Ukrainian Witch in Gogol's Short Horror Story - Lift My Eyelids!

It is difficult to follow a plot with such wide breaks between narratives. I know and apologise to myself for this, like I did a hundred times. And a hundred times I promised to blog here regularly. When I told my friends during our meeting in my native city last summer that I have a blog about witchcraft and witches in literature and mythology, all of them were amazed that I started this topic. I am not the only who blogs about the same, but they found it, being themselves philologists by education if not by present profession, very interesting and one of them even suggested me to try to publish my "research"... Yea this is what I need now, but that is just a thought, a good one I agree.

I lost few followers over time, as I understand completely well that it is no fun to follow a blog which is not being updated. I'd not like the project I was so excited about in the beginning, to wither, decay and vanish completely from the Internet surface. So today I am here again, dragging feet and a *utt and a head of course to continue what once has been started.  

Pannochka by Blavatskaya

Homa, having no other choice, forced to come to centurion's house. The same night his sleep is disturbed by running of people and some noise, the whole house appeared to be on the move with the news that pannochka has died. Homa's first thoughts are to escape, to get rid of the duty he has been forced into. But the fate or better doom doesn't leave, him and he is called to the centurion (not sure whether this Russian word's translation is correct) himself. It seems that Homa now is at the mercy of Pannochka's father as well as demonic powers which drag him farther and farther. The same day Homa enters the room in which the corp is being laid... her father is inconsolable as he also doesn't know who was the reason of the daughter's death. Homa is full of fear but decides to start reading prayers. Centurion exits the room and then Homa looks at the body for the first time - a beauty he has never ever seen before is in front of him. She looks alive, with sharp features on her snow white skin... But through these Homa still recognises the witch. Later in the evening the body is being laid in the middle of a church on the outskirts of the farm. The church has been abandoned and no service has been held there for a long time.

The very same evening Homa hears talks and stories among local people about Pannochka's acquaintance with  "unclean, a wicked one" as Satan is called by Slavic people nowadays too. Right after dinner Homa is being escorted to the church for the first night of the prayers. The fear begins to settle in Homa's heart but first in his mind. He tries to persuade himself that the prayers he is about to read can banish any evil forces. He sticks the church candles all over the place... The witch's corp in the coffin as if beckons him and he looks at it again... She is still as beautiful in her mortality as before. Homa stands near choir and sings the prayers, however with every page he turns the fear doesn't subsides but increases, and thoughts of Pannochka's dead body so close to him haunt his mind. Meanwhile he tries to reassure himself that there is nothing to be afraid of as the young witch is dead and cannot arise from the coffin. Pannochka lifts up her head, and Homa catches a sight of her already sitting in the coffin... A moment later she is already standing on the floor and the next moment moving towards Homa, who hurriedly draws a circle around. She cannot cross it to her displeasure. 

Her appearance changes - skin becomes blue as of the dead body and her eyes look blindly around. Pannochka gets angry as she is not able to harm Homa, she lies back to the coffin which lifts up and starts flying almost above Homa's head but not crossing the circle. As this try fails too, Pannochka arises again, and this is when the rooster sings announcing morning. Of course Pannochka, being a demonic creature,cannot stand the morning light and settles in the coffin again, closing the lid.

The folkloric filling of this story is enhanced by the sacred number 3. Homa spends 3 nights in the church, each of which is more scary than the previous one. Homa notices however that Pannochka  tries to fetch him not where he stands as she is actually  not able to SEE him because of the magical circle.

gothicsstyle.ru

Hence on the third day Pannochka driven by revenge  has to summon a powerfull creature which comes from the depths of Earth,Viy, in order to see Homa and kill him. Homa, glancing askew saw that some squat, burly, clumsy person is being led. He was all in the black earth. His hands and feet knobbed like sinewy, strong roots, buried underground. He walked heavily, constantly stumbling. Long eyelids were lowered to the ground.  Homa noticed with horrorthat the person had an iron face. They brought him under the arms and put straight to the place where Homa stood". Viy demands to lift his eyelids...Though Homa's inner vocie tells not to look at the terrible creature, he fails to do so, and with the Viy's words "Here he is!" all the unclean sprang on Homa, and "breathless he thundered to the ground and his spirit departed at once because of FEAR".
I suppose that this story by Gogol is the scariest in its genre. In the very end author once again confirms the thought that if Homa was not scared Pannochka wouldn't have had any influence on him. It is also interesting that the holy place in Gogol's work itself becomes a habitation of the evil - the church which is no longer a hope for a person and doesn't save him, it wants to punish and take revenge.
I would like to give a list of the movies which are based on this story:
1. "Viy" 1967 - a classic old version which remains the best till date.
2. "Witch" 2006 - an attempt to scare.
3. "Viy" 2014 - a collaborative project with all modern special effects and as the critic said reminds of the Sleepy Hollow by Tim Burton. I haven't seen it.

Sincerely Yours,

Witchcraft and Literature

P.S. I will credit the authors of the pictures later, as I am not able to retrieve the sites' names right now.

A Ukrainian Witch in Nikolay Gogol's Short Horror Story "Viy" - Pannochka

I am sorry but you will have to go and check out my latest post about the Ukrainian witch in order to have a link to this one :) Just kidding of course. I am going to tell you what happened after the crone jumped on Homa's back and bewitched him to take her...out in the fields and forest at night! Gogol' knows how to ignite fear... 

In a state of bewitchment Homa sees the nature around him differently. He is able to perceive every single flower, feel the smell of the soil, and the Moon appears to be the Sun to him as it is so bright. Homa's senses are at  the limit, "He felt a tedious, unpleasant and at the same time sweet feeling, rising to his heart". This state of his I can compare with a great Margarita's flight scene, in which heroin's perception of the actuality becomes sharper, transforms and seems like another dimension. There are even more reminiscences with Bulgakov's writing. Like that of when Homa notices a mermaid swimming in the pond, and mermaids are one of the first creatures Margarita sees when arriving at Sabbath.

Our hero though is afraid of what is happening to him (opposite to Margarita), he starts saying some prayers or some kind of exorcism spells, when feels that the witch is no more gets tight hold of him. Homa manages to snatch a log lying on the ground and starts beating the witch for all one is worth. The witch screams, curses, but fianlly falls on the ground with words "Oh, I cannot take it anymore"", when it is already the hour of dawn. However when Homa looks at the defeated witch he sees before him... a beauty, with tousled luxuriously scythe, with long, like arrows eyelashes. Insensitively she threw the white naked hands on both sides and moaned, lifted up her eyes full of tears".

The hero, tormented by the feeling of guilt and strange anxiety, flees the place, with a desire to reach Kiev (a capital of Ukraine) and never be seen again in this spot. But another Russian writer told us, where there is a crime, there is a punishment ...
Homa reaches a nearby settlement and spends some time in drinking and thinking in a pub... when accidentally hears that the daughter of one of the richest centurions who resides on a farm just few kilometers away from Kiev, "came back home from a  walk all beaten up, had barely strength to limp his father's house, is now near death; and in the hour before death she has expressed a desire that the dirge and pray for her to be read for the next three days after the death by one of the Kiev seminarians: Homa Brut".

Pannochka (1) by nordlige-tale Deviantart

To Be Continued...

1. Pa'nnochka (Rus. панночка) diminutive from panna - unmarried young woman, unmarried daughter of a pan (meaning "gentleman"). Pan, panna and other words with the same root, are the words of Slavic languages like Polish, Czech, Slovak, Ukrainian, Belorussian. However only Polish language seems  to have  preserved these words for usage in polite or formal communication.

Yours sincerely,

Witchcraft and More.

A Ukrainian Witch in Nikolay Gogol's Short Horror Story "Viy" - Who Is Viy?

Viy (Вий)... I bet no one of you have ever hear this name. But for Russian literature this short story was

of a great significance. It was written by Nikolai Gogol' - a Ukrainian born Russian writer of the 19th 

century, who along with Pushkin and Griboedov created the way for Russian literature development in 20th

century. My favorite 20th century Russian writer Bulgakov, author of the novel "Master and Margarita", was Gogol's admirer and you can definitely find influence of this in his fantastic compositions.

Viy Illustration by Eduard Novikov

But why do I choose to speak about Viy and who is this at last? This would be not easy to explain. Though giving a definition of Viy Gogol himself says that "He is a colossal creation of folk mind.
By such name among Ukrainians is called a chief of gnomes, 
whose
eyelids go till the ground.The whole this story is a legend. I didn't 
want to change it in any way, so I am telling it in the same simplicity as I have heard it." The author told us where Viy was originated 
from...but in real there was never such a creature in Ukrainian 
folklore. Hence Viy is a pure fictitious character, which was born in Gogol's mind, and who knows, how it ever got in there.

However, I am not going to dedicate my post to this "sleepy" monster, as I have something more interesting to discuss. And this is a witch of course. Before I had acquainted you with Russian witches mainly, whose witchy nature either helped in solving love and life issues, or made their love story unhappy. Both however had to flee of the society in order to gain peace of mind and soul.

The witch I am going to tell about has particular differences from those created by Bulgakov and Kuprin. Let us explore this.

Gogol produced such a story which to this day excites reader's mind and lets be honest, scares. On just about 20 pages the complete narrative unfolds with all the details of horror genre which I believe are used by nowaday writers and filmmakers. The author uses folklore plots as well as his own creative mind to describe the scenes and characters. The conventional motif of many Gogol's short stories is a scary legend or a hearsay told by one of the story's characters, which then becomes true as the narration proceeds. This is how  the real world and the world of supernatural is linked  in Gogol's early compositions, and "Viy" is not an exception. However one can not deny the author's subtle irony in his writings somehow prevents you from being swallowed by fear... unlike the protagonist of the story Homa Brut... Now it is time to switch to witch!

Homa Brut is a philosopher - a senior student of a seminary, who being on vacations, makes his way back home with two of his fellows. They cross various places, settlements, stay in the fields over night, but at some point of time they feel to rest and refresh. They make a long journey, but all the efforts of finding a sanctuary for the night come to nothing. Homa with his friends don't give up and when the night already has covered the fields with its cloak they see a flickering light afar - a sign of a farm (a "hutor" in Ukrainian). The travellers are very pleased to finally reach near humans...
As they approach one of the houses of the farm, and knock the door, an old lady opens them and first is not happy to see young lads and refuses to let them stay. But the seminary students good at talking, they coax the old woman, and she being wary makes them sleep in tree different places of the farm. Homa Brut is settled in an empty sheep barn. Late at night he is awaken by a noise of a door opening  in the barn - the old woman enters premises. Homa asks why is she there... but the lady proceeds walking towards him with open arms... He assumes that the crone comes to get some pleasure from him what scares him a lot and he is trying to stop the woman but she stares at him and he is not able to move or speak... : "He could only hear how his heart was pounding, and he saw an old woman came up to him, clasped his hands, bent his head, with the swiftness of a cat jumped on his back, hit him with a broom and by his side, and he bouncing around like a horse, carried her on his shoulders...". That is a moment when Homa thinks : "Aha, it is a witch."

To Be Continued...

Yours sincerely,

Witchcraft and More.

Unconditional Love of The Witch Olesya - Part 2

Today we continue to look inside the relations of the novella's main heroes.
How the protagonist finally meets witch is somehow a folklore theme. While hunting a hare in the woods with Yarmola, the hero looses the way and proceeds walking inside the forest. The barrier is a swamp he has to cross. He sees the walls of a woodman's house among the trees and, struggling to go through the marsh, he approaches it. The main hero opens the hut's door and sees only the hut's dark premises... After he calls out for some live soul, he notices an old woman sitting on the floor with a pile of chicken feathers in front of her.

Baba Yaga's hut, as pictured in the Russian fairy tales

Of note note that the main hero's thinking regarding witches is not free from "standard" beliefs. He, not knowingly, feeds his mind with superstitions. When seeing  Manuilikha, he compares her at once with  Baba Yaga, a Russian folklore character. The hero, himself, is just like Ivan from the Russian fairy tales, who stumbles upon Baba Yaga's hut and then asks her to help him.The old witch Manuilikha is not happy at all to see a stranger in her house, moreover, a young man... All because she is accustomed to live out of reach of people and she has a 25 years old granddaughter. The main hero then tries to soften her offering a coin but she has to make a spread for him  in return. While this the hero hears a woman's voice singing a song... and this is how the meeting with Manuilikha's granddaughter Olesya occurs. The protagonist asks Olesya to show him a path out of the woods and they get into a small conversation. The young man of the story gets to know that Olesya and her grandmother were indeed driven away to the forest, and she says herself the people call "Grandmother a 'witch,' a 'shedevil,' a 'jail-bird'". Would you be friendly to others after such accusations in your address?
 Furthermore, the relations between Olesya and the master develop during frequent visits of the latter to the hut. First, the conversations of the young people remind "teacher-pupil" talks, when the hero tries to educate Olesya... Nevertheless, he considers her to be very intelligent for a girl who doesn't even know how to read and has been living in the woods whole her life.

 I guess that the "witchiness", secrets, surrounding Olesya, charm the main hero more that her wit. He tries to convince himself that magic and witchcraft and witches after all, don't exist, while Olesya's belief in her curse of being able to know secrets of life and. actually, do magic, never fades away.  Oleays shows few tricks to her lover and he tries to explain it by some laws of physics...She throws herself in the embrace of love though she knows that this won't lead to any good. Olesya's ability to give her whole entity to the person she loves and never ask for same in return, is her main strength as well as weakness. In order to please her beloved she, in spite of anything, decides to go to the village church, and this is where she meets peasants' enmity towards her witch's nature. They beat and abuse her, and while she manages to escape, she curses everyone around, singing a sentence to flee this place forever.
  The main hero hurries to see Olesya after this incident and finds her covered in bruises and wounds  She explains him that now she and her grandmother have to  leave... Olesya however is happy anyway, because she was able to love...unconditionally. She only regrets that she didn't have a baby with her beloved...
The main hero can't do anything: neither stop nor follow her. He is the one who is weak and can sacrifice his love to his social status. Olesya leaves the place suddenly and all is what the main hero left is her coral necklace... May be he will now start believing in supernatural because Olesya predicted that their love won't have a happy ending...
I can't  not to make analogy with Margarita, a woman, who sacrificed her entity  and Olesya, who stayed true to her witchy nature. Both had to persuade their lovers to believe in love and both physically suffered for standing their ground. Do Russian writers consider women to be stronger than the men? Or more dedicated... or do women simply BELIEVE in the power of love?