CONTEMPORARY HISTORIANS ON THE GOD VIY
Slavic Mythology VIY - WHO IS HE? N. Gogol devoted only about a dozen lines to Viy in his story "Viy." But anyone who has ever read them will never forget such a vivid, unusual, and impressive character. Perhaps one of the reasons for this lies in the special mysteriousness and incomprehensibility of Viy. How did this image emerge, where did it come from? Who is Viy, and what do we know about him? Slavs recognized him as an underground god, a position held by the ancient Pluto, the king of the underworld.
M. D. Chulkov. "The Alphabet of Russian Superstitions"
Let's start by quoting Gogol: "'Bring Viy! Go after Viy!' - the words of the dead man resounded.
And suddenly, silence fell in the church; the howling of wolves could be heard in the distance, and soon heavy footsteps echoed through the church; glancing sideways, he saw that they were leading a stout, stocky, lopsided man. He was covered in black soil. Like sinewy, strong roots, his feet and hands, covered in soil, stood out. He walked heavily, stumbling every minute, with long eyelids lowered to the ground. With horror, Khoma noticed that his face was made of iron. They led him by the hands and stood him right in the place where Khoma stood.
'Lift my eyelids: I can't see!' Viy said with an underground voice, and the whole crowd rushed to lift his eyelids.
'Don't look!' - some inner voice whispered to the philosopher. Unable to resist, he looked.
'There he is!' Viy shouted, pointing an iron finger at him. And everyone present rushed at the philosopher. Lifeless, he fell to the ground, and immediately his spirit flew out of him in fear."
It is hard to find in the works of Russian classics a more impressive and enigmatic character than Gogol's Viy. Clearly belonging to folklore and fairy tale characters, he stands out among them with his special dramatic effect and inexplicable hidden power. "Viy is a colossal creation of popular imagination," wrote Nikolai Gogol in a note to his story. "This name was given to the chief of gnomes by Little Russians, whose eyelids go down to the ground. The whole story is a folk legend. I did not want to change anything in it and tell it almost as simply as I heard it." Considering that in 1835, when the story was written, Slavic folklore studies as a science were just beginning, and we knew as little about our own mythology as, for example, about Chinese mythology, it is not surprising that Gogol did not give a more informative explanation regarding the "chief" of Little Russian "gnomes."
Today, we can look Viy in the eye without fear and tell all about him that even his literary father did not know.
So, who is Viy? If, as Gogol says, he is a hero of folk tales, then his image should be encountered in folklore works. However, there is no fairytale character with such a name. But where did the name Viy itself come from? Let's consult the dictionary. In the Ukrainian language, the name of the character from Little Russian legends Viy apparently comes from the words "viya," "viyka" - eyelash (and "poviko" - eyelid). After all, the most memorable and characteristic feature of Viy is his huge eyelids, so it is quite natural that his name originated from them.
Although there is no Viy as such in Ukrainian, Belarusian, or Russian folk tales, images that almost completely coincide with Gogol's description of Viy are quite common: stocky, strong, and, therefore, powerful, covered in soil, as if the devils dug him out of the underworld. In the tale of Ivan Bykovich, recorded by the famous collector and researcher of Slavic folklore A. N. Afanasyev, it is told that after Ivan first defeated three multi-headed monsters on the Smorodina River and then destroyed their wives, a certain witch, now deprived of her daughters and sons-in-law, dragged Ivan to the master of the underground kingdom, her husband:
'You have our destroyer,' she says. And in the tale before us, the same Viy appears but in the underground kingdom, at his own home:
"The old man lies on an iron bed, unable to see: long eyelashes and thick eyebrows completely cover his eyes. He called twelve mighty heroes and began to command them:
- Take the iron forks, lift my eyebrows and black eyelashes, I will see what kind of bird this is that killed my sons."
Both in Gogol's story and in the tale recorded by Afanasyev, the presence of iron attributes is not surprising. Gogol's Viy has an iron face, an iron finger, and in the fairy tale, an iron bed and iron forks. After all, iron ore is mined from the earth, so the master of the underworld kingdom, Viy, was a sort of owner and protector of the earth's depths and their riches. Apparently, this is why N. Gogol associates him with European gnomes, guardians of underground treasures. For the ancient man at the time of the formation of Slavic mythology, iron, a strong metal, difficult to extract and process, indispensable in economy, was considered of the greatest value.
The fairy tale hero from Afanasyev with his long eyebrows and eyelashes corresponds completely to the image of Viy. However, in Slavic mythology, it was apparently not mandatory for the ruler of the underground kingdom to have long eyebrows or eyelashes. His distinguishing feature was just long hair, whether eyelashes, eyebrows, or beard - it didn't matter. It can be assumed that the exaggerated eyelids were a later distortion of the folk legend. The main point is not the eyelids, but simply the long eyelashes, hair. In one Belarusian fairy tale, there is a description of "Tsar Kokot, a beard the length of an elbow, a seventy-arshin iron whip, a pouch made from seventy ox hides" - an image similar to the ruler of the underground kingdom. There is also a fairy tale old man "From his toenails to his beard," possessing immense strength and a huge herd of bulls. In his service was a three-headed snake, and he himself hid underground from the heroes pursuing him. But among Belarusian fairy tales, there is one where, just like with Viy, a servant lifts the eyelids, "five poods each." This Koshchei "once he looks at someone - they will not escape from him, even if he lets them go - they will all return to him anyway."
So, one cannot look Viy in the eye because he will take, pull towards himself into the underworld, into the world of the dead, which is exactly what happened to poor Khoma in Gogol's "Viy." Perhaps that is why in Christian apocryphal legends, Saint Cassian was identified with Viy, whom the people considered the embodiment of the leap year and the personification of all misfortunes. It was believed that Cassian, just like the master of the underground kingdom, lived deep underground, in a cave where the daylight does not reach. Cassian's gaze is deadly to all living creatures and brings disasters, diseases, and even death. Some features of Viy were also attributed to the apocryphal Judas Iscariot, who allegedly lost his sight as punishment for betraying Jesus Christ due to his excessively long eyelids."
So where did the strange image of Viy come from in Slavic mythology and folklore? The main characteristics of our character help to find an answer: hairiness, ownership of herds of bulls, and association with the underworld. These characteristics bring to mind one of the oldest and most significant East Slavic gods of pagan times - Veles (Volos). Before people learned to cultivate the land, he patronized hunters, helping them hunt game, which, according to many researchers, gave rise to the deity's name. It comes from the word "volos," meaning fur or skin of hunted prey. Veles also symbolized the spirits of slain animals. Hence the association of this deity with death, the world of the dead. "Originally, in the distant hunting past, Veles could mean the spirit of a slain animal, the spirit of the hunting prey, in other words, the god of the hunter's only wealth, embodied in the carcass of the defeated animal." This was how the academician B. A. Rybakov wrote about Veles-Volos.
However, time passed, and agriculture and animal husbandry became integral parts of ancient people's economy. Hunting lost its former importance, and Veles became the protector of domestic animals. This is why the old man "From his toenails to his beard" had herds of cattle, and anyone who dared to encroach upon them risked facing the formidable power of the herd owner. The number of livestock in ancient times was the primary indicator of a family's wealth. Livestock provided humans with almost everything they needed: pulling force, fur, skin, wool for clothing and other household needs, milk, dairy products, and meat for sustenance. It is no coincidence that the custom of measuring wealth in "heads" of cattle survived until the Middle Ages. The word "skot" not only denoted livestock but also all the property and wealth of a family. The term "skotolubie" was used to mean "greed" or "avarice." The position of a financial official, between the governor and the elder, was called "skotnik" because "skotnitsa" referred to the treasury (hence another meaning of Veles as a deity: overseeing income and wealth).
It is not surprising, therefore, that Veles was opposed to Perun - the god of the heavens, thunder, and war. After all, wealth, abundance, and war leading to devastation are incompatible. Perun, the bringer of thunder, resided in the sky, in the heavenly realm of the gods. Veles, on the other hand, was associated with the underworld of the dead, the "dark light." Until the beginning of the 20th century, the custom persisted to leave an uncut sheaf of grain in the field after the harvest as an offering to Veles - "for his beard." Peasants hoped to earn the favor of their ancestors resting in the earth, upon whom the success of the next year's harvest depended. Trees, bushes, and herbs were referred to by the people as the "hair of the earth." Therefore, it is not surprising that the master of the underworld kingdom Veles, whose name was forgotten over the centuries, was depicted as a hairy old man and later derived the name Viy due to this characteristic. (However, the origin of the name Viy is similar to the name Veles: both are derived from the words "hair" or "eyelashes.")
With the advent of Christianity, the role of the protector of livestock, Veles, was passed on to St. Blaise (most likely due to the similarity in names), whose feast day fell on February 11th (January 24th in the new calendar). In many places in Russia, St. Blaise's day was celebrated as a major holiday. For example, in the Vologda province, residents from neighboring districts gathered for a grand mass, during which bread loaves were blessed. In their homes, housewives fed slices of the blessed bread to the livestock, hoping to protect them from diseases for the entire year. From this day on, livestock trading began at the markets. People prayed to St. Blaise for the safety and health of the livestock: "Holy Blaise, bring luck to the sleek calves and fat bulls, so they may play in the yard and frolic in the fields". Icons of the saint were hung in the cowsheds and barns to protect the livestock from various misfortunes.
As for the function of Veles, who ruled in the underworld, the character of Viy seemed to have taken on that role - a character of purely negative, "unclean" forces. In other words, with the adoption of Christianity, the image of the pagan Veles gradually split into two aspects: the positive - St. Blaise, the protector of livestock, and the negative - Viy, a malicious, formidable spirit ruling in the underworld, embodying death and the darkness of the grave, the leader of impurity.
"The rooster's crow sounded. It was already the second crow; the first one had been heard by the gnomes. The frightened spirits rushed, as they could, to the windows and doors to fly out as quickly as possible, but they were stuck there, tangled in the doors and windows. The entering priest stopped at the sight of such desecration of the holy shrine and dared not conduct a requiem service in such a place. And so the church remained forever with the monsters tangled in the doors and windows, overgrown with trees, roots, weeds, and wild thorns; and now, no one can find their way to it." This is how Nikolai Gogol concludes his story "Viy."
E. DMITRIEVA, historian.
Slavic Mythology VIY - WHO IS HE? N. Gogol devoted only about a dozen lines to Viy in his story "Viy." But anyone who has ever read them will never forget such a vivid, unusual, and impressive character. Perhaps one of the reasons for this lies in the special mysteriousness and incomprehensibility of Viy. How did this image emerge, where did it come from? Who is Viy, and what do we know about him? Slavs recognized him as an underground god, a position held by the ancient Pluto, the king of the underworld.
M. D. Chulkov. "The Alphabet of Russian Superstitions"
Let's start by quoting Gogol: "'Bring Viy! Go after Viy!' - the words of the dead man resounded.
And suddenly, silence fell in the church; the howling of wolves could be heard in the distance, and soon heavy footsteps echoed through the church; glancing sideways, he saw that they were leading a stout, stocky, lopsided man. He was covered in black soil. Like sinewy, strong roots, his feet and hands, covered in soil, stood out. He walked heavily, stumbling every minute, with long eyelids lowered to the ground. With horror, Khoma noticed that his face was made of iron. They led him by the hands and stood him right in the place where Khoma stood.
'Lift my eyelids: I can't see!' Viy said with an underground voice, and the whole crowd rushed to lift his eyelids.
'Don't look!' - some inner voice whispered to the philosopher. Unable to resist, he looked.
'There he is!' Viy shouted, pointing an iron finger at him. And everyone present rushed at the philosopher. Lifeless, he fell to the ground, and immediately his spirit flew out of him in fear."
It is hard to find in the works of Russian classics a more impressive and enigmatic character than Gogol's Viy. Clearly belonging to folklore and fairy tale characters, he stands out among them with his special dramatic effect and inexplicable hidden power. "Viy is a colossal creation of popular imagination," wrote Nikolai Gogol in a note to his story. "This name was given to the chief of gnomes by Little Russians, whose eyelids go down to the ground. The whole story is a folk legend. I did not want to change anything in it and tell it almost as simply as I heard it." Considering that in 1835, when the story was written, Slavic folklore studies as a science were just beginning, and we knew as little about our own mythology as, for example, about Chinese mythology, it is not surprising that Gogol did not give a more informative explanation regarding the "chief" of Little Russian "gnomes."
Today, we can look Viy in the eye without fear and tell all about him that even his literary father did not know.
So, who is Viy? If, as Gogol says, he is a hero of folk tales, then his image should be encountered in folklore works. However, there is no fairytale character with such a name. But where did the name Viy itself come from? Let's consult the dictionary. In the Ukrainian language, the name of the character from Little Russian legends Viy apparently comes from the words "viya," "viyka" - eyelash (and "poviko" - eyelid). After all, the most memorable and characteristic feature of Viy is his huge eyelids, so it is quite natural that his name originated from them.
Although there is no Viy as such in Ukrainian, Belarusian, or Russian folk tales, images that almost completely coincide with Gogol's description of Viy are quite common: stocky, strong, and, therefore, powerful, covered in soil, as if the devils dug him out of the underworld. In the tale of Ivan Bykovich, recorded by the famous collector and researcher of Slavic folklore A. N. Afanasyev, it is told that after Ivan first defeated three multi-headed monsters on the Smorodina River and then destroyed their wives, a certain witch, now deprived of her daughters and sons-in-law, dragged Ivan to the master of the underground kingdom, her husband:
'You have our destroyer,' she says. And in the tale before us, the same Viy appears but in the underground kingdom, at his own home:
"The old man lies on an iron bed, unable to see: long eyelashes and thick eyebrows completely cover his eyes. He called twelve mighty heroes and began to command them:
- Take the iron forks, lift my eyebrows and black eyelashes, I will see what kind of bird this is that killed my sons."
Both in Gogol's story and in the tale recorded by Afanasyev, the presence of iron attributes is not surprising. Gogol's Viy has an iron face, an iron finger, and in the fairy tale, an iron bed and iron forks. After all, iron ore is mined from the earth, so the master of the underworld kingdom, Viy, was a sort of owner and protector of the earth's depths and their riches. Apparently, this is why N. Gogol associates him with European gnomes, guardians of underground treasures. For the ancient man at the time of the formation of Slavic mythology, iron, a strong metal, difficult to extract and process, indispensable in economy, was considered of the greatest value.
The fairy tale hero from Afanasyev with his long eyebrows and eyelashes corresponds completely to the image of Viy. However, in Slavic mythology, it was apparently not mandatory for the ruler of the underground kingdom to have long eyebrows or eyelashes. His distinguishing feature was just long hair, whether eyelashes, eyebrows, or beard - it didn't matter. It can be assumed that the exaggerated eyelids were a later distortion of the folk legend. The main point is not the eyelids, but simply the long eyelashes, hair. In one Belarusian fairy tale, there is a description of "Tsar Kokot, a beard the length of an elbow, a seventy-arshin iron whip, a pouch made from seventy ox hides" - an image similar to the ruler of the underground kingdom. There is also a fairy tale old man "From his toenails to his beard," possessing immense strength and a huge herd of bulls. In his service was a three-headed snake, and he himself hid underground from the heroes pursuing him. But among Belarusian fairy tales, there is one where, just like with Viy, a servant lifts the eyelids, "five poods each." This Koshchei "once he looks at someone - they will not escape from him, even if he lets them go - they will all return to him anyway."
So, one cannot look Viy in the eye because he will take, pull towards himself into the underworld, into the world of the dead, which is exactly what happened to poor Khoma in Gogol's "Viy." Perhaps that is why in Christian apocryphal legends, Saint Cassian was identified with Viy, whom the people considered the embodiment of the leap year and the personification of all misfortunes. It was believed that Cassian, just like the master of the underground kingdom, lived deep underground, in a cave where the daylight does not reach. Cassian's gaze is deadly to all living creatures and brings disasters, diseases, and even death. Some features of Viy were also attributed to the apocryphal Judas Iscariot, who allegedly lost his sight as punishment for betraying Jesus Christ due to his excessively long eyelids."
So where did the strange image of Viy come from in Slavic mythology and folklore? The main characteristics of our character help to find an answer: hairiness, ownership of herds of bulls, and association with the underworld. These characteristics bring to mind one of the oldest and most significant East Slavic gods of pagan times - Veles (Volos). Before people learned to cultivate the land, he patronized hunters, helping them hunt game, which, according to many researchers, gave rise to the deity's name. It comes from the word "volos," meaning fur or skin of hunted prey. Veles also symbolized the spirits of slain animals. Hence the association of this deity with death, the world of the dead. "Originally, in the distant hunting past, Veles could mean the spirit of a slain animal, the spirit of the hunting prey, in other words, the god of the hunter's only wealth, embodied in the carcass of the defeated animal." This was how the academician B. A. Rybakov wrote about Veles-Volos.
However, time passed, and agriculture and animal husbandry became integral parts of ancient people's economy. Hunting lost its former importance, and Veles became the protector of domestic animals. This is why the old man "From his toenails to his beard" had herds of cattle, and anyone who dared to encroach upon them risked facing the formidable power of the herd owner. The number of livestock in ancient times was the primary indicator of a family's wealth. Livestock provided humans with almost everything they needed: pulling force, fur, skin, wool for clothing and other household needs, milk, dairy products, and meat for sustenance. It is no coincidence that the custom of measuring wealth in "heads" of cattle survived until the Middle Ages. The word "skot" not only denoted livestock but also all the property and wealth of a family. The term "skotolubie" was used to mean "greed" or "avarice." The position of a financial official, between the governor and the elder, was called "skotnik" because "skotnitsa" referred to the treasury (hence another meaning of Veles as a deity: overseeing income and wealth).
It is not surprising, therefore, that Veles was opposed to Perun - the god of the heavens, thunder, and war. After all, wealth, abundance, and war leading to devastation are incompatible. Perun, the bringer of thunder, resided in the sky, in the heavenly realm of the gods. Veles, on the other hand, was associated with the underworld of the dead, the "dark light." Until the beginning of the 20th century, the custom persisted to leave an uncut sheaf of grain in the field after the harvest as an offering to Veles - "for his beard." Peasants hoped to earn the favor of their ancestors resting in the earth, upon whom the success of the next year's harvest depended. Trees, bushes, and herbs were referred to by the people as the "hair of the earth." Therefore, it is not surprising that the master of the underworld kingdom Veles, whose name was forgotten over the centuries, was depicted as a hairy old man and later derived the name Viy due to this characteristic. (However, the origin of the name Viy is similar to the name Veles: both are derived from the words "hair" or "eyelashes.")
With the advent of Christianity, the role of the protector of livestock, Veles, was passed on to St. Blaise (most likely due to the similarity in names), whose feast day fell on February 11th (January 24th in the new calendar). In many places in Russia, St. Blaise's day was celebrated as a major holiday. For example, in the Vologda province, residents from neighboring districts gathered for a grand mass, during which bread loaves were blessed. In their homes, housewives fed slices of the blessed bread to the livestock, hoping to protect them from diseases for the entire year. From this day on, livestock trading began at the markets. People prayed to St. Blaise for the safety and health of the livestock: "Holy Blaise, bring luck to the sleek calves and fat bulls, so they may play in the yard and frolic in the fields". Icons of the saint were hung in the cowsheds and barns to protect the livestock from various misfortunes.
As for the function of Veles, who ruled in the underworld, the character of Viy seemed to have taken on that role - a character of purely negative, "unclean" forces. In other words, with the adoption of Christianity, the image of the pagan Veles gradually split into two aspects: the positive - St. Blaise, the protector of livestock, and the negative - Viy, a malicious, formidable spirit ruling in the underworld, embodying death and the darkness of the grave, the leader of impurity.
"The rooster's crow sounded. It was already the second crow; the first one had been heard by the gnomes. The frightened spirits rushed, as they could, to the windows and doors to fly out as quickly as possible, but they were stuck there, tangled in the doors and windows. The entering priest stopped at the sight of such desecration of the holy shrine and dared not conduct a requiem service in such a place. And so the church remained forever with the monsters tangled in the doors and windows, overgrown with trees, roots, weeds, and wild thorns; and now, no one can find their way to it." This is how Nikolai Gogol concludes his story "Viy."
E. DMITRIEVA, historian.
