Prototypes of the Holy Fool Nikolka Iron Cap in Pushkin's Tragedy
Pushkin's Boris Godunov contains a tiny scene with a holy fool: children have taken a coin from Nikolka, who never removes his iron cap and is hung about with chains, and he addresses the Tsar as he passes by:.
Holy Fool
(weeping)
They have taken my little kopeck; they are hurting Nikolka!
The People
The Tsar, the Tsar is coming.
The Tsar comes out of the cathedral. A boyar walks ahead, distributing alms to the beggars. Boyars.
Holy Fool
Boris, Boris! The children are hurting Nikolka.
Tsar
Give him alms. What is he weeping about?
Holy Fool
Little children are hurting Nikolka... Order them to be slaughtered, as you slaughtered the little tsarevich.
Boyars
Get away, you fool! Seize the fool!
Tsar
Leave him be. Pray for me, poor Nikolka.
(Exits.)
Holy Fool
(after him)
No, no! One cannot pray for Tsar Herod: the Mother of God forbids it.
Literary scholars have written a great deal about this character, chiefly asking on which particular holy fool Pushkin modelled his Nikolka, "Iron Cap". Pushkin's correspondence with Vyazemsky and Karamzin from the time he was writing the tragedy is well known, and in it he asks directly about the celebrated Moscow holy fools: Basil the Blessed, associated with the person of Ivan the Terrible (without success), and Ivan Big Cap, who did in fact revile Tsar Boris. There was also a third holy fool who inspired Pushkin, Nikola Salos of Pskov. Given that Pushkin's library contained Nikolay Ilyinsky's "Historical Description of the City of Pskov and Its Ancient Suburbs", which supplies the information about Salos, it is quite likely that the name Nikolka was taken precisely from the Pskov holy fool. He saved the city from the wrath of Ivan the Terrible by advising the people to be meek and hospitable before the Tsar, and by saying to Ivan IV himself: "Ivanushko! Ivanushko! Eat bread and salt, and not Christian blood."
The symbolism of the iron cap is more than transparent for the sixteenth century: it is, of course, a model of the Monomakh Cap, iron rods woven into a hat, crowned with a cross and trimmed with the fur of a dead cat. Ivan Big Cap, or the Water-Carrier, was venerated in Moscow as a saint; no one laughed at him or hurt him, they merely kept trying to take the iron cap off him, for he caused the Tsar quite exceptional unease.
