concept
Ilyin Den (Elijah's Day)
Elijah's Day
also: Ильин день
Ilyin Den (2 August Old Style/20 July), the feast of the Prophet Elijah, was a major agrarian holiday in the Russian calendar marking the turn of summer toward autumn, often the setting for a landowner's idle brooding in Chekhov's early sketches.
Reading notes
- The Virtuous Tavern-Keeper §8 Elijah's Day
Ilyin Den (2 August, Old Style/20 July), the feast of the Prophet Elijah -- a major agrarian holiday in the Russian calendar, traditionally marking the turn of summer toward autumn and often the occasion for a landowner's idle brooding.
- The Name-Day Party §107 the feast of Elijah
Ilyin Den, the feast of the Prophet Elijah (2 August Old Style), a major agrarian holiday in the Russian calendar; Varvara, the gardener's wife, reckons her due date by it, a reminder of how thoroughly the church calendar structured rural timekeeping, including a pregnancy this far along in her fifth child.
- The Meeting §25 St. Elijah's day
Ilyin Den (2 August Old Style), the feast of the Prophet Elijah, who in Russian folk belief controlled thunder and lightning; that the church burned from a lightning strike "right around" his feast day carries an ironic charge in peasant belief, reinforced immediately after when Yefrem says the villagers assumed "Elijah the Prophet must have been wroth" that the church doors were locked against the fire.