A Terrible Vengeance
Encyclopedia
A Terrible Vengeance is a Gothic horror story by Nikolai Gogol
.
It was published in the second volume of his first short story collection, Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka
, in 1832, and it was probably written in late Summer 1831.
The short story is written in the "ornate and agitated style" characteristic to Gogol, sometimes skirting purple prose
, and was a great influence on the rhythmic prose of the modernist novelist Andrei Bely
.
The appearance of evil spirits, and specifically of an Antichrist
figure, in A Terrible Vengeance was typical of Gogol's belief in the omnipresence of Evil in everyday life, an aspect of his religious philosophy that is uniquely direct in this story. The overall construction of the story is typical of what would come to be called skaz
, wherein characters are identified to a large degree by linguistic specificities of their manner of speech. Another particularity of the piece is frequent narratorial intrusion, such as asides to the reader or other violations of the narratorial frame.
The basic plot of the story evokes folklore, but there is no comparable piece in Ukrainian
or Russian traditions. A similar story of a sorcerer appeared in "Pietro Apone" by German romantic Johann Ludwig Tieck, published in Russian in 1828. Other potential subtexts are Tieck's Karl von Berneck (1797) and E. T. A. Hoffman's novella Ignaz Denner (1816).
esaul Gorobets's son, outside of Kiev
. Among the guests are the recently married Cossack pan Danilo Burulbash and his wife pani Katerina. They are honored guests; Danilo is Gorobets's sworn brother. Not present, however, is Katerina's father, who was expected to appear after his 21 years spent on the far side of the Dnieper River
, a land considered entirely alien.
During the celebration, the esaul brings out two holy icons, on at the sight of which one of the Cossack revelers, who had been fantastically dancing, stopped and transformed into a sorcerer, with a sharp chin, a beak, green eyes, and bluish lips. In sight of the shocked crowd, he disappears.
After this, Danilo, his wife, and a few fellow Cossacks are on a small boat on the Dnieper discussing the sorcerer. As they pass a graveyard, corpses come out of the ground, each more terrifying than the previous, each screaming "I am stifling".
In the next scene, Katerina tells Danilo about a dream that the sorcerer wants to marry her, which Danilo takes as a serious sign. When Katerina's father appears at last, an argument ensues when Katerina's father asks her to account for their late return the previous night. Danilo, who senses that his father-in-law is somehow not a true Cossack, lying about drinking mead, not eating pork and otherwise acting more like the Poles
and Turks
than like one of their own. In the ensuing saber and gun fight, Katerina's father shoots Danilo in the arm before Katerina intervenes and begs them to forgive one another.
The following night Danilo and his friend come across a castle nearby, and creep up to one of the windows that a strange light is issuing from. Through the window, he sees Katerina’s father calling up spells and her soul appears in a blue haze. The sorcerer seems to be commanding her to marry him as she sleeps and Danilo is horrified at discovering that Katerina's father is a wizard. Back home, his wife recounts to him a strange incestous dream, which coincides with the events Danilo witnessed in the castle. She begins to realize who her father really is, calling him the Antichrist
.
The Cossacks capture the sorcerer and chain him in the cellar of Danilo and Katerina's house. He tries to convince Katerina to free him, out of pity for his soul's salvation, explaining that he is not bound by the chains, but the walls are enchanted, as they were built by a starets
, an Orthodox monk. Convinced that he will repent and be saved, Katerina lets the sorcerer out and then curses herself for doing so.
In the next scene, a group of Poles, organized by the wizard, come to take Danilo’s land but they are struck down by him and his fellow Cossacks one by one. However, at the end of the battle he is shot by the sorcerer from behind a tree and dies, leaving only his child with Katerina, but the child is murdered by the sorcerer.
Katerina grows mad due to her having set the sorcerer free and her husband’s consequent death, and then one day a traveler comes to her house that seems to rouse her back to sanity. However, when he states that Danilo once said to him that he should marry her should he die, Katerina recognizes it is the sorcerer and tries to stab him, but he kills her instead when he gets hold of the knife, fleeing afterwards on horseback.
After the famous impressionist description of the Dnieper (one of the most celebrated pages in Russian literature), a great miracle happens: both the Crimea and the Carpathians
become visible from Kiev. In the Carpathians, the wizard sees a great knight (bogatyr
) and grows mad from seeing him everywhere. He pleads to a starets
at the Kiev Monastery of the Caves to help him, but he will not for the sorcerer is already damned. The latter kills the monk.
Eventually, the giant knight catches up with the sorcerer and casts him into an abyss where corpses await to eternally gnaw on his body. The largest of the corpses is a man named Petro, he murdered his brother out of jealousy and was thrown into the abyss for punishment, given by his brother and agreed to by God. The knight appears to be the spirit of Petro's brother.
studio in 1988 (with the same title). The film keeps the original dark tone and was not aimed at children. It was directed by Mikhail Titov.http://animator.ru/db/?ver=eng&p=show_film&fid=3753
Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism...
.
It was published in the second volume of his first short story collection, Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka
Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka
Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka is a collection of short stories by Nikolai Gogol, written from 1831-1832. They appeared in various magazines and were published in book form when Gogol, who had spent his life in Ukraine up to the age of nineteen, was twenty two. He put his early impressions and...
, in 1832, and it was probably written in late Summer 1831.
The short story is written in the "ornate and agitated style" characteristic to Gogol, sometimes skirting purple prose
Purple prose
Purple prose is a term of literary criticism used to describe passages, or sometimes entire literary works, written in prose so extravagant, ornate, or flowery as to break the flow and draw attention to itself. Purple prose is sensually evocative beyond the requirements of its context...
, and was a great influence on the rhythmic prose of the modernist novelist Andrei Bely
Andrei Bely
Andrei Bely was the pseudonym of Boris Nikolaevich Bugaev , a Russian novelist, poet, theorist, and literary critic. His novel Petersburg was regarded by Vladimir Nabokov as one of the four greatest novels of the 20th century.-Biography:...
.
The appearance of evil spirits, and specifically of an Antichrist
Antichrist
The term or title antichrist, in Christian theology, refers to a leader who fulfills Biblical prophecies concerning an adversary of Christ, while resembling him in a deceptive manner...
figure, in A Terrible Vengeance was typical of Gogol's belief in the omnipresence of Evil in everyday life, an aspect of his religious philosophy that is uniquely direct in this story. The overall construction of the story is typical of what would come to be called skaz
Skaz
Skaz is a Russian literary term that describes a particularly oral form of narrative. The word comes from skazat, "to tell", and is also related to such words as rasskaz, "short story" and skazka, "fairy tale". The speech makes use of dialect and slang in order to take on the persona of a...
, wherein characters are identified to a large degree by linguistic specificities of their manner of speech. Another particularity of the piece is frequent narratorial intrusion, such as asides to the reader or other violations of the narratorial frame.
The basic plot of the story evokes folklore, but there is no comparable piece in Ukrainian
Ukrainian folklore
Ukrainian folklore is the folk tradition which has developed in Ukraine and among ethnic Ukrainians. The earliest examples of folklore found in Ukraine is the layer of pan-slavic folklore that dates back to the ancient Slavic mythology of the Eastern Slavs. Gradually, Ukrainians developed a layer...
or Russian traditions. A similar story of a sorcerer appeared in "Pietro Apone" by German romantic Johann Ludwig Tieck, published in Russian in 1828. Other potential subtexts are Tieck's Karl von Berneck (1797) and E. T. A. Hoffman's novella Ignaz Denner (1816).
Synopsis
The story opens at the wedding of the CossackCossack
Cossacks are a group of predominantly East Slavic people who originally were members of democratic, semi-military communities in what is today Ukraine and Southern Russia inhabiting sparsely populated areas and islands in the lower Dnieper and Don basins and who played an important role in the...
esaul Gorobets's son, outside of Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
. Among the guests are the recently married Cossack pan Danilo Burulbash and his wife pani Katerina. They are honored guests; Danilo is Gorobets's sworn brother. Not present, however, is Katerina's father, who was expected to appear after his 21 years spent on the far side of the Dnieper River
Dnieper River
The Dnieper River is one of the major rivers of Europe that flows from Russia, through Belarus and Ukraine, to the Black Sea.The total length is and has a drainage basin of .The river is noted for its dams and hydroelectric stations...
, a land considered entirely alien.
During the celebration, the esaul brings out two holy icons, on at the sight of which one of the Cossack revelers, who had been fantastically dancing, stopped and transformed into a sorcerer, with a sharp chin, a beak, green eyes, and bluish lips. In sight of the shocked crowd, he disappears.
After this, Danilo, his wife, and a few fellow Cossacks are on a small boat on the Dnieper discussing the sorcerer. As they pass a graveyard, corpses come out of the ground, each more terrifying than the previous, each screaming "I am stifling".
In the next scene, Katerina tells Danilo about a dream that the sorcerer wants to marry her, which Danilo takes as a serious sign. When Katerina's father appears at last, an argument ensues when Katerina's father asks her to account for their late return the previous night. Danilo, who senses that his father-in-law is somehow not a true Cossack, lying about drinking mead, not eating pork and otherwise acting more like the Poles
Poles
thumb|right|180px|The state flag of [[Poland]] as used by Polish government and diplomatic authoritiesThe Polish people, or Poles , are a nation indigenous to Poland. They are united by the Polish language, which belongs to the historical Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages of Central Europe...
and Turks
Turkish people
Turkish people, also known as the "Turks" , are an ethnic group primarily living in Turkey and in the former lands of the Ottoman Empire where Turkish minorities had been established in Bulgaria, Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Romania...
than like one of their own. In the ensuing saber and gun fight, Katerina's father shoots Danilo in the arm before Katerina intervenes and begs them to forgive one another.
The following night Danilo and his friend come across a castle nearby, and creep up to one of the windows that a strange light is issuing from. Through the window, he sees Katerina’s father calling up spells and her soul appears in a blue haze. The sorcerer seems to be commanding her to marry him as she sleeps and Danilo is horrified at discovering that Katerina's father is a wizard. Back home, his wife recounts to him a strange incestous dream, which coincides with the events Danilo witnessed in the castle. She begins to realize who her father really is, calling him the Antichrist
Antichrist
The term or title antichrist, in Christian theology, refers to a leader who fulfills Biblical prophecies concerning an adversary of Christ, while resembling him in a deceptive manner...
.
The Cossacks capture the sorcerer and chain him in the cellar of Danilo and Katerina's house. He tries to convince Katerina to free him, out of pity for his soul's salvation, explaining that he is not bound by the chains, but the walls are enchanted, as they were built by a starets
Starets
A starets is an elder of a Russian Orthodox monastery who functions as venerated adviser and teacher. Elders or spiritual fathers are charismatic spiritual leaders whose wisdom stems from God as obtained from ascetic experience...
, an Orthodox monk. Convinced that he will repent and be saved, Katerina lets the sorcerer out and then curses herself for doing so.
In the next scene, a group of Poles, organized by the wizard, come to take Danilo’s land but they are struck down by him and his fellow Cossacks one by one. However, at the end of the battle he is shot by the sorcerer from behind a tree and dies, leaving only his child with Katerina, but the child is murdered by the sorcerer.
Katerina grows mad due to her having set the sorcerer free and her husband’s consequent death, and then one day a traveler comes to her house that seems to rouse her back to sanity. However, when he states that Danilo once said to him that he should marry her should he die, Katerina recognizes it is the sorcerer and tries to stab him, but he kills her instead when he gets hold of the knife, fleeing afterwards on horseback.
After the famous impressionist description of the Dnieper (one of the most celebrated pages in Russian literature), a great miracle happens: both the Crimea and the Carpathians
Carpathian Mountains
The Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians are a range of mountains forming an arc roughly long across Central and Eastern Europe, making them the second-longest mountain range in Europe...
become visible from Kiev. In the Carpathians, the wizard sees a great knight (bogatyr
Bogatyr
The bogatyr was a medieval heroic warrior of Kievan Rus' and the Novgorodian Republic, akin to a Western European knight errant.- Kievan Rus' :...
) and grows mad from seeing him everywhere. He pleads to a starets
Starets
A starets is an elder of a Russian Orthodox monastery who functions as venerated adviser and teacher. Elders or spiritual fathers are charismatic spiritual leaders whose wisdom stems from God as obtained from ascetic experience...
at the Kiev Monastery of the Caves to help him, but he will not for the sorcerer is already damned. The latter kills the monk.
Eventually, the giant knight catches up with the sorcerer and casts him into an abyss where corpses await to eternally gnaw on his body. The largest of the corpses is a man named Petro, he murdered his brother out of jealousy and was thrown into the abyss for punishment, given by his brother and agreed to by God. The knight appears to be the spirit of Petro's brother.
Film
A 20-minute animated adaptation of the story was made at KievnauchfilmKievnauchfilm
Kievnauchfilm , sometimes translated as Kiev Science Film in English, was a film studio in the former Soviet Union located in Kiev, Ukrainian SSR, established in 1941.-Description:It was the largest European studio for non-fiction films...
studio in 1988 (with the same title). The film keeps the original dark tone and was not aimed at children. It was directed by Mikhail Titov.http://animator.ru/db/?ver=eng&p=show_film&fid=3753