Viy (story)
Encyclopedia
"Viy" is a horror short story
by the Ukrainian
-born Russia
n writer Nikolai Gogol
, first published in the first volume of his collection of tales entitled Mirgorod
(1835). The title refers to the name of a demonic entity central to the plot.
. Every summer, after classes have ended, there is usually a large procession of all the students moving around the area as they travel home, getting progressively smaller as each student arrives at his home. Eventually, the group is reduced to three students, the theologian Khaliava, the philosopher Khoma Brut, and the rhetorician Tibery Gorobets.
As the night draws in, the students hope to find a village near the main road where they can find some rest and food. However, they become lost in the wilderness, eventually coming upon two small houses and a farm. An old woman there tells them she has a little room and cannot accommodate any more travelers, but she eventually agrees to let them stay. The rhetorician is put in the hut, the theologian in an empty closet, and the philosopher in an empty sheep’s pen.
At night, the old woman comes to Khoma. At first, he thinks she is trying to seduce him, but then she draws closer and he sees that her eyes are glowing strangely. She leaps on his back, and he reluctantly finds himself galloping with her all over the countryside with a strength he previously never knew. He eventually slows her by chanting exorcisms out loud, and then rides on her back and later picks up a piece of wood and beats her as punishment. The old woman later collapses, and he discovers she has turned into a beautiful girl.
Khoma runs away to Kiev and resumes his easy life, when a rumor reaches his dean that a rich cossack
’s daughter was found crawling home near death, her last wish being for Khoma the philosopher to come and read psalms over her corpse for three nights after her death.
Although Khoma is uncertain why the girl requested him specifically, the bribed dean orders him to go to the cossack’s house and comply with her last wish. Several Cossacks bring him by force to the village where the girl lived. When he is shown the corpse, however, he finds it is the witch he overcame earlier in the story. Rumors among the Cossacks are that the daughter was in league with the devil, and they tell horror stories about her evil ways, such as previously riding on another person, drinking blood, and cutting off the braids of village girls. Therefore, Khoma is reluctant to say prayers over her body at night.
On the first night, when the cossacks take her body to a ruined church, he is somewhat frightened but calms himself when he lights more candles in the church to eliminate most of the darkness. As he begins to say prayers, he imagines to himself that the corpse is getting up, but it never does. Suddenly, however, he looks up and finds that the witch is sitting up in her coffin. She begins to walk around, reaching out for someone, and begins to approach Khoma, but he draws a circle of protection around himself that she cannot cross. She gnashes her teeth at him as he begins to exorcise her, and then she goes into her coffin and flies about the church in it, trying to frighten him out of the circle. Dawn arrives, and Khoma has survived the first night.
The next night similar events occur but more horrible than before, and the witch calls upon unseen, winged demons and monsters to fly about outside the church, but Khoma is invisible for them. When the cossacks find the philosopher in the morning, he is near death, pale and leaning against a wall. He tries to escape the next day but is captured and brought back to finish.
On the third night, the witch’s corpse is even more terrifying, and she calls the demons and monsters around her to bring Viy into the church, who can see everything. Khoma realizes that he cannot look at the creature when they draw his long eyelids up from the floor so he can see, but he does anyway and sees a horrible, iron face staring at him. Viy points in his direction, and the monsters leap upon him. Khoma dies from horror. However, the monsters miss the first crowing of the rooster and are unable to escape the church when day begins.
The priest arrives the next day to find the monsters frozen in the windows as they tried to flee the church. The temple is forsaken forever, eventually overgrown by weeds and trees. The story ends with Khoma’s other two friends commenting on his death and how it was his lot in life to die in such a way, agreeing that he only came to his end because he flinched and showed fear of the demons.
. This was merely a literary device. In reality Gogol probably never heard of Viy at all. No discovery has been made of the folklore source of Viy, and as such it remains a part of Gogol's imagination.
The demons summoned into the church come from the Slavic superstitions of "midnight dead". Evil people, it was believed, automatically became Devil
's subjects upon death. Earth would not hold them so that every night they would crawl out of their graves and torment the living. In the story, the demons have "black earth" clung to them, as if they crawled out of the ground.
The water sprite (Rusalka) seen by Khoma during his night ride bears relation to the "midnight dead". It was widely believed, in Russian and Ukraine, that rusalki were spirits of unbaptized children or drowned maidens, who were in league with the Devil. They were known to drown their victims or tickle them to death. They were described as beautiful, and deadly, and bear relation to the young version of the witch, and Gogol's frequent portrayal of women as beautiful yet evil.
Incantations, exorcism, and the magic circle come from Ukrainian beliefs of protection from evil forces. The circle relates to "chur", a magical boundary that evil cannot cross. Even though Khoma died from fear, the creatures could not touch him.
Additionally, the final notion that Khoma died only because he let fear win over him appears to stem from John of Damascus, who said "... all evil and impure passions have been conceived by [evil spirits] and they have been permitted to visit attacks upon man. But they are unable to force anyone, for it is in our power either to accept the visitation or not."
. An updated version with advanced special effects was originally scheduled to be released in 2009 to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Gogol's birth. While the first part has been completed, the producers decided to postpone the premiere until the completion of the second part. The 2006 film The Power of Fear (Russian title Ведьма, "The Witch") was a sequel meant to continue the story, with elements of horror similar to The Ring
.
Several other works draw on the short story:
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
by the Ukrainian
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
-born Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n writer Nikolai Gogol
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...
, first published in the first volume of his collection of tales entitled Mirgorod
Mirgorod (Gogol)
Mirgorod is a collection of short stories by Nikolai Gogol meant to be a sequel of sorts to his two volumes of Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka...
(1835). The title refers to the name of a demonic entity central to the plot.
Plot summary
The story concerns three students from the Bratsky Monastery at KievKiev
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....
. Every summer, after classes have ended, there is usually a large procession of all the students moving around the area as they travel home, getting progressively smaller as each student arrives at his home. Eventually, the group is reduced to three students, the theologian Khaliava, the philosopher Khoma Brut, and the rhetorician Tibery Gorobets.
As the night draws in, the students hope to find a village near the main road where they can find some rest and food. However, they become lost in the wilderness, eventually coming upon two small houses and a farm. An old woman there tells them she has a little room and cannot accommodate any more travelers, but she eventually agrees to let them stay. The rhetorician is put in the hut, the theologian in an empty closet, and the philosopher in an empty sheep’s pen.
At night, the old woman comes to Khoma. At first, he thinks she is trying to seduce him, but then she draws closer and he sees that her eyes are glowing strangely. She leaps on his back, and he reluctantly finds himself galloping with her all over the countryside with a strength he previously never knew. He eventually slows her by chanting exorcisms out loud, and then rides on her back and later picks up a piece of wood and beats her as punishment. The old woman later collapses, and he discovers she has turned into a beautiful girl.
Khoma runs away to Kiev and resumes his easy life, when a rumor reaches his dean that a rich cossack
Cossack
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...
’s daughter was found crawling home near death, her last wish being for Khoma the philosopher to come and read psalms over her corpse for three nights after her death.
Although Khoma is uncertain why the girl requested him specifically, the bribed dean orders him to go to the cossack’s house and comply with her last wish. Several Cossacks bring him by force to the village where the girl lived. When he is shown the corpse, however, he finds it is the witch he overcame earlier in the story. Rumors among the Cossacks are that the daughter was in league with the devil, and they tell horror stories about her evil ways, such as previously riding on another person, drinking blood, and cutting off the braids of village girls. Therefore, Khoma is reluctant to say prayers over her body at night.
On the first night, when the cossacks take her body to a ruined church, he is somewhat frightened but calms himself when he lights more candles in the church to eliminate most of the darkness. As he begins to say prayers, he imagines to himself that the corpse is getting up, but it never does. Suddenly, however, he looks up and finds that the witch is sitting up in her coffin. She begins to walk around, reaching out for someone, and begins to approach Khoma, but he draws a circle of protection around himself that she cannot cross. She gnashes her teeth at him as he begins to exorcise her, and then she goes into her coffin and flies about the church in it, trying to frighten him out of the circle. Dawn arrives, and Khoma has survived the first night.
The next night similar events occur but more horrible than before, and the witch calls upon unseen, winged demons and monsters to fly about outside the church, but Khoma is invisible for them. When the cossacks find the philosopher in the morning, he is near death, pale and leaning against a wall. He tries to escape the next day but is captured and brought back to finish.
On the third night, the witch’s corpse is even more terrifying, and she calls the demons and monsters around her to bring Viy into the church, who can see everything. Khoma realizes that he cannot look at the creature when they draw his long eyelids up from the floor so he can see, but he does anyway and sees a horrible, iron face staring at him. Viy points in his direction, and the monsters leap upon him. Khoma dies from horror. However, the monsters miss the first crowing of the rooster and are unable to escape the church when day begins.
The priest arrives the next day to find the monsters frozen in the windows as they tried to flee the church. The temple is forsaken forever, eventually overgrown by weeds and trees. The story ends with Khoma’s other two friends commenting on his death and how it was his lot in life to die in such a way, agreeing that he only came to his end because he flinched and showed fear of the demons.
Folkloric sources
Gogol states in his author's note that Viy, the King of the Gnomes, was an actual character from Ukrainian folkloreUkrainian 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...
. This was merely a literary device. In reality Gogol probably never heard of Viy at all. No discovery has been made of the folklore source of Viy, and as such it remains a part of Gogol's imagination.
The demons summoned into the church come from the Slavic superstitions of "midnight dead". Evil people, it was believed, automatically became Devil
Devil
The Devil is believed in many religions and cultures to be a powerful, supernatural entity that is the personification of evil and the enemy of God and humankind. The nature of the role varies greatly...
's subjects upon death. Earth would not hold them so that every night they would crawl out of their graves and torment the living. In the story, the demons have "black earth" clung to them, as if they crawled out of the ground.
The water sprite (Rusalka) seen by Khoma during his night ride bears relation to the "midnight dead". It was widely believed, in Russian and Ukraine, that rusalki were spirits of unbaptized children or drowned maidens, who were in league with the Devil. They were known to drown their victims or tickle them to death. They were described as beautiful, and deadly, and bear relation to the young version of the witch, and Gogol's frequent portrayal of women as beautiful yet evil.
Incantations, exorcism, and the magic circle come from Ukrainian beliefs of protection from evil forces. The circle relates to "chur", a magical boundary that evil cannot cross. Even though Khoma died from fear, the creatures could not touch him.
Additionally, the final notion that Khoma died only because he let fear win over him appears to stem from John of Damascus, who said "... all evil and impure passions have been conceived by [evil spirits] and they have been permitted to visit attacks upon man. But they are unable to force anyone, for it is in our power either to accept the visitation or not."
Film adaptations and influence in popular culture
In 1967, the short story was adapted by Georgi Kropachyov and Konstantin Yershov into the film ViyViy (film)
Viy is a 1967 horror film produced by Mosfilm and based on the Nikolai Gogol story of the same name.-Synopsis:...
. An updated version with advanced special effects was originally scheduled to be released in 2009 to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Gogol's birth. While the first part has been completed, the producers decided to postpone the premiere until the completion of the second part. The 2006 film The Power of Fear (Russian title Ведьма, "The Witch") was a sequel meant to continue the story, with elements of horror similar to The Ring
The Ring (2002 film)
The Ring is a 2002 American psychological horror film directed by Gore Verbinski and starring Naomi Watts and Martin Henderson. It is a remake of the 1998 Japanese horror film Ring....
.
Several other works draw on the short story:
- Mario BavaMario BavaMario Bava was an Italian director, screenwriter, and cinematographer remembered as one of the greatest names from the "golden age" of Italian horror films.-Biography:Mario Bava was born in San Remo, Liguria, Italy...
's film Black Sunday is loosely based on "Viy". - The 1990 Yugoslavian film Sveto mesto (A Holy Place) is also based on Nikolai Gogol's short story.
- In the 1978 film Piranha, a camp counselor retells Viy's climactic identification of Khoma as a ghost story.
- One of the boss enemies in La-MulanaLa-MulanaLa-Mulana is a side scrolling platform game released in 2005 for Windows PCs that features graphics and an interface inspired by MSX games. The game is a traditional action-adventure game, reminiscent of the Castlevania and Metroid games. This game was originally only available in Japanese, but an...
is a demon named Viy, who is extremely massive and requires the help of small flying demons in order to open his eye.