E-mail: krakhno@ukr.net, Tel.: +380 (5353) 4-24-16
102, Partyzanska str., Opishne, Zinkiv District, Poltava Region, 38164, Ukraine
DSc in History, Leading Researcher, National Museum of Ukrainian Pottery in Opishne
“A Terrible Revenge” is one of Nikolai Gogol’s most striking and famous stories. In it motifs of popular Christianity intertwine with those of an archaic pagan worldview. For a long time, critics believed that the story, with its plot twists and unusual characters, was mostly influenced by Western European Romantic literature. Today the view that prevails among scholars is that the overwhelming majority of its images were not invented by the writer himself and did not come from books, but rather were derived from folklore and popular belief. In this connection, the description of demonic characters — in particular, unbaptized children — is significant. This, among other things, helps to create the story’s Gothic atmosphere. These children are depicted as residing in the forest, in trees. This is an ancient image and echoes the custom of Ukrainians and other Slavs to bury unbaptized babies under a tree in a forest or garden, and it also finds unexpected parallels among Ossetians. Ossetians believed that on memorial days the dead left the other world, put children who were with them in the afterlife in trees, and went home to visit their living relatives. This may indicate the derivation of the Gogolian image from a pre-Slavic ethnic substratum
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