“Chronicles of St. Seraphim-Diveyevo Monastery” a landmark work of ecclesiastical writing at the turn of the century can be considered as an experiment to return the “folk” hagiography to the mainstream literature. Accumulating various hagiographic genres that go back to the tradition of Old Russian literature (monastic chronicle, patericon, vision, miracles, etc.) Chichagov not only reproduces the facts narrated in these texts, but also applies certain features of their poetics to his work. In particular, such elements of the artistic structure of “Chronicles” as composition, style, narrator figure and chronotopos are determined (partially or completely) by the Old Russian genre canon: “enfilade” composition, hagiographic style, the author who deals with the mystical meaning of history, and finally, the eschatological tension of the narrative stemming from the sacred status of the Diveyevo topos. The conceptual grain of “Chronicles” is the legend of the Four Earthly Domains of the Most Holy Theotokos which is introduced into the narrative through a vision. The semantic depth of the legend, due to centuries of circulation within different cultures, had a significant impact on the artistic structure of the work, determining the originality of the artistic time and the religious and ethical position of the author.
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