Viy (story)
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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"Then with the agility of a cat she sprang on his shoulders, struck him on the side with a broom, and he began to run like a race-horse, carrying her on his shoulders.", see the riding humans like a horse trope |
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Viy is a horror story by the Russian-Ukrainian writer Nikolai Gogol, first published in the first volume of his collection of tales entitled Mirgorod (1835). The story was the basis of Mario Bava's film Black Sunday.
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Plot summary
The story concerns three students from the Brothers' Monastery at Kiev. 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.
Folkloric sources
Gogol states in his author's note that Viy, the King of the Gnomes, was an actual character from Ukrainian folklore. 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. However, some scholars believe that the conception of Viy may have been at least partially based on old folk tradition surrounding St. Cassian the Unmerciful, who was said in some tales to have eyebrows that descended to his knees and which were raised only on Leap Year. In some examples, he has been depicted as almost a demon in the sky, so it's likely Gogol at least heard about the character and designed Viy on his various forms.
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."
Film adaptations and influence in popular culture
In 1967, the short story was adapted by Georgi Kropachyov and Konstantin Yershov into the popular Soviet film Viy. An updated version Viy (2014 film), was made with advanced special effects.
Several other works draw on the short story:
- Mario Bava's film Black Sunday is loosely based on "Viy".
- The 1990 Yugoslav 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-Mulana is a demon named Viy, who is extremely massive and requires the help of small flying demons in order to open his eye.
Full text
- (The “Viy” is a monstrous creation of popular fancy. It is the name which the inhabitants of Little Russia give to the king of the gnomes, whose eyelashes reach to the ground. The following story is a specimen of such folk-lore. I have made no alterations, but reproduce it in the same simple form in which I heard it. — Author’s Note.)
- As soon as the clear seminary bell began sounding in Kieff in the morning, the pupils would come flocking from all parts of the town. The students of grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, and theology hastened with their books under their arms over the streets.
See also
