«Wit is the elegance of mind’s nature»: on the Baroque of Vyg Old Believers

The paper deals with the problems of the Baroque Reception in the Old-Believers’ Literary Culture of the 18th century. The author analyzes the specific interpretation of a basic concept of Baroque poetics, «stroumiye» (acumen), in the hand-written Rhetoric of Sofrony Lichud and in the rhetorics of Old Believers. Study is made of the role of the acumen concept in the sermon genre which occupies the central place in the Vyg Old Believers’ Literary Culture.