The Terrible Vengeance Essay

Aanandita Pujji
RUSS 295 Paper #3

Literature produced during the height of Romanticism was unique compared to the works of other eras for many reasons. The Romantic Movement allowed artists the opportunity to portray real events in history through the use of fantasy and the supernatural. As an extension of the Romantic view, Gothicism often played a significant role in this representation. In Nikolai Gogol’s “The Terrible Vengeance”, the inclusion of Gothic elements can be seen from the bizarre descriptions of the scenery to the mystical nature of the story. However, the most remarkable of these Gothic elements is Gogol’s utilization of time and space. His revolutionary interpretation gave new meaning to the term, “Gothic space” – a haunted area that opens the door to an alternate reality and signifies a loss of balance between two
worlds. In “The Terrible Vengeance”, Gogol uses the manipulation of time and space to develop his representation of evil and to construct the plot of his story. The novella begins with the story of the sorcerer and his attempts to marry his daughter, Katherine. It isn’t until the last chapter, during the story of Ivan and Petro that we learn about how the sorcerer came to be. The conflict between Ivan and Petro creates the Gothic space that guides the beginning of the story’s plot. Ivan and Petro, two Cossacks who are as close as brothers, swear to share any fame or fortune that either one receives. However, even after Ivan shares his land and riches received from King Stephen with his friend, Petro still finds himself jealous of Ivan’s success. Petro’s jealousy eventually leads him to take revenge: “He looked round, cast a glance into the chasm and thrust his sworn brother over the edge. Horse and Cossack and small child hurtled to their doom together.” (Gogol, 59) Petro takes Ivan’s fortune and lives a long, comfortable life off of it until his death. After Petro dies, he appears before God, who allows Ivan to choose Petro’s punishment. Ivan asks God to make the last man in Petro’s line to be the “wickedest man on earth” (Gogol, 60), and for his ancestors to rise from their graves, never at peace, except for Petro, who must not be given the strength to rise at all. When the time comes for this man to face his retribution, Ivan requests that God send him back to earth to throw this wicked man into an abyss, where his ancestors will come to gnaw on his bones. Petro’s act of evil – breaking a Cossack bond and killing his friend – and Ivan’s need for vengeance allows for the disruption of reality and the natural order of time and space. Where Gothic spaces exist, there is usually a boundary that separates the supernatural world from the real world. In “The Terrible Vengeance”, this boundary takes the form of the river Dnieper. The sorcerer’s castle lies on one side of the river, as Danilo and Katherine see on their way back to their home: “…in the distance, an earthen mound could be seen rising like a black shadow from behind the wood, and behind the mound rose the dark pile of an old castle.” (Gogol, 17) The Gothic space is further illustrated by the corpses that rise from their graves in the cemetery and scream for air. Gothic literature often focuses on the crossing over from the real world into this supernatural state. When Katherine dreams of her father as the sorcerer, her soul is leaving the physical world and entering a spiritual one. When Danilo follows Katherine’s father to the castle, he witnesses first-hand the manipulation of space in the sorcerer’s room: “Then Danilo imagined…that it was not the sky he could see in the room, but his own bed chamber.” (Gogol, 31) From this scene, it becomes clear that not only does the sorcerer exist in another plane; he also has the power to manipulate the space around him. This becomes especially relevant when the tide turns against the sorcerer, and the time of his retribution draws near. When the sorcerer makes his third attempt to speak to Katherine’s soul, his spell is intercepted: “A strange face appeared in the cloud; unbidden and uninvited, it had come to his subterranean home.” (Gogol, 46) The face that appears is the avenger, Ivan, who has finally arrived to punish the sorcerer and restore the balance to the two worlds. Gogol’s interpretation of the Gothic space differs from other Romantic literature in that most of the time, the Gothic space stays stationary and unchanged.
In “The Terrible Vengeance”, the Gothic space that exists behind the Dnieper River begins to expand. After the sorcerer kills Katherine, the people of Kiev witness this expansion: “…suddenly it became possible to see far away to the ends of the earth. Afar could be seen the blue waters of the mouth of the Dnieper, and beyond that the Black Sea was plainly visible.” (Gogol, 53) The vast distance that normally exists between Kiev and the sights that the townspeople see (i.e. the Crimea, the Sivash, the Carpathian mountains) constricts, allowing them to see parts of the world they should not be able to see from where they stand. The people of Kiev then see the cause of this distortion: “…on [the mountain] appeared a horseman in full knightly armour, with his eyes closed. He was plainly visible to all, as though he were only a few yards away.” (Gogol, 53) The sorcerer sees the face of the knight, Ivan – the same face he saw when he attempted to call upon Katherine’s soul – and
flees.
In Romantic literature, control of the Gothic space tends to stay within the influence of the supernatural being. The sorcerer powers, however, eventually star to work against him. He arrives at the cave of a holy hermit who, after refusing to pray for the sorcerer, is killed by him. The murder of the hermit, a person who is close to God, becomes the sorcerer’s last act and the power that he once had over space begins to fail him. He attempts to ride as far away from the Carpathian Mountains (where Ivan waits for him) as he can, but to no avail: “…he had the curious feeling that he was still riding in the opposite direction, and always farther and farther away from where he wanted to go.” (Gogol, 55) The space that he once controlled begins to control him, forcing him to ride closer to his doom. In Romantic literature, the opened Gothic space is typically, closed by the end and the balance of the two worlds is restored once again. Eventually, the sorcerer reaches the Carpathian Mountains where the knight seizes the sorcerer and kills him. The ancestors of the sorcerer begin to appear from all over the world, and the knight drops the sorcerer into the abyss. Thus begins the punishment of the sorcerer: “And all the dead men leapt into the abyss, seized the dead man as he was falling and fastened their teeth into him” and Petro: “Another taller and more terrible than the rest, tried to rise from the ground, but he could not, for he had not the strength to do it” (Gogol, 56). The resolution of Ivan’s meticulous punishment for Petro allows for the Gothic space that existed in the physical world to close and for the story to come to its end.