Wij

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Wij

Wij (also Vij or Der Wij , Russian Вий ) is a short story by the Russian writer Nikolai Wassiljewitsch Gogol . It was published in 1835 as part of the anthology Mirgorod and is considered a classic of Russian fantastic literature .

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Wij tells the story of the philosophy student Choma Brut from Kiev , who, together with two fellow students from the faculties of theology and rhetoric, spends the night on a trip in an inn and is harassed by the eerie landlady. This landlady soon turns out to be a demonic witch , a succubus , and plays the young man badly by riding him back and forth through the night until he can finally shake her off and half kill her. Suddenly dying she no longer appears to him as a nasty old woman, but as a young, good-looking girl.

Back in Kiev, his rector asks him to go to a landlord in the country. His daughter is dying and asks the philosophy student to say the prayers for her. After an initial refusal, the student travels to the landlord's estate and arrives there when the daughter has already passed away. In the coffin the student recognizes the girl who used to ride him through the night as a witch. On instructions from the landlord of the student holds the coffin of the witch three night long vigil at the nearby church.

During these three nights, the witch emerges from her coffin in increasingly gruesome form and threatens the student, who can only protect himself from the attacks with prayers and incantations . Last night, Choma Brut died of horror and exhaustion. The witch conjures up spirits and demons that take possession of the church; Finally, the Wij, the king of the earth spirits, appears and lets all the spirits loose on Choma. The next morning the pastor finds the church terribly desecrated. Since then it has never been entered again and it is soon overgrown by plants, so that the building cannot be found to this day.

The two fellow students of the student raise their glasses to the inexplicable disappearance of the philosophy student. The rhetorician has now become a philosopher himself and it is becoming apparent that the story told could repeat itself on him.

German-language editions

  • Wij, the king of the earth spirits . In: Nikolai Gogol, short stories . Dortmund 1984
  • The Wij . In: Dieter Sturm, Klaus Völker (ed.), Of which vampires and people suckers . Munich 1968
  • Vampires. Anthology. Heyne, Munich 1967 (TB); Fackelverlag, Olten 1969 pp. 239-283. Translated by Helmut Degner et al

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