The article is devoted to one of the most prolific authors of the beginning of the 18th century – John Maximovich, Metropolitan of Tobolsk, who made a forced journey from Chernigov to the capital of Siberia in 1711. His huge poetic work “The Trave­ler” combines lengthy theological arguments and everyday details. Mundane motives and plots occupy a prominent place in this text, complicating the question of its genre affiliation. Some aspects of the poetics of the “Traveler” anticipate the artistic discove­ries of poetry of the second half of the 18th century. The diversity and variability of the world, the baroque macaronic variety are combined with autobiography, which opens the way to the “golden age” of private life notes.