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diff --git a/77771-0.txt b/77771-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ff1f9e8 --- /dev/null +++ b/77771-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5254 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77771 *** + + + + + _Ukrainian Literature_ + + _Studies of the Leading Authors_ + + _By_ + + CLARENCE A. MANNING + + ACTING EXECUTIVE OFFICER + DEPARTMENT OF EAST EUROPEAN LANGUAGES + COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY + + _With a Foreword_ + + _By_ + + PROFESSOR WATSON KIRKCONNELL + + + UKRAINIAN NATIONAL ASSOCIATION + JERSEY CITY, N. J. + 1944 + + + + + COPYRIGHT, APRIL 1944 + + BY + + PROFESSOR CLARENCE A. MANNING + + COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY + + NEW YORK, N. Y. + + + PRINTED IN U.S.A. BY + HARMON PRINTING HOUSE + POUGHKEEPSIE, N. Y. + + + + + TABLE OF CONTENTS + + Page + + Foreword 4 + + Introduction 5 + + The Background of Ukrainian Culture 7 + + Hrihori Skovoroda 17 + + Ivan Kotlyarevsky 23 + + Hrihori Kvitka-Osnovyanenko 34 + + Taras Shevchenko 41 + + Pantaleimon Kulish 56 + + Marko Vovchok 61 + + Ivan Levitsky-Nechuy 66 + + Changing Conditions 71 + + Ivan Franko 76 + + Lesya Ukrainka 89 + + Mikhaylo Kotsyubinsky 96 + + Vasil Stefanyk 103 + + Oles 112 + + After 1918 118 + + Bibliography 123 + + + + +FOREWORD + + +The Ukrainians have sometimes been termed “the Irish of the Slavonic +world,” and the epithet is not infelicitous. In both cases there is +a tradition of ancient, almost legendary, glory, followed by long +centuries of stifled independence, in which the stream of national life +disappeared underground almost completely--only to emerge in turbid and +eager flood in modern times. + +The two nations’ literary traditions are likewise comparable. The +_Cattle-raid of Cooley_ in the old Ulster-cycle has its counterpart +in the _Raid of Igor_, a powerful epic-fragment whose provenance +is clearly Kievan and not Muscovite. The abundant Irish legacy +of folk-song (recorded by Douglas Hyde and others) is more than +paralleled by the countless Ukrainian folk-songs, full of echoes of +“old, unhappy, far-off things.” In both instances, there is a copious +religious literature in medieval times. Most comparable of all are +the literatures of the modern awakening, in which national authors, +repudiating the dominant literary traditions of English (used by +Goldsmith, Burke and Moore), Russian (used by Gogol) and Polish (used +by Zaleski), have turned with intense political enthusiasm to the +cultivation of their own ancestral speech. + +Yet there are striking differences. While Irish Gaelic is today the +official language of a small state of 3,000,000 people, many of whom +are acquiring the language in school with reluctance and difficulty, +Ukrainian is the cherished mother-tongue of nearly 50,000,000 Slavs +in Eastern Europe. Regardless of all political considerations, the +cultural dynamic of so large a group cannot be permanently disregarded +by the scholar and the general reader. Professor Clarence A. Manning, +of Columbia University, is rendering a service to international letters +in making available, in English, a brief but comprehensive history of +Ukrainian literature. It is a timely task, courageously carried out. + + WATSON KIRKCONNELL + +_Hamilton, Canada._ + + + + +INTRODUCTION + + +Ukrainian literature offers perhaps the best medium for studying the +aspirations of the Ukrainian people and their mode of existence. In +many ways it presents a sad picture for Ukraine has suffered much +during the last thousand years and the efforts of its people to develop +an independent state which could give them freedom and happiness have +been thwarted again and again. We have the almost unique example of +a nation of forty million people that has not been able in the last +centuries to become the master and the director of its fate, that has +been doomed to undergo every form of humiliation and yet has held firm +its resolve to try again at the first opportunity that offered any hope +of success. + +It is the task of history to explain this anomalous situation and +historians, whether friendly or hostile, have not been slow to take +advantage of their privilege. The narrators of the story of Ukraine +have approached the subject from every conceivable angle. Some have +denied stoutly that there ever was a Ukraine. Others have declared that +the nation met its fate because of its own errors and defects. Still +others have challenged these unfavorable views and have laid the blame +on better prepared and grasping neighbors. There are many more of these +explanations but we have little to do with them. + +Literature explains the results of history. It shows us the effects +that history has had upon the masses and upon the individual. It gives +us in artistic form a picture of the reactions of the people to the +conditions under which they are compelled to live and even more than +history, it mirrors their ideals and their dreams for the future. Yet +it does even more than this. + +The important thing in modern literature is the light which it throws +upon the personalities of the authors themselves, both as individuals +and as representatives of their people. No one in modern literature can +produce a memorable work without making clear the innermost workings of +his own soul and thoughts and feelings. When we look from this point +of view at such men as Shevchenko and Franko, we realize that we are +dealing with real spiritual and intellectual leaders with a real faith +in democracy and that these men have a message not only for their +people and age but for the entire world. + +We are often inclined to believe that a literature which is little +known can have little of value in it. The permanent worth and the +greatness of an author are not immediately visible in the sale of his +works and in the number of translations that are made of them. Accident +plays a large rôle and often an unlucky but great author must wait +years for recognition while another who is fortunate but less great +will receive almost immediate and quick-passing praise as a genius. We +need only think of the large number of last year’s best-sellers that +have gone into a speedy oblivion and of the world’s masterpieces which +continue a slow but steady sale for decades as the real virtues slowly +but surely attract a multitude of devoted readers. + +Human nature is remarkably constant from age to age and country to +country but there develops through the centuries a specific character +of each nation and culture. Manners and customs may change. Costumes +may be discarded and varied. Economic conditions may be outgrown or +swept away by revolution. Something remains and that something is the +very kernel of the national character which perseveres and expresses +itself in literature. + +This kernel may be obscured by superficial details. Its qualities +and virtues may be hidden by external trappings. It may seem to take +strange and unusual forms. It may seem to be inconsistent with much +that tradition and religion and education have built around it but it +still remains and the sympathetic reader who can look below the surface +of the outward form can realize its meaning and its significance for +humanity. + +This is especially true with Ukrainian literature. Its modern period +started with the _Eneida_ of Kotlyarevsky in 1798 and it has under +severe difficulties carried on from then until the present. Yet it has +never wavered in its two outstanding qualities, a keen sense of realism +and above all a confidence and belief in democracy in every form and +this is its chief characteristic. There is hardly a literature which +is more devoted to the cause of the common man and presents him more +sympathetically in his struggles, his difficulties and his achievements +and if there may be said to be anywhere a literature of the common man, +it is the Ukrainian literature. + + + + +CHAPTER ONE + +THE BACKGROUND OF UKRAINIAN CULTURE + + +Ukrainian literature in its present phase may be modern but Ukraine +and the Ukrainians are not a new phenomenon in the world’s history. +They have played their part under one name or another for over a +thousand years on their native soil and they have had a rich past which +furnishes the present with the soil on which it can operate. + +What then is Ukraine? Who are the Ukrainians? What is the Ukrainian +language? A simple answer to these questions opens up the entire +Ukrainian problem, one of the most complicated in the whole of modern +Europe and yet superbly simple if the idea is once adopted that the +Ukrainians are a separate people who wish to live their own lives in +their own way in their own land. + +The Ukrainian language is an East Slavonic tongue which is closely akin +to Russian but which differs from it very sharply in many important +grammatical and phonetic ways. The language is spoken by a people of +some forty millions in number who inhabit an area that was included +between 1939 and 1941 almost wholly in the Ukrainian Socialist Soviet +Republic and was after 1941 occupied by the Nazi invaders. Before the +Second World War, the country was divided between the Soviet Union, +Poland, Rumania, and Czechoslovakia. Before the First World War, it was +divided between Russia and Austria-Hungary, and we have to go back for +centuries before we find a free and united Ukraine. + +Yet at that time the land was not called Ukraine but Rus, and even +before that it had had a long and complicated history revealed only +by archaeological exploration and scattered references in ancient +authors. There are many gaps in our knowledge but enough remains to +show that the organization of the state in the ninth century was but +the last act of a drama that had resulted in the development of an +important pre-Christian culture. After the adoption of Christianity, +its history is better known and we realize the importance which the +country played in the world. Under the name of Kievan Russia, it has +been treated by Russian historians who wish to deny that there ever was +a Ukrainian culture which differs in any degree from the northeastern +neighbor, Moscow. Its name, its culture, and its literature have all +been preempted by Moscow which refuses to admit that there ever was a +culture in the south which might develop in its own way and along other +lines than did the tsardom of Moscow or Muscovy. + +Yet in those days the ancient Rus or Ukraine embraced territory that +was never again to be brought under the control of the tsars. Ancient +travellers talk of a Rus that extended from the neighborhood of Prague +to the east and they then speak calmly of passing from there to Muscovy +for the old state was markedly different in area from many of the +common conceptions. + +In the beginning, and here was the geographical root of the tragedy of +Ukraine, the Slavs who spoke this language lived in a belt of greater +or narrower width from the Carpathian Mountains to the sea of Azov. +Their land was longer from east to west than it was from north to south +and it cut across the central portions of all those great rivers that +flow from the north into the Black Sea. Nowhere except in the west were +there any natural boundaries in the form of mountain ranges. To the +north and east there were only the great plains of eastern Europe which +were open to every invader from the depths of Asia and these invaders +had appeared for millenia in an almost uninterrupted sequence, when the +first Slavonic state was erected around the city of Kiev. + +It was an unfortunate geographical situation, for it imposed upon the +princes the constant and never-ending task of guarding a long and +indefensible frontier with a relatively small population and enormous +distances. Without modern methods of communication, the task was +hopeless. The princes were unable to hold more than a small area under +their personal supervision and the evils that were attendant upon +feudalism were not slow in making their appearance. + +In vain the more competent and conscientious rulers tried by almost +superhuman efforts to hold their positions. Almost without their +knowledge large regions grew up into quasi-independent realms and +civil war was the result of the interference of even the best beloved +monarch. The provinces and regions went on their own sweet way with +little thought of obedience to a distant central authority and they +were far too ready to seize a momentary advantage by an alliance with +some one of their neighbors. At some time during the last thousand +years, part at least of the people of Ukraine have been allied with +Muscovites, Poles, Lithuanians, Rumanians, various Mongolian tribes, +Turks, and Tatars of the Crimea. For a long period Lithuanians and +Poles were able to assert a secure political control and today the +Soviet Union and Germany are fighting for the same area. + +Ukraine paid bitterly for all these feuds of her neighbors, for her +position was difficult and desirable. As we have seen, the state cut +across all the rivers that ran into the Black Sea. They were the +natural method of communication between the Baltic and the Black Seas, +even as Ukraine contained the normal land route from Asia to Europe. It +is small wonder then that the rich agricultural land was the welcome +and alluring prize to many an invader from time immemorial to 1941. + +Bad as all this was, the situation was made worse by the fact that the +territory of Ukraine became the battleground between the Byzantine and +Latin cultures. The great cleavage in the Christian world was often +fought out on Ukrainian soil and religious feuds were added to the +personal quarrels and ambitions of the neighboring sovereigns. + +Ukraine received its Christian culture from Constantinople. In the +first centuries of her existence, this was an advantage for the +intellectual hegemony of Constantinople was unchallenged. It is +hard today to understand that the great city on the Bosphorus with +its unparalleled church of Hagia Sophia was the real centre of +Christian culture and civilization. The Emperor of Byzantium was the +Christian secular ruler _par excellence_. His wealth and his power +were unrivalled save perhaps by the Mohammedan Caliph of Bagdad. Rome +looked with envy at the riches and the splendor of the great city of +Constantine. It remembered what it had itself lost at the hands of the +Germanic barbarian tribes and was proudly jealous. The West envied the +glory of the East and sought diligently to seize control of the border +lands and to extend its control wherever possible. + +It was at this period that the Kievan state was organized and St. +Volodimir formally accepted Christianity, largely it is said because +of the splendor of the service in the Church of Hagia Sophia. Soon a +second Hagia Sophia was erected at Kiev and if it did not equal the +splendor and the amazing beauty of the elder church, it was still one +of the richest and most impressive structures north of the imperial +city. The state adopted the standards of Constantinople and the legends +and folk tales tell us of the wealth and power of the princes of Kiev, +of their gold and precious stones, of their glory and their pride, yes, +and of their intelligence and learning. + +We must not think of education in early Kiev in terms of modern public +schools and a high degree of literacy. There was none of that but +where was it to be found? At a time when such kings of England as +William I and Richard Coeur de Lion were barely able to sign their +names, Volodimir Monomakh was able to carry on the business of state +in seven languages. The princesses of Kiev were sought in marriage by +the most powerful rulers of the day and the blood of the royal family +passed into the veins of the sovereigns of England, France, Sweden, +Hungary, Poland, and Byzantium itself. + +The new state had difficulties in the way of internal organization but +no more than the neighboring countries. There were civil wars and heavy +taxes and oppression of the people but those were universal failings. +All the virtues and the vices of Byzantium were copied on a reduced +scale in Kiev and its dependencies and the countries of Western Europe +were in an even more deplorable condition. + +Yet Byzantine culture was a strange phenomenon. It is hard for +us to conceive of a great city and a great empire with powerful +armies in which religion was the all-absorbing subject of interest. +Constantinople was a fusion of the remains of Greek civilization, of +many elements of the Roman Empire, and of ideas, habits and customs +that had been brought in from Asia Minor, north Africa, Arabia, and +points further east. Its religious art was based on principles which +were far from realistic. Its ikons and its mosaics are still the +wonder of the world, as the cleaning of the mosaics in Hagia Sophia is +showing us. Its wealth, luxury, and formalism are proverbial, and yet +the slightest acquaintance with its history shows us that there were +very human aspects of life hidden under the stately pomp and the cold +splendor of display. + +It is small wonder that the Rus and the pagan Slavs were attracted +by this outstanding and beautiful culture. Constantinople had no +objections and Saints Cyril and Methodius created the first Slavonic +alphabet and carried the Liturgy in Slavonic to Moravia and Bulgaria +and the other Slavonic lands. Finally it penetrated to Rus in the days +of St. Volodimir and Christian Kiev was on its way. + +Soon all the books of the Church and the lives of the saints which had +been translated into Church Slavonic were available in the capital +and were gradually corrected into a language which was intelligible +at Kiev. But such works as the _Russka Pravda_ (the Russian law code +of the eleventh century), the writings of Daniel the Palmer and the +_Instructions_ of Volodimir Monomakh speak of the high level which had +already been achieved. There was little secular literature of which +we know except the writings of the princes and their supporters. The +only outstanding specimen of imaginative writing is the _Tale of the +Armament of Ihor_ which has presented as many problems as it has solved. + +Yet with all of the drawbacks and the troubles, life in Kiev was good +in the twelfth century, until in 1169 Prince Andrey Bogolyubsky of +Suzdal in the north sacked the city and moved the centre of the state +to his native town and then later to Moscow. The interpretation of +this action has long been a bone of contention between Ukrainian and +Russian scholars. To the latter it was a necessary and logical step in +the development of the Russian Empire. To the former it was a brutal +conquest of a civilized government by foreigners and strangers. It +did cause a sharp break in history which was emphasized still more by +the fact that the new centre was never able to assert its authority +over Galicia and Volynia to the west. The dynasty reigning there even +was able for a time to call themselves the Kings of Rus. Whatever the +merits of the controversy over the relations of the princes of Suzdal +and Moscow to those of Kiev and the south, the fact remains that +Kievan Rus and Ukraine was now split in half and was not to be brought +together again fully except for a few months in 1918 and 1919. + +Perhaps the damage would have been alleviated, if time had allowed the +normal development of Moscow. The coming of the Mongols and Tatars +changed everything. When the hordes of Genghis Khan swept over the +land, Kiev bore the brunt of the desolation at a time when it had +hardly recovered from the sack of the preceding century. The princes +of Moscow readily submitted and henceforth the Tatar element and +traditions grew in the northern capital. This process continued for two +centuries and at the end of that period, when Ivan the Great finally +declared his independence and assumed the title of Autocrat and Tsar +of Russia, the manners and customs of Moscow were very different from +those which had prevailed at the time of the coming of the Tatars. + +Ukraine had a different fate. The western provinces formed a dangerous +wedge between Poland and Hungary and extended into the area claimed +by the Latin world. The Holy Roman Empire was pressing eastward with +the Germans as the nucleus and the predominant power. Poland and +Hungary confronted with this turned east in their turn. Both were Roman +Catholic powers and western in culture and organization. Both were in +frequent alliance and their dynasties were related by marriage. It was +to the interest of both to crush Rus with its Orthodox traditions and +its Byzantine culture. To the north was Lithuania, still pagan but with +able rulers. To make a long story short, the end came in 1349 when the +Western principalities of Ukraine fell under the power of Lithuania +and Poland. At about the same era the people in the Carpathians passed +under the control of Hungary. Lithuania acquired control of the area +around Kiev, so that by the time of the marriage of Jadwiga of Poland +and Jagiello of Lithuania in 1385, a large part of Ukraine was under +the control of Catholic rulers and the remainder was under the Tatar +yoke. + +With Moscow drifting eastward in its point of view owing to the +influence of the Tatars and Ukraine gravitating westward under the +control of Poland and Lithuania, the breach became wider than in the +beginning and Ukraine was unable to work on its own behalf or to resist +the encroachments of the West. Especially after the Union of Lublin in +1569 when Poland and Lithuania were formally united into one kingdom, +Western influences grew stronger. More and more pressure was exerted +upon the people to join the Roman Catholic Church, to adopt Polish, +and to lose their identity in the new state. This was especially true +in the case of the nobles and the wealthier classes. More and more +they were Polonized and as they became ardent advocates of their new +culture, they endeavored to force it also upon their people. Ukraine +and its national spirit seemed to be doomed. + +Ukrainian opposition to this process was bitter and continuous but +the successes were few after many of the feudal lords passed over to +the new regime. The lesser nobles continued the struggle. Deprived +of any means of expressing their opinions to the heads of the state +and without skilled and daring leadership, they saw their traditional +privileges whittled away and themselves reduced to greater and greater +straits. For a while it seemed as if Protestant ideas might seep in, +but this stopped with the suppression of the Reformation in Poland. +A few of the nobles as Prince Constantine Ostrozky endeavored to +develop and strengthen the Orthodox (Byzantine) culture of the people. +He tried to secure teachers from Constantinople for his schools but +the Patriarch after the fall of the city to the Turks was weak and +powerless and he was not in a position to carry out any strong policy. +A few able monks as the young Cyril Lukaris, later the celebrated +Patriarch of Constantinople, arrived for a short time, but they could +have very little success and again and again the sons of a devout +Orthodox father themselves Polonized and thus undid all that the older +men had accomplished. + +Then too in cities as Lviv there were various brotherhoods interested +in education. They tried to establish schools and printing presses and +to defend the old faith and customs and they did noble service. Still +even these efforts did not bear too much fruit. They were checked +at every stage by the government and their work was so tied up with +the defence of the Orthodox Faith that they were not interested in +giving much secular learning to the young and that little was largely +influenced by the Latin intellectual manner of thought. They used the +old Church language which was becoming steadily more distinct from the +vernacular tongue and created a sterile and polemic culture which often +had little real value. + +Finally in 1596 through the Union of Brest a part of the Orthodox +Church in Ukraine acknowledged the supremacy of the Pope. There was +however great resistance to the new measure, the Orthodox hierarchy +was reestablished by the efforts of the faithful and they regarded +the Uniat Church as an agent of Polonization. The Academy of Kiev +under a series of able leaders, as the Metropolitan Peter Mohyla, did +splendid work in maintaining the Faith. Mohyla worked out a form of +Orthodox scholasticism which retained most of the Orthodox manner of +thinking and was yet available as a weapon again the Polish and Jesuit +propagandists. Yet the Academy like the schools of the brotherhoods +was never able to break with a narrow ecclesiastical tradition and to +launch itself on a program of progressive education. + +A more effective, if cruder, method of opposition lay in the rise +of the Kozaks, peasants who fled to the east to live their lives in +freedom as they desired. These men were prepared to fight against any +foe, whether he were Pole, Muscovite, Tatar or Turk. At first they +were a wild and turbulent group but their leaders finally forged them +into an efficient force. Now and then the Kings endeavored to secure +their assistance by payments and by enrolling some of them in units +in the Polish army but the Kozaks remained independent and a pillar +of strength to all Orthodox movements. Finally in the seventeenth +century the hetman Bohdan Khmelnitsky won with them for a short time +practically complete independence and again Ukraine could breathe +freely. Bohdan died before he had established the new state on a firm +basis and won for it international recognition. In his last years he +found it necessary after the Kozak Wars which started Poland very +definitely on the downward path to put himself and the Kozaks more +or less under the protection of the Tsar of Russia. There was thus +reestablished an official seal on that relationship which had been +interrupted when the Tatars invaded Rus four centuries before. The +result was none too satisfactory for the autocratic Moscow of the day +constantly interfered with the liberties of the Kozaks and in 1667 in +a treaty between the Tsar and the King of Poland, Ukraine was again +divided between Russia and Poland, with the Dnieper as the dividing +line. + +The next century and a half is a sad tale of broken promises and of +political intrigue. Moscow and Poland alike repudiated every agreement +which was made with the Kozaks and the Ukrainians. Discord arose in +the ranks of the Kozaks between the officers and the privates, for +the former tended to adopt the manners and customs of the neighboring +nobles. As Russia steadily increased in power, she kept attempting to +reorganize the whole of Russian Ukraine on the same lines as the rest +of the Empire. Then Catherine the Great abolished the post of Hetman. +She followed that up with the destruction of the Kozak centre, the +Zaporozhian Sich, and finally liquidated all Ukrainian institutions and +rights and bound the peasants to the soil. + +Things were little better on the Polish side. There were the revolts of +the Haydamaki and other groups but they were put down by Russian troops +who were lording it over Poland. Finally when that unfortunate country +was divided by Russia, Prussia, and Austria, Austria took most of the +Ukrainian section of Galicia and Bukovina and added the Ukrainians to +the ethnic confusion that formed the Hapsburg Empire. For this group +Lviv was now the principal centre but the mode of living there and the +methods of control of the Ukrainians or the Ruthenians as they were +usually called in Galicia were very different from that exercised in +Russia. + +There was by the end of the eighteenth century really two Ukraines. +There was the Great Ukraine under Russian control with its religious +culture mainly Orthodox and there was Western Ukraine or Galicia under +the Hapsburgs with the Uniat Church as the predominant religious body. +Life moved at a different pace in the two sections but there were the +same tendencies to denationalization, Russian in one case, Polish in +the other, and the future of the people and their culture seemed very +dark. + +Yet in the seventeenth century at the time of the temporary flourishing +of the Hetmanate, Ukrainian scholarship and spirit won one of its most +signal victories. Moscow during its long period of subjugation to +the Tatars had lost touch with the outside world, and its relations +even with the Orthodox Churches of the east had become limited to +a mere readiness to give liberally to the wandering Patriarchs who +came to collect donations. The dangerous legend of the Third Rome +and the accompanying belief that Moscow was the centre of Christian +civilization had taken root, and the Muscovite scholars, if they could +be called such, objected to all contact with the rest of Europe. +Kiev was a possible exception, for the princes of Muscovy still had +a traditional respect for the city and its culture. When the tsars +finally realized that they needed some outside learning, it was the +scholars trained in the Academy at Kiev who were called in to assist. +Some of these were invited to Moscow. Others went to escape Polish +pressure. Yet all that was done in the way of intellectual progress was +done by these men. The reforms in the Russian Church, incomplete as +they were, were spurred on by the Kievan scholars and it was they also +who inspired the beginnings of Russian literature, halting as they were. + +Not enough attention has been paid to this movement and to the +influence that Kiev exerted upon Moscow during the seventeenth century. +It was a time when Russian military power was making itself supreme but +in the world of culture it was the scholarship of Ukraine that was the +master. The names of men from Kiev appear with monotonous regularity +as the intellectual leaders of Moscow. Many of the greater Muscovites +studied at Kiev and it is not too much to say that if Kiev had given +Moscow its intellectual start at its foundation, so again in the +seventeenth century it was Kiev that started the northern country on +its return to Western intellectual ways. + +Unfortunately most of this was in the narrowly religious sphere. The +Academy of Kiev was still predominantly interested in theological +polemics. During the long struggle with Poland, the Western ideas +which had penetrated the Academy were largely connected with religion. +There was little or no attempt to study the achievements of the West +in literature and art and other secular subjects. Those who sought +secular learning were usually absorbed in the Roman Catholic Church and +in Polish life. Those who maintained the old traditions were usually +peasants who were themselves suspicious of all innovations and the +masters treated more and more the speech of their Ukrainian peasants +and serfs as an object of scorn and of amusement. Along with the +decline in Ukrainian liberties, there came a steady reduction in the +number of educated or even partially educated persons. As a people the +Ukrainians were losing and losing rapidly all the marks and even the +traditions of an educated class. Their interests were becoming those of +serfs and peasants and they seemed destined to be swallowed up in the +mass of the dominant races about them. + +Thus at the end of the eighteenth century, the vast majority of the +Ukrainian people had ceased to figure in the world of culture. They +still had their folk songs which told of the exploits of the Kozaks +and their great Hetmans and leaders of the past. They spoke among +themselves in the vernacular but whatever schools there were still +taught the Church Slavonic language which was hoary with age and which +was by now very different from the daily spoken speech. Ukraine had +drifted into an intellectual backwater. It is small wonder that many +young men trying to escape from this stagnation looked for a more +active life and became lost to the cause of the people. The whole +question was whether the forces of destruction would sweep the country +before there came a new inspiration to lift the people intellectually +and to rekindle a healthy life. Fortunately a solution was found. + + + + +CHAPTER TWO + +HRIHORI SKOVORODA + + +It was at the darkest hour when the rights and privileges of the +Ukrainians were being consistently reduced in Russian Ukraine and all +hope seemed lost, that there passed across the scene a strange figure. +That was Hrihori Skovoroda, philosopher, poet and ethical teacher. Even +today it is hard to understand his attitude toward life, for he was +one of those men who are sincerely human but who stand aside from the +vices and evil deeds of men and in their avoidance of the bad, refrain +also from much of the good, if not from life itself. Had Skovoroda been +ambitious, he could have occupied almost any post in the service of +the Russian government. Had he been thoroughly moved by nationalistic +fervor, he could have had anything that Ukraine could offer him. An +able man, he wished for nothing except to be allowed to live his life +in his own way, to teach whom he wished as he wished how to live, and +perhaps because of his refusal to fit into the conventional mode of +existence, he left an indelible but none too sharply defined imprint +upon all who came into contact with him. All of the writers who +remodelled the Ukrainian language at the close of the century speak of +him with the greatest respect and he was a precursor of the Ukrainian +Renaissance which was to follow just a few years after he ceased his +wanderings. + +Skovoroda was born in 1722 in the village of Chornukhi in the province +of Poltava. His parents were Kozaks and his father had belonged to the +Lubny Regiment. They were not of the lowest class materially and the +young boy had the opportunity to secure what education was available. +He was a remarkably sensitive child and unlike the majority of his +fellows, he cared more for reading than he did for the rough sports of +the day. Religion and the Bible interested him but he early declined +to be bound by the conventional interpretation, and this grew upon him +as he passed through life. Because of his beautiful voice, his father +sent him to study at the Academy of Kiev. He stayed there for two years +and then he went to St. Petersburg and had a position in the court +choir of the Empress Elizabeth. She had secretly married Aleksyey +Rozumovsky (1709-1771) and he induced her to do something for Ukraine. +She even restored the post of Hetman after it had been abolished in +1734 and appointed her husband’s brother Cyril to the position. In 1744 +Skovoroda returned to Kiev and resumed his studies. His talents and +his voice were such that the Archbishop urged him to take holy orders. +It was in vain. Skovoroda absolutely refused and expressed himself so +forcefully that he was finally compelled to leave the Academy. + +In 1750 he had an opportunity to visit Hungary with Major General +Vishnevsky and he gladly took advantage of it. Then for a while he +was a singer in the Orthodox Church of Pest. He travelled extensively +around the neighborhood of Pest, to Vienna, Bratislava and the +neighboring regions and he seems also to have wandered on foot through +Poland, Prussia, Germany and north Italy. During this time he seems to +have interested himself in the classical authors of Greece and Rome and +in the writings of the Church Fathers. He also learned Greek, Latin, +German and Hebrew. Yet we can be very sure that he was more interested +in the world and the people whom he met than he was in serious and +intensive study from books. + +He finally returned home and then for about ten years lived almost the +life of a recluse, endeavoring to understand his own character and +feelings. Next he had an opportunity to teach poetry in the seminary +at Pereyaslav but he obstinately refused to change his convictions +and he declared that for the Ukrainian (Church Slavonic) language, +the accentual system was better suited than was the syllabic system +employed by the French and Poles. As a result he lost the post. He +served for a while as a private tutor and lost that in consequence of +too severe a scolding of the boy whom he was teaching. Then came a long +series of offers. In 1759 he was asked to teach poetry at the College +of Kharkiv and was compelled to leave because the bishop wanted him to +enter a monastery. In 1764 he visited Kiev and in 1766 he was asked to +teach ethics at the college of Kharkiv again but he was soon forced out +because of the strangeness of his ideas. + +From then until his death in 1794, he lived the life of a wandering +scholar, welcomed wherever he might be, whether on the big estates +of the nobles or in the poor huts of the peasants. He cared nothing +for material success and little more for shelter. His death was +characteristic of his life. He was visiting on an estate and at dinner +was never more cheerful. A little later he disappeared and the host +found him in the garden digging a hole. He remarked jokingly that it +was where he wished to be buried. No one paid any attention or thought +it strange when he disappeared after supper. It was not until the next +night when he had not appeared that the host went to his room and found +him dead, November 9, 1794. + +Accustomed as we are to a life of constant and ceaseless activity +with great emphasis on material success, such an existence as that +of Skovoroda may seem to us the acme of uselessness and we may often +regret that in him Ukraine lost a son who could have accomplished much +for her regeneration. Perhaps the reverse was the truth. Skovoroda +taught much and wrote a considerable amount, but his writings were +intended for his close friends, especially a young student Kovalinsky, +and were not published during his lifetime. He accomplished his work by +oral instruction and still more by the powerful force of his example, +for his life spoke more clearly than his words and proclaimed his utter +indifference to the gradations of rank and honors that had been the +means of bringing Ukraine to its fall. Here was the outstanding thinker +of his day who dared to proclaim and act upon the principle that the +great of the world were no more important than the small and who could +not be hired or induced to do what he regarded as wrong and inexpedient. + +It might be possible to compare Skovoroda with Socrates, for the Greek +philosopher also accomplished much in ancient Athens by his constant +and provoking habit of asking questions about all matters of moral and +ethical importance. Nevertheless Socrates was married and played his +part in the Athenian democracy. Skovoroda did not marry and avoided +all public functions. He was not a voice crying in the wilderness and +uttering a prophetic message. He was merely a quiet and educated Kozak +moving among men, living his own life with a quiet dignity that showed +both his self-respect and his consideration for other people. He could +smile as easily and as bitingly at the aristocratic pretensions of the +nobles as he could be indulgent to the whims and superstitions of the +people. Yet wherever he went and whatever he did, he impressed upon all +around him his own attitude toward life and allowed them to understand +of themselves what he meant. + +His great object in life was to know himself, to understand human +nature and human capabilities, and that nature was as inherent in the +serf as in the nobleman. As he once expressed it, “The wisdom of the +lords that the simple man is ‘black,’ seems to me as amusing as the +wisdom of the so-called philosopher that the earth is dead. How can a +dead earth produce living children? And how from a ‘black’ people can +there be born ‘white’ lords?” + +A well-trained classicist, Skovoroda echoed the quotation of Terence, +the Latin comedian, “Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto,” (I +am a human being; I regard nothing human as alien to me.) All of +life was his field and he studied in every situation how to obtain +self-knowledge and self-happiness. His answer was very simple. “The +necessary things for happiness are not difficult to secure. The +difficult things are unnecessary.” + +Happiness is not something that can be secured by wealth or by health. +It is something that exists in the human heart as a gift from God and +man has only to reach out and take it and know when he has it. It +was a quietistic philosophy but it cut sharply across the social and +political views of the time and the more Skovoroda tried to fit himself +into the world, the more he became technically less dangerous to the +established order, the more bitter and unflinching was his indirect +criticism of it. + +Perhaps Skovoroda was greatly influenced by the western Protestant +teachings that he met on his travels. Perhaps he was in contact with +the Masonry of the day, for it was the Masonic lodges that first +printed many of his works. Perhaps he drew upon certain intangible +strains of human motivation that had inspired the early Kozaks to seek +for liberty in the wilderness and which led him as a scholar to try to +attain the same kind of intellectual freedom that they had sought by +force of arms and by emigration from their homes. + +His thought was deeply affected by the classical authors whom he had +read and still more by the Bible. Yet from childhood, while he knew +the Bible thoroughly, he refused to accept it literally and he sought +from it an inner meaning which alone could satisfy him. He practically +rejected both theology and the Church in their conventional forms and +yet he was profoundly religious and highly ethical in his outlook on +life. + +There was a certain pantheism in his teachings. “The greatest truth has +no specific name. To the ancients God was the Supreme Reason. He had +among them different names as Nature, the Essence of Words, Eternity, +the Hour, Necessity, Fate. And among Christians His most common names +are Spirit, Lord, Tsar, Father, Reason, Truth.” Elsewhere He is also +Nature and Love. + +Skovoroda saw in the universe the macrocosm which revealed God’s +greatness and power. God was likewise in the microcosm, in the nature +of the individual man, in his heart and in his innermost being. It is +for this reason that happiness is to be found inside a man and not +outside among acts, rewards, or possessions. + +He lived according to his theories and so the people grasped his +message without reading his philosophical dialogues. Their very +titles are suggestive. There is _Narcissus or a discussion about +self-knowledge_, _The book Ashkan on the knowledge of one’s self_, _A +friendly Conversation on spiritual peace_, etc. They were constructed +in the form usually of a Platonic dialogue but they expressed in +written and permanent form the ideas that he was expounding in his +constant talking and traveling. + +He also wrote poems and fables in the conventional form which repeated +the same ideas for the common people. Such subjects as the _Blessed +Herod_ and the _Poor Quail_ show the way in which he popularized his +ideas. Fables and similar poems had been cultivated as a literary form +at the Academy of Kiev and Skovoroda turned it into a living form of +writing. + +His dialogues and essays on literature have been lost but they showed +an appreciation, we are told, of the real nature of the Ukrainian +language and accent. Yet Skovoroda was not an epoch maker in any +way. He valued the vernacular speech but he was still too much under +the influence of his training to use it in place of the stilted and +artificial language which was then current in Ukrainian letters. He +still preferred to write in that artificial mixture of Ukrainian, +Russian, Polish, and Church Slavonic that was the language taught at +the Academy and as a result his writings passed into that oblivion +which did not concern him at all. He had not cared whether or not they +were published. It would not bother him, if they were forgotten, for +they were but a subsidiary part of his work. + +With his unmystical and individualistic religion and ethics, Skovoroda +fits well into the picture of the eighteenth century Enlightenment, +as it appeared in various countries of Europe. He was sharply opposed +to the elegant scepticism of Voltaire which had become the ruling +fashion in many of the European courts. He was nearer to the Deists +and to certain eighteenth century Protestant theologians and on one +side of his being, he was of that group of eighteenth century thinkers +and scholars as Benjamin Franklin, Mikhail Lomonosov, and Dositej +Obradovich who laid the foundation for the nineteenth century and the +beginnings of Romanticism. + +On the other side, he belonged rather with a group of Slavonic +thinkers of all ages, as the Czech Peter Chelcicky and later in part +Leo Tolstoy, who sought to avoid the evils of the world by living an +existence apart from it. These men had a vision of an ideal existence +to be secured by extreme simplification and abstention from the affairs +of the world in the interest of a higher and a different utility. + +With it all, in a demoralized and disorganized Ukraine, where +the national life was flickering to a new low, he revealed the +possibilities of a newer and different democracy and a kindly and +humane outlook on life. His was not the task to sponsor or to lead +a reaction against the prevailing system. His was not the task to +defend the existing order. He endeavored to stand apart and thereby +he kindled a spark of hope in the people by ignoring, rather than by +defying the prevailing system. He taught the value of the individual +in a day when the individual was neglected. He taught the dignity of +man as man in a day when rank and external glory was the supreme good. +He taught calm and deliberate thinking at a time when people cared for +little except external pomp and show. He emphasized the reality of the +spirit and of the truth when the will of the sovereign was the supreme +law. That was his teaching and he proved it by his own example. It is +small wonder that he did not take the next step and yet that the men +of the next generation felt his influence and were glad to express +their obligations to him in fields and in ways that he never would have +believed possible or valuable. + + + + +CHAPTER THREE + +IVAN KOTLYAREVSKY + + +Four years after the death of Skovoroda, there began to circulate in +the country near Poltava manuscript copies of an amusing travesty of +Vergil’s _Aeneid_, written by one Ivan Kotlyarevsky. It attracted +attention not only because of its subject matter and treatment but +because the author had for the first time endeavored to write in the +ordinary vernacular of the day. In other words, modern Ukrainian +literature had been born. + +To understand the value and significance of this, let us glance at the +political situation in Eastern Ukraine. In 1764 Catherine the Great had +induced the last of the Hetmans, Cyril Rozumovsky, to resign his post, +and in return he received from the Empress large grants of land. The +position of Hetman was replaced by a Little Russian Board which worked +strenuously for the Russifying of the country. There still remained +the Zaporozhian Sich which had lost much of its former power but which +still gathered around it many “unruly” Kozaks. In 1775 after the war +with Turkey and the suppression of the revolt of Pugachev, Catherine +sent a large army against this and confronted with overwhelming force, +the Kozaks were obliged to submit. The regular Russian system of +landholding was introduced and the Kozaks who did not join the Russian +army had to become serfs. A large number refused to accept either of +these alternatives and during the next years emigrated to Turkey. Then +in 1783 the last remains of the Hetman state were abolished. + +Thus perished Ukrainian autonomy in the Russian Empire and a large +number of the officers and the gentry willingly Russianized in order to +reap the advantages of their new position. Ukrainian songs, manners, +and customs became a subject for popular jesting. At the same time many +of these Russianized Ukrainians not only distinguished themselves in +the Russian service but also in Russian literature. Such men as Vasili +Kapnist made a name for themselves in literature and played almost as +great a role in the Russian eighteenth century as the Kievan scholars +had done in the pre-Petrine period. + +The new culture of St. Petersburg that had succeeded the old +Byzantine formalism of Moscow was heavily under the influence of the +pseudo-classic culture of eighteenth century France. The leading +writers vied for the honor of being the Russian Vergil, the Russian +Racine, the Russian Molière, etc. They carried the use of classical +allusions to an almost ridiculous extreme and outside of the comedies, +there was little about their works that was distinctively Russian. +Their originality lay in an almost unconscious caricature of the French +models and it was the vigor and energy of the authors that kept them +from being as ridiculous as they might have well become. + +In addition to that, the theoreticians of Russia found it necessary to +develop in Russian the three styles of poetry as outlined by Boileau. +There was the high style to be employed in odes, tragedies, and epics +and the language of these forms was to have the highest proportion of +Church Slavonic words. Then came the more ordinary styles, and finally +in the low style of comedies there was to be the pure vernacular +speech. It was all carefully arranged by the scholars and the arbiters +of fashion by _a priori_ reasoning and not by practical experience or +literary skill. It could not fail to produce smiles and hence there +were several attempts to write burlesque epics and to poke a heavy fun +at the excesses of the more egotistical authors. + +Yet it is to be noted that humor of this kind had long been a +characteristic of Ukrainian writing. The intermezzos that had been +inserted in the mystery plays were full of such burlesque exactly as +they had been in the West in an earlier period and the Academy in +Kiev had developed despite its formalism the comic element which was +inherent in the Ukrainian character. + +All this brings us back to Ivan Kotlyarevsky, the talented founder +of modern Ukrainian literature. He was born in 1769 in Poltava in an +impoverished noble family. This was just five years after the abolition +of the Hetmanate and but six years before the destruction of the Sich. +When the boy was sixteen, the last vestiges of Ukrainian autonomy were +abolished. Thus in his youthful years he passed through the depressing +atmosphere of the downfall of the Ukrainian state. He studied in the +Seminary at Poltava and won a certain reputation as a poet. This did +not give him a livelihood and so for several years he remained as a +private tutor in the homes of various nobles. Then he entered the +Russian civil service and later served in the army as a captain. When +he retired from this, he secured a position as inspector in one of +the Poltava schools for the children of impoverished nobles. Later as +a welcome guest at the home of the Governor General Repnin, he became +director of the theatre at Poltava. He died in 1838. + +His was a life lived in general superficial agreement with the new +order. There is no record that Kotlyarevsky met with any difficulties +because of his use of the Ukrainian language or because of his ideas +and it is perhaps a little extreme to credit him with far-reaching +separatist ideas. At the same time he clearly recognized the difference +between the Ukrainians and the Russians. He had a lively interest in +the conditions of his people and he deeply regretted that history had +not developed differently. He was not afraid to say that conditions as +he knew them were not ideal but it would be rash to press his views too +far, when we consider the general atmosphere of his times. + +During his lifetime also there began the intense interest in folk +songs and folk customs. Rousseau had taught an interest in the lives +of the simple people and Herder as early as 1773 had begun to write +his glorification of the folksongs of the people. Everywhere in Europe +this form of study was growing. Scientists and poets alike worked on +the same themes and hardly a year passed without some new work in this +field. Macpherson’s _Ossian_ was already known in Russian as well as in +French and German. During the reign of Catherine the _Armament of Ihor_ +had come to light and in the early nineties scholars and courtiers +“discovered” the idol of Tmuturakan and established a vogue for “South +Russian” antiquities. + +Yet it is very significant that Kotlyarevsky in his first Ukrainian +work did not produce anything along these lines. Neither did his +interest in the people and their speech lead him to make a scientific +study of the language of the people. In this he differs sharply +from the Czech scholar Dobrovsky and he differs equally sharply +from Lomonosov and the other writers who founded modern Russian +literature. Poland too had its own development on the basis of French +pseudo-classicism which later passed into the Romantic period. +Kotlyarevsky started on the basis of the old classical culture of the +Ukrainian schools and stood nearer to the enlightened sceptics of the +eighteenth century than to the younger group of Romantic authors. + +There is a story that he had commenced the _Eneida_ during his studies +at the Poltava seminary and had worked over it for many years. It is +perhaps possible, for there is much in it that reminds us of a work +conceived in a school perhaps as a definite and humorous reaction to +the excessive Latin training that was customary at the time. + +It was a bold idea to undertake a travestying of the _Aeneid_ but it +was something that might be done under the conditions prevailing, as +other authors of Russia had done. The use of the vernacular was only a +slight extension of the normal usage for a burlesque epic should not, +under the strict rules, have been written in the high style and we can +therefore understand the course of Kotlyarevsky’s reasoning in starting +upon this work. + +The most significant fact is that the author definitely decided to +depict Aeneas and his companions as Ukrainian Kozaks wandering around +Europe in search of a new home. The comparison was obvious but it took +a mind of considerable penetration to grasp the situation. Then as +now the vast majority of classical students insisted upon seeing the +ancients in a vacuum which had no relation to present reality. On the +other hand in the very first paragraph Kotlyarevsky sets the key note. + + Aeneas was a clever fellow + And he was a superb Kozak. + He stood all ills and did not bellow, + Surpassed his men on every tack. + But when the Greeks old Troy had fired + And made of it what they desired, + He took his pack and drew a sigh. + A group of Trojans he did rally, + All banished boys, to make a sally + And showed his heels to Troy for aye. + +The very opening stanza could not fail to bring to the mind of every +Ukrainian the parallel between Aeneas and the Kozaks from the ruined +Sich and with that as his text Kotlyarevsky worked on, following the +Aeneid very closely and yet modifying the adventures of the Roman hero +so that they would fit perfectly into the position of the Kozaks. His +skill in selecting the proper details and episodes show his amazing +talent in this difficult task. + +Of course there were passages that were entirely unsuited to his +purposes. There was nothing in recent Ukrainian history which he +could use as Vergil used the destruction of Troy. Even aside from +difficulties with the censor there was no possible similarity between +the capture of the great city and the surrender of the Sich. None of +the older sieges which the Sich had undergone would have fitted into +the picture, as the source of the migration, and so Kotlyarevsky +merely assumes the fall of the home of Aeneas and goes on with his +story. + +For the same reasons he slurs over those episodes which take place +upon the sea and it is in these passages that the work becomes rather +a burlesque upon the original poem. In their earlier and happier days, +the Kozaks had made many a raid down the Dnieper and across the Black +Sea against the Turks but for a couple of centuries their exploits were +associated with the land and so Kotlyarevsky could not adapt the scenes +at sea with the same skill and wealth of allusion that he could the +episodes on land. + +Yet the great difference lies in the position of the authors. Vergil as +the poet laureate of Augustus was describing the events leading up to +the foundation of mighty Rome at a time when Rome was the mistress of +the world. It was safe and necessary for him to introduce prophecies +of Rome’s coming greatness and of the glories that the descendants of +Aeneas were to win. Anchises in the underworld could safely predict the +coming of all those great men who were to increase the prestige of Rome +and the Julian line for centuries to come. Kotlyarevsky, a contemporary +of the emigration of the Kozaks, saw their glory in the past. What was +to be their future? As he looked at the wretched inhabitants of Ukraine +and the suffering Kozaks abroad, he could only hope and that hope had +to be indefinite for the Russian sovereign had decided that there would +be no more Ukraine and any prophecy of resurrection might be treated +as treasonable. Thus the main differences in the treatment can be +explained by the different position of the two authors. + +The religious attitude of the authors is also very different. Vergil +believed or pretended to believe in the gods of Rome. He had to +maintain the proper attitude of piety to the state. Kotlyarevsky treats +them as brawling and unidealistic beings, very human individuals with +all the vices of the Kozaks and little of their human virtues. Thus +Juno, the tutelary deity of the Latins and the implacable foe of Troy, +becomes a very ill-tempered _baba_ and she is described accordingly. +The gods who drink their fill and beyond are ordinary mortals. In this +there is a great deal of the scepticism of Voltaire and the criticism +of paganism by the older Christian tradition that believed in the evil +character of paganism, perhaps even more than a deliberate satire on +the rulers of Moscow with their almost divine pretensions as is thought +by Yefremiv (Istoriya Ukrainskoho Pis’mentsva Vol. I, p. 361). We can +never forget that Kotlyarevsky was an Orthodox Christian, writing +for his coreligionists and that they had been taught that the pagan +gods were either non-existent or evil and hence not deserving of a +respectful treatment. + +It is not so often noted that the _Aeneid_ of Vergil is not the +only source of Kotlyarevsky’s poem. He undoubtedly knew his Homer, +especially the _Odyssey_, and the gods of the _Eneida_ are often human +in a manner similar to those of the Greek poet, although there is not +the same naivete in their description and Kotlyarevsky does not feel +the need of making them superhuman with the human virtues and vices +raised to a high degree. The Greek influence can be clearly seen, for +the poet perhaps for metrical reasons is far more apt to name the ruler +of the gods Zeves (Zeus) than Jupiter, the regular form in Vergil. + +There is also a deliberate slurring over of supernatural incidents. The +miraculous plays very little role except in the transformation of the +ships of Aeneas into swans. Kotlyarevsky follows Vergil in passing over +lightly the episode of Polyphemus but he cannot resist the temptation +to bring Aeneas close enough to Circe’s Isle to see the animals into +which her different victims have been changed. Thus the Poles have +become rams, the bearded Muscovites goats, and the Prussians foxes. + +He does not hesitate to depart from Vergil in the account of the visit +to the underworld. He definitely says so himself: + + For Vergil, may he reign forever, + Was always wise, as we well know. + We would not harm him now or ever + But he lived many years ago. + Besides in hell conditions differ + From what they were when he looked thither. + And when the long departed wrote. + I now will give the present story, + Will change, omit some details hoary, + And from my elders I will quote. (III, 42) + +So he includes in hell all those who have transgressed the Kozak spirit +and code and all who are working in this world to make unbearable the +lot of the poor people. + +With these outstanding changes, Kotlyarevsky with good-natured fun +and real pathos makes Aeneas and his Kozak followers proceed through +the Latin story. They get uproariously drunk at Dido’s court. Aeneas +deserts Dido. They conduct the games in Sicily in the Kozak manner, +even to the scene where old Entellus, the former champion, is drunk in +a ditch and cannot be roused to meet the young challenger until he is +promised sufficient liquor, quite like the legends of Ilya of Murom +in the old byliny. The Kozaks revel and fight as they did once in the +Sich, they are loyal to one another and finally when they do make their +way to Italy, they learn Latin out of the same grammar that was taught +in the Ukrainian schools of the day and they make their petition to +Latinus in a grotesque mixture of tongues which may be well translated: + + Aeneas, noster magnus panus + And Troianorum mighty prince + A-roaming o’er the sea, a gypsy, + Ad te, O rex, has sent us nunc. + Rogamus, domine Latine, + Do not destroy our wretched heads. + Permitte us to live among you + E’en for pecuniam or gratis. + We all will thank you always satis + For your beneficentia. (IV, 46) + +Likewise in places where Vergil indulges in descriptions as in the +catalogue of the Italian clans, Kotlyarevsky gives us long passages +of information as to the Kozak leaders of the past and he describes +the various Kozak regiments as taking part in the campaign. He does +not mention either Khmelnitsky or Mazepa. Both were perhaps dangerous +figures to introduce, for the one had brought the Kozaks into +connection with Russia and the other was in bad odor with the Russian +government. It was therefore more convenient and more in line with the +policy of Kotlyarevsky to omit any clear mention of either. + +The author showed however an amazing grasp of the manners and customs +of the Ukrainians of his day. Without idealizing or degrading them, he +pictures the life of Aeneas and his followers exactly as the Kozaks +lived, even to their petty virtues and vices. There is almost an +atmosphere of folklore study about certain passages and it testifies to +Kotlyarevsky’s powers of observation and selection that he was able to +do this so successfully. + +The _Eneida_ was a revelation to the Ukrainians. Here was a poem in the +common vernacular, glorifying the Kozaks. It was very different from +the attitude of the historians, whether they were pro- or anti-Kozak, +and was nearer in spirit to the popular songs of the day. But what a +difference! For in the _Eneida_ Kotlyarevsky had dared to be himself, +to play with his material and to break out a new road. + +The effect was almost instantaneous. What other writers had not been +able to accomplish with serious tracts or flaming denunciations, in +the old artificial language, Kotlyarevsky had done with a sure and +firm touch, thanks to his appreciation of the language and customs of +the people. Those who wished merely to laugh could find an abundance +of humor. Those who were more serious could see the sufferings of the +people hidden under a perfectly transparent guise. There was a message +of hope in the comparison. If Aeneas and his Trojans, the founders of +mighty Rome, had to pass through such hardships, then the cause of +Ukraine was not lost, so long as any of her sons remained alive. + +It is small wonder that the poem speedily became popular and went +through three editions in a few years. It touched off the long hidden +spark which most had regarded extinct. Henceforth Ukraine had a written +language understood by the people, and it was up to them to write in it +as well as speak in it. The country and the people had the proof that +their ordinary vernacular could be adapted to literature and that real +books could be written in it. Once and for all in Eastern Ukraine the +artificial language vanished and slowly but surely its place was taken +in publications by the vernacular of Kotlyarevsky. + +Meanwhile the author kept on with his ordinary work. He did not try to +repeat the performance. He did not engage in any propaganda for the new +language but his home became the centre for the steadily increasing +number of people who were awakening to a self-esteem that had been +sadly lacking for many years. That was the highest praise that could be +given to a work. Critics can analyze it and try to find the detailed +meaning of each allusion. They can seek for the author’s point of view +on many questions of the day. They can annotate every line. They can +praise or condemn. Kotlyarevsky had done the impossible and opened a +literature in a new language and he could rest content. + +Meanwhile the years moved on and there was a growing number of books +written in the vernacular. Kotlyarevsky retained the friendship of the +Governor General and became more and more interested in the theatre and +finally was put in charge of the theatre in Poltava. + +The Ukrainian theatre was in a bad way. There were troupes of serf +actors on many estates and in some of the main cities there were +theatres but there were no Ukrainian plays for them to perform. What +they did was to give uninteresting performances in a mixture of +Russian, Polish and Ukrainian. They satisfied a certain need but the +general level of education was so low that the new performances were +little more than the degradation of the old religious and school plays. + +In 1812 Prince Shakhovskoy, realizing the musical value of the +Ukrainian folksongs, produced what he was pleased to call a Ukrainian +vaudeville, the _Kozak Poet_. This employed certain Ukrainian themes +and was written in what purported to be the Ukrainian language but +Shakhovskoy did not know the vernacular speech and his language was +neither Russian nor Ukrainian but a hodge-podge of unreal and assumed +forms. The _Kozak Poet_ became very popular and its linguistic defects +were largely unnoticed, for there was no fully accepted standard, and +his work was highly praised, especially by all those who were seeking +for advancement in the Russian service. + +It displeased Kotlyarevsky, who had already shown some talent in +various amateur performances and he determined again to be a forerunner +in another field. In 1819 in his own theatre at Poltava, he produced +two comedies _Natalka Poltavka_ and _Moskal Charivnik_. (The Muscovite +Wizard.) The celebrated actor Mikhail Shchepkin, a Ukrainian by birth, +took part in these performances. They were the first real Ukrainian +plays written for a modern theatre and they have held their own on +the stage for over a century. Let us say frankly that they are not +masterpieces of the dramatic art but neither are they to be despised. +They are adapted to the stage and it is not only patriotic fervor that +has kept them alive. + +Let us look a little more closely at the _Natalka Poltavka_, +“an opera in two acts,” as Kotlyarevsky calls it, though it is +really an operetta. It contains many elements that are typical of +the Franco-Italian play of the period. The characters are quite +conventional. There is the heroine, a beautiful country girl who has +been reduced to poverty by the death of her father but who is still +honorable and virtuous. She is a type that goes back through the ages +into the ancient world. There is the poor orphan boy who was regarded +as unworthy to become her husband and who returns rich at the crucial +moment. There is the sincere but ambitious mother. All these are stock +characters from world drama and if Kotlyarevsky had merely put these +types through their paces, he would have laid a good basis for the +Ukrainian theatre. He did more than merely imitate the conventional +models. He was deeply conscious of the difficulties of his people and +if he was not heroic in the later nationalistic sense, he stood for +an ideal that was strange in his day and boldly emphasized various +qualities of the Ukrainian temper. + +Take the conversation between Petro and the _Vyborny_ and the _Vozny_. +Petro had been to the theatre in Kharkiv and had seen there the drama +of Shakhovskoy which was creating so much excitement. He boldly +declared that he could not understand it because the Moskal did not +know how to write the Ukrainian language or draw a Ukrainian character. +Here he definitely expresses the author’s sense of literary criticism. +It is very interesting that Petro is fully conscious of his difference +from the Moskals and that the _Vozny_, the judicial official, no more +educated than Petro, corrects the historical mistakes which Shakhovskoy +made about Ukraine. + +In the _Moskal Charivnik_, Kotlyarevsky also pokes fun at those +Ukrainians who endeavor to turn themselves into Russians but this play +is far weaker and less clear in its construction. In the _Ode to Prince +Kurakin_, he stresses the same points and the hardships of the people. + +Both of his dramas contain snatches of poetry, sometimes purely +original and sometimes a reworking of the poems of Skovoroda. They end +with a chorus as in the traditional dramas of the day and they show +Kotlyarevsky’s command of other forms of Ukrainian verse as well as the +epic. + +The striking characteristic of all of Kotlyarevsky’s work is the +democratic character of his writings. The nobility had been pretty +well Russianized and it was only the common people who preserved the +native language. However, while he depicted them in a kindly humorous +way, he never lost an opportunity to speak out strongly about the +peasant virtues and to emphasize that democratic tradition which had +always been so strong in Ukraine and in the lives of the Kozaks. Thus +Natalka in her talk with the _Vozny_ definitely refuses to marry him, +because she is of poor peasant stock and he comes from the gentry. +There is hardly a literature which took its rise in such a clearly +democratic atmosphere as did modern Ukrainian and Kotlyarevsky from the +very beginning set the keynote which was to be followed by all of his +important successors. + +Yet with it all Kotlyarevsky did not present the Ukrainian cause in a +manner that would get him into trouble with the authorities. He was +not a political agitator nor a man to menace by his actions the social +order of the day. He was a literary innovator and the creator of the +Ukrainian language and like most of the early leaders of the Slavonic +revival in various countries, he did not work in the field of politics. +He did not aim at reviving the political independence or the political +system which had been overthrown by the Russian Empress. At that time +Ukrainian culture had been so buffeted and demoralized that the first +and most essential factor was the creation of a new spirit and a new +self-respect. + +That was his work and he succeeded admirably in what he undertook. It +is even said that many of the Russianized nobles were moved to tears +when they read in his lists of the Ukrainian regiments and groups their +own family names and recalled the old traditions which they affected to +have forgotten. Critics of the later day bewailed his frivolity and the +light tone in which he worked. Yet those very men were compelled to use +the language which he had forged and they profited by all that he had +accomplished. That language which had been derided as a peasant tongue +was revamped into a literary medium and when Kotlyarevsky died, he +could look out at a world in which the great poet Shevchenko was just +beginning his career. The creation of the language was the first step +toward this flowering and that was the work of Kotlyarevsky who formed +the speech out of an unwritten vernacular and taught his people to use +it and to use it in a democratic spirit. + +The _Eneida_ was really the beginning of a new movement even as the +comedies were the practical start of the modern Ukrainian theatre. They +stand as a solid monument to Kotlyarevsky and every critic, friendly or +hostile, must realize the full measure of his accomplishment. + + + + +CHAPTER FOUR + +HRIHORI KVITKA-OSNOVYANENKO + + +Kotlyarevsky had paved the way for a Ukrainian literature and he had +set standards for it in poetry and the drama. He had shown that the +Ukrainian language was a proper vehicle for literature and he had given +to it a strongly democratic quality. Yet the task of winning a proper +place for the literature was not yet completed. + +It was still necessary to break through the stubborn opposition of the +gentry who then formed the bulk of the educated class. Most of these +had been Polonized or Russianized and while they knew the language, +they were ashamed to use it in their writings. They felt the charm of +Ukraine and of the Ukrainian scenery and customs, but they preferred +to write about it in the more popular and supposedly aristocratic +languages. As a result there appeared in both Polish and Russian +literature a large number of books which dealt with Ukrainian themes as +if they were a special subdivision of the culture of the master groups. +The authors regarded the Ukrainian language as suitable only for works +in a lighter vein and as a source of amusement. The Ukrainians were +often caricatured and derided and this procedure only increased the +tendencies toward assimilation. + +In Polish we find the _Maria_ of Malczewski and in Russian we +have Gogol’s _Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka_ and the collection +of _Mirgorod_ with the great story of _Taras Bulba_, a brilliant +description of Kozak life as Gogol conceived it. Yet Gogol had an +attitude of unbending loyalty to the Russian Tsars. He knew relatively +little of Ukrainian history, although he was proud of the fact that his +family had been famous in the Sich and his father had written several +plays in Ukrainian after the tradition of Kotlyarevsky. + +It was necessary to widen the range of the Ukrainian subject matter +and to create new forms of writing but this was no easy task under the +conditions of the day. As at Poltava, so at Kharkiv there was a great +interest in things Ukrainian, especially after the foundation of the +university there in 1805 but there was a general aristocratic tone to +the entire social life and the same tradition that Kotlyarevsky had +opposed at Poltava. + +Despite these handicaps certain steps in the development of the +literature were taken by Hrihori Kvitka, a landowner of the +neighborhood of Kharkiv. He was born in 1778 and received the usual +superficial education of the day and of his class. He had little +regular instruction and that little was entirely in Russian. Largely +through the influence of Skovoroda, he became deeply religious at the +age of twelve and wanted to enter a monastery. His parents prevented it +and they finally put him in the Russian army. In a short time he left +it and entered the civil service. Then he tried the army again and when +he was twenty he entered a monastery as a lay brother. This life too +proved uncongenial and finally he left it and returned home to busy +himself with the social life of the day and to dabble in intellectual +pursuits. Of course he read the _Eneida_ but it did not inspire him to +imitate it or to use the Ukrainian language. + +Instead of that, he began to write in Russian under the pen name of +Falaley Povinukhin. His stories attracted a certain amount of attention +in Kharkiv but they made no impression on the literary world of the +two capitals. They were merely stories written by a provincial Russian +for a provincial audience. Kvitka would have remained unknown and +unnoticed, had chance not led him to try his native Ukrainian. + +He was joking one day with a writer who was endeavoring to compose +in his native tongue and Kvitka asked him to write something serious +and sentimental in it. When the author replied that the language was +unfit for such subjects, Kvitka became displeased and to prove his +friend wrong, he decided to write himself some stories in Ukrainian +and soon he turned out two of his main works, _The Soldier’s Portrait_ +and _Marusia_. Their success was immediate in Ukrainian circles and it +was not long before they were translated into Russian and brought the +author that fame which he had never achieved in his Russian writings. + +Before this in 1812 he had become the director of the theatre in +Kharkiv and this inspired him to write dramas and especially comedies. +In 1831, he gave up most of his interests in Kharkiv and retired to his +estate at his native village of Osnova, from which he took the pen name +for his Ukrainian writings, Osnovyanenko. From that time he came to the +city only once a year to carry out his duties as Marshal of the local +nobility. Thus absorbed in society and his estates, he died in 1843 at +a ripe old age. + +It is curious that in his later days the very success which he had won +for the Russian translations of his Ukrainian works, many of which he +had made himself, led him back to Russian and he again tried without +success to achieve fame in that language, while he prepared Ukrainian +translations of his Russian books. The result was a weakening of the +value of his works, for it can be truthfully said that Kvitka wrote +nothing of importance except in Ukrainian. + +To a large extent Kvitka was typical of the vegetable existence of the +nobles of the day. The timeless life on the big estates gave to the +masters abundant and placid happiness and isolated them from the life +that was proceeding at an ever increasing tempo in both Ukraine and +Russia. Kvitka maintained the old conservative attitude toward life and +was always the talented amateur and the respectable reactionary in his +views. Thus in his _Letters to my dear Countrymen_ which appeared in +the thirties, he definitely set forth a type of reactionary doctrine +which had long since been repudiated by the great writers of the same +period in Moscow and St. Petersburg. He unhesitatingly declares “As +God is heaven, so is he (the tsar) on earth” and he explains to his +countrymen of the government of Kharkiv the glories and the virtue and +the divine origin of the imperial regime. Radical critics attacked him +for his views but we must never forget that throughout his entire life +he was a provincial nobleman who accepted uncritically the slogans of +the day as they were accepted in the Russianized circles of Kharkiv +society. + +If these _Letters_ could be taken as the whole of Kvitka’s work, he +would hardly deserve mention but it was only a small part of his +activity. _The Little Russian Tales_ published in Moscow in 1834-37 and +in Kharkiv in 1841 were very different. + +Let us take _Marusia_ as an example. Marusia, a young Ukrainian girl +and a paragon of all virtues, is the daughter of a fairly well-to-do +farmer. She falls in love with a poor young man, who, as an orphan, has +to serve in the army. To escape this and to make money to buy himself +off from this obligation, he leaves home. This moves the heart of old +Naum, Marusia’s father, and he consents to the wedding but sends the +young man on a business trip before the marriage takes place. The +lovers part in the cemetery and Marusia promises to meet him there. +Soon after she is taken ill and dies and her funeral is being held as +the future bridegroom returns. Broken-hearted, he gives up his career +and becomes a priest but after a short time he dies of grief in a +monastery. + +The story is filled with ethnographical details. Kvitka knew the +colorful life of the peasants and the vast number of customs that were +carried out with almost religious scruples and he inserted them into +his tale. We learn of all the ritual of courtship and of love making +and in the hands of a less skillful writer, these details would make +the story drag. Kvitka avoids the danger and _Marusia_ is one of the +best tales of village life on its brighter side. + +Yet the heroine is almost cloyingly sweet. There is little or +nothing of the earthly about her and she is a typical heroine of +the sentimental era which was attendant upon the introduction of +Romanticism. This fashion had been started by Zhukovsky in Russian with +his translation of the German ballads and now Kvitka adapted it to +Ukrainian. The theme bears striking similarities to the contemporary +Czech ballads of Erben and Celakovsky where we find the same +over-sentimentality particularly in the case of young girls. + +In his tales Kvitka had adapted this ballad material to prose and +strange as it may seem, they really antedate similar works in French, +German and Russian. This heavily Russianized nobleman who admired and +almost worshipped the tsar wrote in Ukrainian a very strong plea for +the people and produced realistic peasants who shared the thoughts and +emotions of their fellows. He knew the life of the peasants around +Kharkiv and depicted them sympathetically and in glowing colors. + +He also noticed the differences between the Ukrainians and the +Russians. He shows it in their reactions to various motives and he +makes at least a passing reference to the hostility or at least the +aversion that existed between them. Thus Vasil, the lover of Marusia, +says when he tells about his entrance into the business world, “I got +along at once with my companions, although they were Moskals.” In the +same way in another of his early stories, _The Soldier’s Portrait_, the +peasant artist who takes his painting to the fair for criticism, is not +impressed when a Russian is deceived by its realism, “for it is no feat +to deceive a Moskal.” + +In his early peasant stories, Kvitka has a rather light and somewhat +humorous touch and many of his sketches of peasant life are +distinguished by the general gaiety that pervades the atmosphere. +Yet he soon became aware of the darker sides of the picture. Thus in +the _Unfortunate Oksana_, he gives us the same theme that was used +with such great effect by Shevchenko in _Katerina_, the story of the +unfortunate girl who is seduced and carried off by a Russian captain +who promises to marry her and then abandons her with her baby. She +finally returns to her home to her aged mother. Petro, a young man whom +she had formerly loved, now becomes her brother and when the captain +returns and gives the child, his child, a few coins for nuts, the +mother throws them out of the window into the street. The evil desires +of the captain have been helped by the pride and the beauty of Oksana +who has hoped and dreamed of a husband who would be of higher social +station than she is and it is this desire to rise above the other girls +of the village that leads to her downfall and tragedy. + +In the dramas which Kvitka wrote for the Kharkiv stage, he has the +same attitude but he very often uses the same mixture of Ukrainian +and Russian that was the vogue before the dramas of Kotlyarevsky. +Thus in _Shelmenko the Orderly_, the hero who is saved from military +service into which he has been plunged by the scheming and unscrupulous +village clerk, talks Russian consistently whereas the orderly usually +speaks Ukrainian. The way in which the governor unmasks the rascality +of his subordinate and punishes him is typical of Kvitka’s attitude +toward the imperial regime. The crooked clerk is also a good example +of the climbing and corrupt Ukrainians who desire to get away from +their peasant past. As the inn keeper says, “The village clerk, a +peasant with money, is ashamed to be with his brothers and wastes money +for a costly meal and expensive wines,” because he thinks that this +represents enlightenment and improvement. + +Again and again in these plays as in his stories, Kvitka the +reactionary does not hesitate to put down the truth as he sees it, +even though it runs counter to many of the preconceived ideas which +he elsewhere stubbornly defends. He does not idealize many of his +characters and almost unconsciously he gives us the attitude of the +people to their Russian rulers. Thus Nikita says in this same play, “My +father did not teach me to write in order that I should become evil +and worthless and he tried to put me on the right path.” It is also +interesting that he, speaking Russian, still cannot read and write his +native tongue, for he knows only the church language, that arbitrary +and artificial system to which Kotlyarevsky had given the death blow +with his _Eneida_. + +After giving such rich and varied pictures of Ukrainian life, it +is strange that he returned to Russian and in such stories as _Pan +Halyavsky_, he describes in a fairly amusing manner the life of a +typical rich cub with his stupid Polish tutors and his inability +to accomplish anything. In great detail the author shows how he is +tyrannized over by his ambitious wife who succeeds in sending him to +the country, so that she can play around with the army officers who +seem to her more attractive. Perhaps in a way Kvitka is not so untrue +to his own feelings, for he draws a sharp differentiation between the +native life of the villages and the gay existence of the capital. + +Kvitka then stands in a curious position in Ukrainian literature. He +undoubtedly deserves the praise which was showered upon him for his +ability in describing Ukrainian peasant life in excellent and readable +prose. He marks a definite advance over Kotlyarevsky in the greater +range of emotions and themes which he handles and in the more serious +moods that appear at times. Yet it was not in him to be a champion of +the cause of his people. It was not in him to break definitely with the +polished world of the great estates and to start a definite movement +for the assistance of the peasants. He recognized the dubious position +of Ukraine in its contacts with the Russians but at the same time he +appreciated the advantages which the connection with Russia had given +him and his aristocratic friends and he was constantly torn between the +two ideals. + +Kvitka was really a passing phase in the development of Ukrainian +literature. In many ways he can be compared to Gogol who had definitely +stepped across the line into Russian. Kvitka was held back by his +success in his Ukrainian stories. He knew the village life around +him and felt that it was only from that life that he could draw his +best themes. Yet he did not analyze or think through his position. +He remained within the framework and lived the life of the average +Russianized Ukrainian nobleman and hence it was, as he swayed back +and forth, that he was condemned by Shevchenko and the ardent young +patriots of the next generation. + +At the same time he found a deeper appreciation at home than in Russia. +Byelinsky, the great Russian critic and liberal, expressed himself very +strongly against the peasant stories of Kvitka, for he did not believe +that peasant life could furnish the material for serious literature and +despite his marked democratic leaning, he was opposed to the use of the +Ukrainian language for literary purposes. Hence he condemned Kvitka +on all counts. Nevertheless Kvitka has held his own for his peasant +stories especially in Ukraine. They have been often edited and reedited +and still find large masses of readers, despite the sentimental style +in which many were written. Had he been inclined to rest his fame +upon his Ukrainian stories, his place would have been higher, and he +could have polished them even more highly. As it is, his Russian work +has been forgotten, his Ukrainian stories have lived, and we must +consider him as another milestone in the resurrection of the Ukrainian +consciousness and in the development of the language. The great master +had not yet appeared to crown the work but Kvitka was one of the men +of the transition period who builded better and more solidly than they +knew or dared to imagine. + + + + +CHAPTER FIVE + +TARAS SHEVCHENKO + + +It was a favorable time for poetry, if not for the poet himself. The +second quarter of the nineteenth century saw a great flowering of +poetry in Russia and in Western Europe. The first wave of interest in +folk poetry was reaching its height and together with the Romantic +movement was spreading into the Slavonic countries. There was a lively +interest everywhere in the collecting of folk songs and not only +in Western Europe but throughout the Balkans there were the first +rumblings of the new nationalistic interest in language. Goethe was +translating and praising the Serb ballads which had been brought to his +attention. The Czechs were discussing with vehemence the authenticity +of the ancient manuscripts recently discovered by Hanka. Safarik was +working on the history of all Slavonic literatures. Mickiewicz had +already achieved fame as a poet and his residence in St. Petersburg +during the twenties had spread a knowledge of his works throughout +Russia. The Polish Romantic movement was dominating the Polish scene +and the great trio of Mickiewicz, Slowacki, and Krasinski were doing +their best work. + +In Russia too poetry was in its Golden Age. It was the period of +Alexander Pushkin, the greatest of the Russian lyric poets. Around +him was gathered a group of the gilded youth who had mastered the art +of elegant verse and who had wide human interests, even though they +cloaked them under a mask of aristocratic dilettantism. As their patron +and adviser, Zhukovsky was still the master critic. With his excellent +court connections, where he was the tutor of the young Tsarevich, later +Alexander II, he was able to save the poets from the consequences of +their own pranks and to give them good advice on their literary work. +More than that Gogol with his Russian stories on Ukrainian and Kozak +life had concentrated the attention of the general public on the life +of Little Russia, for the name of Ukraine was still taboo in official +circles. Now, if ever, was the time in Russia when there might be a +hearing for Ukrainian culture, even if there were still no feeling for +any change in the political situation. The era of the Russian literary +gentlemen was at its climax. That of the plebeian realists was yet to +come. + +It was an ominous time for the poet himself. The Russian armies, +returning from the defeat of Napoleon, had brought with them the +seeds of modern democratic and republican influences. This had led +the progressive aristocracy to embark upon the ill-fated Decembrist +Revolution and when the tragic consequences of that evil day had +passed, it was realized that Nicholas I with his narrow bureaucratic +tendencies had destroyed the political power of the liberal elements of +the country. Many of the literary men had suffered and even Pushkin was +for a while under suspicion and in real danger. Then came the Polish +revolt of 1831 and the Russian armies stormed Warsaw and destroyed the +little autonomy that had previously existed in that land. Nicholas was +suspicious of new outbreaks and as he firmly bound the universally +recognized Pushkin with golden chains and broke his heart at the +Russian court, so he was on the watch for any new malefactors who might +venture to preach the hated liberal ideas. + +It was just at this moment that a young Ukrainian serf, Taras +Shevchenko, arrived in St. Petersburg, little dreaming of the changes +that a few short years would make in his life. + +He had been born on February 25, 1814, in the little village of +Morintsy in the government of Kiev and was therefore a Ukrainian of +the right bank of the Dnieper, far to the west of the home of both +Kotlyarevsky and Kvitka. His father, though a serf on the estate of +Vasily Vasilyevich Engelhardt, was able to read and write. His mother +was also of a superior type and the boy always respected her memory +and admired her, even though she died when he was nine years old. His +father married again but the step-mother was not kind to him, and when +his father died in 1826, the twelve year old Taras was left as an +orphan amid the hard conditions of serfdom. + +He had already been attracted to painting and he made several attempts +to study with various local painters but his experiences were so +unpleasant that he finally gave up and returned to his native village +to pasture the cattle. A new attempt to get permission to study brought +from the overseer of the estate merely an order to serve in the bakery +but his failure there was so evident that he was appointed instead a +page in the mansion. + +This gave him at least the opportunity to feast his eyes on the +beautiful works of art that it contained and encouraged him in his +early attempts to copy them. He had to do this secretly and when his +master discovered his copying and painting, the boy was soundly +flogged. Nevertheless Engelhardt, like many other nobles of the day, +liked to have educated serfs on his estate, and since Taras seemed +competent, he took the boy with him first to Vilna and then after the +outbreak of the Polish revolt to St. Petersburg and apprenticed him to +the painter Shirayev. + +Shevchenko learned relatively little here and life was very hard but he +had the opportunity to make the acquaintance of the Ukrainian artist +Ivan Soshenko. This was a piece of good fortune, for Soshenko soon +introduced him to Karl Petrovich Bryulov, the most fashionable painter +of the day. + +Bryulov was then at the height of his fame. He was of a French Huguenot +family which had long been domiciled in Russia and had been allowed +to Russianize his name, only when he received a fellowship to study +in Italy in 1821. He stayed there twelve years and took the Italian +capital by storm. There he painted his masterpiece, the _Last Days of +Pompeii_, which encouraged Bulwer-Lytton to write his novel on that +subject. He had come to know personally Sir Walter Scott and the other +English authors who visited Italy. Now in 1833, back in Russia, his +studio was frequented by the most fashionable people of the day. His +courses at the Academy were the goal of all students and the approval +of Bryulov meant success or failure for the average artist. + +It was this man who took an interest in the young serf and desired to +have him as a student, but no serf could be admitted to the Academy. +Engelhardt refused to give Shevchenko his liberty but finally offered +it in return for 2500 rubles. To secure this sum Bryulov painted a +portrait of the Russian poet Zhukovsky and this was sold in court +circles by a lottery. The money was easily raised and on April 22, +1838, Shevchenko, then twenty-four years of age, became a free man, +just one year after the death of Pushkin. He commenced his formal +studies at the Academy of Art and finished the course in 1845 as a free +artist. + +Probably as early as 1837 he had begun to write poetry but his writings +began to attract attention only after he was set free. In 1840 he +brought out a slender volume, the first edition of the _Kobzar_, at +the expense of a Ukrainian landowner Petro Martos, whose portrait he +was painting. There was something new and startling in the quality of +this first work with its emphasis upon the decay of the old Ukraine and +the pictures of the sufferings of the people. It was typical of the +spirit of Shevchenko that one of the poems _Katerina_ (named after his +beloved sister) portraying the sufferings of a Ukrainian girl betrayed +by a Russian lover was dedicated to Zhukovsky. Incidentally it may be +mentioned that Zhukovsky was himself the illegitimate son of a Russian +officer and a Turkish girl who had been captured in war. + +He then set to work upon the _Haydamaki_, his longest and greatest +poem. He finished it in 1841 and published it in the same year. + +In 1843 he paid a short visit to Ukraine and everywhere he was received +with the greatest honors as the Ukrainian poet _par excellence_. He +was entertained by the various magnates including Prince Repnin, the +governor, who was of Ukrainian origin, and his daughter Barbara. He +visited his native village and he could not fail to be impressed as he +never had been with the hardships which the people were compelled to +undergo. + +As soon as he completed his course in the Academy, he returned to +Ukraine and spent the summer of 1845 travelling around the country, +visiting the sites of famous buildings. He soon found a position in the +Archaeological Commission where his skill in painting stood him in good +stead. + +He finally settled in Kiev and soon found himself among a group of +enthusiastic young men and scholars, including Nikolay Ivanovich +Kostomariv and Panteleimon Kulish. Filled with the enthusiasm of youth +and stirred by those revolutionary currents which were preparing the +movements of 1848, they organized the Society of Saints Cyril and +Methodius, for the purpose of creating a great free union of all the +Slavonic peoples under a republican form of government. It was typical +of the change that had taken place in Russian and Ukrainian life since +the time of the Decembrists that this new movement was headed not by +members of the gentry or army officers but by a group of professors, +scholars, and men of letters. The naturally radical instincts of +Shevchenko and his ardent patriotism for Ukraine led him to associate +himself with them and he shared their dreams as well as their activity. + +The authorities soon heard of the movement and acted swiftly and +savagely to suppress it. Apparently its existence was revealed to +the authorities on February 28, 1847. The matter was referred to St. +Petersburg and on April 5, Shevchenko and his friends were arrested. +An investigation and trial followed and on May 30, he received the +verdict that he was to be enrolled in the army in the Orenburg +Independent Corps with the rank of private and the tsar added in his +own handwriting, “under the strictest supervision with the prohibition +of writing and drawing.” + +Shevchenko had been a free man for only nine years. Now he was back +in bondage under an even more intolerable yoke, torn away from his +beloved Ukraine and condemned to live as a soldier in the most remote +area of eastern Russia on the borders of Asia. At first his service +was none too rigorous, for sympathetic commanders attached him to two +expeditions to explore the Sea of Aral and allowed him to make sketches +for the records of the expedition. When this came to the attention of +the authorities in Petersburg, the privileges were speedily revoked and +the tsar’s instructions were carried out literally. Finally Shevchenko +was sent to the fortress of Novo-Petrovsk. + +After the death of Nicholas I, the new tsar Alexander II pardoned him +in 1857. Influential friends in the capital interceded for him and he +heard in May that he was to be liberated but the official formalities +were slow and it was the end of July before he was finally released, +and he was able to start on his way home. He had reached Nizhny +Novgorod on his way to Petersburg, when he was again detained, for +his amnesty had not given him the right of residence in either of the +capitals. It was March, 1858, before he was able to go further and +even then he had to remain under police supervision. On his way to St. +Petersburg, he stopped at Moscow to visit his friend Shchepkin, the +celebrated actor, and he was kindly entertained by the Aksakov family. + +In St. Petersburg, he resumed his studies at the Academy of Art and +he renewed many old friendships, especially with Count and Countess +Feodor Petrovich Tolstoy, who had been instrumental in securing his +release. At their home he met such literary men as Count Aleksyey +Konstantinovich Tolstoy, and in fact all of the conservative and +liberal group of cultured writers, who appreciated the real value of +art, literature, and freedom. + +In 1859 he secured permission to pay another visit to Ukraine for the +first time in twelve years and he spent the summer dreaming of marriage +and of securing a little home for himself on the banks of the Dnieper. +It was all in vain. On his return to St. Petersburg, he did succeed in +securing the liberation from serfdom of his family but that was all. +His health began to fail and he died the day after his birthday on +February 26, 1861, just on the eve of the liberation of the serfs. + +It was a sad life that Shevchenko had led. Out of his forty-seven +years, he had been a serf for 24, in the army 10, and under police +supervision for three and a half, so that there were only nine years +under which he could feel himself a free man to come and go as he +would. There is hardly any other writer of the same prominence to whom +fate was so uniformly unkind. Yet despite it all and despite all the +obstacles which he had to face he had succeeded in placing Ukrainian +literature on its feet as a recognized literature and it is highly +significant that whatever may have been his radical ideas, he retained +to the end the friendship and confidence of the Russian aristocratic +writers far more than he did that of the liberals. Even Turgenev did +not fail to look at him with some hesitation and the liberal critics +utterly failed to understand his feelings of love and sympathy for +Ukraine. On the other hand Apollon Grigoryev, one of the Slavophile +critics, ranked him as a poet above both Pushkin and Mickiewicz. + +From his earliest writings Shevchenko was the bard of Ukraine. The fate +of the Kozaks and the misfortunes of his unhappy people were constantly +in his thoughts and in his early works, in accordance with the Romantic +currents of the day, he idealized the life which they had lived, the +stern and bitter conflicts which they had waged for independence and +he glorified the _kobzars_, the folk bards, who alone preserved for +posterity the memory of the heroic deeds of the Ukrainian past. + +That is the message of _Perebenda_, the poor old bard who wanders +around homeless and neglected, singing of the great heroes of former +days, singing wherever he can receive a few coins to eke out his +miserable existence, and yet ever returning to the graves of the +departed warriors to mourn over the fate of Ukraine. There was much in +the old bard that can remind us of Shevchenko himself and of the role +that he imagined for himself from his first steps in the art of writing. + +There have been many attempts to trace the literary origin of this +type of the old peasant bard which was so widespread and common in +Ukraine and the other Slavonic lands. Some have tried to find the +model in Mickiewicz, in the poems of Pushkin, but perhaps after all, +we can imagine without too much fancy that Shevchenko had heard from +his teacher Bryulov, the friend of Sir Walter Scott, of the _Lay of the +Last Minstrel_. Those words at the beginning of the English poem, + + The way was long, the wind was cold, + The minstrel was infirm and old. + His withered cheek and tresses gray + Seemed to have known a better day. + The last of all the bards was he + Who sang of border chivalry. + +sets the tone of _Perebenda_ far better than do all the mystical and +prophetic bards that have been invoked as models. We have an indirect +support of this in the preface of the second _Kobzar_ of 1847, when +Shevchenko says that the Russians point to the fact that Scott did not +write in his own language, but “he was born in Edinburgh and not in +Scotland.... And Burns was also a great national poet.” + +The pathos of the last minstrel, as Scott draws him, is close to the +message of _Perebenda_, but Shevchenko adapts him perfectly to the +Ukrainian scene. There is less of the beautiful romance about the +Ukrainian situation. There is a deeper sadness and a deeper pathos, as +the burden upon the lower classes was heavier and more intolerable. +Scott described a situation of two centuries before and conditions had +changed and mellowed with the passing of time. Shevchenko, the freed +serf, was thinking of the life which he had once personally known and +of the battles in which there had participated men whom he had known in +Ukraine. In the _Kobzar_, he laid his main emphasis on the struggles +between the Kozaks and the Poles. Moscow and the Russians play a +subordinate part, for after all Shevchenko was from the right bank of +the Dnieper where the bloody Kozak wars against the Poles had been +fought in the preceding centuries. + +The only poem that describes the relations with the Russians is +_Katerina_, the story of the young girl who has a child by a Russian +officer who has seduced her and then cast her off. When she finally +overtakes him, he is unwilling to recognize her or his child. This +social theme was to grow in importance as Shevchenko matured, but it +rests upon his observation of the present rather than his regard for +the past. + +The _Kobzar_ marked an epoch in modern Ukrainian literature. For the +first time a poet had arisen to pour out his heart in his native tongue +and to express the sufferings of his people and their past. Shevchenko +was not like the earlier authors who had developed Ukrainian but who +had also worked extensively in Russian. He did very little in the +Russian language and even that little belongs to the most unimportant +part of his work. He was a Ukrainian first, last, and always and he +never was attracted by any of the compromises that were so convenient +and popular. + +The next year saw the publication of the _Haydamaki_, the greatest +poem of Shevchenko and the masterpiece of Ukrainian epic poetry. It +goes back to the last struggles in Western Ukraine in the eighteenth +century, to the last uprising of the peasants and the Kozaks in +a futile attempt to secure relief from their Polish masters. His +grandfather had told him stories of this struggle, the Koliivshchina, +which spread fire and sword through part of Ukraine in 1768, and in +the poem Shevchenko reworked these legends on the basis of eye-witness +accounts. As he says: + + My grandsir was there and my father who’s dead, + It happened one Sunday on closing the book + And drinking a cup with a neighbor of ours, + My father asked grandsir to tell us a tale + Of Koliivshchina, how there they had fought, + How Zaliznyak, Gonta had punished the Poles. + His aged old eyes flamed afresh as the stars, + His words came out fluently, youthful, and strong; + How they finished the Poles, and how Smila was burned. + The neighbors in fear and in sorrow were dumb + And I in my youth more than once set to weeping + In grief for the sexton. + But no one did notice + How wept the young child in the still of the cabin. + Thanks, grandsir, for all that you kept in your head, + The glory that once was the pride of the Kozaks, + Now I to my grandchildren tell the same tale. (I. 2421ff) + +In the preface the poet speaks in the same mood, bewailing the +invariable tendency of the day to treat Ukrainian themes as a source of +gaiety and merriment while “Ukraina’s weeping.” To him a country and a +culture that had produced such warriors as the bards had sung of was +not something to be mocked and treated as of small esteem. The hetmans +and the atamans of the past were worthy of a better fate and a better +regard among following generations. + +There is nothing mild about the poem. The convulsion of the +Koliivshchina had been too terrible for that. It was a tale of savage +massacres, one of those wild outbursts which was a war to the bitter +end and where the oppressed, once they had taken up arms, could look +only for victory or death. Yet the best passages in the poem are not +the battle scenes--in one sense Shevchenko slurs over them--nor are +they the pictures of devastation and of slaughter, but rather the +preludes to the action, the gathering of the clans, the blessing of +the weapons, scenes of the country which was so soon to be overwhelmed +with bloodshed, and apostrophes to those leaders who had carved out for +themselves a place in legend and in folklore and whose most patriotic +efforts had met only with failure and disaster. + +The prologue and the epilogue show us the enthusiasm of the poet and +his spirit. Shevchenko was not bloodthirsty. He was not a military +man. Yet as he looked out at the world, he could not fail to see the +difference between the past centuries, when the Kozak hetmans moved in +the most aristocratic circles of Poland and matched wits and swords +with the Polish magnates and the present time when the poor serfs were +denied the least human rights. + +The visit to Ukraine in 1843 seems to have made a great difference in +his ideas. The first ideal of Shevchenko was the free Kozak state, the +Sich where the men made and unmade their officers, and he emphasized +in his early poems the great struggle of these lovers of freedom +against the Polish nobles. Later in the Hetman state, the rights and +privileges of the ordinary Kozaks had been largely curtailed and a new +form of aristocracy had grown up among the Ukrainian people. It was +this new race of aristocrats that had made the treaty of Pereyaslavl +with Moscow and had fashioned the Russian yoke upon the Kozaks. Much +as he admired Bohdan Khmelnitsky, he could not help feeling that this +act was the cause of all the troubles of Ukraine. He was not enough of +a student of history to appreciate the complications of the situation +in which Bohdan found himself and he did not see the difference between +the great Hetman and his lesser followers who allowed themselves to be +deluded and deceived by the Muscovite ambassadors in the seventeenth +century. Perhaps there was more than a grain of truth in the artistic +insight of the poet but he differed sharply with the scholars of his +day, including his friend Kostomariv, and went on his own way. He was +more fascinated by the figure of Mazepa who joined with Charles XII +of Sweden against Peter the Great than he was with Bohdan seeking +Muscovite support against the Poles. From 1843 on, Moscow and the +Russians were for him the chief enemy of Ukraine. He was still free +and had not yet met the personal disillusionment with the Russian +regime. Still his return to Ukraine and the startling effect that the +sufferings of the serfs made upon him seem to have swung his sympathies +into a social channel and away from the romantic pictures of life in +the Sich. + +This is the theme of the _Great Grave_ (_Veliky Lyokh_), a curious +but effective mystical poem, in which under various forms Shevchenko +pictures the past, the present, and the future of Ukraine. The lost +souls come from three crucial periods of Ukrainian history. One had +cooperated with Bohdan in surrendering to Moscow, the second opposed +Mazepa in his attempts at liberation, and the third had aided Catherine +in abolishing the Sich. Then come the three crows, the Ukrainian which +recognizes what has happened to bring the land to its doom, the Polish +which expresses the fate of Poland and the Muscovite which boasts +of its success. There are the poor singers who in their misery are +endeavoring to collect alms for praising Bohdan. Finally there is the +excavation of the graves, the little one where lie the bones of Bohdan +and the great one in which are buried the spirit and the independence +of Ukraine and which will also one day be excavated so that the nation +can rise again. The poem is one of the most famous of Shevchenko’s +and perhaps nowhere does he express more powerfully and bitterly his +disapproval of the oppression of Ukraine by Moscow and the Russians. + +In the _Caucasus_ he sympathized with the still continuing struggle of +the mountaineers to maintain their independence from the Russian yoke. +He sees the pathos of the natives and he compares it with the fate of +Ukraine before the Moscow arms. + +At the same time Shevchenko commenced to pay more attention to the +suffering that he observed among the poor of his country. He had +alluded to social ills in _Katerina_. Now he repeats and repeats the +same message as in the _Hireling_ where the poor deceived girl never +confesses to her son that she is his mother, until she is on her death +bed. All her life long she has had to treat him as the child of the +kindly couple who have taken her in and given her protection when her +own parents had cast her out. The sufferings of the girl at the hands +of Muscovite lovers and the cruelty of the village toward those who +have transgressed its moral code weighed upon his soul and more than +once he returns to this theme which was to be one of the chief subjects +which he treated in later days. + +Another result of the dreams of the Society of Saints Cyril and +Methodius is the _Heretic_, dedicated to Safarik and singing the praise +of the great Czech patriot Jan Hus, who was burned at Constance for +his religious and political views. Yet the treatment of Shevchenko is +characteristic for he sees in Hus not so much the national hero or the +great scholar as he does the representative of the common people. This +is the first time when he went outside of Ukraine for a subject but we +can see very clearly how those qualities which he glorified in Hus are +precisely those which he desired for his own people and if we are to +interpret any of his works symbolically we can do it here and feel that +Hus is another lost leader of the Ukrainian people. + +A deeper and more tragic note appears in his works as the hour came +for his arrest. There is more of the purely personal lyric, more of +a feeling of pessimism as he realizes that he had attained a certain +freedom for himself but that this only laid upon his shoulders the +heavier burden of securing it for his own people. He could not enjoy +his personal success while he remembered that his people and his family +were still in bondage. More and more he came to draw inspiration from +the Old Testament and the sufferings of Israel. + +His arrest threw these new feelings into the foreground and during his +confinement in St. Petersburg, he produced a surprising quantity of +excellent songs which expressed his sorrow and his discouragement. Let +us take the following as an example: + + It makes no difference to me, + If I shall live or not in Ukraine + Or whether any one shall think + Of me ’mid foreign snow and rain. + It makes no difference to me. + In slavery I grew ’mid strangers, + Unwept by any kin of mine; + In slavery I now will die + And vanish without any sign. + I shall not leave the slightest trace + Upon our glorious Ukraine, + Our land, but not as ours known. + No father will remind his son + Or say to him, Repeat one prayer, + One prayer for him; for our Ukraine + They tortured him in their foul lair. + It makes no difference to me, + If that son says a prayer or not. + It makes great difference to me + That evil folk and wicked men + Attack our Ukraine, once so free, + And rob and plunder it at will. + That makes great difference to me. + +At times as the difficulties and hardships of life descended upon him +in the faraway districts of Orenburg and Aral, he became discouraged +but the vast bulk of his poetry was a lamentation for his absence from +his beloved Ukraine. He dreamed of the beauties of its fertile soil now +that he was in an arid and desolate region and he lamented the sad fate +of his beloved country as well as his own. A surprising number of poems +deal also with the hardships and the troubles of a young girl who has +been left an orphan to make her way in a cruel and unfeeling world. +Perhaps in some of these we may easily imagine that the girl symbolizes +Ukraine, for the two themes of the ruined country and the ruined girl +more than once merge in the thoughts of the sympathetic poet. + +As the rigors of imprisonment became still more severe, Shevchenko +tried his hand at prose in various stories which he dated from before +his imprisonment but he seems to have done this in an effort to avoid +the tsar’s prohibition of writing and drawing. These stories, while +they are good, add little to his reputation. Shevchenko was primarily +a poet and the prose which he wrote contains little new, either in +ideas or content. They are largely reworkings of the same themes of +the suffering girl, the tyrannical landlord, the Muscovite seducer and +oppressor that he had dealt with earlier in more concentrated form in +his verse. They have attracted less attention than his poetry and as in +the case of Pushkin form the minor part of his work. + +We must mention two poems of this period. One is the _Prophet_ in which +he sets forth the value of the poet as a proclaimer of the divine +ideals but the unappreciative people reject and kill him and choose a +tsar in his place. The other is _To the Poles_, in which he laments the +feud that the Jesuits had stirred up to destroy the harmony that had +once prevailed between the free Poles and the free Kozaks. The poem +is far removed from the glorification of the Kozak wars in the poems +of the _Kobzar_ and the more romantic dreams of a free Ukraine, but +Shevchenko in his life and thinking had passed from the right bank of +the Dnieper to the Hetman state and he realized the many conflicting +elements that had wrecked Ukrainian existence. He saw now that they +were more serious and more complicated than he had once believed and +from this time on he rarely alluded to those old battles and never +with the anger against the Poles that had once been so manifest. It +is however interesting that he never relented in his distrust of and +hostility to the Russians and in his condemnation of the tsars for +their destruction of the rights of the Sich and the free Kozaks. + +On his release from captivity, Shevchenko dashed off in a few days one +of his great poems, the _Neophytes_, a tale of ancient Rome and the +persecution of the early Christians, dedicated to his friend Shchepkin. +We can hardly fail to see in this as in the other poems of the ancient +world the influence of his old master Bryulov, who had laid the basis +for his fame by his scenes from classical antiquity. Yet the story +of the young Christian whose heroic martyrdom for the faith finally +converted his mother to Christianity and faith in the Crucified was +perhaps a symbol of the spreading power of Ukrainian self-confidence. +The comparison between the tyrannical Nero and the Russian tsar was +so evident that it terrified some of the poet’s friends as Kulish who +feared that new misfortunes would come upon the poet. None did but it +is a tribute to the courage and unbending loyalty of Shevchenko to his +ideals that he never wavered in them even at the most critical times. +His message of freedom and of kindness he would not dilute or hide, no +matter what it might cost him personally or how more timid men might +take to cover. + +Nevertheless Shevchenko had returned a broken man. He produced one more +long poem, _Maria_, a story of the Blessed Virgin which differs in some +ways from the ecclesiastical tradition. For this he was denounced as +irreligious. Yet that is hardly the word to be used, for there is a +deep religious feeling in the work and if he has violated the sacred +story to make more poignant the character of the Blessed Virgin and to +equate her life history with that of the suffering Ukraine, the poem +does not deserve the severe abuse that has been directed against it by +the more literal minded. He aimed to show the apparent overwhelming of +the right and the temporary triumph of evil but he never had in his own +mind any doubt as to the final outcome, whether the time of waiting and +of suffering were long or short. + +The vast majority of his poems after his return, however, are either +adaptations and imitations of the Psalms and the Old Testament or they +are pathetic expressions of his hope for a little home on the banks of +the Dnieper and for at least a few years of happy family life. He was +weary of the struggle that he had waged for his people for his entire +life. He had succeeded in freeing his own family from serfdom and the +broken and exhausted man felt that he could now hope for something for +himself. It was not to be and an untimely death struck him down just a +few days before the tsar had definitely abolished that serfdom against +which he had fought so violently. + +The importance of Shevchenko cannot be overemphasized. He was the +greatest of the Ukrainian poets and he was more than that. He was the +first writer who was purely and thoroughly Ukrainian, who dared to +dream of a Ukrainian language and literature that would be completely +separate from Russian and would have an independent place in the world. + +He had started his career with the romantic dream of perpetuating +the memory of the conflicts between the Kozaks and the Poles and of +reviving the old days when the free Kozaks were able to carve out a +precarious liberty for themselves and their people. Experience and +observation taught him that that was impossible. He always valued +the positive ideals of the old days, he realized the courage and the +heroism of the leaders and still more of the ordinary man of the time. +But he soon saw that that was not enough and that those days would not +return. It was necessary to build for the future and he considered +all that had passed since that fateful treaty of Pereyaslavl the +unfortunate consequences of a mistake. + +That led him to differences of opinion with many of his most intimate +friends, for some of them were hoping against hope that there could be +some settlement on the lines proposed by the great Bohdan. Shevchenko +did not believe it possible and he dared to express his beliefs. To +him a free Ukraine meant exactly what it said, a Ukraine that would be +completely independent in every sense of the word, that would not be +subject to interference by any foreign ruler, especially the Russian +tsar. That was a more immediate danger than the old feuds with the +Poles for after the division of that country and the failure of the +revolt of 1831, Shevchenko saw that the Ukrainians, particularly those +on the right bank and in the Hetman state had nothing to fear from the +ruined Poland. + +He had an ardent democratic and revolutionary faith in the common +people and he recognized that they were the very backbone of the +Ukrainian stock. In his lifetime he was friendly with many of the more +enlightened members of the Ukrainian nobility and with many of the +conservative writers of Russia. Never did he compromise his beliefs +that the new order was to be founded upon the rights of the common man +who must be educated to enjoy his new privileges. His ideas were often +in close agreement with those of the Russian radicals but he did not +have much personal contact with them for his belief in a liberal and +radical solution of the Ukrainian question on its own territory shut +him off from their refusal to recognize the Ukrainians as distinct from +the Russians and their attempts to create in Russia an ideal system +based only on western ideas and ideologies. + +He was a peasant but he realized also that all was not well within +the peasant communities and in the peasant way of life. They were +cruel and merciless to one another, for example, in their dealings +with girls who had transgressed the moral code and it was impossible +to blame all this upon the external oppression to which they were +subjected. It was perhaps a result of serfdom and of self protection +but it was an attitude that needed to be changed, if Ukrainian life +was to be enlightened. He felt from his own experience what the +people could achieve, if they were awakened to a sense of their own +responsibilities and he worked in every way to help them. He understood +the need of education and of progress and he did not try to conceal +what he felt with the result that he gave us realistic pictures +of peasant life, avoiding both undue idealization and excessive +condemnation of the people’s weaknesses, for he knew that much of these +was due to ignorance. + +Born a serf and later a soldier in the Russian army, he accomplished +with few opportunities for formal education an amazing amount. He took +the Ukrainian language as it had been developed by Kotlyarevsky and his +followers and by the force of his own genius made it into a language +capable of expressing the most refined emotions and fully adequate to +all the needs of modern literature. He voiced in that language and in +no other the thoughts and aspirations of his people. He had completely +separated Ukrainian from Russian and started it along an independent +course and he had made himself its greatest literary master. Taras +Shevchenko, the son of a serf with his fanatical faith in the victory +of democratic ideals and despite all obstacles, made himself one of +the great poets of the Slavonic world and his fame will live as long +as that of any of his contemporaries in the other literatures. No one +of them believed more firmly or voiced more clearly an unyielding and +uncompromising belief that democracy, truth and freedom would win the +day and no one worked harder or suffered more to bring it about. + + + + +CHAPTER SIX + +PANTALEIMON KULISH + + +Shevchenko was a poet by the grace of God and a genius who set the path +for the Ukrainian people. Endowed with an iron will and firmly devoted +to the principles in which he believed, he was able to undergo all the +hardships of his sad life without giving way or varying the course on +which he had embarked. Not so with Pantaleimon Kulish who was great in +his positive activity but unfortunately equally great in his defects +and errors. He devoted himself to the cause of Ukraine but over and +over again some peculiar mode of thinking cast over his reputation a +shadow which was easily avoidable. It makes his figure unusual and +pathetic rather than tragic. He stood the buffets of fate but it is +always difficult to discover exactly what he sought from life. + +Kulish was born of a small landowning Kozak family in the district of +Hlukhiv in the government of Chernihiv July 27, 1819 and was thus only +five years younger than Shevchenko. He first learned to read in Church +Slavonic from a young cousin and as a child he was greatly influenced +by a neighboring landowner Ulyana Muzhikovskaya who impressed him as a +highly superior being and almost a god. + +He was sent to school but was not allowed to finish the gymnasium +because of the prejudices of his father. Despite this he succeeded in +entering the University of Kiev and paid his way by acting for months +at a time as tutor on various estates. It was from this period that +he first became interested in peasant poetry and folksongs and some +of his stories based on folk motifs were published in the collection +_Kievlyanin_, edited by Prof. Maksimovich in 1840. In 1843 he published +a collection of poems, _Ukraina_, based largely upon folksongs with +some additions of his own, and he dreamed of combining them to form a +Ukrainian _Iliad_ but he did not have the opportunity or the poetical +ability to undertake it. He was not a natural poet like Shevchenko and +seemed to avoid direct comparison with him. + +On the other hand the historical novel always interested him. While he +was in the university, he had become acquainted with the works of Sir +Walter Scott and he instinctively realized that the exploits of the +Kozaks lent themselves to the same kind of treatment. Yet even then +some impulse kept him from achieving in that line the perfection which +he might have had. + +At Kiev he became friendly with Kostomariv and Shevchenko and was with +them in the Society of Saints Cyril and Methodius. He very soon was +called to St. Petersburg by Pletnev to teach in the University there +and also to conduct classes in Russian for foreigners. He married the +sister of Bilozersky, another of the members of the Society, and had +just received a stipend to study abroad, when the blow fell upon the +Society. Kulish was arrested in Warsaw, as he was preparing to leave +the country, and was brought back to St. Petersburg for the trial. +He fared better than most of the others and was only sentenced to +two months in prison, perhaps through the intercession of Pletnev +who warmly recommended him as a young man of high mind and religious +principles. He was then exiled to Tula with the prohibition of writing +but the supervision over him was not so strict as that over Shevchenko +and he was able to continue his literary work by publishing under +various pen names. + +On his return to St. Petersburg in 1850 he was able to resume anonymous +writing and he published the first of his studies on Gogol, the money +for which was furnished by the distinguished Slavophile Sergey Aksakov. +For a while he held a small job in the government service and then his +friends bought for him 120 desyatins of land in Ukraine and he and his +wife went there in an effort to earn his living by agriculture. + +After the accession of Alexander II, he was granted an amnesty and the +permission to publish under his own name. He rapidly brought out his +_Memoirs on South Russia_ (1856), prepared the first edition of his +_Grammar_ and in 1857 he published in both Ukrainian and Russian his +main historical novel, the _Black Council_. + +In his _Grammar_ Kulish set the standard for the orthography of the +Ukrainian language and his decisions were accepted as final for many +years. He made himself the authority on all kinds of linguistic and +grammatical and stylistic questions, and hoped that his work would be +employed in the proposed Ukrainian school system. He followed this book +with simpler writings intended for the common people. + +The _Black Council_ was his chief work of fiction. It dealt with the +period immediately after the death of Khmelnitsky, when the various +Kozak colonels were competing for the hetmanship and when Poland and +Moscow had divided the country between the right and left banks of the +Dnieper. He emphasized the vivid contrasts between the manners and +customs of the officer class and the more unruly and undisciplined +members of the Zaporozhian Sich as Kyrylo Tur, and although he pays +tribute to their loyalty and fidelity to Kozak traditions and to the +bravery and heroic conduct which they demonstrated on all occasions, +there is always a lurking feeling in the mind of the reader that Kulish +did not after all consider these Kozaks of the Sich as the real bearers +of a national culture of a very high type. + +With the love affair between Petro Shramenko and Lesya Cherivanivna, +Kulish remained true to the type of the romantic novel as it was then +understood in Europe. There are the usual scenes of adventure for +the hero, the battles, the feasts, the feats of arms, that we are +accustomed to expect. There is also a certain democratic tinge to the +novel. On the whole it is a good piece of work and it was only at the +very end in an epilogue in the Russian translation that he alluded to +the certainty that it was the undisciplined actions of the Kozaks that +had precipitated the loss of Ukrainian independence and had ruined the +country. + +In 1861 his brother-in-law Bilozersky secured permission to publish a +Ukrainian journal at St. Petersburg, the _Osnova_, and Kulish, while +forbidden by the censor to take over control of the publication, was +its main contributor. It gave him an opportunity for sociological and +ethnographical studies and it also gave opportunity to his enemies +to criticize him, for in one unfortunate article, he declared that +the hetmanate was a tree rotten internally and he asserted that the +Ukrainians should not regret its destruction. Kostomariv, an infinitely +more careful and better scholar, agreed in part with Kulish but he +emphasized that the method of its destruction was the important factor +and that this had been more harmful to Ukraine than the destruction +itself. + +There were other difficulties with the _Osnova_. Kulish still remained +close to the ideals of the Society of Saints Cyril and Methodius which +had been suppressed fourteen years earlier but at the same time he did +not feel free to include in the periodical the extremely iconoclastic +views on federalism which had precipitated the arrest of its members. +He was little more friendly to the radical social views of some of the +younger generation who had been influenced by the Russian radicals +of the late fifties. As a result the journal languished and finally +came to an end before the repressive measures taken by the Russian +government after the Polish revolt of 1863. + +For a few years after the ending of the _Osnova_, there came a period +when severe restrictions were put upon the printing of Ukrainian books. +During this time Kulish was in the Russian service in Poland and then +in 1869 he went to Eastern Galicia in Austria-Hungary to establish +closer relations with the Western Ukraine and arrange to have his books +published in Lviv. + +Here his unfortunate disposition again got him into trouble with the +leading Ukrainian circles. In 1882 in the _Krashanka_ he used certain +expressions that convinced the Ukrainians of the West that he was +taking sides with the Poles against them and he suffered again severe +criticism. + +The fact was that Kulish had more or less fundamentally changed his +views during the passing years. In his younger days he had noted in +his travels that the Ukrainian customs and language had been better +preserved in the villages than in the urban centres and on the large +estates. He had already realized that this peasant culture was on a +relatively low level and he became convinced that it was largely the +result of the turbulent manners of the Kozaks. He did not take into +account the other factors of denationalization that had swept from the +Ukrainian population the bulk of the gentry and the educated class +who had been drawn off into other fields. He expounded his ideas in +the _Unification of Rus_ in 1874-7, and also in the _Falling Away of +Little Russia from Poland_ in 1889. Both of these books aroused violent +antipathy to his views and in the minds of many people they outbalanced +the work which he had done for the upbuilding of the movement. + +To tell the truth, Kulish had become gradually a violent Kozakophobe +and he could hardly speak of those doughty warriors without applying to +them all kinds of opprobrious epithets, despite the fact that it was +in their camps that the Ukrainians had survived foreign pressure for +two centuries. The whole theme of many of his later poems as in the +_Village Sparks_ can be well summed up in these lines, + + For thou hast perished, Ukraina mother, + Amid Kozaks and all the worthless rabble. + In blood and ruins dies the fairest flower + Of thine abundant nature. + +Yet this is from the pen of the same writer who first tried to unite +Eastern and Western Ukraine and who had written interesting and +sympathetic studies of the Kozaks of the preceding centuries. + +He had returned to poetry after the death of Shevchenko with his +collection _Dosvidki_ (_Experiences_) in 1862 and he brought out several +other volumes. They were good poems but they were sadly lacking in that +especial spark of genius which alone marks the great poets of the world. + +At the same time and despite his unmitigated opposition to the +Kozaks and all that they stood for, Kulish continued to work at the +translation of the masterpieces of the world into Ukrainian. He +translated many of the plays of Shakespeare, the poems of Byron, and +much of Goethe and Schiller. On a more ambitious scale during his +residence in Lviv he translated the Books of Moses and then in 1870 +he brought out the Four Gospels and the Book of Psalms. He continued +to work on this after his return to Russia and by his death he had +completed twenty-nine books of the Old Testament. All this was in +addition to a constant stream of journalistic work. + +Kulish continued to work to the very end and often in the greatest +poverty. For long periods of time, he and his wife were compelled to +live on almost the same fare as those peasants whom he affected to +despise and for whom he was expending all his energy. Illness did not +stop his working and he continued almost to the very end which came on +February 2, 1897. + +His was a sad fate. One of that brilliant group that had suffered so +much for the cause of Ukraine in 1847, he gradually drifted towards a +point of view that could benefit no one but the enemies of his people. +Yet with it all he continued his work, sacrificing more and more to +it, without being able to see the inherent contradictions between his +goal and his philosophy. With his ability and his personal integrity, +he could have been a far more attractive figure, had he ever reached +a proper balance but even without that, he has left his mark upon the +development of the language and literature and he was one of the first +to grasp the possibilities of contact between Eastern and Western +Ukraine and to act upon it. In evaluating his work we must agree with +Yefremiv that he was great in his positive achievements but also +great in his mistakes. Then and only then can we see him in his true +perspective. + + + + +CHAPTER SEVEN + +MARKO VOVCHOK + + +The stifling bureaucratic regime of Nicholas I offered a poor +opportunity for the development of a new generation. The collapse of +the Society of Saints Cyril and Methodius was a heavy blow to the older +school of Ukrainian authors and it weighed still more heavily upon the +next generation which would have been attracted to it. At the same time +throughout Russia the old Romantic school vanished and a new era of +prose came into being. It was now the period of Turgenev and Belinsky +and it was only natural that the new tendencies would make their +influence felt upon the still weak Ukrainian literature. + +There was another factor that was extremely important. Up to this time +the authors had had a personal connection with the old Ukraine in its +last phases. Shevchenko knew from his grandfather many details of the +Koliivshchina. In his youth there were still living men and women who +remembered that revolt, the Sich and the Hetman state. What would be +the spirit of the writers who had been born too late to have that +personal contact with the actors of the last scenes? That question was +still to be answered. + +By the time that Alexander II had ascended the throne, Russia and all +Europe had passed out of the Romantic period. The new school of writing +paid attention not to the past but to the present, to the hardships +and difficulties of daily life rather than to the stirring deeds of +even the recent past. This was particularly true in Russia where for +nearly half a century all the writers devoted themselves exclusively to +the contemporary scene and to the movement for the liberation of the +peasants and the improvement of the conditions of the present. + +Kvitka had in a way directed the attention of the Ukrainian authors +to the rich stores of material that were to be found there but his +characters were too idealized, too perfect to suit the next generation. +Besides that the predominant idea may well be called the belief in +the republican philosopher in homespun. The type appeared in France, +in England, in America, and in Russia and of course it would appear in +Ukraine. This was a school of thought that definitely emphasized the +humanity and the clear thinking of the uneducated peasant. The authors +believed sincerely that most, if not all of the evil of life, came +from the misthinking and errors of the upper classes. They saw in the +peasants, despite their rudeness, a vigor and an intelligence that only +required the possibility of free use and development to solve most of +the troubles and abuses of the day. + +And those abuses were heavy. The rights of the nobles were construed +so as to deny to the peasants the most elementary human rights and +the serfs in Russia were probably never more bitterly oppressed than +they were in the last decades of serfdom. The economic pressure of +progress upon the nobles was so great that many of them, to satisfy +their supposed financial needs and to keep up with the procession of +culture, found it necessary to squeeze the last drop of income out of +their serfs and the more the landowners desired the comforts of the +nineteenth century, the more they were forced to inhuman devices to +collect the wherewithal. + +Shevchenko in his last works keenly felt this oppression. He had passed +through the school of experience and after he had been able to compare +the life in the capital with the hardships of the peasants, he spoke +out strongly against this oppression. His was not the only voice that +was raised but it carried him over from the Romantic period to the age +of realism. + +The author that was to be the spokesman of this new period in prose was +Maria Vilinskaya, who was born in 1834 of a Ukrainian landowning family +which had moved from Ukraine to Orel in Russia. She was educated in the +Kharkiv pension, one of the fashionable girl’s schools of the period. +When she returned to Orel, she met and married Opanas Markovich, who +was there in exile as a former member of the Society of Saints Cyril +and Methodius. The newly married couple returned to Ukraine in 1851 +and for about a decade they lived in Chernihiv, Kiev, and Nemiriv. She +became interested in ethnography and began to study the peasant life, +customs, and language. Naturally the young wife became convinced of the +evils of serfdom and it was this that launched her into literature. + +In 1852 Turgenev had published in book form his _Memoirs of a +Sportsman_ and these tales of peasant life speedily became the standard +for the new realistic treatment of the peasant existence. The Tsar +Alexander II read and reread them and it was often said that they +inspired him to issue the decree of emancipation. Yet it is to be noted +that Turgenev had contented himself with picturing the peasants as +human beings and had not laid stress upon those phases of life that +were most repulsive to the human conscience. He had secured his effects +by emphasizing the humanity of the peasants rather than the brutality +of the landowners and thereby he had definitely reached the higher +level of literature which many of his followers failed to attain. + +In 1857 Maria Markovich sent to Kulish two stories on Ukrainian peasant +life which he read with enthusiasm and published under the pen name +of Marko Vovchok. The real identity of the author was not ascertained +for some time but the stories themselves attracted a great deal of +attention as soon as they were published. The next year, 1858, a +full volume appeared under the title of _Narodni Opovidaniya_ (_Folk +Sketches_) and it was warmly acclaimed by Shevchenko as the writing +of a prophet sent to the Ukrainian people to rouse them to opposition +against serfdom. Turgenev translated some of these tales into Russian +and Maria Markovich soon finished the translation herself. + +She soon published another series in Russian under the title of +_Stories from the Folk Life of Russia_ which attracted attention. The +Russian critic Dobrolyubov used this latter work as a text for one +of his longer essays on the real strength of the peasant character, +after he had criticized her Ukrainian works on the ground that it was +impossible and undesirable socially to endeavor to create a literary +vocabulary in what was essentially an uncouth peasant dialect, an idea +which he stoutly maintained along with most of the Russian radicals and +a large part of the reactionary bureaucracy. + +In 1859 she and her husband went abroad and while she was away she +published in 1862 another volume of Ukrainian stories. He returned to +Russia without her and died in 1867. During these years she became very +friendly with the radical leaders Herzen, Ogaryev, and Bakunin, and +from this time on she practically ceased to write in Ukrainian. Later +she married again and shortly before her death in 1907 brought out a +few more stories but apparently most of these had been written during +the few years when she was active. + +Yet her fame really rests upon her stories in Ukrainian. As in the case +of Kvitka, her Russian works were really mediocre and this is the more +remarkable as Ukrainian was probably not really the language spoken +in her family. So striking is her mastery of Ukrainian in these days +that many critics have believed that the role of her husband in their +production was greater than has been often supposed. + +The appearance of the first volume of her _Ukrainian Sketches_ was the +sensation of the year and they added to the overwhelming disgust at +serfdom which was growing among all thinking classes of society. Their +one theme was the abominable way in which the serfs were treated and +she emphasized especially the hard lot of the women who were thwarted +by the cruelty of the masters in their desires to lead a normal, +decent existence. In this they agree in style with the _Memoirs of a +Sportsman_ by Turgenev but they differ in that Marko Vovchok does not +hesitate to present shocking examples of the abuse of the peasants +by their masters, instead of merely indicating the humanity of the +peasants. Thus in _Horpina_ the peasants are compelled to work three +days on their master’s estates for him, two days for the poll tax, +and the fifth and sixth days for grinding grain, and the young master +drives his people harder than he does his cattle. + +In the same story the mother takes a sick child to work in the fields +with her, because there is no one in the village to care for it, and +the master orders the overseer to take the child back and leave it +alone in her empty house, because she takes time from her labor to look +after it. In order to stop the child from crying, while it is alone, +she gives it an opiate. When the child dies as a result, the mother +from a sense of guilt goes insane. + +Marko Vovchok does not hesitate to draw such stories of the callousness +of the masters and to emphasize the differences between the small +free proprietors and the serfs. Thus in the _Kozak Woman_, the girl +Olesya is the daughter of a wealthy farmer but she falls in love with +Ivan Zolotarenko, a serf. The leaders of the village express their +opposition to this union of a free woman and a serf but she insists and +submits to bondage for his sake. She spends all her money and sinks +down to the level of her companions. Then her husband is taken away +to the city by his master and dies there. At this moment she neglects +to recover her freedom because of her children and almost at once her +oldest son is taken away to serve as a companion and servant to the +son of the master. He fails to make good and dies. When she too passes +away, the master of the estate is even unwilling to bury her and the +expense of this is left to the already over-burdened serfs, who have +that sense of decency which is lacking in the master, a Russianized +Pole. + +In the _Institutka_, we have another picture of a cruel and abusive +woman who has received the best education that her family can give her +and who returns from school only to abuse her mother and to wreak her +vengeance on every one that crosses her, including her husband and her +peasants. It is a lurid story of human meanness which spares no one. +The story is told by a peasant woman Ustina, a maid of the Institutka, +who has seen her husband forced into the army for a long term of years +because he had endeavored to protect her when she was being unjustly +flogged. Ustina is compelled to go to the city and work as a servant +but even this is preferable to life on the old estate under the iron +hand of the inhuman mistress. + +Marko Vovchok’s understanding of the emotions and the feelings of the +peasant women struck a new note in Ukrainian and Russian literature. +Her feminine instincts told her how they reacted to the hardships of +their lives and perhaps no author has better expressed the disastrous +effects of serfdom upon the women who suffered from it and the women +who profited by it. + +In addition to these tales of human suffering and brutality, she also +wrote a number, setting out in narrative form some of the Ukrainian +folktales and superstitions. Thus in the _Chary_, (_the Charms_) a +sorceress succeeds in changing her rival into a bird and marrying the +abandoned husband. Later when the bird returns to the old home, she +persuades her innocent husband to shoot it and the dying bird changes +back into the wife. The story is told simply and the author succeeds +in imparting to it that unreal atmosphere that makes us regard it as a +real event. + +So too in _Lemerivna_. A rich, young Kozak loves a girl and woos her. +The girl refuses to love him in return but her mother, who is mindful +of the qualities of the young man, finally forces her into the wedding. +After it is over and he starts with her for her new home, she commits +suicide and he goes off and is never heard of again. + +Marko Vovchok is easily the outstanding prose writer of her period, +the age just before the liberation of the serfs. She was one of the +group that cooperated in producing the state of mind that reformed the +evil and deserves all credit for it. It is only a pity and a great +loss to Ukrainian literature that she gave it up almost as soon as +she had achieved success. She was another of those talents that were +so frequent in Russian Ukraine who were swept from the vernacular +literature of the land into the colossal sea of Russian and who then +never justified their work, either by the quality of their productions +or the benefit that they may have hoped to give to the people. + + + + +CHAPTER EIGHT + +IVAN LEVITSKY-NECHUY + + +With the abolition of serfdom, there vanished from Ukrainian life the +worst abuses which the earlier writers had experienced and described. +The ruthless floggings were mitigated or abolished. It was no longer +possible for the master to separate husband and wife or parents and +children to suit a passing fancy or to indulge a mad caprice. A more +humane spirit grew up in the villages and the old system gradually +changed. The millenium was not reached, however, and new difficulties +were added to the peasant lot, because with the abolition of the +almost autocratic power of the landlord, the economic position of the +peasant often became more complicated. Where he had formerly worked +out his obligations, often at terrific cost to his well being, now it +was necessary for him to secure by his labor the necessary money to +pay his new obligations to the state and the land owner. The reform +had not been far-reaching enough to put all the peasants on the road +to material prosperity and the new conditions demanded a new type of +literature. + +The author who handled this new period was Ivan Levitsky, better known +under his pen name of Nechuy. He was born in 1838, the very year when +Shevchenko received his freedom and four years after the birth of Marko +Vovchok. He was educated in the theological academy at Kiev, the very +school which had been made famous in the seventeenth century by Peter +Mohyla, and then he became a teacher of the Russian language, history +and geography in the higher elementary schools. Here he toiled until he +was able to retire on a pension. He still continued to live in Kiev and +gradually became almost a recluse. He drifted away from active contact +with his fellow men and gradually slid into an obscurity which was +aided by his devotion to his own theories of what Ukrainian literature +should be. Finally the Central Rada of the free Ukrainian Republic gave +him a pension in 1918 as its first gift to a needy writer, but it was +too late for it to be of service and he died in a very short time. + +Levitsky was induced to write in Ukrainian through his reading of +Shevchenko’s _Kobzar_ and also by the influence of the _Osnova_, the +journal which Kulish had founded in 1861. These models determined the +course of his life and led him to prose and the social novel. In a few +cases he attempted to deal with the life of the peasants under serfdom +as in _Mikola Dzherya_ but that period was definitely passed with the +ending of serfdom and he turned his attention to the contemporary +post-abolition scenes. + +His first works were published in 1867 in the _Pravda_, a journal +appearing in Lviv, and for many years during the time when the +Ukrainian language could not be used in Russia for the publication of +books, his works appeared regularly in the Galician capital. + +The great bulk of his works dealt with the unjust and burdensome +conditions of life immediately after the liberation of the serfs. Thus +for example in _The Baba Paraska and the Baba Palashka_, we have a +picture of the ignorance and lack of education that was hindering the +economic development of Ukraine. The _Buried Alive_ is another example +of the hardships of the people and in general most of his characters +are completely overwhelmed by existence and represent the failures who +are unable to master life and work out their own salvation. + +It is not for nothing that in one of his tales, the _Zaporozhians_, he +represents the return of one of the old time women after a lapse of a +century to the same village where she had formerly lived. She finds +that life has become even more intolerable than it had been in the days +of the Hetman state, when at least there was the possibility for a +determined character to break away and live on the steppes a wild and +tempestuous but free existence. + +Levitsky also noted the beginning of the growth of factories in +Ukraine, especially in the _Burlachka_. In these conditions were worse +than in the villages. Long hours, utter lack of protection, miserable +pay and impossible living conditions marked the life of the poor +unfortunates whom need had driven to the new life. It was worse than +the old slavery which had been abolished with serfdom, for in the +industrial communities there were not even those safeguards and that +healthy atmosphere and fresh air that had existed in the village. + +He noted too the other evils as militarism and the effect of army +service that were weighing heavily upon the people as in the _Two +Moscow Women_, but the thing that concerned him the most was the gap +between the intelligentsia and the people and the great dangers which +the former ran of being absorbed and remade by the two “aristocratic” +cultures, the Polish and the Russian. There seemed to be a constant +stream of young and vital forces sapped away from the people by the +insidious power of example and of material reward. + +Thus in the _Prichepa_ (_The Caviller_), Levitsky shows us pictures +of Polish social influence in the neighborhood of Kiev and of the +disastrous results that follow the attempts of the Ukrainians to adapt +themselves to the Polish standards. Hanya, the daughter of the Orthodox +priest, Father Fedir, marries a young Pole, Jan Seredynski. He is +really of Ukrainian stock but his family has been Polonized for some +generations. The young people get along well and improve their position +financially, until the husband becomes infatuated with a Polish woman +Zosya who offers him those superficial advantages that mark the Pole +in the average Ukrainian story. For her he is willing to neglect his +simple but wholesome wife. It breaks her heart. Finally her father +thrashes him soundly and takes his daughter home but she pines away +and dies and then her son dies and the unworthy husband is left alone +without a position, for he has been discharged in the mess. The girl +Zosya Przepinska is the daughter of a petty Polish aristocrat but a +steward on an estate. She marries young Lemishka. This boy, the son +of a prosperous Ukrainian trader, has been educated in Kiev and there +has acquired a superficial Russian polish. Then as he comes under +Polish influence he changes his name to its Polish form Lemishkovsky. +He marries Zosya and for her sake and to keep up in her society, he +sells his parental farm and goes to Kiev where he wastes his entire +fortune. Then he comes back to a poor job as a steward and is ridiculed +consistently by her aristocratic Polish friends, while she flirts +unpardonably with Seredynski. Finally the whole family is engulfed in +ruin, although she remains with him to secure her support while she +continues her affairs with other men. Levitsky abhors the so-called +aristocratic mode of life of the Polish nobles and of the Polonized +Ukrainians which he contrasts to the simple existence of the ordinary +peasants. + +He bewails in _Prichepa_ the lack of a true enlightenment among +the Ukrainians and he summarizes the situation in the following +passage (p. 110ff), “Who in Kiev does not remember the time before +the Sevastopol war? It was a heavy time for Ukraine, it was its bad +time. The ordinary people groaned in heavy slavery under the _pans_, +compelled to be silent and suffer, worse than before Khmelnitsky. And +for every groan it was tortured in the Muscovite manner. Ukraine had +forgotten its historical tradition and could not by knowledge reach +its lost thoughts. On both sides of the Dnieper they were overwhelmed +by foreign customs, in foreign skins, they heard a foreign tongue and +forgot their own. Knowledge perished, education fell, remaining only +in the scholastic Latin theological schools. The university knowledge +was only the alphabet of European culture, cut on the official measure. +This knowledge wished to train the people into Muscovites, for the +army, for the administration. From the Ukrainian university and other +schools came out bribers, grafting officials, unjust judges, who +made the innocent guilty and the guilty innocent, those conservative +teachers and professors, who twisted history on the Moscow orders, +those Moskal officers who forgot their own people for profit. And the +people were at forced labor, and the Polish and Muscovite landowners +were stripping the last hide from Ukraine, at that time when our +sincere Ukrainians for their young Ukrainian idea were sitting in +slavery, in the distant Muscovite north. It was a hard time, may it +never return!” + +In the _Clouds_ which first appeared in 1874, Levitsky tried to show +something of this period and of the evil results that attended the +Russianization of the scholars of the day. Here the situation is +reversed. The learned professor Dashkovich, entering the Theological +Academy of Kiev as the only Ukrainian amid a group of Russians, +lives an idealistic life but he becomes finally so interested in his +philosophical studies that he forgets his native Ukraine and loses +touch with his native village. Meanwhile as an adherent of Pan-Slavism, +he talks incessantly about the Slavonic question in the Balkans but +cannot see that there is anything to do at home. His daughter, a +beautiful Ukrainian girl, is sent to fashionable Russian schools +and comes out as a wilful and cynical Russian aristocratic girl who +is perfectly satisfied to make a loveless marriage with a rich and +distinguished colonel. She has been in love with a young and patriotic +Ukrainian Radyuk, who wears Ukrainian costumes and speaks in public +and private the Ukrainian language and who even tries to convert his +beloved to the Ukrainian cause, but she rejects him because he is not +fashionable enough and frivolous enough for her, despite the fact that +she really loves him. + +In 1890 he added several chapters to the novel to carry on the fate of +Radyuk still further but they add little to the novel and still less to +the character of the young man, for the hero finally submits to social +pressure and takes a governmental position in the Caucasus where no one +will know him and his past. + +In other words the new man is no more effective than the old and the +problem of how the Ukrainians were to secure a real understanding +of European culture and such subjects as would be useful to them +remained unsolved. Of one thing, Levitsky is absolutely sure. The +teachers and all of those groups that stand for European culture are +mere caricatures of what they should be. They have no appreciation of +the deeper aspects of human life, the higher qualities of mankind, +and they are really parasites on society. They and their institutions +of learning are chiefly interested in the denationalization of the +Ukrainians and they have no interest in true education, in truth, or in +scholarship. + +There are very sympathetic pictures of the life in the Theological +Academy where Levitsky had studied himself in the dark days before the +liberation of the serfs and he gives even more delightful pictures +of some of the old Ukrainian landowners and business men who were +continuing the old customs without bothering with the new fangled +European notions and culture. + +The novel shows some of the finest and some of the weakest points of +Levitsky’s style but it has been generally considered his masterpiece +and marks a definite epoch in the history of the Ukrainian novel. + +Levitsky well represented the situation as it existed in his lifetime. +He had grasped the fact that the final solution of the Ukrainian +question was not so simple as the mass of the intellectual leaders +might think. It was one thing to declare that Ukrainian culture should +be kept inviolate. It was something else to modernize and develop it +without falling under the temptation to abandon the solid virtues for a +superficial polish which could profit no one. By this time it was clear +that even the liberation of the serfs had not released the new spirit +or produced a new and better life for everyone. The accomplishment of +this was a task that called for the highest abilities and limitless +self-sacrifice and the orators and the intelligentsia were not able +to make these contributions. In a way his works were a condemnation +of that educated class which in the name of a misunderstood European +culture were cutting themselves off from all that was best in their +people and who would not listen to reason, because they could not +find it in the European garb that they envied. For the years after +the liberation of the serfs, Levitsky was a good guide but his later +avoidance of life led him to an isolation that marred the value of his +works. However in his early years, he was a forcible and interesting +writer and the Ukrainians need still to ponder the problems which he +raised, even though he was unable to give a thorough and complete +answer. + + + + +CHAPTER NINE + +CHANGING CONDITIONS + + +With the opening of the reign of Alexander II and the amnestying of the +leaders of the Society of Saints Cyril and Methodius, a new era seemed +to have opened for Ukraine. The authorities were not unsympathetic to +the use of the Ukrainian language and while they were sternly resolved +to resist and suppress any movement toward separation and toward the +demand for the restoration of the ancient rights of Ukraine, they did +not seem averse to the development and use of the Ukrainian language +among the people. Steps were taken to print text books in Ukrainian for +Ukrainian schools. Institutions for the education of the people were +planned and some were started and it looked as if a new and happier era +was dawning. + +It was possible to think of establishing Ukrainian journals openly +without resorting to subterfuges that they were intended for +archaeological and ethnographical purposes. Now was the time when +Bilozersky and Kulish founded the _Osnova_ in St. Petersburg and in +Kiev and Kharkiv and elsewhere in Ukraine other papers were speedily +called into existence. + +It was a false dawn. In 1863 came the Polish revolt and although +Ukraine took no part in it as a whole and many of the Slavophile +leaders were cooperating with them in their endeavors, the idea spread +throughout the official circles that the Ukrainians were somehow +involved in the Polish movement, an idea carefully fostered by the +Poles. The result was the beginning of a far-reaching policy of +repression which was to nullify many of the gains that had already been +made. + +The Sunday Schools that had been established in Kiev and other points +in Ukraine were suppressed and the various journals were compelled to +suspend. Then in 1863, Count Valuyev, the Minister of the Interior, +issued a statement that there never was, is not, and cannot be any +separate Ukrainian or Little Russian language. He ordered the censors +to prevent the publication of anything in it that had a spiritual +content, textbooks or books intended for elementary instruction. This +allowed only works of belles-lettres to be published and even this was +a mere subterfuge, for it was not long before the censors were able to +consider these too as popular books and under that clause of the order, +the way was open to silence entirely the Ukrainian writers. + +The new literature seemed destined to be crushed in its cradle. Even +though for a time in the early seventies there was a slight lessening +of the restrictions, the tsar in 1876 issued a more far-reaching order +which forbade the printing of Ukrainian books except in the Russian +spelling, the importation of books printed abroad, and theatrical +performances in Ukrainian, and even the printing of musical texts with +Ukrainian words. Of course the term Little Russian was constantly used, +for every mention of Ukraine was to be banned. + +This was a death blow to literature, and although at various times +during the next thirty years before the Revolution of 1905, many of +these provisions were quietly shelved, yet the Ukrainian authors in +Russian Ukraine were effectively debarred from publishing their works +at home. They had only one possibility left, and that was to turn to +Galicia as Kulish and his friends had been doing from the end of the +sixties. + +The situation there had also changed greatly. At the time of the Union +of Brest in the sixteenth century, the Kozaks and the Brotherhoods of +the various cities had fought stubbornly against the establishment of +the Uniat Church, for they regarded it as a forerunner of Polonization. +They feared from practical experience that the division in the Orthodox +ranks would lead only to increased pressure from the government to +give up their special characteristics. They were essentially correct +in this idea. During the remaining centuries of independent Poland, +the Ukrainians in that country lost most of their gentry and educated +classes and only the parish clergy remained to plead the cause of the +people. + +After the fall of Poland, the situation changed. Western Ukraine +under the rule of the Hapsburgs underwent a special development. +The Emperor Joseph II, one of the enlightened despots of the day, +decided it would be proper to improve the low educational level of +the Galician intelligentsia which was chiefly represented by the +clergy. As a result, immediately after the occupation of Galicia, +Maria Theresa opened in Vienna a seminary for Uniat priests. She had +earlier made certain arrangements for education among the Ukrainians +in the Carpathian sections of Hungary. Now in various mild ways, she +endeavored to improve the conditions and the educations of all the +Ukrainians in her territory. In 1784 there was established a University +in Lviv and it was ordered that certain subjects be taught in the +native language, that is the mixture of Church Slavonic which was +commonly employed before the time of Kotlyarevsky. + +It was not long before the Polish magnates were able to renew their +control and increase their influence at the court of Vienna and +this led to ever new restrictions on the life of the Ukrainians or +Ruthenians, as they were consistently called in Austria-Hungary. +Yet the germ of a national renaissance had been established and the +hopelessness that had prevailed was steadily mitigated. Willing or not, +the leaders of the Uniat Church saw themselves forced into an attitude +of loyalty to the Hapsburgs and of opposition to Polish domination in +the province of Galicia. That very movement which in the sixteenth +century had meant Polonization now at the end of the eighteenth came to +stand for opposition to Polish influences and this shaped the entire +life in Galicia for the next century. + +There was still the language question to be solved. There was no +agreement among the Ukrainians as to what form they should use. Many of +the more conservative classes and the clergy and devout laity insisted +upon continuing the ecclesiastical language which had been handed down +from their fathers and they dreaded any innovation. Another group of +the younger and more progressive elements read Kotlyarevsky and the +writers in the Ukrainian vernacular and argued strenuously for its +adoption. A third group, completely disillusioned with the rule of +the Hapsburgs and the Poles became convinced that the future of the +province lay in union with Russia and they endeavored to remodel the +language on the basis of Great Russian with reference to the work that +was being done in the Russian Ukraine. + +There was a sort of a grim humor in this struggle. There were few or +no relations between the average village in Galicia and one in Russia. +Thus many of the Russian Ukrainians looked more or less with envy +through rose-colored glasses at the scanty signs of recognition given +to the Ruthenians in Austria-Hungary. At the same time, a large number +of the Ruthenians looked with equal envy at every sign of progress in +Russia and sought to join themselves to the dominant party in the great +Empire. + +The controversy was long and bitter, for there was really a three-sided +debate among the Galician leaders themselves. There were the old +conservative adherents of the Church language, there were the +Ukrainian nationalists, and finally there were the Moscophiles who +gained influence in every period of Hapsburg repression. Yet in their +relations with the outside world all three groups were faced with the +same task of supporting the Hapsburgs in Vienna and of resisting Polish +domination in the province of Eastern Galicia. + +From the time of Markian Shashkevich (1811-1843) in Galicia and Osip +Fedkovich (1834-1888) in Bukovina there was a constant stream of +young men working to develop the language on the lines laid down by +Kotlyarevsky. In 1848, Count Stadion as Governor of Galicia gave the +Ukrainians many privileges to thwart the danger of Polish revolt. Jakov +Holovatsky, a Ukrainian, became Professor of Ukrainian Literature at +the University of Lviv. There was established a General Council of +the Ukrainians in Galicia and on May 15 of that year appeared the +first newspaper in the vernacular, the _Zorya Halitska_ (_The Star +of Halich_). A Society for Enlightenment was organized on the model +of the Czech Matica and Ukrainian was introduced into many schools. +Serfdom was abolished and this was a long step forward. Yet it was +not long before the Emperor came to an understanding with the Polish +aristocratic leaders and as soon as this was done, measures were taken +to check the growing Ukrainian movement and a period of repression +again set in. + +In the sixties, the Galicians began to find themselves and were at +least in a position to organize their own journals and literary papers, +even though there was a very strong Russophile party in the province. +It was to these papers that the Ukrainians in Russia were forced to +turn when the period of repression began there and from this time on +for a half century the heart of the Ukrainian movement was to be found +in the Western Ukraine in Lviv and not in Kiev and Kharkiv where the +modern revival had started. + +The key to the work can be found in the Society of Shevchenko which was +first established in 1875 but it was more than a decade before this +secured enough funds to enable it to commence publishing operations. +In 1892 it was renamed the Scientific Society and in 1898 it was again +reorganized as the Shevchenko Scientific Society and became for all +practical purposes the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. + +Thus the movement in Western Ukraine, although it started later, +was able to catch up and even to surpass in self-consciousness the +movement in Russia but as we have mentioned before, the word Ukraine +was always more or less suspicious to the Austro-Hungarian authorities +and for a long while the people were compelled to call themselves +Ruthenians. Even to the most recent times, the Poles have emphasized +this difference between Ruthenians and Ukrainians and have sought to +foster a division between the two groups. So have the Hungarians in +their domination of Carpatho-Ukraine, where the movement after 1848 +languished in the isolated valleys of the Carpathian Mountains. + +Thus this well-dismembered race finally succeeded in some small degree +in establishing spiritual contacts about the middle of the nineteenth +century. For the first time in centuries, the scattered groups +became aware of their mutual relationships, despite the religious +differences. The people in Russian Ukraine were still Orthodox. Those +in Austria-Hungary were primarily Uniat but the modern trend toward +secular thinking and the diminution of the bitterness of the religious +conflicts allowed them to work together. They could have small hope +of political freedom and of political union, but there was a profound +sense of social solidarity and in the peaceful years of the nineteenth +century, the task of education and of social development took +precedence over the old dreams of attaining liberty and freedom on the +field of battle. + + + + +CHAPTER TEN + +IVAN FRANKO + + +In the sixties the writers from Great Ukraine had begun to find +shelter in Lviv and to seek opportunities for publishing there which +had been denied to them in their native land. Yet, when they reached +Galicia, they were passing into another atmosphere and another society. +There were some like Kulish who tried to reconcile the Ukrainians +and the Poles in the province of Austria-Hungary. There were others +as Levitsky, whose works dealt only with the Russian Ukraine and who +described the problems there as they saw them with their own eyes. +They undoubtedly contributed much to the desire on the part of the +people of Western Ukraine to remodel their lives and to commence +social and national work. Yet they themselves were not at home in the +complicated problems of Austro-Hungarian politics and the different +social institutions and they rarely interested themselves in the many +questions that were raised by the existence of Vienna and the Hapsburg +monarchy and the obligations and possibilities that existed in Western +Ukraine as a result of being a part of a great multilingual and +confused area. + +If literature in Western Ukraine was to find itself, it could do so +only through the efforts of some one who was born and reared there and +who understood the situation and the lives and thoughts of the people +as a native and a true son of the country. Just as the literature +of Great Ukraine had been responsive in some degree to the moods of +Russian literature, so in Western Ukraine similar influence would be +exerted by the various schools of Polish literature and the changing +literary fashions of Vienna. No one from the outside could steer a +direct course amid this confused and confusing situation. The language +in the two sections might be identical but the overtones and the +connotations would be very different, for even the presence of a few +leaders from Great Ukraine in Galicia had not yet spun together all the +threads that had been torn apart so completely centuries before. The +man who was to found this literature and do more than his share in +bringing together the two Ukraines was Ivan Franko, who is undoubtedly +after Shevchenko the outstanding Ukrainian author. + +It is hardly necessary to point out the differences between them. +Shevchenko was a natural genius. Franko was far from that and in his +works, talented and excellent as they are, there is not that supreme +perfection, that incomparable greatness that there was in the older +man. Their lives too are markedly different in every way. Shevchenko, +the self-educated son of a serf, was born in the period when the +Romantic movement was at its height. He was old enough to have thrilled +in his youth to the tales of the men who had taken part in the last +armed revolts of the Ukrainians and his mind often harped back to the +heroic days of the past. There was something romantic and tragic in his +life story. His liberation from serfdom, his service in the Russian +army, his association with many of the broadminded aristocrats of his +day, all lend themselves to the dramatic and the unusual. + +There was none of this in Franko. He was more than well educated and +his life is singularly empty of startling episodes. It is a prosaic +record of duty recognized and executed, of articles written, of +difficulties surmounted. If he ever had visions of riding into battle +beside the great hetmans of the past, he did not bring himself to +describe them. He offers us merely the commonplace spectacle of a +hardworking journalist and editor winning his way by the sweat of his +brow and the burning of the midnight oil. It was his task to remake +the moral fibre of his people, to rebuild a shattered edifice and to +expend superhuman energy in the process. All that does not lend itself +to thrilling and unusual episodes but it is none the less valuable both +for the man and his people. It is none the less important because it is +not decked out with gaudy colors and with feats of physical daring and +spectacular sufferings and endurance. + +Ivan Franko was born August 15, 1856, in the little village of +Nahuyevichi, in the foothills of the Carpathians only five years before +the death of Shevchenko. He was the son of a poor farmer-blacksmith. +The boy was not deprived of the opportunity of a formal education. +Quite the reverse. He early learned to read and write Ukrainian, Polish +and German and he received most of his early education in a German +speaking school conducted by the Basilian Fathers. His father died +when he was eight years old and his mother soon married again but his +stepfather treated him kindly and helped him with his education. + +On finishing the elementary schools, he entered the gymnasium in +Drohobych and during his entire course he stood almost continuously at +the head of his class. His clothes may have been ragged and tattered +and he may have been shy and retiring, but he showed clearly that +he had an acute mind and a great deal of endurance. He dabbled in +literature along with many of his fellow students but there was still +something youthful about his works and they did not appear in all of +their later perfection. + +In 1875 he entered the University of Lviv at a time when practically +all the lectures were given in Polish and he was at once plunged into +the frenzied academic debates about the problems of Galicia and the +fate of the Ukrainians there. He listened for hours to the bitter +partisanship over the form of the language to be used in the province +and soon realized the sterility and artificiality of the entire +controversy. + +In his first period at the University, he drifted into the Academic +Circle, a group of students that were rather Moscophile in tendency. +At least this group had access to a journal which could publish his +writings, and besides it appeared to be more serious and less devoted +to society and frivolity than some of the groups that were more purely +nationalistic. + +It was about this time that he became interested in the writings of +Mikhaylo Drahomaniv, (1841-1895) who was the leading Ukrainian scholar +of the day. Drahomaniv, a great democrat, had taken a relatively +advanced position and was frowned upon as a radical in many quarters. +Yet he held firmly to the idea that the Ukrainians in both sections +should cooperate closely and in order to work more freely in this +connection he moved to Geneva, from which point he found it easier to +communicate with the leaders on both sides of the Russian-Galician +border, and later he was professor in the University of Sofia, Bulgaria. + +Drahomaniv used his influence definitely against the Galician +Moscophiles and he had no difficulty in pointing out that this group +was an artificial and insincere creation, for at the very moment when +its members were talking of adapting themselves to the Great Russian +point of view, they were taking little interest in understanding +what that point of view was and they were almost equally innocent of +the achievements of Russian literature. In fact many could not even +use Russian well. This policy brought Franko and Drahomaniv together +and the younger man commenced a correspondence with Drahomaniv that +continued until the latter’s death. + +In 1877 Franko had his first taste of Austrian justice. He was arrested +with many of his friends on the charge of being involved in political +conspiracies with Drahomaniv and sentenced to nine months in prison. +When he was finally released, much of the Ukrainian society of Lviv +declined to meet him. He was forbidden to enter many of the gathering +places and was treated as if he had been an ordinary criminal. The +immediate result was a strengthening of his desire to pursue a direct +course for the welfare of his people, as he saw it, and in 1878 with +money which he received from Drahomaniv, who was supported from the +Russian Ukraine, he commenced the publication of the _Hromadsky Druh_ +to spread his ideas. The journal lasted about a year but was constantly +in trouble with the censor. The work, however, brought Franko in +contact with the socialists of the province. This had its good and bad +sides. It brought him into contact with the Polish liberal journals and +on the other hand it alienated from his influence many of the people of +the conservative classes. The mood of the young poet can be well seen +in the last stanza of the _Stone Cutters_, which he wrote at this time-- + + And so we moved ahead, united as one man + By sacred thought, with hammers in our hands. + Let us be cursed by all, forgotten by the world, + But we will break the rocks and build a proper road + And happiness will come for all from our lost bones. + +The immediate result of all this activity was a second arrest in 1880 +when he was travelling through the country and after three months in +prison he was ordered sent back to his native village, but before he +arrived, he was taken ill and after extreme privations and a long +illness, he was allowed to return to some of his friends. In 1889 he +was arrested a third time and kept in jail for three months without any +formal charges being preferred against him. + +During all this time he continued to write and in fact in the early +eighties, he did much of his most significant work. He was not, +however, satisfied and in 1885 he made a trip to Kiev to establish +personal contacts with the Ukrainian leaders there and to arrange for +the publication of their works in Lviv. The following year he returned +to Kiev and there married Olha Khorunzhinska, a marriage which turned +out very happily until his wife was taken ill in his later days. + +For the next ten years he made his living by writing for various Polish +liberal papers but he steadily became more disillusioned as to the +possibility of creating a working harmony between the socialist parties +of the two peoples. He came to believe that the ideal of socialism as +preached by the Polish socialists toward the Ukrainian working people +was not deep enough to bind the two peoples together. In 1897 in a +review of _Konrad Wallenrod_, a poem by Mickiewicz, he criticized the +idea that a man could become a national hero solely because of his +treachery. Some of the Poles regarded this as an attack on their whole +nation and it cost him most of his Polish friends and more seriously +yet, his position as correspondent for various Polish papers but he did +not change his opinions to better his financial status. + +In 1892-1894 he studied at the University of Vienna and in 1894 he +received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy with a dissertation on Ivan +Vishensky, a Ukrainian publicist of the early seventeenth century. He +had high hopes of securing the chair of Ukrainian Literature at the +University of Lviv and the faculty approved his candidacy. The governor +of the province, however arbitrarily cancelled the nomination in view +of his three arrests. + +Then for a while he dabbled in Galician politics and would have won an +election to the Diet in Vienna as the representative of the Radical +Party, the first party of the Galician Ukrainians to be organized on +a definite economic program, had he not been defeated by the most +unashamed chicanery and cheating. After that he avoided politics in +the strict sense of the word and continued his activities as writer, +critic, scholar, and teacher of his people. + +The response on the part of the people of Galicia and the respect +which he had won were fully shown in the reception accorded him on the +twenty-fifth anniversary of his entrance into literature in 1898 and +again on the fortieth anniversary on the eve of the First World War, +when the Shevchenko Scientific Society awarded him a yearly pension and +the Ukrainians in Russia, Galicia and the United States raised for him +the sum of 30,000 Austrian crowns. + +His health began to fail in 1908 and he almost lost the use of his +hands but he continued to work without any relaxation. The World War +was an even more serious blow. His sons were mobilized in the Austrian +army. The Russians penetrated into Lviv and Galicia and endeavored to +put an end to all Ukrainian activities. Finally he died on May 28, +1916, just about two years before the collapse of Austria-Hungary and +the temporary independence of Ukraine. His funeral was arranged by the +Shevchenko Society and despite the restrictions of the war, over 10,000 +people were in his funeral procession. + +It is the simple story of a life devoted to the service of his people. +Most of the controversies that Franko had with other Ukrainian leaders +and the periods when he fell in disfavor were connected with that most +severe problem of a leader, how to guide his people in a democratic +spirit and at the same time not be so far ahead of them that he loses +touch with their feelings and their beliefs and preaches to them real +truths which they cannot and do not wish to comprehend. He summarized +his obligations as he saw them in the preface to the Polish translation +of the _Galician Sketches_: + +“Before all I confess it as a sin, that many patriots regard me as +destructive; I do not love the Rusins. Compared with that burning +love, which comes often ‘for a brother race’ from the pen of Polish +conservative journalists, my confession may seem strange. What is to +be done, if it is true. I am not one of those naive and blind lovers +and I can speak soberly about such a tender subject as love. I affirm +again: I do not love the Rusins. I have found so few among them of +righteous character, and so much pettiness, narrow material egotism, +duplicity and pride, that I really do not know for what I could love +them, remembering constantly the thousands of greater and lesser darts, +that they have planted in my skin, often with the best ideas. It is +understood that there are exceptions, many pure personalities, worthy +of all respect among the Rusins (I am speaking of the intelligentsia, +not the villagers), but these exceptions unfortunately only confirm the +general statement. + +“I accept it as a great sin; even our Rus I do not love at least as our +patented patriots do or pretend to do. What is there to love in it? To +love it as a geographical conception, I am a foe of empty phrases and +I have seen too much of the world to be able to say that there is no +such beautiful nature as in Rus. To love its history, I know it well +and I love too warmly the general human ideals of justice, brotherhood, +and freedom not to recognize how few examples there are in the history +of Rus of real community spirit, just sacrifice, true love. But it is +important to love this history, for at every time it is necessary to +weep over it. Why can I love Rus as a race--this race which is hard, +intractable, sentimental, a race without temper or strength of will, +so little adapted for political life on its own behalf, and so fertile +in producing renegades of every kind? How can I love the bright future +of this Rus, which I do not know, when I cannot see any basis for this +bright future? + +“But if on the other hand, I feel myself a Rusin and with all of my +strength I work for Rus as the honored reader will see, it is not from +reasons of a sentimental nature. I am guided before all by a feeling +of a canine obligation. The son of a Rusin peasant, reared on black +peasant bread, the work of stout peasant hands, I feel myself bound by +the labor of my whole life to repay those coins which a peasant hand +has expended, so that I can ascend to the heights, where one can see +clearly, where freedom is poured out richly, where universal ideals +shine. My Rusin patriotism is not sentiment, not national pride, but +a great yoke placed by fate upon my shoulders. I can protest, I can +quietly curse my fate, for placing that yoke upon me, but I cannot +throw it off, I cannot seek another country, or I would be base against +my own doubts. And if anything lightens for me the burden of this yoke, +it is the sight of the Rusin people, that, although bent, deafened +and demoralized for long centuries, although today poor, awkward, and +joyless, yet is gradually advancing and perceives somehow in the widest +circles the feelings of light, truth, justice and is seeking approach +to them. It is worth while to work for this people and no honorable +work for it is lost.” + +We can well understand how such plain speaking aroused criticism +against Franko among those Ukrainians who were flattering the people +and at the same time hindering their educational advance and the +improvement of their social conditions. From the very beginning of +his work Franko took as his goal the good of the people. He realized +that it was no easy task and that his path would not be strewn with +roses. He realized the opposition that he would encounter not only from +his opponents but also from those whom he was trying to help. Yet he +approached his task with the coldly realistic manner of the end of the +century when the hopes of decisive and rapid changes had practically +vanished from the minds of most people and when it was fully understood +that only hard work and slow social reform could benefit the people. + +Yet it did not curb his enthusiasm or his belief in the undying spirit +of liberty and the good in man. He summed it up in his poem _The +Eternal Revolutionist_, + + A revolutionist eternally + Man’s spirit, driving him to fight + For progress, liberty and right. + It lives, it cannot die. + + (Translated by Arthur P. Coleman) + +This theme runs through all of his collections, especially of the +early days and the titles are themselves suggestive. _From the +Heights and Depths_, _Sad Songs_, _Night Thoughts_, _The Thoughts of a +Proletarian_, _Ukraine_, _Prison Sonnets_, _Galician Sketches_, _Jewish +Melodies_. The overwhelming mass of his poems especially in his early +years and until about 1893 dealt with various social problems. They +pictured the hardships of society, of the common man and of the poet +himself in his aspirations to do something before the people. They run +through all forms of lyrical verse, sonnets, _et cetera_, and form a +good poetic picture of conditions as they were in Western Ukraine with +the constant struggle against the Polish lords. + +It is very rare that Franko creates a true narrative poem and the +best example is the _Nobleman’s Pranks_, a picture of peasant life in +Galicia on the eve of the abolition of serfdom. Pan Mihucki, a strong +willed Polish landlord, could not believe that this liberation would +ever take place. He could not believe either that the peasant had any +rights, even those which were guaranteed by the law. When the devoted +priest on his estate endeavored to preach temperance and to teach the +children to read and write, the autocratic master ordered him to be put +to work in the fields like a common peasant despite the laws of the +land which exempted priests from such labor. The priest was compelled +to work until he dropped dead. The imperial commissioner, an Austrian +German, tried in vain to moderate the lord’s wrath when he learned that +serfdom had been abolished and when all remedies were useless, and +the new order was introduced, he placed the Polish landlord in jail. +It was an overwhelming shock to Pan Mihucki and though he was soon +released, his time was over and within a year he died abroad. His widow +returned but she was entirely in the power of the Jewish agent who held +the mortgages on the estate and soon she too disappeared, “And Moshko +bought the village.” It was a grim warning of a situation that was far +too common in Galicia and not generally recognized. + +The priest is one of those types that Franko particularly appreciated +and to which he returns again and again. He is a man who does all that +he can for his fellows and perishes in his attempts to aid them but at +the time he is so conscious of how much more he could have done, that +he feels no self-satisfaction even amid the plaudits of others. + +This type of a lost leader appears in a poignant form in the _Death of +Cain_. Old Cain who has struggled with the curse of God for centuries +finally learns that the way to a peaceful and quiet life is through the +virtues of a man’s own heart. He returns to men to tell them of the new +truth and his great grandson Lamech, old and blind, shoots him with +an arrow directed by a little child. Ignorance and misunderstanding +prevent Lamech from learning the message that the old sufferer had +wished to give him. + +Of his lyrical collections perhaps the most musical are the _Three +Garlands of the Fallen Leaves_ which appeared between 1893 and 1896. +They are personal poems dealing with the emotion of love and pain. In +the first Garland they emphasize disappointment. In the second pain +is treated as a cult and in the third, Franko glorifies a feeling +of detachment from sensation, a lack of feeling, with a tendency to +glorify Buddha and to approach Nirvana even through suicide. Some of +his critics accused him of accepting the philosophy of the decadents. +He repudiated the idea but these poems strike an unusual note in +Franko’s general attitude of eternal confidence in the human spirit. +Still they are among his best work and together with the collection _My +Emerald_, written during a period of illness, they are among his most +deeply musical creations. + +Perhaps the greatest of his longer poems is _Moses_ which he wrote in +1905, and we cannot fail to see in it a certain hidden autobiographical +touch and to regard the Hebrews as types of the contemporary +Ukrainians. Moses, the great prophet, has led his people into the +wilderness with the promise of a happier and a more abundant life. Yet +the new world is not forthcoming and the people whom he has aroused to +action, murmur against him and prefer the advice of the false prophets. +Moses defies them and wins but he withdraws from them to go alone and +by himself to the Promised Land. Yet hardly has he left when doubts +begin to assail him. Can he be sure that he has been on the right path? +Can he be sure that he has acted properly in rousing the people in +the beginning? He grows more and more discouraged and finally loses +faith in God. While the evil spirit mocks him, he curses Jehovah and +can therefore not enter the Promised Land. Yet the people without him +willingly obey the call of Joshua and press on to their destined goal. +His sufferings have not been in vain but that one moment of unbelief +has wrecked his chance to go with them to happiness. + +Franko in the last years of his life had many such moments of +discouragement. He shows it clearly in the preface to _Moses_, when +he proudly asserts that there will come a time when his people will +achieve their goal and be masters in their house from the Caucasus to +the Beskids, even though the way seems dark and hopeless at the time. +He realized that with his failing health he could not be the leader +until the struggle for freedom would reach a victorious ending. He +knew that there was no one else to take his place at the time, but he +never lost hope that the right man would appear and like Joshua carry +the cause to triumph. + +In addition to his original poems, he enriched Ukrainian literature +with many translations, especially from English and German. He early +published lengthy translations from Byron, Goethe, Heine, and other +writers and he commented extensively on the literature of his own +country and that of Western Europe. + +Yet poetry was not his only mode of literary expression. He was a +prolific writer of novels and short stories. All of these aimed to show +forth by example the great truths which he felt in his poetry and which +he expounded in his journalistic writings. + +Let us take for example _Zakhar Berkut_, a historical novel of the +Ukrainian people in the Carpathian Mountains in the thirteenth century, +which he wrote in 1882 and for which he received a prize offered by +the journal _Zorya_. The Boyar Tuhar Vovk was given domains by Danilo +the Prince of Halich. There he exercised certain rights and powers in +opposition to the peasant tradition and he refused to submit them to +adjudication before the council of the villagers under their chosen +head, Zakhar Berkut, a peasant of some ninety years of age whose +mind was still keen, even if his body was aging. All the efforts of +the Boyar to assert himself against the wishes of the people came to +naught. As one man they stood together and thwarted all his schemes. +Even when the Boyar became a traitor to his people and allied himself +with the Tatar invaders, it did no good, for the villagers were able to +flood the path over which the attackers had to move. The love affair +between Berkut’s son and the daughter of the Boyar is rather colorless +and stereotyped. The novel reads well and even the editors who awarded +him the prize did not grasp the obvious moral that the people would +be invincible, if they would but unite under a rational and sane +leadership to defend their rights. Power and legality cannot come from +mere words. They rest upon concerted action and that is the one thing +that the villagers of his day did not wish to see. + +He returns again and again to this same theme and in one of his latest +novels, the _Crossed Paths_, he unites this theme with the same +lesson which could be drawn from the _Nobleman’s Pranks_. The scene +is in Galicia of the present day and the young lawyer Dr. Rafalovich +is surprised to learn that the great landowners are as hopelessly +in debt to the Jewish money lenders as are the peasants to their +tavern keepers. This lawyer has decided to devote himself to the +cause of the people and so has developed a laborious practice among +the Ukrainians instead of seeking a more lucrative one among the +Poles. In that region one of the big estates was being sold at auction +and Dr. Rafalovich realizes how easy it would be for the villagers +to secure their own land. Yet not one peasant is willing to trust +another to cooperate in the transaction. One and all want the land, +they realize that they cannot be prosperous without it but they will +not work together or trust one another, in order to secure it. They +much prefer to grumble rather than to show a modicum of common sense +and win. On the other hand the romantic part of the story is equally +sad. Rafalovich has loved a girl in Lviv. Now he finds her married to +a drunken sadist who is insanely jealous of her and does everything +to make her life unbearable. Both she and her husband die. Rafalovich +is arrested, and though he is cleared of all charges and released, +something has gone out of him and he is tormented by doubts as to the +sense of the course which he has followed. + +Franko realized that the new conditions after the abolition of serfdom +were not ideal and in one of his early stories the _Boa Constrictor_ he +pictured the evils of the growing industrialization of the neighborhood +of Borislav and the consequent fate of the workers who are kept in an +economic serfdom which was as bad as that of the enslaved villagers. +This was another theme that he treated again and again throughout his +life. + +Another subject that interested him was the inhumanity of one man +to another especially as regards family life. Thus in _For the Home +Hearth_ the hero Captain Anharovich returns from Bosnia to Galicia +only to learn that his wife has been trapped into recruiting girls +for the purposes of prostitution. When she is finally unmasked, she +commits suicide and her husband is thus allowed to continue his career +and maintain his honor as an army officer, although the rumors of his +wife’s disgrace have led him into a duel with his best friend and +broken his own heart. + +Questions of peasant marriage also concerned him greatly and in +his best play, _Stolen Happiness_, which won a second prize in a +competition at Lviv he criticizes the arbitrary way in which such +unions were arranged. A soldier returns from his army service to find +that the girl whom he loved and who loved him had been forced into +marriage with another man. Such happenings were relatively common and +they aroused the enmity of Franko as much as did the abuse of his +people by outside oppressors. + +It would be too long to list all of his stories and collections which +range from autobiographical studies as in the _Sweat of the Brow_, +stories taken from adventures and incidents in his whole life, to +studies of peasant customs in every form. In all of them Franko was +willing to see the good as well as the bad and he gave invaluable +pictures of Galician life in the period from 1880 to 1914. + +Yet it is to be noticed that in many of these stories as in the +_Nobleman’s Pranks_, he has kind words for the representatives of +the Austrian government at Vienna, who were mostly Austrian Germans, +although some were of Slavic origin. + +This was only natural for Franko rarely left his native land except for +the two years in Vienna. During his lifetime the Poles had a strangle +hold on the government of Galicia. They were the direct oppressors of +the people and the Viennese government in many cases tried to mitigate +the iron hand of the provincial administration, partly from a feeling +of justice and partly from self-interest. The Hapsburg policy had +always been to allow a relatively free hand to the dominant group in +a province and then to favor and help in minor ways the oppressed +sections of the province. In this way they hoped to maintain a policy +of “Divide and Conquer” and to facilitate their own control of the +entire area. + +Almost universally also he refers to his people as Rusins or +Ruthenians. The name of Ukraine was taboo for political purposes in the +Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Franko would merely have been courting +trouble and injuring his own work, had he not followed the usual +practice. At times as in his poem _Ukraine_, he uses the word for the +larger entity. At the same time he worked steadily for the promotion +of closer relationships with the people in Great Ukraine. He did not +regard it possible that the two groups, the one in Austria-Hungary and +the other in Russia would be able to cooperate freely until the two +great Empires met with shipwreck and thus permitted the establishment +of a united and independent Ukraine. In both sections there were the +same economic problems of an oppressed agricultural race struggling +against a dominant aristocracy, largely composed of persons who had +risen out of their own soil and adopted a more aristocratic language +and mode of life. The danger of assimilation was however greater in +Russia than in Galicia where the process had largely slowed down some +centuries before, and so many of the themes which had stirred Levitsky +and others seem to pass unnoticed by Franko. + +In the same way his literary models were those of Western Europe rather +than those of Russia. From his youth he was well educated in German and +he wrote for German as well as Polish papers. He was affected by the +types of writing common there, even more than by the developments in +Russia. + +Despite all of the persecutions and the hardships that he had to meet, +he had still more abundant opportunities to express himself freely +on the political and social theories which he advocated than did +the authors who wrote in Russia, but he had to adapt himself to the +framework of the Hapsburg empire. Within that he struggled long and +strenuously for the welfare of his people. At times he was very popular +and his ideas caught public fancy. At times he stood alone and felt to +some degree that which Moses and his other lost leaders realized, that +he was ahead of his time, that he was not accomplishing all that he had +intended, that his words were not being interpreted in the sense in +which he meant them. + +He suffered from discouragement but long before his death men of all +parties recognized that he was the chief teacher, poet, and novelist +of the province. They realized his incorruptible character, his +wide knowledge and his literary talent. He was not the peer of the +incomparable Shevchenko but next to him he stood out as the most +important talent in Ukrainian literature, the greatest scholar, and the +one man who could see the problems of his people and the path on which +they should go. His enormous funeral bore token to the esteem in which +he was held and to the work which he had done during the unremitting +years of journalism. Franko worked hard. His life was uneventful. It +was not filled with surprising and unusual episodes but as scholar, +critic, poet, novelist and teacher he deserved well of Ukraine and was +the glory of the Shevchenko Scientific Society. + + + + +CHAPTER ELEVEN + +LESYA UKRAINKA + + +The age of realism gradually gave way to neo-romanticism. After a +period of time in which literature was bound within the strict limits +of a photographic reproduction of nature and of social life, the +authors gradually came to demand the liberty of expressing their +thoughts in their own way and of choosing such subjects as they +desired. There came a renewed emphasis on poetry and a higher technical +skill in its production. New devices in metrics and in rhythm were +introduced and there appeared authors with the proper talents to master +the new devices. + +Nowhere was this more true than in Russia. The eighties had been a +time of discouragement to the Russian intelligentsia but toward the +middle of that decade, some of the writers against the opposition of +most of the liberal elements demanded for themselves the same liberties +that were being claimed in other countries. There came a broadening of +themes and an endeavor to get outside the narrow range of contemporary +subjects that had preoccupied the literature for forty years. + +The same influences were working on Ukrainian literature, although the +authors who had never bowed the knee to that peculiar type of Russian +liberalism which had discounted the Ukrainian right to exist did not +have to pass through all the phases of pessimism that their conquerors +did. Besides that, the influence of men like Franko and contact with +the Ukrainian renaissance in Galicia had to some extent opened direct +channels to western Europe which were lacking in St. Petersburg. + +Yet most of the older writers had been either primarily scholars or +provincial writers. Few of them had travelled abroad and most of them +had confined their works to the contemporary life of Ukraine, to the +recording of national customs and to direct attempts to solve the +most pressing problems of the day. It gave a narrowness to Ukrainian +literature which prevented it from taking its rightful place in the +literature of the world. There was needed a new type of writer who +would be no less patriotic, no less devoted to the national cause, but +who was familiar with the world, with modern literary developments, and +with the aspirations of other peoples, especially in Western Europe. +The person who was to exercise that influence upon Ukraine was the +poetess who wrote under the pseudonym of Lesya Ukrainka. + +Larisa Kosacheva, for that was her real name, labored under no +less difficulties than her predecessors. Yet these were strikingly +different, since her greatest handicap was ill health. For practically +the whole of her adolescent and adult life, she was a hopeless invalid. +She never knew a healthy day, and it was the power of her mind and her +own spiritual resources that kept her alive and allowed her to triumph +over all obstacles and to express her faith and confidence in a better +day to come. The careful reader can see the effects of her illness +upon her outlook on life and yet no author has more carefully hidden +her personal burdens in her devotion to a great cause. It is much +harder to connect her poems and her biography than it is in the case of +most writers, for in reality her mind and body were separated and the +courage of the one has little relationship to the weakness of the other. + +She was born on February 25, 1871, in Russian Ukraine. She came +of a prominent intellectual family, for her uncle was none other +than Mikhaylo Drahomaniv, who was at that time at the height of his +influence and was working actively to bring the Ukrainian movement in +line with the other democratic movements of the world. Her childhood +friends were children of similar families and formed a group that was +decidedly precocious and superior. + +As we might expect, she was given a good education, chiefly at home, +with particular emphasis on the study of modern European languages. +By the time that she reached maturity, she had a good knowledge of +Russian, English, German, French, Italian, Latin and Greek, and later +she learned Spanish. She naturally read and knew the works of the +older Ukrainian authors but she was also familiar with such writers as +Goethe, Schiller, Victor Hugo, and Byron. She was thoroughly acquainted +with the writers of the Romantic school and she was therefore better +prepared to bring about that adaptation of their ideas that was +beginning to take shape in the world. Her first poem written at the +age of twelve was a translation of a poem of Heine and her first +independent poem began about the same time with the phrase, “I have no +freedom nor fortune, there is left only hope.” + +At almost the same time she was stricken down with tuberculosis of +the bones of the hand and was compelled to stay in bed for months at +a time while her young friends were enjoying the pastimes of youth. +Finally this seemed to yield to treatment but it was not long before +the disease reappeared in her feet. From then on, her life was merely +the passage from one system of medical treatment to another. In 1892 at +the age of twenty she brought out her first book of poems _On the Wings +of Songs_ and this was followed by other volumes, _Thoughts and Dreams_ +in 1896, and _Echoes_ in 1902. + +Meanwhile she lived most of the time in Kiev except during the winters +and the long trips necessary for medical treatment. She had to go to +the south and she spent her winters in the Crimea, the Caucasus, in +Bulgaria where her uncle was professor at the University of Sofia, and +in Egypt. She travelled in Italy and Germany and in 1900 underwent a +serious operation in Berlin. In 1907 during a period of relief from +suffering, she married K. M. Kvitka but the disease soon came on again. +The doctors in Berlin advised against further operations and sent her +to Egypt but finally even the climate there ceased to have a favorable +effect upon her and she passed away in 1913. It was really her iron +will that had kept her alive to the age of forty-two and had allowed +her to accomplish so much. + +It was a heroic record of resistance to suffering and disease and +undoubtedly her linguistic talents and her love of literature helped to +vary the monotony of those months of suffering when she was confined +to her bed and was unable to move around freely. Yet with it all she +never lost her interest in life and if many of her later works show a +preference for exotic and literary subjects, we can well understand it +from the nature of her affliction. She was constantly in touch with +the leading people of the day and was actively interested in all the +reforming movements of the period. Her poems appeared in radical and +progressive papers and showed that despite her physical isolation, she +was not isolated in mind and thought. + +The preface of her first book of poems is suggestive of her attitude +throughout life. + + To thee, O my Ukraine, my dearest, unfortunate mother, + My songs will be raised first of all. + They will be solemn and quietly sounding. + Each song will flow forth from my heart. + +Naturally it is possible to find in this first collection poems that +show the influence of the authors whom she had read and there are +slight touches of regret that she cannot do more for her country. +There are moments of disillusionment and of weakness but more and more +she found herself and expressed her desires to be useful to her country +in whatever way was possible. There is little direct mention of her +personal afflictions but we can to some extent imagine that they had +much to do with her fits of pessimism. + +It was not long before she became more interested in social problems +and she thought hard and earnestly about the position of Ukraine. She +was aware of the fact that all was dark and confusion around her and +that the future of the country could not be secured by words alone. +Thus she writes, + + The fellahin and pariahs are happy. + Their minds and thoughts are swaddled in repose. + In us the fire of a Titan burns.... + For we are paralytics with fierce blazing eyes, + Are great in spirit but in strength are frail, + We feel the wings of eagles on our backs, + While fetters binding us to earth ne’er fail. + +That was her judgment on most of the intellectuals of her day and on +the fate of Ukraine. Yet she never wavered in her words of hope and +consolation and the very titles of such poems as _Contra spem spero_, +(_I hope against hope_), show the confidence that she had that right +would finally conquer and they refer to the fate of her people as well +as to her own physical condition. + +Yet even in her first volumes we find specimens of that kind of song +which she was to do more as time went on. Thus in the _Iphigenia in +Tauris_ she makes the priestess say that she is willing for the glory +of her country to live “without glory, without family, without a name” +if only she can assist in its triumph. Here Lesya Ukrainka turns to +literature to find illustrations that might be impossible to draw from +the present conditions in view of the censorship. It is often forgotten +that the scene of the play of Euripides was laid in the Crimea. Orestes +and his friend had come to Ukraine and its neighborhood to recover the +statue of Artemis and undoubtedly the poetess was thinking of this in +choosing her theme. + +Ukrainian literature had long dealt with Ukraine and Ukraine only. The +writers of the past half century had neglected other subjects but there +was a movement away from this narrowness and in dealing with classic +antiquity and the ancient world, she was following after decades in +the steps of Shevchenko with his poems as the _Neophytes_ and _Maria_. +So Lesya Ukrainka with her more abundant erudition and her acquaintance +with the Black Sea and the Mediterranean south knew by study and +observation the life of other regions and saw how these ideas could +illustrate the psychological, moral and social lessons which she wished +to convey. + +Her English reading gave her the idea of Robert Bruce and she pictured +the well known story of the Scottish king who accepted the throne only +on the condition that he could use his power to keep his people free. +That was his claim to fame and the fact that he lived up to his promise +gave him everlasting glory. + +After 1902 the nature of her works gradually changed. They ceased to +be predominantly lyrical in character and gradually assumed the form +of poetic dramas and dialogues in which by preference she treated some +subject connected with the downfall of a people and the efforts that +they had to make to win back their independence. + +Many of these as the _Babylonian Captivity_ and _On the Ruins_ dealt +with the sufferings of Israel under the yoke and immediately after the +return to Palestine. Lesya Ukrainka understood well that death or shame +were the only alternatives to a courageous struggle for independence. +Even in _Three Moments_ which dealt with the French Revolution the +Girondist who is able to save his life by escaping realizes that he +cannot be happy while his companions are facing death and prison for +the cause in which he believes. + +Thus for example in _Ioanna, Wife of Khusov_, we have the story of a +woman of Palestine who has left her husband to follow in the train of +Jesus of Nazareth. When she returns after the Crucifixion, she finds +her husband busily engaged in gaining the favor of some Roman visitors. +There is obvious misunderstanding on both sides, an obvious attempt on +his part to deny his own traditions in order to curry favor with the +new rules of the land and to secure an invitation to Rome, and to do +this, he is willing to break all the rules of native etiquette, and +imitate the strangers. Ioanna is thoroughly unhappy and feels herself +more isolated than ever before because of her grasp of higher ideals. +Yet she is compelled to go through with her role, even though it leaves +her unhappy and miserable. The parallel to the Ukrainian situation is +obvious and we can be sure that it was in the mind of the poetess, +even though there are no definite statements that might apply to the +situation. + +In the _House of Slavery_ we have still another study of the same +problem. The scene is Egypt but the Hebrew slave and the Egyptian +slave cannot work together and be friends. Both desire freedom but the +one wants it to continue the culture that has enslaved him. The other +desires it as ardently but that freedom would be meaningless unless +it gave him the power to shatter and destroy all that had overpowered +him and reduced him to his present situation. There are differences in +slavery as well as in masters and he who would forget that does so at +his peril. + +Thus at almost every turn Lesya Ukrainka chooses some subject which can +have at least an indirect significance for Ukraine and the cause of its +people. Yet the connection is never too obvious. For its understanding +it required deeper thought and a clearer insight into the nature of the +problems which were facing the country. + +There was also required a better understanding of the psychological +nature of man. The earlier authors had treated this in a casual way +when they saw fit to mention it at all. They had taken a rather +simple view of human nature and the problems of their characters +could be expressed in terms of external injustice and oppression. +In such writings of Lesya Ukrainka as _Tristan and Isolda_, where +the one Isolda represents spiritual love and the other earthly, we +have a clearer representation of the problems of human nature than +we have had hitherto. Even in the poems of Shevchenko we do not meet +such representations of human life with its manifold aspects and the +problems that come from the various elements of human nature. + +All this marks the entrance of Ukrainian literature into a more mature +stage and heralds its approach to the great literatures of the world in +their modern form. Of course it annoyed many of the representatives of +the older school, who could not see that this deepening of themes was +anything but a betrayal of the sacred cause. They were ready to condemn +the poetess and lament that she did not continue in the old vein. + +The same thing happened when the various theatres attempted to produce +her plays. The troupes of actors were in many cases experienced and +able to represent the old fashioned type of characters and the old +fashioned problems. They were hardly prepared by training or outlook +to give a good exposition of this new kind of problem. It is true +that her writings were more literary and not so well adapted to +theatrical presentation as those of the older writers. She had not had +that experience with the theatre that was possessed by many of her +predecessors but under proper auspices some of her sketches contain +striking dramatic scenes. + +Thus Lesya Ukrainka used her very isolation from the world and the fact +that she was obliged to live in a literary atmosphere with books as her +chief friends to increase her power to write a Ukrainian literature +in a modern and more cosmopolitan style. She was typical of the newer +intelligentsia who were none the less patriotic, none the less zealous +for Ukraine, because they were able to present its case in forms that +were being developed abroad. In a sense her work marked the end of +that old ethnographical-political period which had been so necessary +in the first stages of arousing the people to a consciousness of their +past. She assumed that that had been achieved, and on that basis she +started for the younger generation a new literature which was to +adapt the general ideas of modern Europe to Ukraine and to bring the +intelligentsia into a new world. + +Surrounded by those friends whom she knew and liked and isolated +from the worst storms of the day, she often felt the oppression of +loneliness and solitude. She could not hope for wide popularity and it +is probably not too much to say that the wider circles of Ukrainian +society began to appreciate her only after her untimely death. Since +then there has been a steadily widening circle of her admirers who have +recognized in her one of the great masters of the Ukrainian language. +Her native talent and her industry made her works masterpieces. She +won many imitators for the new style of writing. The universality of +her themes and the careful treatment that she gave to various human +emotions have made her more than the poet of a passing era and she is +one of those authors who gain a steadily increasing number of readers +and admirers as time passes. Yet with it all her desire for the +cosmopolitan never led her away from her native land and in her Ukraine +found a devoted patriot and a great understanding soul. + + + + +CHAPTER TWELVE + +MIKHAYLO KOTSYUBINSKY + + +During the greater part of the nineteenth century it was the task of +the Ukrainian authors to arouse and educate their people. The nation +in its darkest hour had lost to Russia or to Poland practically the +whole of its educated class and the national habits and characteristics +were preserved in the villages among the illiterate peasants. The +first and most pressing duty was to form a new educated class, to +give a knowledge of the past of Ukraine to those people who were but +dimly conscious of their existence as a separate entity and to lay the +foundation for a deeper study of their own traditions and habits. At +the same time the harsh censorship and the regulations, especially of +the Russian government, practically required that this work be carried +on under the guise of the study of ethnography and archaeology. The +very names of the journals that appeared in Russia as _Bulletin of the +Archaeological Commission_ and the _Kievskaya Starina_, (_Antiquities +of Kiev_) the only ones that were allowed to appear during the periods +of repression show the truth of this statement and it was only natural +accordingly that the writers who were compelled to work with one eye +on the censorship tended to exploit these possibilities. There grew up +in Ukrainian literature a definite ethnographic school and the writers +with pleasure and profit gave long descriptions of the manners and +customs of the villagers. The time, however, had to come, when the +authors would no longer be content with these self-imposed limitations +and would branch out into a broader field. The author who was to do +this in prose was Mikhaylo Kotsyubinsky, one of the greatest artists in +this field. + +Kotsyubinsky was born at Vinnitsa in Podolia in 1864. His father was a +poor official but during his father’s lifetime he was able to study in +the bursa and the theological academy. He did not finish the course and +after his father’s death he made his living for a while as a private +tutor. He continued his own studies especially of literature and +finally entered the government service. In the early nineties he was +attached to the commission for the elimination of the phyloxera which +was ruining the vineyards in the south and he passed several years in +Bessarabia and the Crimea, where he had extensive opportunities to +study the lives of the villagers. He then served in the statistical +office in Chernihiv. During this time the Revolution of 1905 broke out +and Kotsyubinsky became very friendly with Maxim Gorky and many of the +leaders of the Social Democratic party of Russia. He finally retired +on a pension in 1911 to devote himself entirely to literature. He went +to Italy and lived near Gorky on the island of Capri. His heart grew +steadily worse and he returned to Kiev for a long period of treatment +but it did no good and he passed away in 1913 at the age of forty-nine. + +Kotsyubinsky started to write in the same ethnographic realistic style +that had been popularized by Levitsky-Nechuy. He had been inspired to +write in Ukrainian by the _Kobzar_ of Shevchenko and the stories of +Marko Vovchok but he very soon broadened his literary range by the +diligent reading of later Russian authors such as Chekhov and also by +the careful study of the French and Scandinavian naturalists as Zola, +Maupassant, and Hamsun. All of these affected his style in passing +but he gradually worked out his own attitude toward literature and +developed that individual style in which his main works were written. + +As he developed, he came more and more to understand the importance +of beauty in writing. He realized that there was always one correct +word artistically for every situation and he made great efforts to +find that right word, so as to secure the maximum effectiveness of his +work. He had a lyric and almost a sentimental appreciation of nature +and his power of casting a roseate glow over a scene and giving a +poetic picture in a few simple words of prose is marked. Perhaps of +his contemporaries only Korolenko shares that power and he too was +of Ukrainian origin, although he wrote in Russian. The ability to +transfigure an unpleasant and sordid scene and make of it a thing of +beauty without preventing the reader from realizing its real character +is a marked feature of Kotsyubinsky’s style. It definitely advances +him above the level of the great majority of the Ukrainian authors and +makes him a European writer in the best sense. + +Side by side with this is a delicate appreciation of human psychology. +In his short stories with a remarkable economy in means, he is able to +penetrate the human heart and to express the most poignant feelings and +the most secret ambitions of a man or woman. + +These characteristics are most clearly seen in his last collection +published just about the time of his death and especially in the +_Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors_, a story of peasant life in the Beskid +Mountains which he visited in 1911. It is the account of the life of +the shepherd boy Ivan Paliychuk. We see the young boy under the shadow +of the family feud with the Gutenyuk family in which his father is +killed, and his love for young Marichka of the rival clan. There is +a really idyllic picture of the young love of these two children of +nature, but Ivan is compelled by poverty to take a position as herdsman +for the summer in the mountains and during that summer Marichka is +drowned. Later he marries the wealthy Palagna and all seems to prosper +but there is not that affection and sincerity between them that had +existed between the young Ivan and his first love. His wife misbehaves +shamefully with the sorcerer Yura and the two plan to kill Ivan by +magic but he, broken hearted and in despair, wanders off into the woods +and mountains, lured on by a spirit, a Nyavka that took the form of +his beloved Marichka. Finally he fell over a precipice and was killed. +Then came the funeral rites, the entertainments and the games that +were customary while all through the neighborhood resounded the death +strains of the Hutsul pipes. How far at this moment Kotsyubinsky is +from the cold realism of the earlier authors can be seen from the way +in which he enters into the realm of the peasant superstitions and +makes plausible the appearance to Ivan in his despair of all those +supernatural beings, the Nyavka and the Chugaystyr. He carries his +readers into the spirit of the mountains not in any cold archaeological +sense but as a living world apart from the ordinary affairs of men. + +If this was the culmination of the work of Kotsyubinsky, he had covered +a long path in his creative development. He had started with little +sketches and it was only in the pictures of the south in _Under the +Minarets_ and _In the Paths of the Devil_ that he had begun to work out +this finely chiseled style, the success of which depends so much upon +his ability to evoke the beauty and the artistry of untutored nature. + +The style is still only partially developed in such tales as _At a +Great Price_ published in 1902. It might easily be a historical novel +for it refers back to those days when the persecuted and oppressed +Ukrainians were seeking to escape into Turkey in the hopes of founding +there a new Sich after their own had been destroyed. Ostap starts on +the difficult journey and his wife, the devoted Solomeya, overtakes him +and goes with him and shares his hardships. They try once to cross the +border but the Cossack guards intercept them. A little later Ostap is +badly wounded in another attempt and is nursed back to life by the care +of his wife. They are helped and plundered by the Gypsies and finally +Ostap is rescued by his wife and a friend from the hands of the Turks, +but she is drowned in the Danube in the attempt. So he lives alone, and +he shows his bare back to those who will listen and look at the marks +left by the cruel floggings which he had received in his lifetime. +“Here on my back is a memory from my master, and in front between my +ribs is my present from the Moskal. Well placed ... with them I will go +to God.... I paid well for my liberty, I paid a bitter price. Half of +me lies at the bottom of the Danube and the other is waiting and cannot +wait to join it.” Here is the germ of the later development with its +appreciation of nature and of the undying call of liberty and democracy. + +Kotsyubinsky was keenly aware of the wave of unrest that was sweeping +Ukraine along with the rest of Russia just prior to the Revolution of +1905 and in the _Fata Morgana_, he gives us the first rumblings of the +coming storm in the picture of the poor peasant Andriy and his wife +Malanka and his daughter Hafiyka. The father has long since given up +the struggle to become independent. His wife has married him for want +of a better suitor and they have one daughter, beautiful as a picture +but still with no dowry and faced with the possibility of a joyless +life. The father dreams that a factory may be built, so that there can +be work. The mother still has the unsatisfied craving of the Ukrainian +peasant for the land. She muses “How splendid thou art, O earth. It is +pleasant to sow thee with grain, to adorn thee with green, to decorate +thee with flowers. It is pleasant to work thee. Only thou are not good +in this, that thou art not kind to the poor man. For the rich thou +glowest with beauty, the rich thou pleasest, thou clothest him, and the +poor man thou receivest only in a grave.... But our hands are waiting +to work our meadows, our cities, our gardens.... They will divide thee, +O land, and ‘our benefactor’ will come to the plough. Oh, God, God, +even in my old age grant me this happiness to bring out my child among +people.” Into this environment come the first students who are arrested +by the police, the first outbursts of hostility against the established +order. Kotsyubinsky had planned a trilogy on this theme but he only +finished two parts and the whole remained a mere skeleton. + +There are many other stories dealing with the Revolution and the +revolutionary movement and Kotsyubinsky tries in each to illustrate +the psychology of the various participants, as the _Birthday Present_ +where the bureaucratic father decides to give his son the pleasure of +seeing a hanging but the boy fails to appreciate the honor which is +shown him. He interferes, and at the end, the father fears that he +will be put out of the service, that the boy will be excluded from the +school, while the young Dorya is thinking for his part that he must +somehow punish the people responsible for such an outrageous act. Or +_The Horses are not to Blame_ gives us the reactions of a family on the +very eve of the time when the peasants demand from them their land. + +Yet perhaps the best stories of Kotsyubinsky are not those that have +this kind of content but those where an ordinary man faces some sharp +crisis. Thus in _What is written in the Book of Life_, an old peasant +woman feeling herself in the way and wearied that death does not come, +persuades her son to take her out into the woods to leave her to die. +He does so, but at the very moment when she is determined to leave this +world, she shows so much interest in the chatter about her neighbors, +that the son finally changes his mind and goes back for her. He thinks +of all the rites and customs that surround the average funeral, the +drinking, and the entertainment and these things done for the good +opinion of the neighbors are almost as potent in making him change his +mind as is the actual sorrow for the fate of the poor old woman whom +death has forgotten. Or there are such stories as the _Letter_ where +a young and idealistic boy is brought face to face on his return home +with the killing of a little pig for his dinner. The stain of blood +separates the family and without knowing why, he loses all contact +with them. He is horrified by the church and its services and he looks +perfectly calmly at the fighting and the drunken brawls that go on +around him for blood will have blood. + +One of his most striking stories is the _Dream_, and here we see one of +the underlying ideas of our author. The scene is the prosaic life of +an ordinary family. When they were young and first married, Antin and +Marta had something to live for. They had love and affection but the +dull routine of life had carried all that away and now they were living +well but uninterestingly. There were the prosaic facts of daily life, +the ordinary cares and petty household and office activities. Marta was +unconscious of the loss. Antin was and in his dreams which he tells his +wife, he resurrects the past and imagines a new romance with a girl +in Italy. There is beauty, there is love, there is passion, and it is +all a dream. At first the mere idea that her well-known husband could +become a problem to her, that there were in his being elements that +she had effectively stifled in herself was too much for her. Yet at +the end it did rouse her to make an attempt to bring back something of +that past, and “She did not know whether she would have the strength, +whether storms would rage at some future time, but now oftener than +before roses adorned their dining table.” + +It was the fault of routine. “She had not known to guard life, to +preserve its beauty. Daily she had been throwing it away in trifles, +in the useless filth of existence, until she had turned it into a foul +pit. Poetry cannot live in such an atmosphere, and without it, life is +a crime.” + +That is the real gist of the work of Kotsyubinsky. In his memoirs Gorky +emphasizes this quality of the author and it takes precedence over all +other aspects of his work. Life can be made interesting. Life can be +made good. Sympathy and love and kindness can be universal and perhaps +they are so natural to man that they can even pass over into the +consciousness of dogs and other animals that are near to man. It is a +law of life and he who neglects does so at his infinite peril. + +It is this spirit that moved and inspired all of his writings. It gave +him the feeling and the desire to penetrate the human heart and mind +to understand man as he really can be. Humanity, beauty, the people, +Ukraine--these were the things for which Kotsyubinsky lived and about +which he thought and wrote and dreamed. Between him and Levitsky and +the older novelists there was a great gulf. They had been as eager to +help the people as he was. They were as self-sacrificing as he was, +but they did not try to take into account those other values which he +regarded so highly. + +Like them in style he was realistic and naturalistic. He endeavored +to deal with life as it was in the rough and the unmild as in the +_Intermezzo_, where life among human beings is like that among the +wolves for the people ruined by syphilis, poverty, alcohol, and +illiteracy, know nothing better than to fight and destroy one another, +but there was something more, for he wished not only to tell a story +to impress the minds and hearts of his readers, but he wanted also to +evoke a mood so as to stir their emotions and to rouse their sense of +beauty. + +Beauty and harmony appear in all the later works of Kotsyubinsky. It +is a deliberate beauty and a deliberate harmony, not like that natural +spark of the genius Shevchenko who seemed from the very beginning to +know what to say and how to say it. With Kotsyubinsky it was something +acquired. The feeling was natural to him. He had that finely balanced +character that was favorable to its growth but there was a conscious +training of that feeling. It is small wonder that Kotsyubinsky was +not a voluminous writer. It was impossible to imagine him combining +literature and journalism or entering the rough and tumble arena of +life. It is impossible to picture him careless or indifferent. The +very methods that he borrowed from impressionism and grafted on to +his realistic settings are those which are the results of a real +understanding of the finer points of culture. Without poetry, life is +a crime. It is a new note in Ukrainian literature, a note of a growing +maturity, a greater refinement, a sign that Ukrainian literature is +taking its place as one of the culture literatures of the world. The +problems of Ukraine are still as pressing, they have not been solved +but Kotsyubinsky feels that it is no use to harp only on the external +and the immediate. The Ukrainians still have souls and if they are +to be really civilized people, they must share the emotions and the +sensations of civilized people. They must deepen their life as well as +broaden it. From his earliest efforts Kotsyubinsky steadily deepened +and broadened his range of subjects. He did for prose what Lesya +Ukrainka and others had done for poetry and when he died in 1913, he +could look at the world and say, as he had always thought, that life +was good, that mankind had enormous potentialities, and that he had +done his part in making them available and accessible for literature. + + + + +CHAPTER THIRTEEN + +VASIL STEFANYK + + +A new realism appeared in the twentieth century but this was +significantly different from the older form that had been handled with +so much success by Marko Vovchok and Levitsky. Its centre of gravity +was different. Where the older authors had indulged in stories of +peasant life that had the avowed intention of awaking the educated +classes to a realization of the problems confronting the Ukrainian +people, the new authors sought to give pictures of the conditions +as they existed at that period when the old patriarchal order was +definitely breaking down. There is not the constant harping on the +theme that changes in the social order might produce important results. +Rather there is a representation of people who have been broken by +life and we are asked to look at them as they are in their misery and +despair. + +It is definitely the underprivileged who are described. We are not told +how or why they have become that way. The fact is that they exist and +they form a sad spectacle for the keen observer. An atmosphere of fate +broods over the whole and there is nothing that they or we can do to +change their lot. Life has dealt them many blows. It has taken away +their power of resistance and man becomes an individual, no longer one +of a group that is bound together as a class, a family, or a member +of society. He stands out by himself with his own problems with which +he cannot grapple and if he has a family or friends beside him, they +cannot do much to ease his solitude. We are born alone and we die alone +and compared with those great truths, our petty human attempts to +understand one another are doomed to futility, try as we will. + +Gone are the days when we feel that the peasant, the serf, has within +himself abundant resources of mental and moral and physical strength. +Gone are the days when we are led to believe that these oppressed and +insulted people are the backbone of society and can be led and taught +to live a better and a more abundant life. The tide has turned and is +running strongly toward other phases of existence. If there is to be a +brighter future, we cannot expect it to come from the actions of the +impoverished, drunken, broken peasants. We must seek it elsewhere, if +we can. + +The new style perhaps took its rise in French naturalism but it was +certainly influenced by Dostoyevsky’s interest in broken souls, by +the misunderstandings of Chekhov, and by the revolutionary heroes of +Gorky. It was influenced to some extent by the teachings of Marxism +and the growth of radical political parties which clustered around the +factories and the cities. + +The phenomenon was not confined to the Slavonic countries. We can +trace it in English and American literature, in the almost unconscious +efforts of the more modern writers to turn away from the picturing of +virtuous peasants and farmers and to see in the country characters +who possess all possible vices and perversions. The old view that the +city is the source of corruption and decay and the rural districts +are the home of virtue is looked upon as old-fashioned and the newer +psychology endeavors to analyze, to explain or at least to picture +almost photographically the warped and helpless types that are found +everywhere. + +The same movement made its appearance in Ukrainian and the great +master of this school was Vasil Stefanyk, a consummate artist and a +miniaturist in words. His pictures are short and concise. In a few +phrases and a few paragraphs he pictures the sad state of the average +Galician village and the strange creatures that inhabit it. + +He had a good opportunity to study these people for he lived almost his +whole life among them. He got to know the inner life of the village, +the sorrows and the scanty joys of the people of a community where +prosperity rarely occurs and where misery and disease are universal. + +Vasil Stefanyk was born in 1871 in Western Ukraine in the foothills +of the Carpathian Mountains. He received a good education at Krakow +and for a while studied medicine but he left the university without +completing his course. In the meantime he had become friendly with +some of the leaders of the Young Poland movement and shared with them +their infatuation for the life of the common people. Wyspianski and the +others of the group were actuated by a new interest in the life of the +ordinary Polish peasant and were trying to understand the psychology +of the average villager. Stefanyk applied the same technique to the +life of his own people. As a result he went back to his own village +and settled down as a farmer among them. He got to know them and their +modes of thought and expression. He studied their local and untutored +dialect, he learned to appreciate the difficulties with which they +were confronted and he began those stories of peasant existence that +have made him one of the greatest prose artists of modern Ukrainian +literature. + +He was not a voluminous writer. He began to produce his masterpieces +when he was about thirty years of age and for a decade he worked and +developed his own gemlike style and his gift of portraiture. The task +of composition was not easy and he toiled over almost every phrase and +paragraph, tearing up copy after copy, until he had found exactly the +right word and the right idea. Then he grew silent and for another +decade, although he was recognized as a master, he produced nothing. +The impact of the war and the temporary liberation of Ukraine roused +him again to write and for the first time he used the word Ukraine and +emphasized the unity of the people in both halves of the country. The +disastrous situation that ensued as a result of the Ukrainian defeat +and renewed division made him again give up writing and return to his +former silence. He died in 1936, just before the new catastrophes were +to overwhelm his country. + +He does not reveal himself in his sketches. Far from that. If we +read them carefully, we will find few clues to the author and his +personality. He does not dwell upon any special theme with marked +enthusiasm. He does not comment or give moral judgments upon his +characters from which we could infer his own sympathies or his own +point of view. He simply in a few well chosen sentences sets out a +situation confronting some broken souls and bodies and he objectively +pictures a little incident that explains the situation. It is useless +for us to ask him why these things happen. They simply do and that is +all there is to it. + +In the beginning there was a slight touch of symbolism in his works +as in the _Road_, the pilgrimage of a man through life, nameless and +unidentified. He leaves his mother and starts out through the world. He +sees people in their agony and despair. At night they lie like stones +one by the other. His strength rises and wanes again when he finds his +mother’s grave, he sobs with dry eyes. She does not answer him when +he calls. “He ran from grave to grave, as autumn flowers. When he had +passed one hundred graves, the one hundred first was his. He fell down +to it, as he had long ago to his mother’s bosom.” + +This was the early phase of Stefanyk’s work but he did not long remain +at this level. His characters speedily become more individualized +and if there is a special symbol that we may deduce from his works +to describe the people whom he presents, it is as fallen leaves +blown along on the autumn wind. No one understands them nor do they +understand themselves. + +So in the _News_. “In the village there was the news that Grits +Letyuchy had drowned his little girl in the river. He wanted to drown +the older one, but she begged off. After his wife Gritishka died, he +suffered misfortunes. He could not care for his children without a +wife. No one wanted to marry him, for besides the children there were +also poverty and need. Grits suffered for two full years with his young +children. No one knew about him, how he lived, what he did, although +neighbors were very near. They said only that Grits for a whole winter +never lighted a fire in the hut and he and his children passed the +winter on the stove.” He takes the hungry children to the river and +throws the youngest Dotska in. The older one Handzynya begs off, “Daddy +don’t drown me, don’t drown me, don’t drown me.” He relents but tells +her that Dotska will be better off than she. However she can go to the +first hut and ask to spend the night and then try for a position to +care for a child. He himself starts to ford the river but changes his +mind and goes to the bridge. + +There is no moral judgment on the action of Grits. The poor man is at +the end of his physical and moral powers but Stefanyk does not explain +it. He does not condemn him. He merely in plain, unadorned language +describes the course of events. + +No one in the village knows how Grits lives, although the neighbors are +very near. The old village spirit has vanished. In the stories of Marko +Vovchok, the peasants are ready to help one another. They sympathize +with the unfortunate. They are ready to share their last crumb with one +another. Here even that spirit is gone. The members of the village are +enemies one to another or at best are impartial and neutral observers +as is the author of the story. We have travelled far from the days when +the chief cause of peasant suffering was the flogging by the arrogant +and haughty lord. The peasants are free but they are free to starve and +Stefanyk is not interested in those who have carved out a secure place +for themselves in the village community. + +Or let us take _The Family of Les_. Les steals a sack of barley from +his wife to sell it at the inn and secure something to drink. She +follows him with her two boys, one eight and one ten years old and +makes a scene. Then she knocks him down and orders the children to +beat their father roundly. Finally she goes home with them in mortal +terror that their father will return in the night and take vengeance. +All the tragedy of drunkenness is described, all the pathos and despair +of the poor mother who cannot work enough to take care of her children +and the inn keeper. There is no attempt at presenting a roseate view +of peasant life. Misery, need, want, that is all the unfortunates +know. It is what has been in the past and all that they can expect +in the future. Yet there is more to it than this for again Stefanyk +brings out the complicated psychology of an event which might seem at +first sight simple. Thus the mother realizes that she could receive +assistance from the state if her husband were crippled whereas she +could have no relief, if he were merely drunk. Likewise the father is +willing to suffer at the hands of his children and even takes off his +overcoat so that their light blows can inflict greater pain upon him. +Family feeling has taken a strange turn and the mother appears more +like a female animal defending her young than she does as a member of +a civilized community but Stefanyk gives clue after clue to the varied +reactions of the individuals which are by no means simple. + +We have the same sort of peasant cynicism in the _Blue Booklet_ (or is +it really a picturing of the despair that comes when a man is finally +broken?). Antin has lost his wife and his two children and alone in the +world, he has no solace left but drink. He loses his land and then his +little hut and takes the blue employment book to start out in the world +alone. He flaunts his poverty in the village inn and names the people +to whom he has lost everything but he boasts “I haven’t a cent, but I +will drink. I will drink with our people, I’ll go to ruin with them. +Let them know how I have left the village. Go, I have the blue booklet +in my pocket. Now that is my hut and my field and my gardens. I’m going +with it to the end of the world! A booklet from the emperor, I have +all doors opened to me. Everywhere. Among gentlemen and Jews and every +faith.” Antin has ceased to belong. He has passed out as so many of +Stefanyk’s heroes from the normal humdrum life which at best may bring +a normal respectable living or at least a slow starvation. + +Death and preparation for death is another favorite theme. Take +_Katrusya_ for example. The poor girl is dying of tuberculosis. With +the last of their money the family take her to a doctor but the comment +they make is “Peasants do not need to go to doctors. He tells you to +drink a lot of milk, or eat some light meat or drink some liquor, or +eat white bread or something like that (all things not obtainable on +a peasant’s income). It can help the gentry, but it won’t help in +our class. Therefore let her die as she is.” A neighbor replies. “Do +you think the doctors give the peasants the same medicine that they +give the gentry or the Jews? Therefore let her die as she is.” They +look at Katrusya and say, “There is nothing on her as on a leaf that +has been torn away from the tree.” So death comes on but this symbol +of the fallen leaf is a favorite one with Stefanyk. Indeed most of +his characters are just that. They are the unsuccessful, the poor +devils who have been torn away from the tree of life and yet there is +something human and touching in their misery and their despair. + +For an example of characters drawn from the wealthier classes we have +the _Basarabi_. They had been an old and brutal race which as overseers +had mercilessly driven the peasants in the days of forced labor. One of +them during the Turkish wars had murdered seven little children. Now +in their decline they were little better although they are well-to-do +peasants. The old vitality of the race is gone and with the ill +concealed hatred of the other peasants and the disordered minds of the +family, suicide becomes the rule rather than the exception. Tomas who +has been cut down in time, tells the rest of the family of the pangs of +conscience and of the weird spirits that hang around him and drive him +to his deed. The doctors ascribe it all to nerves but even at this the +gruesome story so impresses another of the clan, Mikolay, that he goes +out into the night to commit the same deed to the consternation of the +others. It is typical of the decline of a family and in the Galician +setting there is something of the studied horror of Edgar Allen Poe and +the other writers who set forth the degeneration of a once tyrannical +family. It is longer than most of the works of Stefanyk, for it +contains more of a story with a perspective over generations. It is +rare that he refers back to the days of the past. For the most part +his stories deal with an event in the present and he assumes as his +background the whole degeneration of a community under the influence +of alcohol, Jewish tavern keepers and grinding poverty. It is highly +significant for Stefanyk’s attitude that he chooses as his horrible +examples no outsiders but one of those Ukrainian families which had +prospered in the past by devious and unmentionable methods. + +For a long while Stefanyk gave up writing and then during the exciting +years after the First World War he returned to literature. His later +stories were of the same type as the earlier ones. They had the same +compressed form, the same careful workmanship but there was something +different about them. He had grown during the years of silence and had +come to find more positive qualities in his poor folk. He shows their +sufferings in the war, when the peasants of Western Ukraine came to +feel toward the Russians, the Moskali, what had been mentioned again +and again in the writings of the people from Great Ukraine. Thus in +_Maria_, the old woman comes to meet the Kozaks in the village and she +is surprised that they being Ukrainian also respect Shevchenko. In the +_Sons_, an old peasant realizes that his sons have gone to fight for +Ukraine. On his return from seeing the last one off, he finds his wife +dead before the painting of the Blessed Virgin and in a fit of simple +religion, not without a bitter undertone, he appeals to the Blessed +Virgin to care for his home for he has given not one but two sons for a +great cause. + +There has come a new enlightenment in the village, a new feeling that +the people have some part to play other than to be mere hewers of wood +and drawers of water. It is a sign of the deepening of the national +consciousness, of that tendency that Franko had hoped for and in which +he had believed. The Ukraine is now a real thing even to the humblest +and the most underprivileged and along with this there is a growing +tendency of hostility to the Polish landowners and bureaucrats. They +had hardly appeared in the earlier stories where Stefanyk had been +describing merely little sketches of peasant life taken without any +background except the misery and suffering of the village. + +It brings about a new atmosphere of hope, a deeper confidence in the +capacity of the peasants. There is more thought, more conscious guiding +of their own affairs. They are no longer satisfied to accept their fate +without questioning and to pass from the scene without a murmur. Yet +they are fundamentally the same people. With the same temptations and +vices. + +Take for example, “_She is the Earth_,” where the Bukovina refugees +make their way to the north. Old Danilo has brought his family with +him but his wife is silent. From the time when they abandoned their +little farm before the onrushing armies, she has remained still and +silent. Old Semen, the same type of man, advises the newcomer to go +home. “An old bird must not leave its old nest, for it is not able to +build another. It is better that its head grows cold in its old nest +than in a hollow on a strange road.” He warns against following the +lords and the Jews. “The Emperor has his purse open for them, but the +purse is closed for you....” “Our work is with the earth; you abandon +it, you are lost, you cling to it, it rakes out all your strength from +you, it fills your soul with its hands; you fall down to it, you bend +your back, it fills your veins, for that you have flocks and herds, and +haystacks. For your strength it gives you a hut full of children and +grandchildren, who laugh as silver bells, and bloom like poplars.... +Don’t go, Danilo, with the lords and the Jews, don’t seek the tsar, +for you do not need the tsar; there is always someone to come to the +farm to collect the taxes.” And it is only then that the old woman +finds her voice and says,--“Let us go home, Danilo, let us go home.” +“And when the sun rose, the old men parted, they kissed their black +hands, and the red sun threw their shadows across the boundary far +along the earth.” + +This is the creed of the peasant, the creed of the earth, and it was +a new note for Stefanyk. It is perhaps too optimistic. It perhaps +shows a narrow conception of life but it is the fundamental essence of +the peasant wisdom put in a simple form. It opens a new vista to the +reader, it gives a psychological motive and a philosophy that had been +hitherto lacking in his work. Now in his later stories he ventures to +give the world and his characters some elements of philosophy other +than the cynical or coldly unmoral picture of human dissolution and +disaster. + +Stefanyk was working toward a deeper and a more satisfactory philosophy +of life under the pressure of the events of the World War. Yet his +basis was the impartial observation of the poor material condition of +the average Galician village in the period when the old safeguards had +been removed by the abolition of feudal powers and when the individual +peasant was not yet effectively trained to stand for himself. + +He writes of a transition period when the peasant was left almost +entirely alone to stand upon his own two feet and when he was not +prepared to do so. The peasant exists under the implacable rule of the +erstwhile master and the no more tender mercies of the tavern keeper +in the village (usually a Jew) and hence it is that again and again +Stefanyk attacks the gentry and the Jews, the two classes in Galician +society that seemed to get along, while the hard working peasant gave +to both all of his hard earned money. For those peasants who had +solved the problem and who were able to live and get along, Stefanyk +has nothing to say but in his time the refuge for all of these was +ultimately America. The still living ambition to succeed drove the +peasant to sell everything and emigrate to the United States or Canada +where he could be free to become a man and had some prospects of +solving his own problems. + +This was the period that Stefanyk described and his knowledge of +the lives and thoughts of the people he set forth in exquisite and +carefully worked out stories in which every word is important. No +writer up to this time in Ukrainian had been so economical in his use +of material. No one had been so compressed in his style and language. +Stefanyk was a supreme artist in a particularly difficult medium. His +stories had the finish of a miniature but they are not to be neglected +because of the brevity of their material. With the exception of Franko, +he was the leading author produced in Western Ukraine during the past +seventy-five years and his sense of literary values, his command of +language and his appreciation of the significant episodes in life +make him an author of whom any literature may well be proud. He dealt +with a restricted field but in this field he knew how to show the +important elements not only for his people but for humanity and he is +one of those authors who under the guise of picturing the down and +downtrodden, the failures and the misfits, have known to show them as +human beings with many a toil and sorrow but still profoundly human +and profoundly worthy of pity and assistance, yet without any attempt +to include any form of propaganda and without adding anything that +conflicts with pure literature in the strictest sense of the word. + + + + +CHAPTER FOURTEEN + +OLES + + +At the end of the nineteenth century a new poetry spread rapidly over +Europe. Directly or indirectly this traced its source to the French +symbolists and decadents, to Verlaine and Mallarmé and the other +writers of that period. Then came the influence of Maeterlinck and the +movement was in full course. However, as the movement with its emphasis +on aestheticism and beauty and its frequent desire to shock the +bourgeoisie spread among the Slavs, it gradually sought a philosophical +basis for the new developments. + +The new authors rapidly advanced the technique of poetry and at the +same time they broadened the range of materials which were regarded as +proper subjects. For a half century there had been predominant a form +of realism which conceived as within its scope only the contemporary +lives of the people. It remained to go outside of the conventional +and to choose subjects from the entire field of recorded history. +Lesya Ukrainka had started this with her dramas and sketches from the +antique world. Even this was not enough and as the symbolistic movement +expanded, the authors flew from the earth to the heavens, to other +planets, to imaginary scenes and they sought in all these areas that +which they considered beauty in their own imaginations. Many schools +of thought arose among the new artists and basking in the light of +self-adulation, they cared little for the old-fashioned social motifs +which had been instrumental in training the people for the last half +century. They cared little more for the enthusiastic admiration of the +great masses who were beginning to appreciate at long last the older +writers and were content to read new and ever new reinterpretations of +the old themes. + +Ukrainian literature was no exception to the general rule, and +around 1890 at the very end of the century the new movement made its +appearance. It rapidly forced into the background the older writers. In +the meanwhile life was changing and the symbolists and decadents were +being attacked on all sides. The champions of the old order had not +spared even Franko for his _Withered Leaves_ and they were even more +concerned with the vagaries of the still younger authors. + +Yet it cannot be denied that with all their weaknesses, these new men +were doing a great work in the adaptation of Ukrainian literature to +world models. They were rapidly forcing the literature from a narrow +and almost provincial field to a world arena and if in the beginning +they cut themselves off from their less fortunate fellow men, the +greater writers, once they had mastered the forms steadily began a +return to the world which they had formerly scorned. Yet that return +was no mere repetition of the past, no slavish abjuring of the ideas +that they had formerly admired. It was rather a realization of the fact +that literature did have other purposes than the purely photographic +repetition of details of ethnography and social philosophy, that it +could affect the readers by the evocation of various moods, and could +give them a deeper understanding of some phases of human psychology +by the use of symbols more or less easy to penetrate than it could by +plain matter of fact narration and bald statement. In other words there +was again a conscious approach to that method of exposition which had +been unconsciously present in the mind of a great genius as Shevchenko. +His _Great Grave_ is as much of a symbolistic poem as is any work of +the present writers but he did it with the spark of genius and with his +eye directed at the history of his nation even more than at individual +psychology. + +The author who was to develop this new poetry to its height was O. +Oles, the pen name of Oleksander Kandyba who was born in Russian +Ukraine in 1878. Like many of the more modern writers, he was well +educated and from 1903 on, he was recognized as the most outstanding +poet since Shevchenko. Yet at no time could he have the appeal of such +a man as Franko, for Oles with all of his talent was still pitching his +works on a level which was inaccessible to the average educated man and +he could be admired and understood in many cases only by a relatively +small audience. + +The early years of the twentieth century saw many changes in Ukraine +both in Russia and Galicia. In Russia there were the high hopes at +the time of the Revolution of 1905, when it seemed again as if with +the abolition of the strict rules of the censorship there would be +presented favorable conditions for work. Almost over night there sprang +into existence new journals, new writers, new hopes. Then again the +clouds descended and the reactionary regimes that followed tried to +go back to the old days when Ukraine seemed non-existent. Between +1905 and 1910 many of the new journals again passed out of existence +and the despairing may have thought that all hope was again lost. Yet +much had been gained. The Ukrainians had learned to group themselves +into political parties and other organizations. They had secured a +larger nucleus of a reading public and that public could not be easily +disintegrated again. The time was past when an imperial fiat abolishing +the very name of Ukraine and wiping out the Sich could discourage and +almost destroy the entire movement. + +So too in Galicia. The Ukrainian population there was becoming more +self-conscious. The students were demanding more and more vigorously +the introduction of Ukrainian courses in the University of Lviv. The +contacts with the Russian Ukraine were growing stronger and that +exchange of writers and published books which had been going on for +nearly a half century was no longer a tender plant which could be +shattered by the slightest blow. + +Then came the stirrings of the First World War and the final collapse +of the two empires of Russia and Austria-Hungary. For a few months +Ukraine was again free. The two republics of Great Ukraine and Western +Ukraine came together with Professor Hrushevsky as the President of the +Rada and there came a rapid flowering of the national culture. The work +of the preceding century had borne fruit. Alas! It was only for a short +time and then with the renewed division of the country, between the +Soviet Union, Poland, Rumania and Czechoslovakia, it seemed as if the +hopes of all had died again. + +During all this period Oles continued his work, grouping together words +of encouragement and lamentation, personal lyrics and poems with a +definite social content which had a real meaning for his countrymen. +His moods varied with the political conditions. They were strong and +cheerful when the outlook was hopeful. They were sad and depressed in +moments of adversity but he never lost hope and he never felt that his +work in the service of social ideals bound the wings of his talent +or interfered with the artistic value of his poems. When misfortune +finally came to Ukraine, he withdrew to Galicia and then became one of +that group which moved to Prague and from there he poured out his poems +of despair, of the sadness of the emigré but always with the superb +confidence that Ukraine would rise again and that her sons would some +day be happy and free in their own land. + + In moments of encouragement he can sing: + I’ll weep no more. My sorrow I will fetter + In chains of strongest steel. + My people are still burdened with their fetters + + Their wounds their woes reveal. + And all my soul + I show forth with their wounds. + + I’ll sing no more. And nightly in the struggle + The iron swords sing loud. + The swords cut deep into the people’s vitals + And call a race uncowed. + Then let my sword + Sing for me in the strife. + +Or again Oles with his eye upon nature and the same hope in his breast +will sing: + + Thou marvelous and wondrous night! + Just yesterday a coverlet of snow was sifting down, + And now to-day a change ... so warm and bright, + With here and there a pushing upward from the frozen ground. + + Know this: ’twill be the same with man.... + Such miracles there be!... Upon a certain day + Men everywhere, free and of equal rank shall stand + And seize the visions dreamed along the way. + +So too with his confidence in man’s power to gain his goal by fighting +and denying even the powers of nature that endeavor to stop him.... + + Make sport of us, ye winds, and mock us, thunder, + Unswerving we tread a beckoning pathway, + Our young breasts we raise to defy the wind’s power, + Thunder we deafen with paeans of victory. + + Only he wins his goal who, unmoved, presses forward, + Who burns with a passion that never consumes. + Life’s carpet spread out lures his youthful steps onward, + The crown Death shall weave him immortally blooms. + + More faith in our cause! Raise higher our banner! + Tears, groans, and misgivings ... begone from the fray! + Life rides a winged charger, + Spreading flowers on our way. + + (Translated by A. P. Coleman) + +In his early poems as _Anxiety and Joy Embraced_, Oles harps on that +theme which was so dear to the early symbolistic authors in all +European countries that sorrow and joy are closely connected, that in +nature the extremes meet and that it is the duty of the individual +to embrace both as parts of the great existence of the universe. In +moments of depression he returns to the same theme with an almost +pantheistic interpretation of nature as but an external manifestation +of what is within the human heart. + +It was an age of symbolism. In Russian literature it was the time of +Aleksander Blok with his symbolic dramas and of Leonid Andreyev with +such grim and disillusioning plays as _The Life of Man and Anathema_ +where the characters are universal types as man and woman. Oles follows +in the same traditions and produced many lyrical and symbolistic plays +as _On the Road to a Legend_ and the _Tragedy of the Heart_. They are +really literary dramas better suited to be read than produced. + +Very rarely are the characters personalized. There is He and She +and a Girl, a Gentleman and a Lady. They are merely symbols for +Oles to indicate the involved and contradictory, self-including and +self-excluding universe and man. They deal with the memories of +the past and the hopes for the future but Oles realizes that there +is no clear line of demarcation and that no one of the alternating +and contradictory emotions of the human heart and emotions and mind +can ever win a clear and definite triumph. Man and the universe are +mysteries and we can only hope to approach their underlying meanings +by indirection and symbols. All of this makes them very difficult for +theatrical representation but they easily belong in the masterpieces of +Ukrainian literature. + +Again following the tastes of the day, Oles translated into Ukrainian +Longfellow’s _Hiawatha_. It was one of the many translations of this +poem that were made early in the twentieth century into the Slavonic +languages. Of all the masterpieces of American poetry, not one has +taken a firmer hold on Slavonic thought and feelings than has the story +of the Indian chief and lawgiver. Hiawatha became almost a symbol +of America and Oles in making his translation marked an enormous +step in the placing of his native literature on the basis of a world +literature, in which the world masterpieces existed in adequate and +poetical translations. + +Oles belongs to the greatest masters of his people’s literature but +he can never be popular in the sense of a Shevchenko or a Franko. He +will always be a poet’s poet, a man whose art requires sympathy and +understanding. At times in the height of national indignation or of +national jubilation, he emerges from his cultured seclusion and his +study of human moods to express something clear and definite. For the +most part he remains within the mystic shrine of pure art and deep +thinking and feeling as one of those poets who represent the higher +aspirations of modern civilized man. + +The recognition of Oles as a great poet by his people is a sign of the +growing maturity of modern Ukrainian literature. It is a sign that the +people are securing a new intellectual class, are acquiring a modern +culture, are thinking in modern ways, and sharing modern emotions. +It is a sign that Ukrainian culture is deepening constantly and that +with favorable conditions it would include all those gamuts of emotion +and thought that have been fitted into those literatures which have +developed naturally and freely over long periods of time. + + + + +CHAPTER FIFTEEN + +AFTER 1918 + + +The brief independence of the Ukrainian National Republic and its fall +could not fail to have catastrophic results upon the literature. The +whole trend of Ukrainian literary development had been to develop along +those lines on which the other literatures of the world had travelled. +There had been a constant effort to establish close contact between the +Ukrainians in Russia and those in Austria-Hungary. Finally there had +come with Franko, Lesya Ukrainka, and the later authors at the very end +of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries, a group +of writers and critics who were familiar with what was going on abroad +and had striven to acclimate at home the new methods and ideas as they +were rising to prominence. + +All that was changed. New barriers were erected between the different +parts of the dismembered country and these barriers were even more +impenetrable than those which had been erected by the severe decrees of +Russia at the middle of the nineteenth century. Then it was possible +for the Ukrainian authors in Russia to print in Galicia and have their +works smuggled back into Russian Ukraine. Now the censorship was +ruthless and efficient. Some of the authors as Oles, the last of the +great names who remained alive, emigrated to Prague to live the sterile +life of an emigré. Lesya Ukrainka had died just before the war, Franko +had died before the collapse of Austria-Hungary. Stefanyk soon returned +to silence. + +The early enthusiasm for independence produced a large number of +promising and talented young writers who eagerly were adapting futurism +and imaginism and the most modern literary movements to the Ukrainian +scene. Such authors as Pavlo Tychyna (b. 1891) attracted more than +favorable mention and the leading historian of literature, Serhey +Yefremiv, in 1923 could speak glowingly of the groups of younger +authors who were bidding fair to herald a new and still more glorious +period. All this was soon changed. + +In Poland some scientific and literary work was still possible. The +Shevchenko Scientific Society was able to continue. A Ukrainian +Scientific Institute was established in Warsaw in 1929 and accomplished +a great deal. Such writers as Bohdan Lepky (b. 1872), professor of +Ukrainian literature at the University of Krakow, was able to continue +writing and a number of promising young authors as Ulas Samchuk +appeared. At the same time the Czechoslovak government encouraged the +formation of a Ukrainian University and Institute in Prague. But it +was hardly the time for fruitful work. The dark shadow of Fascism was +beginning to appear upon the horizon and threatening an overturn of +life as it had long been known. + +In the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic the problem of communism +forced itself ever more to the foreground. It became imperative for the +authors to write on those themes and in that manner which was regarded +as politically reliable by the authorities. At first for errors +recantation was regarded as sufficient punishment, but from about 1928, +the Soviet critics denounce in scathing language as bourgeois Ukrainian +nationalists all those authors who went beyond the appointed line and +that line varied with the exigencies of Soviet politics in Moscow. + +Some of the writers as Tychyna made their peace with the Soviets +and the Soviet Encyclopedias can speak of his growing revolutionary +optimism in his later works. He had been one of the masters of the +younger generation with his melodic songs on the rebirth of Ukraine. +Now he became another of the Communist poets writing in praise of the +Party and sharply condemning their foes. + +On the other hand, Mikola Khvylovy (b. 1893), one of the more talented +of the prose writers, passed on an opposite course. Khvylovy had been +far to the left and had counted himself one of the first Ukrainian +proletarian writers. As the pressure grew, he sought and sought in vain +to establish in Ukrainian literature a reliance and a contact with +Western culture in contrast to the ever increasing dependence upon +Moscow. This was interpreted as a Fascist plan for the development +of Ukraine. Thus A. Khvylya, a Soviet critic, wrote about Khvylovy’s +novel _Wood Snipes_, “Khvylovy carries his heroes on a literary horse +to prove that Soviet Ukraine is not Soviet, that the dictatorship +of the proletariat is not the dictatorship of the proletariat, that +the national policy is only deceit; that the Ukrainian people is +exclusively a benighted, unfree people, that a rebirth is coming, that +finally the party itself is an organization of hypocrites. Khvylovy in +a very talented way sets forth these ideas in the _Wood Snipes_ and +having made such an analysis of our reality proves that the one hope, +which can enkindle millions, bring to the height of a pathos for the +struggle for Ukraine, for the people is national rebirth, the rebirth +of the nation.... In the beginning it is necessary to create firm +cadres of a new Ukrainian tempered intelligentsia. In the beginning +there must come a tempered Ukrainian Longfellow, to lead the Ukrainian +people to the state of another great social movement, and only after +this can there be new economists, new workmen, to lead the economies +and social life of our country to other days.... The only means of +safety is nationalism. It is necessary to see to it, that Thermidor +develop to the creation of a powerful Ukrainian national state. And +there is no doubt that if a Ukrainian ‘communist’ does not do it, a +Russian ‘communist’ will do it, for he will act against him, against +the Ukrainian, in order to hand over to his own Fascist ‘a single +indivisible’ (land). In the minds of the heroes of Khvylovy, the +questions are either for a Russian or a Ukrainian fascism. There is no +third course.” + +Confronted with such attacks on his novels and publicistic works, +Khvylovy shot himself on May 13, 1933, and he was only one of a +large number that passed from the literary scene. Serhey Yefremiv, +the literary historian, was liquidated as a writer. Prof. Mikhail +Hrushevsky, the historian and former President of the Ukrainian +National Republic, died in exile. Many others were shot or committed +suicide because the Marxists and the Communists who had hoped for the +development of some independent intellectual physiognomy within Soviet +Ukraine were regarded as equally hostile to the state as were the +bourgeois and the anti-Marxians. + +The language was allowed to exist. No one ventured to repeat the words +of Valuyev in the sixties that there never was, is not, and never +will be a Ukrainian language. It was clear, however, that there never +was, is not, and never will be a Ukrainian culture distinct from the +general Soviet culture within the Soviet Union. The measures taken in +the twentieth century go further than any in the nineteenth. At that +time supervision and censorship were primarily of the external form. +Now they are of the internal content. The modern ideological state +cannot tolerate the diversity, the privileges that were granted by the +old fashioned despots, no matter how cruel and tyrannical they were. +Everything must be standardized, must be run strictly according to +pattern, and most of the younger Ukrainian authors in Eastern Ukraine +have learned it to their cost and have been silenced or have submitted. + +The Second World War has swept the entire area into its vortex. The +Ukrainians of all groups and classes in both sections of the Ukrainian +lands have learned that the Nazis are but carrying out on a broader +and more terrible scale the same policy that the Germans did in 1918, +the using of Ukraine as a mere granary, and that they have no more +intention than in the past of allowing any human rights or liberties +to the Ukrainian population. Fire and sword, famine and disease are +destroying the population as they did twenty-five years ago. Yet that +period was followed by the brief outburst of the national spirit that +accompanied the brief moment of independence. Then amid the ruined +conditions of the land there suddenly appeared, poets, prose writers, +scholars, men of every intellectual calling. They left their imprint +upon Ukrainian culture and the events of the past years have not been +able to destroy all that they accomplished. Ukrainian literature which +under adversity has developed so well during the past century and a +half cannot have been brought to an untimely end. Its revival depends +upon victory and the triumph of the human spirit over regimentation. +When that moment comes, Ukrainian literature will take its next step +and march hand in hand with the other great literatures of the world. + +The only guide to the future is the experience of the past and the +century and a half during which Ukrainian literature has developed into +being the chief expression of the Ukrainian people leads us to expect +even more in the future and to look with confidence at the Ukrainian +genius. + +It was a happy instinct that led Kotlyarevsky at the close of the +eighteenth century to put into literary form the speech of millions +of serfs and to revamp the old archaic Church Slavonic so as to form +a modern literary language. It was still more fortunate that he gave +to the new development a democratic flavor and a sympathy for the +downtrodden and the oppressed which have ever since remained as the +fundamental message and keynote of Ukrainian literature. + +A half century later, one of the greatest of all Slavonic poets, Taras +Shevchenko, set to work and added to it his own noble conceptions +of the human spirit. Devotion to the cause of his people and to the +highest ideals of human liberty was his especial contribution to the +language which he molded into being, a true poetic language. + +From that time Ukrainian literature has not lacked authors of varying +degrees of excellence and of vision to comment from generation to +generation on the aspirations of their people and of humanity. They +have followed the various social movements of the times and they have +broadened their range of interests from the narrow area in which they +lived to include every land where the Ukrainian people have been living +under alien rule. + +More than that, they have realized that no literature can live and +develop for itself alone. They have come more and more into contact +with the great movements of world literature. They have felt themselves +a part of the international world of culture, of that brotherhood of +mankind that has been so brutally attacked in the last years. With +each generation the outstanding authors have gained a broader outlook +on life, a closer contact with and a fuller understanding of the best +that was being done in the world. They have worked hard and have +succeeded in placing Ukrainian literature on an equality with the other +literatures of the Slavonic nations and of Europe as a whole. + +There is a direct and unswerving line of service to the democratic +ideals of humanity and to the cause of the people from Kotlyarevsky +through Shevchenko and Franko and Lesya Ukrainka to the present time. +It is a line of which the Ukrainian people may well be proud and we +can be sure that their ideals will not die but that in the newer and +better world after the war the goals for which they have struggled +will be realized and that Ukrainian literature and culture will play a +prominent part in the development of the coming centuries. + + + + +BIBLIOGRAPHY + + +GENERAL + + Ukrainian Literature--“The Atheneum,” London, Aug. 29, 1874, No. 2, + 444. “Saturday Review,” London, Vol. 39, June, 1875. + + Songs of Ukraine--(translations of Ukrainian songs with notes) by F. + F. Livesey, New York, J. M. Dent & Sons; 1916. 175 pp. + + Old Folk Songs (translations of Ukrainian songs) by F. R. Livesey, + “Poetry,” Vol. 14, pp. 24-29 (April, 1919). + + Ukraine and its Songs, by F. R. Livesey, “Poetry,” Vol. 14, pp. + 36-40. (April, 1919). + + Ukraine in Literature--“Literary Digest.” Vol. 58, pp. 29-30 (Aug. + 31, 1918), reprinted in “Living Age,” Vol. 298, pp. 752-755 (Sept. + 21, 1918). + + Our Little Ukrainian Cousin by Clare V. Winlow. Page & Co. Boston, + 1925. + + The Story of Ukraine, by Marie S. Gambal. Ukrainian Workingmen’s + Association, Scranton, Pa., 1932; 102 pp. ill. + + Ukrainian Songs and Lyrics, by Honore Ewach, Winnipeg, Canada, 1933. + + A Short History of Ukrainian Literature, by Rev. Mikola Kinash, + translated by Stephen Shumeyko, “The Ukrainian Weekly,” issues Feb. + 9, 1934 to April 18, 1936, incl. + + A Bird’s Eye View of Ukrainian Literature, by Stephen Shumeyko. + Jubilee Book of the Ukrainian National Association, Jersey City, N. + J., 1934, pp. + + Spirit of Ukraine (contains chapters on Ukrainian Literature), by D. + Snowyd, New York, 1935, 152 pp. illus. + + Brief Survey of Ukrainian Literature, by Arthur Prudden Coleman, + Ukrainian University Society, New York, 1936, pp. 23. + + Masha, the Little Goose Girl (stories about Ukraine), by Marguerita + Rudolph, New York, Macmillan, 1939, 64 pp. + + +INDIVIDUAL AUTHORS + +1. Ivan Kotlyarevsky. + + The Aeneid of Kotlyarevsky, by Clarence A. Manning, “Classical + Weekly,” Pittsburgh, Pa. Vol. 36. (Dec. 7, 1942) + +2. Hrihori Kvitka. + + Marusia (a novel) translated by F. R. Livesey, with introduction by + Lord Tweedsmuir: New York, E. P. Dutton & Co. 1940, pp. 219. + +3. Taras Shevchenko. + + Life-- + + A South Russian Poet, by Charles Dickens, Jr. (Morfil) “All Year + Around Weekly,” London, May, 1877. Vol. 18, pp. 224-230, No. 440. + + Out of a Kozak They Made a Valet, and Out of a Valet a Genius was + Born, by Van Wyck Brooks, “The Freeman,” Vol. 3, Aug. 10, 1921, pp. + 526-527. + + Taras Shevchenko, Bard of Ukraine (biographical outline with + some translations by Voynich, Semenyna, Hunter) by Prof. Dmytro + Doreshenko of Prague, with preface by Prof. Clarence A. Manning. + United Ukrainian Organizations of the United States, New York, + 1936, pp. 59. + + Shevchenko and Women, by Dr. Luke Myshuha (translated by W. + Semenyna). New York, 1940, 94 pp. + + Taras Shevchenko by Ivan Franko, “Slavonic Review” London, Vol. + III, pp. 110-116. + + Works-- + + Six Lyrics from the Ruthenian of Taras Shevchenko, translated by E. + L. Voynich, London, 1911. E. Mathews, pp. 64. + + The Kobzar of Ukraine, by A. J. Hunter, Winnipeg, 1922, 144 pp. + illus. + + Taras’ Night, translated by S. Volska and C. E. Beechofer. + + Preface of the Hajdamaki, translated by Clarence A. Manning, + Columbia University Course in Literature, New York, 1928, Vol. 10, + pp. 486-489. + + ’Tis all the Same to Me; Each Day Goes By. The Roaring Dnieper; + Ukraine Today. At the Roadside, and other verses by Shevchenko, + translated by Waldimir Semenyna, “The Ukrainian Weekly,” 1933-1936. + + Thoughts of an Exile, translated by Helen Lubach, “Ukrainian Life,” + August, 1940. + +4. Panteleimon Kulish. + + Orisia (short story) translated by Helen Kinash Siegler, “The + Ukrainian Weekly,” December 5, 1936. + + Black Council (Historical Novel of the 17th century), translated by + Stephen Shumeyko. “The Ukrainian Weekly,” August 8, 1942 to September + 18, 1943, incl. + +5. Marko Vovchok. + + Limerivna (short story), translated by T. L. Wissotsky-Kuntz. “The + Ukrainian Weekly,” Dec. 12-19, 1936. + +6. Ivan Franko. + + Life-- + + A Voice from Ukraine (biographical sketch and translation of a + number of poems) by Percival Cundy, Roland, Manitoba, 1932, 74 pp. + + Ivan Franko, by Prof. Clarence A. Manning. Ukrainian University + Society, New York, 1938, 33 pp. + + Life and Works of Ivan Franko, by Stephen Shumeyko. “The Ukrainian + Weekly,” May 11 to August 24, 1940 incl. + + Works-- + + Taras Shevchenko. “Slavonic Review.” + + Doctor Bessedwisser (satiric short story) translated by Waldimir + Semenyna, “The Ukrainian Weekly,” July 11, 1936. + + Naimyt. Eternal Revolutionist. Great Anniversary and other poems + translated by Waldimir Semenyna, “The Ukrainian Weekly,” Sept. + 3,-Oct. 1, 1938, incl. + + Moses, (epic poem) translated by Waldimir Semenyna with + biographical sketch by Stephen Shumeyko. New York, 1936, 93 pp. + + In the Blacksmith Shop, (short story), translated by John Panchuk, + “The Ukrainian Weekly,” April 3-May 1, 1937. + + Abu Kassim’s Slippers (poem) translated by Waldimir Semenyna, “The + Ukrainian Weekly,” Sept. 3-Oct. 1, 1938. + + Thorn in the Foot (novelette). Patrimony (novelette). The Legend of + Pilate (sketch). Little Myron (short story). Constitution for Hogs + (short story). The Blue Fox (short story). The Education of Hrytzko + (short story), translated by Stephen Shumeyko. “The Ukrainian + Weekly,” 1940. + + The Jay’s Wing (novelette), translated by R. L. Wissotsky-Kuntz. + “The Ukrainian Weekly,” Jan. 10-Feb. 7, 1941. + +7. Lesya Ukrainka. + + The Babylonian Captivity (drama), translated by S. Volska and C. E. + Beechofer, “Five Russian Plays with one from the Ukrainian,” London, + Trubner & Co. + +8. Mikhaylo Kotsyubinsky. + + Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (novelette), Written in the Book of + Life (short story), translated by Stephen Shumeyko, “The Ukrainian + Weekly,” Jan. 27-March 16, 1940 incl. + + Out of the Depths. Praised be Life (short stories), translated by C. + A. Andrusyshen. “The Ukrainian Weekly,” March-April, 1940. + + By the Sea (short story) translated by R. V. Orlans, “The Ukrainian + Weekly,” May 2-May 23, 1941, incl. + +9. Vasil Stefanyk. + + Stefanyk’s Own Story (autobiographical sketch) translated by Stephen + Shumeyko, “The Ukrainian Weekly,” May 20, 1939. + + The Burglar. Novel Incident. They Took Him Away. (Short stories), + translated by Stephen Shumeyko, “The Ukrainian Weekly,” Jan. 7-14, + 1937, Feb. 27, 1937, Sept. 23, 1939, respectively. + + Suicide (short story) translated by C. A. Andrusyshev, “Ukrainian + Life,” June, 1940. + + His Sons. Children of War (short stories) translated by Waldimir + Semenyna, “The Ukrainian Weekly,” Oct. 14, 1939, and Nov. 20, 1943, + respectively. + + Maple Leaves (short story), translated by R. L. Wissotsky-Kuntz, “The + Ukrainian Weekly,” Feb. 14, 1941. + + Their Land (short story), translated by Marie S. Gambal, “Ukrainian + Life,” Sept. 1941. + + The Dew (short story) translated by Stephen Davidovich, “The + Ukrainian Weekly,” Jan. 19, 1942. + +10. Bohdan Lepky. + + A Peaceful Death (short story) translated by Stephen Shumeyko. “The + Ukrainian Weekly,” Oct. 15, 1938. + + The Old Man (short story) translated by Stephen Shumeyko. “The + Ukrainian Weekly,” July 23, 1939. + + The Flower of Fortune (short story) translated by Stephen Shumeyko, + “The Ukrainian Weekly.” + + Visits from the Dead. Ready to Go (short stories) translated by J. + A., “Ukrainian Life,” April and June, 1941, respectively. + + + + +Transcriber’s Notes + + Spellings of proper nouns have been left as-is save as noted. + Inconsistent spelling of “folksongs”/“folk songs”/“folk-songs” has +been retained. + Use of “as” for “such as” has been retained. + Added Foreword and Introduction to Table of Contents. + p. 8 changed “indefencible” to “indefensible” + p. 12 changed “,” to “.” in “Poland. At about” + p. 12 changed “sucesses” to “successes” + p. 15 changed “innnovations” to “innovations” + p. 17 changed “right” to “rights” in “rights and privileges” + p. 19 changed “prentensions” to “pretensions” + p. 20 the close of the quote beginning “The greatest truth...” has +been left as-is + p. 21 changed “.” to “,” in “_one’s self_, _A friendly_” + p. 25 changed “Poltave” to “Poltava” in “theatre at Poltava” + p. 27 changed “the” to “that” in “forget that Kotlyarevsky” + p. 28 changed “Kotylarevsky’s” to “Kotlyarevsky’s” + p. 28 changed “naivite” to “naivete” + p. 28 added period to end of quoted stanza + p. 31 changed “Shakhovoskoy” to “Shakhovskoy” in “Shakhovskoy did not +know” + p. 32 changed “Shakhovoskoy” to “Shakhovskoy” (twice) + p. 35 changed “Kotleyarevsky” to “Kotlyarevsky” + p. 35 changed “penname” to “pen name” + p. 36 changed “countryment” to “countrymen” + p. 37 changed “skilfull” to “skillful” + p. 42 changed “appointd” to “appointed” + p. 43 changed “introuced” to “introduced” + p. 43 changed “Bulmer-Lytton” to “Bulwer-Lytton” + p. 44 changed “incluring” to “including” + p. 47 italicized “_Perebenda_” + p. 47 changed “These” to “There” in “There is less of” + p. 47 changed “,” to “.” in “passing of time. Shevchenko” + p. 52 changed “earliier” to “earlier” + p. 55 changed “awakend” to “awakened” + p. 60 added “in” before “1862” + p. 61 changed “?” to “.” in “That question was still to be answered.” + p. 68 changed “Russiian” to “Russian” + p. 72 changed “fougth” to “fought” + p. 72 changed “opening” to “opened” in “Maria Theresa opened in +Vienna” + p. 73 added “of” in “before the time of Kotlyarevsky” + p. 75 changed “desipte” to “despite” + p. 79 changed “one” to “on” in “on the other hand” + p. 86 changed “Franco” to “Franko” + p. 87 changed “time” to “times” and “poems” to “poem” in “at times as +in his poem _Ukraine_” + p. 92 italicized “_I_” in “_I hope against hope_” + p. 92 removed “.” following “without a name” + p. 92 changed “Artenis” to “Artemis” + p. 98 changed “Sketches” to “sketches” + p. 98 changed “finally chiselled” to “finely chiseled” + p. 100 changed “,” to “.” in “loses all contact with them. He” + p. 101 changed “seeemd” to “seemed” + p. 104 changed “tooks” to “took” in “took its rise” + p. 106 changed “Stefanik” to “Stefanyk” + p. 107 changed “an” to “a” in “like a female” + p. 119 changed “Czechslovak” to “Czechoslovak” + p. 119 removed comma following “Mikola Khvylovy” + p. 120 changed “physiogonomy” to “physiognomy” + p. 121 changed “down trodden” to “downtrodden” + p. 123 removed “1.” from “GENERAL” header + p. 123 changed “,” to “.” following “(April, 1919).” + p. 123 changed “Ukrzinian Natiokal” to “Ukrainian National” + p. 123 page range is missing for “A Bird’s Eye View of Ukrainian +Literature” + p. 124 added close quotes to “The Ukrainian Weekly” + p. 125 changed “.” to “--” following “Life” and “Works” + p. 126 added close quotes to “Five Russian Plays with one from the +Ukrainian” + p. 126 changed “Michael” to “Mikhaylo” + p. 126 removed “Life” header before “By the Sea (short story)” +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 77771 *** |