by Tommaso Di Maria
Note: This is a guest post from Tommaso Di Maria, an Italian student at the University of Naples "L'Orientale" with a strong interest in Ukraine. After reaching out to HURI and attending a few of our HUSI Public Lectures, Tommaso wanted to share an excerpt from an Italian source on Ukrainian literature. He offers here his own translation of the chapter on Panteleimon Kulish from Oxana Pachlovska's Civiltà letteraria ucraina. We hope he will soon join us as a student at HUSI!
Introduction
My name is Tommaso Di Maria. I study Comparative Languages and Cultures (Russian and German) at the University of Naples “L’Orientale” in Italy. In my Russian course I met many Ukrainians - they account for one of the largest migrant communities in Naples - who choose to study Russian both because they have an advantage as Slavophones and because it offers more job opportunities. Getting to know them and their families, I came into contact with Ukrainian culture and immediately developed a passion which soon turned into an academic interest.
My university is the oldest school of Sinology and Oriental Studies in Europe. It offers a wide range of courses in many languages. For this reason, I am disappointed that Ukrainian is not taught there. I therefore came in contact with HURI and had the opportunity to attend the public online lectures this summer. In particular, during Professor Grabowicz's interesting talk on Taras Shevchenko and Panteleimon Kulish, I was able to interact with him by asking him questions about the existence of comprehensive manuals of Ukrainian literature in English. In Italian we have "Civiltà letteraria ucraina" (1998), an excellent work by Oxana Pachlovska, professor of Ukrainian Language and Literature at the Sapienza University of Rome. Professor Grabowicz mentioned the translation of Dmytro Chyzhevsky’s A History of Ukrainian Literature: From the 11th to the End of the 19th Century (1975), which was extended up to the early 20th century by Yuriy Lutsky, an intellectual of the Ukrainian diaspora in the United States, but there is nothing analogous to Pachlovska’s work in English.
However, Professor Grabowicz said that he and a group of scholars from Europe, North America and Ukraine are currently working on a new History of Ukrainian Literature “from the beginning to the present - not to the early 20th century, not to 1945, but to today, to 2020.” Already eight years in the works, the project is well advanced. The COVID situation interrupted their progress, but it could be published as early as next year. It will be an up-to-date work, not only in terms of including contemporary authors but also in its quality, Professor Grabowicz noted. For example, he said, the third of the four-volume Istoriya ukrayinskoy literaturi (Kyiv, 2014) presents a discussion of ‘Enlightenment realism,’ along with its discussion of Ivan Kotliarevsky. Professor Gabrowicz explained that Enlightenment realism exists only for the Russian sphere of influence, not the West, and is a misguided notion. “It is an attempt to justify socialist realism by projecting it back in time,” he said. This notion seems to be present in Pachlovska’s book too, but the new History of Ukrainian literature will be revisionist in this regard.
Without overlooking Taras Shevchenko, an author certainly better known than Panteleimon Kulish in Italy, the latter caught my attention to a greater extent. What fascinates me most about this author is his versatility, with activities and interests that mirror my own, such as folklore and translation. For that reason, I wanted to translate Pachlovska's chapter on Kulish into English, in order to allow HUSI students to read about Ukrainian literature also from sources available in other languages. I hope one day to be able to study in this school too, the only program where I can satisfy all my curiosities about the Ukrainian world and study in depth the various fields of Ukrainian studies that I am most passionate about: first of all Ukrainian nationalism, the Great Ruin, folklore and nineteenth-century literature.
Translation by Tommaso Di Maria
Note: What follows is a student translation and has not been verified or edited by the Institute. Google Translate was a primary aid in producing this glimpse at Italian resources on Ukrainian literature.
From: Oxana Pachlovska, Civiltà letteraria ucraina, 1998, pp. 556-563
Panteleimon Kulish
The “Ukrainian Jeremiah” and his time
Kulish (1819-1897), whose literary activity spans more than half a century, is one of the most important figures of this period. Along with Shevchenko and Kostomarov, he lays the foundations for a new literature and a new historical sensibility. Yevhen Malaniuk considers Kulish's work one of the two "sources" from which the new Ukraine draws. While Shevchenko represents in the highest degree “the explosion of the nation's subconscious,” Kulish best expresses the “tension of the nation's intellect.” In his name bitter literary quarrels broke out up to the 1930s. Poet, novelist, historian, ethnographer, literary critic, linguist, translator, he is "master in irritating public opinion" (M. Zerov), and a key figure for understanding the problems of Ukrainian culture of the time.
Born into a wealthy Cossack family of ancient lineage, he studied at the University of Kyiv. In the years 1843-1844 he met Shevchenko, Kostomarov and V. Bilozersky, whose sister (the writer known under the pseudonym of Hanna Barvinok) he married. Later he remained close to the circle of the "Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood.' Since 1845 he taught the Russian language in a St. Petersburg gymnasium. Arrested for suspected connivance with the "Cyril-Methodians," he was accused of harboring “absurd thoughts about the alleged importance of Ukraine.” After a few years spent in confinement in Tula, he obtained permission to publish and, in the years 1856-1863, developed an intense cultural activity, becoming the leading figure of the “Ukrainian colony in Petersburg.” Along with Kostomarov, Shevchenko and Bilozersky he founded the magazine "Osnova" (The Foundation, 1861-1862), the first Pan-Ukrainian magazine. This magazine gives voice to the most varied leanings, from moderate to radical ones, and collects the liveliest energies of the period, but is forced to cease its activity due to pressure from censorship. The magazine also published the famous almanac "Chata" (The House, 1860). Kulish also founded the "Drukarnya Kulisha" in Petersburg (Kulish Press, 1857-1863). It published not only Ukrainian writers, but even the most complete collection, for those times, of Gogol's works and letters (Sochineniya i pis'ma, Works and Letters, 6 vols., 1857).
One of the most important historical-ethnographic works of Kulish is represented by his Zapiski or Yuzhnoy Rusi (Annals on southern Rus', 2 vols., 1856-1857). Among other things, the writer for the first time resorted to his special spelling (kulishivka) which will play a great role in codification of the Ukrainian language. After traveling to Western Europe, he worked in Warsaw starting in 1867. From the early 1860s until the mid-1870s he was “the main promoter of the Ukrainian movement in the Halychyna” (I. Franko). After having tried in vain to start a new literary magazine in Petersburg, from 1883 he abandoned the publishing activity and retired to his “farm” in the Chernihivshchyna, devoting himself entirely to studies, literary work and translations.
Kulish’s formation was long and winding. It fluctuated between Romanticism and Positivism, between a profound religiosity and the cult of science, between Orthodoxy and the ideal of a "natural religion" shared by all humanity, between Cossackophilia and Cossackophobia, between the myth of the West and the harshest criticism of western civilization. In Kulish, in short, we are confronted in an emblematic way with the aporias of the Romantic age. The basic idea underlying the entire cultural system of Kulish is the concept of the duplicity of human nature, torn between the "essentiality" of the res cogitans and the "transience" of the res extensa, between the mystery of the “invisible heart” and the vanity of the “surface.” The heart is prophetic (vishche serce), it is an expression of the feminine component of the universe, the deepest and most essential (“My temple is my heart. There I hail / That whose name I don't know”). Kulish's historical thinking also moves in the logic of this basic dichotomy. Throughout his life he sought Ukraine as a “heart”, an “inner” and essential Ukraine that must be freed from the dross of the “exterior”. Hence the pathos that exudes from many of his writings in the name of the redemption of Ukraine and in which the Cyril-Methodian spirit clearly echoes. On the other hand, the idea of nation that Kulish seeks is decidedly from the Herderian point of view, and therefore fruit of the Enlightenment "optimism." Kulish believes that universal history follows a rational plan, that there is a unicum beyond the diversity that ensures the vitality of the evolutionary process. The "mission" of Ukraine in this unicum is particular. A nation that fully understands the horror of oppression and forced homologation has the primary purpose of mediating between opposed ideas and aiming to ensure with this commendable effort a moral victory. Ukraine must therefore oppose the most authentic humanistic spirit to the violence, and at the same time be the promoter of equal relations between dominated and dominant peoples, enhancing the strength of the spirit as opposed to the spirit of strength.
It is true that Kulish's concept of Ukrainian history is marked by many contradictions. If in the 1840s and 1860s we are in line with the Romantic dictation, with the cult of the Cossack epic, in the 1880s and 1890s the emphasis shifts to the historical-philosophical heritage of Kyivan Rus'. Kulish’s position is typical of a certain Ukrainian intellectual aristocracy not inclined to populist impulses. Indeed, after the careful study of the Polish, Jewish, and Ukrainian memorialists, he attempted a reinterpretation of the Cossack movement in his Istoriya vossoedineniya Rusi (The history of the union of Rus'), Otpadenie Malorossii ot Pol’shi (1340-1654) (The detachment of Little Russia from Poland, 1340-1654), as well as in the article Kazaki po otnosheniyu k gosudarstvu i obshchestvu (The Cossacks in relation to the state and civil society, 1877). His vision of the constitution and structure of the state led him to condemn popular revolts, in which he saw only anarchy and irrationality, a “horrifying communist and nihilistic fantasy,” generated, according to him, by the instinctuality of a savage mob which on a political level would only result in the worst of the ochlocracies. At the same time, Kulish supports the constructive role of the Polish and Ukrainian szlachta, and even revalues the positive impact of Russian absolutism. With this in mind, Kulish, editor of Shevchenko's works, contrasts with his illustrious contemporary. In summary, he recognizes Shevchenko's genius, but does not share his ideas. If Shevchenko sees in the people a “Gospel of truth,” Kulish is instead more skeptical, and in the people he sees rather a contradictory and heterogeneous entity, with decidedly dark sides, ready to lead to irrational impulses with destructive consequences. After all, in his historical analysis, Kulish compares two models of the formation of Ukrainian statehood: the monarchical one (age of the Kyiv Rus' and the Principality of Galicia–Volhynia) and the republican one (Zaporozhian Sich, Hetmanshchyna), giving preference to the first model. Kulish's demythologization of the Cossack epic is not always objective, but in any case marks a significant evolution, and in particular the abandonment of the exclusively national and religious approach and the rediscovery of universal values, a novelty reported immediately by Drahomanov. A similar orientation is also at the origin of a certain political idealism of Kulish which, although without renouncing the idea of an independent Ukraine, also hopes for its union “on equal terms” with Russia. This idea, expressed at a time when Ukraine was in fact politically nullified, and despite its tragic utopianism, constitutes an indirect but indisputable recognition of a Ukraine with a distinct cultural and political identity. Kulish also argues that political independence begins with "spiritual independence." The main proponents of this process are writers who can transform the “humiliated mass” into a “conscious nation.” He believes in the prophetic force of the Word. The figure of the writer is therefore central to founding a not only literary but also political rebirth. Kulish never embraces the idea of upheaval which a revolutionary change necessarily leads to, but instead advocates a gradual evolution in the name of culture, advocates the priority of universal values, and is a convinced supporter of Eurocentrism. At the time when the romantics of Kharkiv spoke of a dying Ukraine, and even Kostomarov insisted on only the "domestic" use of the Ukrainian, Kulish envisioned a new Ukraine within the larger European family, and experimented with his language as an instrument perfectly capable of expressing himself best in prose and poetry, in publications and in the lexicon of science, thus leaving various long-term perspectives to its culture.
Narrative
Kulish, after getting over the first literary experiments in an ethnographic key, would definitively arrive at a "high" writing. This turning point occurs with the story Orysya (1844, published in 1857), in which the writer merges the ancient myth (Odysseus and Nausicaa), in the wake of the Homeric subject, with a Ukrainian legend (the golden-mane aurochs drowning in the Trubayla river). It is an elegant romantic idyll, which sees two patriarchal worlds merging in the distant future, the Greek and the Ukrainian ones, in the nirvana of a solar harmony between man and nature. Antiquity is for Kulish the mythical Arcadia in which the nation lived its golden age. Short historical novels, such as Khmelnycchyna (1961), Sichovi hosti (Guests from Sich, 1862), Martyn Hak (1863), Braty (Brothers, 1864), are distinguished by a fine psychological analysis. But there are also works that favor the burlesque character (Cyhan, The Gypsy; Sira kobyla, The Gray Mare; and others). Kulish writes some works in Russian, including the historical novel Michaylo Charnyshenko, ili Malorossiya vosemdesyat let nazad (Michaylo Charnyshenko, or Little Russia eighty years ago, 1843).
Kulish's most famous work as a prosaist is the first historical novel in Ukraine: Chorna Rada. Chronika 1663 roku (The Black Council. Chronicle of 1663; written in 1846 in Ukrainian, but also in a Russian version, it was published in Russian in the "Russkaja Beseda," The Russian Conversation, in 1857; of the same year it is the Ukrainian edition). The approach to historical events has all the characteristics of adventure and involves the reader with a pressing rhythm. In short, it is a Walter Scott-style novel, but more concerned with historical truth. In fact, alongside an intertwining of historical events and love subjects, the work has a solid documentary basis, based on Cossack chronicles, historiographic studies, folkloric sources. The period in question is the era of the “Great Ruin,” immediately after the death of Khmelnytsky. The novel is a detailed investigation of the political history of Ukraine at the time and the reasons that prevented the emergence of an autonomous state. The subject revolves around the famous Black Council, i.e. the Cossack Council of Zaporizhia, which took place in Nizhyn in 1663 and which brings to power the hetman Bryukhovetsky, who will sell off Ukraine to the tsar (this event is documented in the Chronicle of the Witness and the Chronicle of Hrab’yanka). Kulish therefore underlines the internal disintegration of the country, the continuous lacerating conflicts between the various factions. Some characters are historical, others fictitious. Thus, the sentimental story of two young people, Petro Sramenko and Lesya, fits into the dramatic background of the story. The central character, however, is the old Cossack Shram, outlined with great suggestive strength. Of particular interest are the mass scenes (the council of Nizhyn, the insurrection of the Kyivans in the Podil), which give the action a truly choral breadth. The language, which boldly combines archaisms and neologisms, is certainly effective.
The description of the Cossack community has been the subject of many polemics. On the one hand, the writer underlines the noble brotherhood of the Cossacks, their loyalty to tradition and dedication to the dream of freedom, obviously gaining the praise from those who have always seen in all this the culmination of national pride. On the other hand, the writer has the courage to touch on a sore point: to reveal the defects of this community, its endemic disorganization, individualism, uncontrollable passion. In this sense, Kulish's historical vision has an undeniable balance of judgment. The novel gives a “vision of Ukraine as a living popular entity, whose vital forces are not yet lost or extinguished. But instead of presenting itself with the usual idyllic image, Ukraine emerges as a whole, an organism with real needs, with interests and with contradictions.” In other words, the novel is an artistic expression of Kulish's historiographic creed which saw the constructive force of Ukrainian history in the Cossack nobility and not in the insurrectional movements. Kulish then insists on the need to expiate the "internal wrongs" first, to take charge of one's own responsibilities.
The realistic cut of the novel does not prevent him from producing a writing with strong symbolic suggestions. Chizhevsky reports that Kulish is no less "symbolist" than Shevchenko. The story is "commented" by the blind kobzar, “Man of God”, who “turned his gaze beyond the edge of the world.” Even the sculptural figures of the Cossacks, with their epic indifference towards death, appear and vanish as in a dream where the boundaries between the real and the otherworld merge. And the "reading" of history takes place in a philosophical-religious key. Behind the clashes of the forces on the field we find the eternal struggle between Good and Evil. And from the convulsive development of history, the man flees into himself. Disappointed and betrayed by "external truths," he seeks his ultimate home in the "truth of the heart." Hence an unexpected note of optimism that shines through in the finale. Those who wanted to change history have died, but young people are able to find happiness in the serenity of the family microcosm, where ancient values can still take root and develop. Ukraine is therefore not destined to be only the arena of the desperate struggles of the past, but it can also aspire to be a happy island in the future. “The disaster has vanished almost as if it were a dream [...] and only what God wanted to grow and flourish will remain…”.
The poetic works
Kulish is also a talented poet, combining the reflections of a late Romanticism with instincts already typical of the modern age. He began his poetic writings in 1843, with the great epic poem Ukrayina, which was intended to embrace the period from Volodymyr the Great to Bohdan Khmelnytsky, but which did not go beyond a mannered stylization (the work remained unfinished). The Dosvitky collection (Alba, 1862, written in Italy) shows a quite different degree of poetic maturity. It includes lyric-epic poetry, that is the dumy and the historical poems Nastusya and Velyki provody (The long farewell). The tone is mainly tragic, but of an entirely internal drama. Kulish's characters do not have the "sacred fire" of Shevchenko's heroes. They have more complex psychological implications, usually centered on the conflict, often unsolved, between man and community, between inner and outer reality. Particularly interesting is the poem Velyki provody, dedicated to the glories and tragedies of the 1648 Ukraine. It is a sort of historical novel in verse that investigates the mysterious meaning of history, how man affects history. As for the poetic language, Kulish makes an operation of undoubted interest: it enriches the "high" style of the national language with elements of ecclesiastical Slavic.
Kulish returned to literary activity in the 1880s. This period, as we said, marks a turning point. The writer escaped from the world and found refuge in his "farm," where he formulated a theory that would arouse many controversies. In these works, the writer defends the autonomy and specificity of intellectual work in general and that of the artist in particular. The thinking and creative elite must not immerse itself in the chaotic whirlwind of history. On the contrary, it has the right-duty to retreat – so as not to squander their creativity – to what Kulish calls khutir: literally "farm", a term that should be understood as an island detached from the world, in short, an oasis, an uncontaminated Eden away from the roar. For Kulish the khutir is a personal and family "island," a house in the middle of the countryside, a large library in which to meditate and work "in holy solitude," without giving in to the enticements of worldliness. The khutir is also a monastic cell where he dreams of dying like a Cossack, not on the battlefields, but in tensons no less worthy of the intellect. Kulish exposed himself to many attacks for this stance. He will be accused of trite aesthetic decadence, of sterile provincialism. Yet his choice reflects a well-motivated need: to interrupt the inertia of a culture that now moves only behind the emotional thrusts of a past too immersed in the dramatic roar of sabers, to recover a new depth more meditated in the silence of libraries. In other words, the writer warns of the danger of a pervasive politicization of Ukrainian culture, senses the approach of a new cultural sensibility in the name of modernity. In fact, Kulish dreams of a turning point that is not political but cultural (the protagonist of this process becomes a "kulturnyk," a cultural operator), a national conscience developed not on nostalgic memories, but on deep-rooted spiritual energies, able to insert the best Ukrainian cultural tradition in the best of world culture. After all, this ideal of "kulturnyk” advocated by Kulish, the "Knight of a Rueful Countenance," would be fully understood and appreciated by the modernist intellectuals of the 1920s.
In the aforementioned collections, Kulish shows all the refinement of the consummate stylist. In particular, the Dzvin collection is full of themes and daring versification experiments. At the end of his life, the writer then discovers a vein of poignant melancholy for the transience of beauty, hidden fire of the "underworld of love" (Chudo, Miracle; Vydinnye, Vision; Zavorozhena krynytsya, Enchanted well; Cholom dozemny moyi zhe taky Znyny .., I bow down to the one I love and know ...). Even his "polemical" poetry is marked by a remarkable expressive energy, of aphoristic value (Do Tarasa za richku Acheron, To Taras, beyond the Acheron river; Kozatskym panehirystam, To the Cossack panegyrists; Stoyu odyn..., I'm on my own...). The theme of solitude of the poet-bard, demiurge of his own misunderstood world, is pre-eminent. Of his posthumously published works (1909) we should remember the poems Kulish u pekli (Kulish in hell) and Hrychko Skovoroda. In the first the poet reaches a playful showdown with his numerous critics; in the second he reconstructs the era of the great Ukrainian philosopher.
Kulish's poetics is all contained in his most ambitious and suffered creed: The future of the country lies in the Word. Paradoxically, it takes up what was advocated by his opponent Shevchenko. He says: "Let us build our country in our word." He will be right. In those times and for many decades the only common homeland for Ukrainians will remain the Word.
As a playwright, Kulish is the author of the Dramovana trylohiia (Dramatic Trilogy, 1882-1885), poetic dramas, in which problems of Ukrainian history are examined in the light of a Gospel purified from the bureaucratic incrustations of the church “institution.” Kulish's contribution as a translator of English, German and Russian poetry is remarkable. Of the most memorable works we remember the translations of Shakespeare's works and the Bible. His journalistic writings, which anticipate Franko and Drahomanov and which not only focus on crucial issues but also awaken critical capacity and civic sense in society, are also of great importance.