

But Maria Soloveyovnya, the daughter warrior of Nightingale, would have none of it. She took the metal bar from their gates—3,000 pounds and more it was—and she struck Ilya Muromets right between the ears. Oh ho, that blow rang in Ilya’s head like a bell clanging during a village fire. And then Ilya Muromets got mad. He picked up Maria Soloveyovnya like she were a sheaf of wheat, and he threw her! She flew like a bird until she landed head-first in the ground, losing her wits completely. When she came back to consciousness, she shook her head, which felt like all the bees in the world had come to make a home of it. “Oh, what possessed me,” she said to herself, “to tease such a warrior.”

But Ilya had no more time for her. He broke into the holds and keeps of the outlaw family. There, behind walls and bars and screens and chains as thick as a man’s hand, he found 99 warriors in chains. “Get up, lazybones!” he jeered at them. “Haven’t you heard? There’s an outlaw on the road to Kiev!”

And Ilya rode to Kiev, Nightingale still chained to his saddle. He didn’t bother to knock at the gates. He didn’t bother to call for the door wardens. He whispered into his horse’s ear, and it jumped clear of the walls of the city, landed right in the city square, at the foot of Vladimir the prince’s own palace. Ilya Muromets dismounted and did the proper thing. He crossed himself in four directions, then he bowed deeply to his waist. A fifth time he crossed himself, but it was for the health and life of Vladimir the beautiful son himself.

Into the hall of feasting Ilya went, waiting for no man to introduce him or to allow him in. “Good morning to you, dear Vladimir, prince, the beautiful son of this holy land!”

At that greeting, all the boyars seethed like a pack of dogs. “What is this barefooted booby of a peasant? How dare he come here with no one to announce him, all the way to the feet of Vladimir prince himself!”

But Vladimir kept his peace and asked the young warrior, “Tell me, young man, who are you? Of what tribe? Are you come to us from a foreign land?”

“I am of this holy land, O prince,” said Ilya. “From Murom I come, from the village of Karacharova. My father is a peasant of the land, Ivan his name. My own is Ilya Muromets. Only yesterday I stood at vigil in the church of Chernigov, and today for liturgy I have come to Kiev, the great city.”

And again the boyars seethed and cackled like a pack of jackals. “Hear him, that barefooted booby of a peasant! Cast him out, O prince, as a raving liar, for what man can stand at vigil in Chernigov? You know yourself that enemies besiege that city all around!”

Ilya said to them, growing in anger, “You know of those enemies, and yet you sit here and drink? Yes, Chernigov was surrounded, on all sides, but I hacked them down with my sword, I stomped them with my horse, and the rest I bound in chains.”

And again the boyars seethed and cackled like a pack of barking dogs. “Hear him, that barefooted booby of a peasant! Cast him out, O prince, as a raving liar! He has not defeated an army near Chernigov, and what’s more, he’s too stupid to know that Kiev itself is unreachable, for the roads are ruled by the outlaw Nightingale and his 40 warrior sons!”

At that, Ilya turned away from the boyars, ignoring them. “As for that, Vladimir, prince, son of this holy land, I have captured the Nightingale, and he lies even now chained to my saddle.”

The court rose in uproar, the prince first of all. “Oh, Ilya Muromets, you marvel! Show me. Show me the man who has brought so much grief to my lands. And they all tumbled down the stairs to the courtyard where Ilya’s horse still stood bearing the chained Nightingale like a pack of fodder.

“Nightingale, you outlaw,” said Vladimir the prince, “would you do me a service? I would like to hear you whistle like a bird, roar like a beast, hiss like a snake for myself.”

But the robber turned away from the prince and said, “I do nothing but the bidding of Ilya Muromets.”

Vladimir begged Ilya to let him hear the Nightingale’s famous song.

“But I cannot,” protested the outlaw, “for my throat is parched and my lips are sealed with my own blood.”

Ilya brought him a bucket of wine and let him drink. “Only take care,” he said to the outlaw, “a half whistle only, a half roar only, a half hiss only. That’s all you’re allowed to do.”

But the outlaw drank and felt the wine coursing through his body like hot blood in his veins, and he thought this was the chance he needed. So he whistled as he had never whistled, he roared as he had never roared, he hissed as he had never hissed before. The buildings shook, the bell tower swayed, the boyars groveled, and even Vladimir himself crawled on the ground from the blast of Nightingale’s song.

“Ilya Muromets!” the prince begged, barely speaking. “I have had my fill of this song!”

Ilya Muromets picked the outlaw up by his scruff. He threw him up to the sky. The clouds themselves as the outlaw flew up, up, up, then down, down, down to mother earth, and down to the shoulders he was buried under all that dirt.

And that was the end of Nightingale’s song.

“Come, Ilya Muromets,” said Vladimir the prince, as the boyars still groveled in the dust, afraid to stand up. “Come, sit in the war leader’s chair. It is yours if you want it.” And Ilya Muromets went up with the prince and he sat at the great hall of feasting, and from that day on he became a war leader of the armies of the capital city.

There’s something missing in the stories of our time. That’s especially true for those who are paying attention to fantasy and science fiction, both in the written word and in visual media. It has to do with a willful misunderstanding of the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, or at least partially it does. You might be surprised to know that most modern fantasy readers generally don’t like Tolkien. In fact, many of the people who watch the movies don’t read the books. And in fact, most people who have come to encounter The Lord of the Rings have done so by watching the movies and not by reading the book.

I digress a little bit. Those who don’t like the works of Tolkien, especially in their written form, tend to object, first of all, to the ubiquity of elves, dwarves, and the vaguely medieval European setting, especially nowadays. There’s a lot more of a hankering for diverse stories in diverse settings. Nothing wrong with that, of course, but here’s the problem: they often combine that objection with another objection. They say that they object to the so-called moral simplicity of Tolkien’s vision.

One of the first among these complainers is somebody who otherwise considers Tolkien to be a forerunner of his own art. I’m speaking of George R.R. Martin. Here’s what he has to say:

The battle of good and evil is a great subject for any book and certainly for a fantasy book, but I think ultimately the battle between good and evil is weighed within the individual human heart and not necessarily between an army of people dressed in white and an army of people dressed in black. When I look at the world, I see that most real living breathing human beings are gray.

And so we have the current ascendance of something called grimdark in printed fantasy and also the current ascendance of what I started to talk about last time, of something we might call superhero fatigue, or hero fatigue in general. So the stories that are the most legendary, that are the most inspired by epic storytelling traditions in our popular culture are mostly grim and dark and becoming more so. The moral universe of these stories is definitely gray, but skewing closer to black.

The problem is that this is not really a response to Tolkien’s so-called simplistic moral vision at all. In fact, it’s entirely incorrect to say that Tolkien’s moral vision is simplistic. There’s a wonderful article in The American Spectator that says the following:

I think many people who listen to this podcast probably being fans of the Amon Sûl podcast, would agree with me when I say that Tolkien skillfully created a world in which black-and-white moral categories serve as ideals or archetypes. But the real world of Middle Earth constantly veers away from the world of the archetypal, from the black and the white.

Let’s take Galadriel. She refuses to take the ring. Why? Is it because she is so white, so simplistically perfect, that she doesn’t want to even sully herself by contact with evil? Well, no, it’s because she is gray. She recognizes that she is fallible, but she wants to become white. She knows her own limitations, and she fears that even she, with her centuries of experience, may fall to the black. Even Gandalf has doubts, and Gandalf is basically an incarnate angel. That is the opposite of simplistic morality.

Actually, it’s Martin’s moral vision that I think is overly simplistic. From the very first page of A Game of Thrones—again, I’m talking about the book version here—we enter a world where grayness is overwhelming. Martin—and many other writers of our time—don’t seem to allow for the possibility that the good can ever win. On the contrary, it seems possible, though, that the black will win, everything; not the gray, but the black. All the characters seem permanently enslaved to their own failings, to their own passions. It’s a very pessimistic worldview, almost a nihilistic one, one that, yes, does jive well with our culture’s current sensibilities and with the tremendous political and societal upheaval going on around us right now and becoming worse with every week.

This is why I think any really good fantasy writer, any good parent, any good storyteller still needs to contend with the reality that is J.R.R. Tolkien. No, not everybody wants a constant rehash of The Lord of the Rings, and it’s my sad necessity to tell many of you who may not believe me that the kind of fantasy that Tolkien wrote has become so hackneyed that it can no longer move the heart. If you are not Tolkien and you’re trying to write Tolkienesque, you will probably fail. So I think there actually needs to be a new kind of heroism, a new kind of storytelling, a new kind of fantasy, one that is neither Tolkien nor Martin, though it can be inspired by both.

I’ve already mentioned this preponderance of gritty realism, this brutality in our culture’s representations of stories and of the past. Readers and viewers who prefer such stories often complain that Tolkien is too removed from everyday life to be effective, especially for the complex moral reality of our time. They make the claim—and I’m afraid they may be right—that Tolkien’s epic heroism requires that you already exist within a civilization that has raised you with certain archetypes in mind: the wandering knight, the exiled king, the dark lord, and the eucatastrophe at the back of it all.

The problem is that these ideals for the last millennium have been part of the cultural inheritance of the West, and people much more intelligent than I, including recent convert to Orthodoxy Paul Kingsnorth, are making very impassioned and very effective and convincing arguments that the West has already died, and what we are living in now is a post-Western reality. Hardly anyone has really been raised in a common Christian Western cultural context. Worse than that, people have been and are being fed a vision of Christianity, a version of Christianity, that has very little to do with the truth of historical, actual, orthodox Christianity. You see this a lot in recent historical and speculative fiction, both in the visual and in the written media. Christianity in particular is often described as an ideological system whose entire purpose is to gain power and control over both individual people and institutions. The Church, then, is no different from a government—from a corrupt government, or maybe even a drug cartel—except religion is worse, because clerics have divine sanction to do all kinds of terrible things.

For example, in the award-winning novel, Station Eleven, the main antagonist is a violent cult leader who goes insane after reading—get this—St. John’s Revelation. So when the end of the world actually comes, in the novel, he begins to gather people into his cult forcefully, sometimes even killing people who get in his way. The suggestion of the author is that this character became this way because at a critical moment of trauma, he read St. John’s Revelation. But that idea is crazy! If there’s any single image of the faithful Christian that stands out in Revelation, it’s the martyr covered in blood, crying out, “How long, O Lord holy and true, until you judge and avenge our blood upon those who dwell on the earth?” (Revelation 6:10). These are not holy warriors.

Another example among many is the depiction of the Church in the BBC’s otherwise excellent series, The Last Kingdom. In this series, the Church is overwhelmingly an organization full of either idiots or unscrupulous, power-hungry clerics. Abbots see nothing wrong with exterminating pagans wholesale; priests hoard money and jewels “for the Church,” letting poor people starve in the process. It’s all about power; it’s all about accumulation of power.

Now, I’m not saying all this to complain about the treatment of Christians in popular culture. Too many people have done that; it’s not time to do that any more. My point is that Tolkien’s heroic ideal is inextricably rooted in Christianity, but not in the Christianity that many of the people rooted in popular culture assume Christianity to be. Not only that, but the simple historical truth is that any heroic ideal, even one rooted in paganism, in the West has become inextricably linked with Christianity. So as Christendom dies, then the heroic ideal dies along with it, which is why, rather than trying to come up with a new heroic ideal for modern times, many writers simply suggest—or many storytellers, I should say, simply suggest that the heroic ideal is impossible, or, worse, the implication is that it’s a delusion and that heroism in any manifestation is actually something that should be actively fought against, because it will always become something corrupt.

Maybe we need a radically different sort of hero now, to counteract the damage that has been done, whether we like it or not, to the image of the archetypal hero of the West. This hero can’t be someone who seeks power, or if he does, it will not be through the acquisition of power that he becomes a hero; the opposite, only the abandonment of control and power over others can such a hero find his heroism.

There are a few examples of this kind of hero in fantasy literature. One good one is Severian in Gene Wolfe’s wonderful Book of the New Sun. Another is Paksenarrion in Elizabeth Moon’s Deed of Paksenarrion. But these books, which are excellent books, are not really all that well known; they’re more cult classics—and they’re not really the kind of literature that’s going to change the world, not really the kind of stories that are going to grab the imagination of a huge number of people.

In fact, I suggest looking in a completely different direction to find the source of this new heroic ideal. If you haven’t already, I suggest that you read The Gurus, the Young Man, and Elder Paisios. It’s a book in which we encounter a man who battles with forces of evil and on such a scale that it all sounds too fairy-tale to be true. But Elder Paisios is not large, muscle-bound, handsome; he’s a short, hairy, funny-looking old man who is more ridiculous than inspiring—but he’s a hero, and one of the most well loved and well known figures in Orthodox Christian circles. It’s precisely his humility and love and self-effacement that is the source of his strength.

Maybe that’s the kind of hero we moderns need, the kind of ideal hero that I think good stories should try to depict.

But we still are attracted by the physically imposing, by those who are stronger, by those who are more beautiful, by those who are set apart from all others. And I’m not suggesting necessarily that we abandon that visual image of the hero. And this is where these Russian epic poems are actually very valuable to the modern listener, to the modern reader, because if we look at the first few stories of Ilya Muromets, we see a character who keeps breaking the mold of what most stories have the traditional hero do. Very often, the hero must go out and acquire strength, through feats of military or physical prowess.

But what does Ilya Muromets do? At every single opportunity that he has, he is first denied the chance to have excessive power. In the first story, where the three travelers give him a lot of physical strength, but only enough to be virtuous and not too much so that he doesn’t become Kalivan the giant. And then in the second story, when he encounters Svyatogor, remembering the lesson of the travelers, Ilya Muromets does not accept Svyatogor’s full exhalation of power, not even knowing that it would kill him anyway; but he on principle refuses to accept the fullness of Svyatogor’s strength, because it’s not in that kind of strength that Ilya Muromets finds his heroism. He finds it in the blessing of his father, which is all about sacrificing oneself for the benefit of the downtrodden, the orphaned, and the poor and the marginalized.

There’s another aspect to Ilya Muromets’s story that I think is very compelling or should be very compelling to those of us who are looking for a new kind of hero to tell stories about to our children and to ourselves, because, let’s be honest: we need the stories as much as our children do. And that is, in that moment when Ilya Muromets, filled with enthusiasm at coming out into the world for the first time, ready to go and do battle with all that is evil, makes a promise, trying to honor his weeping mother, that he will begin his journey in the asceticism of the warrior—he will not draw his sword, he will not bend his bow, he will not get off his horse—and yet, he is immediately faced with the reality that such bombastic and honor-bound proscriptions that, by the way, traditional heroes in the Greek sense and generally in the Western sense, would not dare go against their word given out loud for the hearing of the world, and yet here, Ilya Muromets very simply and very humbly sets down his promise, asking forgiveness of his mother because he is dishonoring her memory in a way, in order to do what must be done, because it must be done, thereby leaving himself open to criticism, potentially, for being the kind of warrior who does not hold to his word, once given, never to be broken.

This is the kind of hero that is similar in some ways to the saint, not surprisingly. Not surprisingly, Ilya Muromets is a saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church. We’ll talk about that more later on in this season, but the epic, legendary warrior, does have a real-world analogue: a monk who died in the Kiev Caves in the 10th, 11th century, at the very, very early time of Christianity in Russia. This kind of hero, whether it’s Elder Paisios or Ilya Muromets, lives in a fallen world where gray is the predominant color. This is going to become more and more obvious as we encounter the foibles of Prince Vladimir who, in the stories, is not at all the saint of the hagiographic tradition; this is a very fickle, very negative character, and in fact everybody around him is the same.

There is no certainty in the internal battle of the hero in this world. At any moment, the hero in this world knows that the black can overwhelm the white within him, and this knowledge forces him into constant vigilance. He doesn’t go out to battle, guns blazing, a sword in his hand, a song on his lips; he goes out to battle asking forgiveness of his mother for breaking his oath, because he understands the evil within himself can come out at any moment if he’s not careful. And, more importantly, he, like Ilya, recognizes that the source of his power is not within him; it’s not himself. And this is so important.

Tolkien’s magic, magic system in The Lord of the Rings and the rest of his legendarium, is notably different from most other fantasy writers’. The source of his good magic is never within the wielder of power; it is always a derivative power, and it never seeks to dominate, and if it does, it becomes corrupted. In the case of the three rings of power, the power derives from the Valar, from the angels, and it is useful not so much for weapons as for things like maintaining the cycle of nature and the fruitfulness of the earth. The one ring, on the other hand, thrives on the kind of grasping after power that Svyatogor is guilty of and that unfortunately caricature “Christianity” has been reduced to in popular fiction and movies. Sauron is the source of his own power; so is the pope, and they both seek to dominate others with it.

The good guys deplore any attempt at domination. Both Gandalf and Galadriel refuse to take the ring for that reason alone. Good magic always derives from a higher power, and it never dominates: it serves. In fact, let’s stop calling that kind of magic “magic”; let’s call it “grace.” It’s no less powerful than the magic of the fully realized self; in fact, it is far greater. It can only be accessed through the path of self-rejection and humility, not the path of self-actualization. It seeks the good of others.

This is a new kind of quest that good stories should try to depict, new ones and old ones, depending on the ones that we tell, whether we are parents telling old stories to our children, or new storytellers trying to inspire others with new heroes. Ultimately, it’s still very, very hard to write about heroism in a convincing manner without becoming preachy. Why? Because depicting heroism realistically depends on a very scary reality. We storytellers, we have to attempt the quest for grace in our own lives. If we tell stories of heroism without trying to embody that heroism ourselves, it will ring hollow. This is why gritty realistic modern fantasy and modern renditions of a brutal past, they’re comforting because they confirm the reader and the viewer in their own worldviews instead of pushing them to consider better alternatives.

Basically, a storyteller who really wants his stories to change the world needs to become a kind of ascetic or maybe even a saint. I’m not really being facetious at all. If, as I have tried to argue repeatedly, if fantasy or story or fairy tale, if they have the power to move readers, it’s because the writer knows what he or she is talking about. If good fantasy is the kind literature that will move people to become humble and strive to acquire grace, not power over others, then the writer needs to be able to express it from first-hand experience. In fact, the great Russian poet, Pushkin, had an artistic credo. In the words of literary critic Ivan Andreev, Pushkin understood

that aesthetics without ethics is nothing; that Beauty without Good is not Beauty at all, but only prettiness; that to be a great poet, one must first become a good man. And then service to art will become a high moral calling—loving one’s neighbor.

Actually, I think this is something that all of us, whether we tell stories professionally or not, should aspire to. And whether we decide that we’re going to write stories that are more like the stories of Tolkien or more like the stories of Martin, the stories for our time need to have a high moral calling. Those who hear our stories, those who see them, those who read them, should themselves be inspired to become better people, to become the kind of hero that Elder Paisios and Ilya Muromets were.

Thank you for listening. If you’d like to find out more about the exciting and dangerous world of Slavic fairy tales, check out the Raven Son epic fantasy series, which is inspired by these stories. If you find yourself moved by these fairy tales, consider becoming a patron of the podcast. Your contribution will go a long way towards supporting independent creators like me and Natalie and will make it possible for more episodes than the current limited format of ten episodes per season. Visit patreon.com/nicholaskotar for more information.

This show was edited and its beautiful music is originally composed by Natalie Wilson at nwcomposing.com. In a Certain Kingdom is a listener-supported presentation of Ancient Faith Radio.