R. Lysha: The place of birth determines quite a lot in our life. My Village of Yalosovetivka as it was called at the time was situated in the Kozak land, Sicheslavshchyna. Later they distorted this name to make it allegedly grammatically more correct and it became Village of Yelyzavetivka, but to my mind the old popular name Yalosovetivka was more mellifluous, more intimate … So Yalosovetivka, or at least Yelysavetivka, was situated nine kilometers from the famous Petrykivka of Petro Kalnyshevsky. By the way, Yuri Vivtash cleverly played on this name and jokingly called it Ya-lysha-vetivka.
There’s a whole group or cluster of Kozak villages: Sotnytske, Loboykivka… There are as much as three rivers nearby: Dnipro, Orel and Protovchanka. And this is apart from numerous brooks. Unfortunately, the builders of Dnipro-Donbas Canal destroyed Protovchanka. There were situated Protovchanska and Orilska Kozak Palankas[1]. And one can feel there Kozak spirit and tradition.
I remember a very beautiful village situated beside Dnipro−Pankivka−where our relatives lived once my parents were on a visit to them (sometime in 1947) and they took me with them. The streets had trees with lush leafage on the sides: poplars, willows, oaks ... The khatas were buried in flowers. Even now I recall it as a paradise. That wonderful old village like the picturesque Village of Auly on the opposite right bank was inundated by the so-called Dniprodzerzhynsk Sea. Nearby my village, nearer to Dnipro there was Kurylivka Village, winter abode of Kytaihorod Sotnyk Pavlo Semenov, who built three churches in Kytaihorod in the style of Kozak Baroque, which were wrecked but by a miracle the ruins are still there. Yalosovetivka happened to be located on the very border between Kozak Hetmanate and Kozak Zaporizhia. Having been overwhelmed by Zaporizhia, the village fell to its lot like all Ukrainian Kozaks in difficult times.
In my childhood I took hard memory−live and painful−about those on whose bones St. Petersburg had been built, about Solovki, and about Kalnyshevsky.
By the way, Yalosovetivka fomented armed rebellion against serfdom. Yalosovetivka always supported the right to liberty and right to self-government. Although it often came to grief.
My parents were villagers to my mind, they were exceptional, deeply religious people, both my father and my mother. They stood out, as I now see it, due to extraordinary, natural tender conscience, generosity and talented humanity. One could say that this was typically Ukrainian spiritual aristocracy. My father was innerly engrossed. He did not like empty words. I remember how after the war−it took place in 1946-47−he read the Bible and a man, Feodosiy, frequented to him and they were talking about divine, about Christ.
My parents, probably from the earliest childhood, cultivated in me the incomprehensible feeling that God is the One with whom both on earth and in heaven you do not feel terrified and lonely.
By the way, during the war, my father was called up for military service shortly before the German advance (they kept him at the factory where he worked as a steelworker). I was about two years old. In my mind, this picture is still alive. My father took me in his arms and went to our neighbors: there, in the garden, was the gathering station for those who were sent to the front. There were about 200 meters from our khata to the highway. On the highway we saw roaring advancing vehicles, maybe tanks, and marching soldiers. And I, already knowing that my father was going to war, suddenly said, “Oh, they will beat you, Dad, badly”. And then I added: “But you come back soon”. I remember that garden of Aunt Maryna, reserved men, who were joking and asking me about something. And the husband of Aunt Maryna did not return from war. And many others did not return, too. Most of our neighbors were killed.
And I, while waiting for my father, every day kept praying before the icon of the Mother of God that he would return. My father later said that those prayers− my mother’s and mine−saved his life. He was severely wounded near Voroshylovhrad (Luhansk) and maimed, nevertheless, he came back.
When I went into the first grade, I kept in mind my father’s warning: At school they say that there is no God but you do not say so.” Actually, I already would not be saying this in any case. But with time my father’s precious reservations gradually became for me as a lesson of complete rejection of betrayal. No wonder he liked so much Taras Bulba by Gogol. And he asked me to read it aloud for him when we studied it accordance with the curriculum.
There was no church in our village. The Church of the Intercession built by Kozaks was destroyed in the 30s. But the faith remained all the same: not a kind of religionism, but true traditional Kozak devoutness.
During high Christian festivals the heaven was the dome of the temple. It was so to say open in a peculiar way. Our Christmas carols resounded there… The Word was really born in the vast space… During the Feast of St. Basil the strewers pronounced wassails, angels and souls of ancestors sat down to table to eat kutia[2]. The Easter enveloped the soul with miraculous unearthly light of the Resurrection. There were true, unforgettable festivals: Ascension, Intercession, Trinity Sunday, Assumption… St. Barbara, St. Nicholas ... The villagers also observed the feast of the place. God was somewhere close, though invisible.
V. Ovsiyenko: You still have not named your father and mother. And, please, tell us their life years.
R. Lysha: My father’s name was Saveliy (colloquial Sava) Tytovych. Born 1901. He died in 1984. My mother was Nataliya Demydivna, born 1903, died 1991.
V. Ovsiyenko: What is the correct pronunciation of your last name?
R. Lysha: It is a very common name in the country. There are people bearing the last name Lysha in Petrykivka. Lyshà. There were also variants of this last name: Lyshivtsi, Lyshivny, Lyshenky, Lyshyha… there was one such Aunt Nastia, wife of my Uncle Vasyl… That is, there are many inventive variants of this name. A girl was usually called Lyshivna[3]. It is a Kozak name the word itself is very old. Perhaps it was a familial totem. I have dug it out in some little book on the history of Ukrainian and Lithuanian children’s folklore. It turns out that in olden times there existed a counting-out rhyme: This one is lyshá, this one is kuná, and you clear out.” The author of the study maintains that this rhyme is at least two thousand years old. Lyshá stands for a fox, and kuná stands for a marten. Valery Illia also said that he had found in dictionaries that lyshá meant fox[4]. Very interesting and specific nouns were used as traditional Kozak last names or sobriquets in my village: Dizha, Patalashka, Nepadymka, Kyianytsia, Kopyak, Serdiuk, Netrebka, Vizmelo… They generate a great lot of associations and testify to the affluence of word formation methods in our tongue.
Many a man considered my name abstruse. Almost everyone stressed the first syllable. I decided to finally come to terms with the fact: let it be my pen name.
It is worthwhile telling now about my parents and my mother’s family and their fate in the twentieth century.
In olden days the fugitives from the Turkish raids in Podillia fled to our village. The Podillia element is clearly visible in the structure and spirit of the village. I think that my father’s family came from Podillia.
Probably, my Grandfather Tyt’s family came from a wealthy Kozak starshyna[5] stock. This is really true judging from the fact that my grandfather had before the revolution 50 hectares of arable land and four horses, as it was written in the minutes of the meeting about the exclusion of my father from the collective farm as a son of the dispossessed person. Indeed, near the village on the south side there was an area called Lyshivska Gully which was a part of my grandfather’s land, where they later excavated the dazzling white and good sand, which they exported somewhere abroad (they say, to France) and as a result of excavations in the 70s there emerged the Holube Lake. There was also a plot or land on the northwest: Hrabove. My father told me about it once. But the family of my Grandfather Tyt and my Grandmother Natalka was large: six sons (Yakiv, Petro, Vasyl, Ignat, Saveliy, Danylo) and two daughters (Fedora and Paraskeva). All of them were typically chivalrous, strong, diligent, creative, and kind. For instance, Aunt Paraska wove very good sackcloth, stitched felt boots, hats, sheepskin coats. My father together with his brothers planted an alley these eastern cottonwoods protected the village against the sands approaching from the Dnipro riverside. This alley was called Lyshivski Osokory. This alley together with another one consisted of Bolle’s poplars and cottonwood also planted by brothers decorated the village. But in the 80’s there came guys wishing to cut down beautiful majestic trees. At the time the people were seized with wild lust for devastation.
My father also dug a big pond in the coastal strip behind the kitchen garden, perhaps 40 plus meters long and 5 meters wide later people were fishing and children were swimming there. He also lined the pond with willows however under screen of night someone unrooted all willows. (It was the time of collectivization). Only one big willow-tree grew on the bank of the pond.
Not only my Grandfather Tyt, but also my father and all his brothers were dispossessed. The Komsomol members killed the eldest brother Yakiv in 1933 Petro shot himself unwilling to join the collective farm and being in despair. Danylo, the youngest brother, was forced to flee in search of work and, without documents, found himself in Georgia. He was eventually caught, arrested as a passportless person and sent to the Volga-Don Canal where he perished later. He sent a letter to his brothers in 1933, where he wrote that he was hungry and asked to send bread. Vasyl and his young son Dmytro were killed in action during the war.
At first, my father’s was expelled from the collective farm as a son of kurkul for “demoralization of collective farmers during grain procurements”, “did not subscribe to the domestic loan and entered into arguments, failed to sign the contract of procurement and entered into arguments”. Soon, in February 1933, they together with mother and two children−three-year-old Stepan, who the same spring died of starvation, and five-year-old Mykhailo− threw out of their khata having confiscated their property and food. And they did it despite the fact that my mother went to work at the collective farm. Then my father survived only because while wandering in search of any work, barefoot, exhausted, he accidentally came across the Deputy Chief Engineer of Metallurgical Plant in Kamyanske (Dniprodzerzhynsk), who knew him and immediately employed him as an assistant steelmaker. My father always remembered the man with gratitude. Later my father became a famous steelmaker. He loved his job and told a lot about it. But he never uttered a word about the fact that he was honored as the overachiever and Stakhanovite.
My parents recovered our khata somewhere in 1940, because the new occupier failed to get accustomed to the place. He decided to return home.
But I still cannot get a handle on the fact that during the war, when my father with a head injury stayed in a hospital, the commies returned and began to draw out of khata my mother with me, a three-year-old child, and my teenage brother. Only the intervention of the captain, who was our roomer and whom my mother asked for help, stopped that predicament.
When I already was a staffer in the oblast newspaper Prapor Yunosti, I interviewed Professor of Metallurgy Semykin, who had designed and updated blast furnaces in Dniprodzerzhynsk, and suddenly I heard−because displayed interest in my name−that he had known my father, who had helped him to experiment with furnaces.
I was also impressed by the fact that about my father’s active service as a young lad in the army of Ukrainian People’s Republic I learned not from him, but from his elder brother Mykhailo. Perhaps, he simply did not want to expose me to danger. Only once, when for some reason I asked him, “Dad, did you serve in the army? he smiled enigmatically and answered: “Yes, I did. I was a tall guy and I added myself two years and they drafted me.” And I had no idea what army it was. And his tone was rather regretful, when he recalled that in 1918 people believed in Lenin’s Decree on Freedom and Land to peasants.
V. Ovsiyenko: And what was your mother’s maiden name?
R. Lysha: My mother’s maiden name was Nevhamónna. There was a family lore, which she told me. My Great-Grandfather Denys Ivanovych came from Zolotovusy family. He had an independent streak. He was tchoomak, brought from Kyiv icons which people wanted. Once he drove his wagon from Polovytsia (now Dnipropetrovsk) and met the approaching landlord’s carriage. Those were already the times of forced serfdom. The landlord wanted my grandfather Denys to make the way for him. But my great-grandfather ignored that arrogance whipped the landlord’s horses when the carriage was about to push away the wagon. After that the landlord ordered to take away my grandfather’s name Zolotovus.
V. Ovsiyenko: What do you mean by “take away the name”?
R. Lysha: I do not know. But, after the incident, the landlord gave him a new name as a kind of punishment: Nevhamónnyi. At the time the army had already quelled the uprising and serfdom was gradually introduced. There was a legend that there was an executioner in the village, who used to put rebellious people on pillars like stylites. There is still a saying in the village: like one put by executioner on a pillar.
My mother’s cousin uncle Semen lived in the Village of Kvaky, a few kilometers southwest of the village. My mother often mentioned him. I saw him only once, when I was an eighth-grader. He arrived from somewhere to see relatives. I was impressed by the freedom and certainty of his behavior. Uncle Semen told how in the 30s they dispossessed him and were about to arrest him this time. He saw them when they were approaching he smashed a window and escaped. I’m still regretting to have not made inquiries about this amazing and courageous person.
But Nevhamónnyi is also a good name. The Nevhamónnyis were generally lively people. My mother was very talkative. My father was a taciturn person, though witty, sometimes he made dry-humor Kozak cracks, while my mother was very fond of the language itself. She literally flourished in the actual utterances. She used to go to our neighbors to gossip. She brought them cakes or bread, pickles or something else and they talked by the hour. It seemed she could not simply exist without it. When I happened to come, while I studied at the university, I first of all sat down and listened to her. And later I began writing down her words. She naturally lived in her language: she just created her language. She was very talented. By the way, my mother even was on the verge of tears when remembering that she as a little girl in a family of many children was not allowed to go to school. But, it seems, this very fact strengthened even more her talent to narrate. The way she uttered those surprisingly blooming and innovative words was amazing indeed, plus an exclusive fund of words! Live neologisms!
Actually, not only my mother, but the whole village was a great creator of language. It was an ocean of language and one couldn’t but love it. Thence emerged my sense of the word as something live and mysteriously beautiful.
Moreover, I see in my parents, in their view of the world, indigenous Kozak traits from the depths of generations: I grew up free I was given an opportunity to be free and independent. My parents trusted me, protected, advised and forgave everything. More than once I heard: “See for yourself…” That is, try and think. But my father did not tolerate any falsehood. It was a categorical imperative. “It is easy to say truth,” he said. And life has shown that it is really so. For it means that a person should not muck herself/himself with untruth. This was the key to the weight and significance of the word.
Despite the rigors of time my parents presented me with the world where there was a fullness of existence, which I accepted still being unaware of the price of the gift. There was independence, there was God, love and goodness, live treasure of centuries-old worldview… And all of it created an essential, most important, invisible wealth of my village despite the complex processes in which it had to survive. And my parents had not even a hint of some kind of inferiority complex. This force of dignity was given them for their choice of good.
Even in times of abject poverty, famine in 46-47 there was no begging for bread in our khata. My mother used to be very upset when she was not able to make contribution for the poor. My parents always shared with beggars whatever was at hand and treated them as messengers of God. Once I gave a beggar an apple pie that my mother had baked for the day. And I was not given a telling-off.
All vanities vanished into thin air before them. This all remains with me as a perpetual value. For example, my father told me that while he worked at the factory as a steelmaker he was offered to join the Communist party, they promised to send him to study, they tried to persuade him, but he refused. He could not and did not want to participate in something that was untrue in his judgment. Once he gave me a piece of mature and valuable advice: “Do not seek after money”. One day he said and I felt it was like a confession and food for thought he believed it was extremely important to tell me this: May you know: during my life I never killed anyone both in times of revolution and in times of war at the front”.
Generally, he did not like, did not want to remember war. His attitude differed from that of Uncle Luka Khaliavka, black-haired, dark-eyed, with very dexterous and plastic movements, typical Mamai from Petrykivshchyna, soldier by birth at the front he was a machine gunner who reached Berlin. He eagerly told about adventures marked by strategist’s talent and military quick-wittedness, and about prosperity of proprietors in Europe.
Instead I heard many times a story how a man reported to the authorities that his neighbor drove a herd of cattle from our village to Germany according to my father, the squealer mentioned my father as a witness and he was summoned to the NKVD. He recalled how the officer put his revolver on the table before him. And then the officer began the interrogation. “And I affirm that I have not seen it.” They kept him there for a long time and, of course, threatened him. But my father was not one of those who cast a stone at a man in trouble.
So the relatives usually said about my father: “He is a purposeful person”.
My father and mother were happy about my desire to learn. And this is also forever: their joy, their holy expectations of something from you…
On the whole, I was always impressed by optimality of their steps, their choice when they were thrown in at the deep end. So, if you asked me about my greatest teachers, I would name them, my father and my mother, and then the village and people who also kindled the light of the world and were able to be themselves.
And then came school and university with the avalanche of cosmic controversial and terrible world, with its good and evil, right and wrong and they showed that it is not a simple thing to learn to be one’s own accord. In your actions you may suddenly begin to see the authenticity of yourself and the world.
In the olden days the Kozak rode in the open field to get to know the world wide and himself. Therefore, taking these things into consideration, my father sent me to school not when I was under seven, but when I was under eight years old. At the time I had already known how to read and write. In my father’s khata, my education exceeded the usual limits of knowledge, and I saw the truths both most-valued and unattainable.
I finished school in 1959 and that same year joined the philology department (Russian branch) of the Dnipropetrovsk University. I chose the Russian branch because in upper school I grew fond of Russian literature. Maybe the quality of meticulous lectures was better. And I wished to know the whole immensity of the unknown.
However, both the school and university, despite all contradictions and falsifications of the time, including the distortion of, true knowledge, managed to bring light into my inner space. Many shallow and dull things of the past became much deeper and acquired new mysterious light.
For example, the image of first teacher Mariya Olexandrivna, who loved children very much and was like an angel. Each time I see a sunlit room. Children learned to syllable words. In the meantime I twiddled my thumbs. So I listened and looked around. Boy Lionia Nizdran read a tongue-twister. It sounded like as follows: “Six sick hicks nick six slick bricks with picks and sticks.” The children laughed unquenchably. And the boy looked like a small defenseless hicker. And the teacher stroked his head. She admonished the children that it was improper to give a boy a ha-ha: all of them were still clumsy at this or that and all pupils were there to learn. And I was prey to thoughts: “Why his name was Nizdran? Maybe, because the creek near his khata skirted the market place on a rising ground in the middle of our neighborhood was called Nizdranka? This lively brook might even flood the neighborhood at times.
In the third and fourth grades our teacher was Ivan Yakovych Bilenko: strict, demanding, you just couldn’t play a lazy bone, because he tried his best to show you the way up if you liked to be respected he was scraggy, dark, with black shiny eyes, in which a mysterious fire shone. Later on I came to know that he was persecuted in the 30s for express Ukrainophilia.
There was also an intellectual of the non-Soviet old school old: geography teacher Petro Kuzmovych. He lovingly talked about the world so that we could not but love geography, Earth, and Ukraine, and traveling.
Brilliant, elegant, noble math teacher in high school Volodymyr Andriyanovych transformed math, algebra, and geometry into poetry bringing nearer the charms of invisible space.
The summer biking tour after 8th grade to Askaniya Nova and Kamyana Mohyla Reserve under the guidance of Ulyan Opanasovych Chubynets became a new discovery of the world for me. Especially impressive were the boundless and plain-country steppe and deeply mystical Kamyana Mohyla.
Generally my school in the 50s, despite all innovations of history, was focused on strengthening the native culture-specific principles. And now with a certain peculiar sense of gratitude I recall teacher of geography and history Zinayida Yakivna Zaternianska which was the only one who gently chided me for choosing the Russian branch at the university. But I did not know, was not aware of the subtext of fighting and hidden meanings of social processes.
It was a happy feeling of euphoria. I passed the exams with distinction. There were 16 candidates per one place, and only five school graduates (without career history) were admitted.
At that time the university was a hot spot. The Khrushchev’s Thaw had just got underway. Though, very soon everything began to freeze, and lecturers had to say something quite the opposite. Of course, it aroused thinking and destroyed the view of the world and society as an entity. In the first year we were carried away by brilliant lectures on linguistics (in Russian) by Halyna Isayivna, who was a proponent of the theory of Marr. All of a sudden the officials began to accuse her of distortion of the party line. All students rose in her defense. But we were also accused of rioting. The seniors had a thin time. For the freshmen the danger was over. And the talented linguistics lecturer had to leave her job and quit the city.
I also took particular in lectures on old Ukrainian and foreign literatures. The latter course was given by highly intelligent, wise and refined Professor Nina Samoylivna Shrader. I attended her study group. I wrote a yearly essay on Goethe under her guidance.
I was keen on art. I bought books on the history and theory of art etc., I spent all my maintenance allowance leaving money only for bread and tea. And strangely enough, I did not feel hungry. The Impressionists, Van Gogh, Cezanne, Picasso, Petrykivsky painting, Scythian and Polovetsian babas in historical museum… Another wing of my interest included theoretical physics, secrets of the universe. I was fascinated with physical dictionaries. And then appeared a wonderful book by J. Danina The Imminence of Strange World…
In the 60s, in literature (Mykola Vinhranovsky, Ivan Drach, in Russia Andrei Voznesensky, his collected poems Triangular Pear), mainly in poetry, the authors zeroed in on the form issues. The Nuclear Preludes by M. Vinhranovsky charmed with a new living space, which opened in those poems freely, out of dogmas of the cramped world. The critics called these poets formalists.
Meanwhile the poetry readings attracted thousands of fans, especially students. The craze for poetry was so big that I failed to attend the soiree with M. Vinhranovskiy. I even could not join the standee audience.
At the time the new trend in art attracted everyone’s which was called abstractionism. A public discussion on this topic erupted at our department. Because of this interest in the abstractionism I could be expelled from the university.
In the dorm I hung over my bed a reproduction of a work of a Western artist: “Girl with a Die”. The picture showed the head of a girl who stared at a die on the plane: light and shadow. The officials ordered me to remove the picture because it supposedly was an abstract art. And I objected to it.
There was a lively student wall newspaper I publish there some of my writings. One student wrote an epigram about my opus: Sometimes you are like Lesia, sometimes like Syniakov…” (Lesia implied Lesia Ukrayinka and Syniakov was the editor of the wall newspaper who later became a journalist). The wall newspaper was soon torn down because somebody considered it too liberal.
By the way, there was a strange incident in connection with the placement of graduates. One day I went to a school in Dniprodzerzhynsk, where there was a vacancy of an aesthetics teacher, and spoke with Director Tetiana Danylivna. And she said she would come to the university and would ask to strike me off the placement list. Meanwhile, I was assigned to a small Village of Pidpilne in Novomoskovsk Region where there was no school. However, despite the request of the director (she spent two days following the formal procedure) I was not allowed to teach aesthetics.
V. Ovsiyenko: What language did you use at the time? You graduated from the Russian branch…
R. Lysha: This is an important question. I wrote in Russian and in Ukrainian, even poetry. At the time I was overwhelmed by the need to study, to learn… I thought that one can write in both languages and the most important thing is what and how you write. Only after the university I came to understanding that while writing in a foreign tongue you doom yourself to unoriginality, because you severe your spirit from the underlying sources and meanings of your life. Then I began to see clearly.
This does not mean that you cannot write something interesting in a foreign tongue. You can, of course. However, you can come to know the true depth existence only through the feeling of unique native foundations.
So the awareness of the uttermost truth that you are a live carrier of the whole, spiritual, cultural and historical heritage of your ancestors and that you have to convey this world and hold up its heaven emerged right after, as if it just kept waiting for the prime time to go up from the subconscious.
So, I worked for two years in the Pishchanska evening school near Novomoskovsk where stood the known masterpiece of Ukrainian architecture, Kozak nine-dome wooden Trinity Cathedral. There I could see the amazing monumental several-meter-high unique icons. Forlorn as an alarming question mark they were heaped in the “museum of atheism…
I had a bent for journalism, I wanted to write therefore I went to Dnipropetrovsk to look for a job in a newspaper. And it was not an easy thing: you had to find accommodations without a job and job without registration. For almost a year I was out of work.
In 1967 I began working at the oblast newspaper Prapor Yunosti for a few months before it I worked at the regional newspaper Dniprovska Zoria, but I left the job feeling that it was better to be out of work than to stay in such a slough. Sure, there were interesting journalists and some creative outbursts in the Prapor Yunosti. But the qualifying standards for the Soviet newspapers had a leveling tendency. “The newspaper requires a standard, and not creativity,” the chief editor frankly instructed me.
…But I have not finished my thought about the language in which we store and carry on our boundless spiritual world and in which we the environment and the form of our existence that nurtures and cultivates a unique view of every person and every nation. As Shevchenko wrote: “And words, it seems, are only words, are words and voice and nothing more. But spread their wings all hearts as birds the very minute they resound…”
So, in 1968 I went to Riga at the invitation of Technology College students, future architects who admired rock climbing and about whom I had written in the newspaper. And it was there where I felt for the first time how it was to live a week without hearing your native tongue. You sort of start choking. Because your language is not something external, mechanical, but your live inner world.
You see, when looking for a job, I came to the Prapor Yunosti and I spoke Russian doing it through inertia it was simply beneath my notice. Suddenly the senior secretary observed: “How are you going to work if you speak Russian? You probably do not know how to write in Ukrainian?”
It was so easy and suddenly, as if for the first time I saw myself speaking Russian which sounded strange for people … and actually for me as well.
Then there was this old journalist Nikulin, whom I remember very well the Zoria newspaper was a Communist party organ, nevertheless it featured Ukrainian culturological materials, too. The Ukrainian culture and Ukrainian sentiment were present in a sort of truncated form. There was something hidden in the depths.
He was the father of Natalka Nikulina, poet and journalist. She worked for oblast radio. She tragically died a few years ago. I was not acquainted with her, but everybody had a kind word to say about her.
So, Nikulin and I went on a business trip to Krasnopillia: he represented Zoria and I represented Prapor Yunosti. Mechanically, with him I began speaking Russian as well. Suddenly this man−I think he was cautious because he knew all the trouble one was in for when he spoke about Ukrainian “issues”−and we had to negotiate snowdrift there−he suddenly asked me: why I, a Ukrainian working for Ukrainian newspaper, was speaking Russian? He said it with such disgust with me, with such inner rejection, that I experienced a real shock. Even now I am grateful to this man who precipitated my sobering up from invisible captivity dogma about Soviet reality.
My father, for example, when I came home one day and spoke Russian, said nothing, but I read in his eyes that he was not happy with my demonstration. It happened only once. But I remember this incident as a flare that suddenly illuminated the space, which somehow I failed to notice.
About the state and condition of the Ukrainian language I had very important for me conversations with talented journalist, conscientious Ukrainian by the scale of her world view Tetiana Chupryna, who was placed on a job at Prapor Yunosti upon graduation from the Kyiv University. We worked in the same office. Tetiana showed not indifferent or rather zealous, careful involvement in the language development, as if the heaven itself appointed her a guardian of Ukrainian words. She completely ignored those secret circulars that existed then in the press, which banned the use of too Ukrainian words and offered to replace them with close Russified equivalents. Instead, she declared war on the so called Russisms and she was convincing in her arguments, because she knew the language perfectly.
Unfortunately, very soon Tetiana left her job. I endured three years in the Prapor Yunosti. By the way, Tetiana, having read some of my poems, expressed the opinion that I’d better move to Kyiv. She even offered to help me to find a job at some editorial office. But I did not dare to leave my parents away from me.
V. Ovsiyenko: When did you meet Ivan Sokulsky?
R. Lysha: Well, you see… we failed to get acquainted at the university, because when he transferred from Lviv to Dnipropetrovsk University (1964 – V.O.) I had already graduated. But I remember Hryhoriy Malovyk, though he was a year or two my senior. He was a poet and, as I subsequently learned, the closest friend of Ivan. The poems of Hryhoriy Malovyk testified to his considerable potential talent. The characteristic traits of his poems reminded of the poetry of Vasyl Symonenko. He did not spare himself and contracted tuberculosis.
Ivan always spoke of him with great emotion. I think it’s high time to publish a book of his poetic legacy. His personality flared like a torch, he had a real Kozak spirit. He just blatantly ignored the fear that prevailed among inhabitants. It is God probably gave birth to such a man to manifest the free live Kozak spirit. It happened at the time, when such individuals were scarce as hen’s teeth.
V. Ovsiyenko: When did Hryhoriy Malovyk die?
R. Lysha: It happened in the late sixties[6]. I cannot say for sure, but it happened before the arrest of Ivan.
V. Ovsiyenko: That is before 1969? Ivan was arrested on June 14, 1969 in connection with the Cathedral.
R. Lysha: Yes, the campaign against Honchar’s novel was put on a drive when I still worked for the Prapor Yunosti… If Hryhoriy were alive, he would have been involved in the process. He could not be out of the swim. He went to the tomb of Prince Sviatoslav, he was a bright personality who sparkplugged people.
When in 1976 I made the acquaintance of Ivan, I felt how alive Hryhoriy was for him. He always mentioned him as his best friend and was exceptionally sorry for his demise. Ivan even said that he had never had such a friend as Hryhoriy. I some of his poems and saw him in the university, as they say, from a distance. But even from faraway and allowing for the opinion of other people one could conclude about the considerable force of his personality.
The novel of Honchar was vitally important for me.
V. Ovsiyenko: For the first time it appeared in January issue, 1968, in the Vitchyzna Magazine.
R. Lysha: It so fell out that both the Cathedral by Honchar and harassment contrived around this outstanding work, as well as the enforcement proceeding against Ivan Sokulsky and his friends tried for “bourgeois nationalism” played a special role in my life precisely because formally I still worked for the printed media, which denounced this work as a hostile publication, which was close to me for its truthfulness, and nationalists, which I wanted to protect from the evil that befell them. And in my eyes they were the best people, knights and heroes.
Actually the underlying message of the Honchar’s novel (and he himself was born in Kozak settlement Lomivka near Dnipropetrovsk) was easy to decipher against the background of local realities, which I also tried to cover in the newspaper: destroyed, devastated Kytaihorod churches, smoky Kamyanske (Dnipropetrovsk), Novomoskovskiy Cathedral, the question of its monumental baroque icons, innovative performances of Ukrainian youth theater put on stage by talented director Hryhoriy Kononenko, who brought a fresh wind of life in the city (despite the achievements this director and several artists were driven out of the city and had to go to Kharkiv), ecology of Dnipro and small rivers… But in fact the Dnipropetrovsk Soviet media did not need either Ukrainian or any other culture.
The officials isolated me from handling the matter. My materials were turned down. The editors read, praised my materials but declined to print them…
But Honchar novel, despite its persecution, changed the spirit of the times, created an atmosphere of growth and intimate . And no one could quell it. The novel was a real support. It stirred up what we call stagnation and actually stripped the mask of communist atheism showing its essence as the destructor of spirit and culture.
During the trial of Ivan and like-minded persons, I was not allowed to enter the courtroom. No invitations ensued. The head of the ideological department wrote the relevant material using the widespread cliché. And I had a feeling that I had to be there among convicts. My soul was with them. And actually for me my reading of materials and in particular of quotations from The Letter of Creative Youth” was an absentee acquaintance with Ivan. Then I knew already that I would leave the newspaper and I did not regret. After all those publications in the newspaper I was ashamed of it. I could not adapt to hypocrisy and take part in it.
In 1970 the atmosphere in the newspaper grew defiantly unbearable. Someone suggested me a job in a design institute consisting in editing technical texts in Russian. There was no doubting how the wind blows.
Within a month, the administration rudely evicted me from the dorm. I began to knock about the world and look for accommodations.
Subsequently, the KGB officers told me: We have been keeping this washed-up vacancy open for you for a decade now.” Why did they keep it? Firstly, they separated me from journalism. In addition, there was a very good supervision and only a minimum wage. You’re balancing between existence and non-existence. But I thought that I would be able to write and put it on ice as they said at the time.
At that time I keenly felt the lack of Ukrainian creative environment, lack of real communication. Although, it should be said, during my work for the newspaper I met interesting people. There was flamboyant professor Mykola Svynolobov at the metallurgical institute: powerful intelligence, highly creative nature, heuristic thinking and true Ukrainian soul. He took interest in the language and true history of Ukraine. In general, this institute in the city stood out for the palpable atmosphere of conscious Ukrainian mindedness.
Another distinctive personality was Yuri Slavko. He was a noble and intelligent man. He was Ukrainian, but he wrote talented poetry and prose in Russian, because was brought up in a family of Russified intellectuals. He wrote an original work about Pushkin and Tsvetaeva. Everything soviet he considered absurd. He wrote, of course, with no hope to see it in print. Creativity was his only salvation. I do not know if he is still alive for he was often ailing.
Movies and theater were of particular interest for me then… Paradzhanov, Illienko, Ivan Mykolaichuk, Italian Neorealism, Fellini, Polish movies… There were also outstanding phenomena in Russian culture: Theatre on Taganka, which gave guest performances, Stanislavsky Theater performing Antigone by Jean Anouilh with starring unique Russian actress Lisa Nikishchikhina (I reviewed the performance), also I met then Russian writer Mikhail Roshchin… All of them believed that the Soviet ideology ruined culture.
At the same time I met artists Mykola Malyshko and Nina Denysova. This meeting brought me immense joy. Mykola had just finished an extremely good Ukrainian-style panel for children’s cafe. And I published my notes about his works. But they, like most talented artists, could not withstand the suffocating lack of freedom, left Dnipropetrovsk and went to Kyiv, and some of them to Lviv.
Nobody knows where they are now, those masterpieces of the great artist? Not a shred was left the officials destroyed these works, like many other.
Worst of all, perhaps, was this feeling of a sort of non-existence. It looked like there was no Ukraine and only longing for it remained… However, I began to find this and that and I realized that Ukraine should be outlined anew. It had to be outlined so that the Ukrainian space could become a living reality.
One of fighters for this vital space was poet Volodymyr Sirenko. He riveted my attention because then, presumably, he was one of a few persons in Dnipropetrovsk, who protested against the announcements in Russian at the railroad terminal. He went through channels and wrote formal applications. Those were brave deeds at the time.
By the way, it was Sirenko, who introduced me to the researcher of Ukrainian history, courageous sufferer for Ukraine and true spiritual aristocrat Mykola Bereslavsky, with the Kuzmenkos.
V. Ovsiyenko: The Kuzmenkos? Where did they live?
R. Lysha: Olena Fedorivna and Olexandr Olexiyovych with their daughter Oksana, who was a beautiful singer, played bandura, composed songs, lived in Dnipropetrovsk, near the Botanical Garden, which, unfortunately, does not exist now. Olena Fedorivna was for many of us like a mother. At their place the atmosphere was free and natural. We fearlessly talked about everything. I learned a lot about what was happening in Kyiv, about dissidents and persecutions. It was the discovery of Ukrainian life, not visible on the surface.
V. Ovsiyenko: Kuzmenko was a former political prisoner, a member of the OUN, or wasn’t he?
R. Lysha: They both were in OUN.
V. Ovsiyenko: Were they born in Dnipropetrovsk or elsewhere?
R. Lysha: No, she was Boyko from Western Ukraine. It was a UIA field communications crewwoman she was probably about 14-15 years old when she was arrested. They tortured her, they fastened her with the help of her plaits: she was severely tortured. Her family was also exiled to Kazakhstan.
V. Ovsiyenko: So where did they meet? Apparently, after the prisoners were sent in exile?
R. Lysha: It looks like it. He was from Dnipropetrovsk, from these lands.
V. Ovsiyenko: When officials began to transfer the convicts from concentration camps to the places of banishment, the exiles got to know one another there and married. This happened in the mid-fifties.
R. Lysha: You know, it is very bad that we do not record such things. She told me so much, and I was not smart enough to record all those things.
Under no consideration they were extremists. But they always ran the hazard receiving all those who came to them and helping when they could.
Olena Fedorivna knew how to sublime, just magically harmonious atmosphere of Ukrainian world. She was an expert on customs, could interpret their meaning and beauty. In each Kuzmenko found sense of living intact their culture is its bearer and creator. To my mind, it was of great importance because one could come to the house, a small island, which shone with conscious Ukrainian life.
There one could meet poets Mykhailo Diachenko, Volodymyr Sirenko, Oles Zavhorodniy, whom I knew from his student years, Liubov Holota, Mykhailo Romanushko, Ivan Sokulsky… All visitors from Kyiv called on Olena Fedorivna.
There was a great deal of talk about, in particular, Lviv and Western Ukraine. I wanted very much to go to the Carpathians. And Volodymyr Sirenko gave me the address in Stari Kuty, where his friend poet Mykola Blyzniuk lived. This was a Hutsul family. So I went there on vacation, and Mykola, extremely good and inspiring personality, was my guide.
The Carpathians impressed me: real and non-egalitarian Ukraine, which was not afraid to be authentic. The children, I beg to say, were chirping in Ukrainian… The people were sincere and friendly. The river Cheremosh was amazing. There were many art products: pysankas, wood carving, Kosiv ceramics, embroidery, carpets, candlesticks… The Kosiv Market seemed to me the most luxurious artistic action.
Then, thanks to Mykola Blyzniuk, I met poet Taras Melnychuk. It was a great event for me. He had been home from the zone for about three months then. He was skinny and exhausted. He was a real icon for the locals. They talked about Taras like about a saint. I was very touched by the fact that people talked about him in such a way. His poems impressed me by the depth and naturalness as well as by self-dedication of the poet himself.
In addition, Taras could uniquely enjoy not only his own creations. He had an inherent feeling of creative brotherhood. He also had a perfect sense of authenticity of poetry. He told me about Mykola Vorobyov, Vasyl Holoborodko, Igor Kalynets he believed that at the time their works were the most powerful events in Ukrainian poetry.
Taras then presented me with a little book of Igor Kalynets which later figured during the search at our apartment when Igor was imprisoned. (“How do you know Kalynets?” And so on.)
I then met with a warm support when Taras highly praised my actually almost unknown poems which never had been at the printer’s. I saw then that there indeed existed unknown to the world unofficial Ukrainian poetry not only I wrote poems like nothing on earth.
Speaking of Neomodernizm or avant-garde… Taras Melnychuk considered the poems of Taras Shevchenko the most modern and the Ukrainian folk songs the most modern avant-garde…[7] And I think along the same lines. Although it is said polemically, but by and large it is true. The main determinants in poetry are the depth of foreknowledge of the image of reality: of human being and time.
When in 1976 I met Ivan Sokulsky, Yuri Vivtash, Mykhailo Romanushko and then Yaroslav Lesiv, all by itself a creative group emerged. It was our group, not New York, but Dnipropetrovsk group. Yurko then laughed and said: “Pendopupovsk” it was his coinage for the Dnipropetrovsk group. But we also invented an alternative name: Dnipropol. We were a group apart: our relations concentrated upon creativity. I remember the enthusiasm with which we maintained (that is, there was a need for Ukrainian literature at the time) that there was a need to poetry at global, at European level… We should keep the dialog alive with the world. These were our plans, and I think they were not unfounded.
For example, the mystically deep and noble power of poems of Ivan Sokulsky has not been effaced from the memory until now. His Ukraine−the God’s garden of freedom, truth and love selflessly kept by him−has been firmly inscribed in the spiritual universe. So, today the Ivan’s word sends a life-giving breath of heavenly light. For he was the poet who heard the “crying of a stone”.
Or a wonderful poem by Mykhailo Romanushko “Concerto for a lonely voice” which he left us here like a valuable gem, full of beauty, pain and music, before he went to Kazakhstan and there were no news of him ever since. He was like a star that approached too close to something in space, but suddenly left its orbit and flew into the unknown. And the pearl is here: it is opalescing saying in a strange voice… “Destinies, destinies…” as Yuri Vivtash wrote in “Porohy”.
There is no denying that the pathbreaking fiction of Yuri Vivtash is remarkable phenomenon in the modern Ukrainian literature his Black Dandelion was a banned and persecuted work his breakthrough artistic manner−due to concentration of image-senses, freedom and spiritual vision−outran its time.
It was written in Russian nevertheless it is a Ukrainian work. The plasticity of thinking and images are Ukrainian, like those in Gogol’s Evenings on a Farm near Dykanka, Terrible Revenge and so on. Later, Yuri Vivtash wrote prose and poetry in Ukrainian. These works were characterized by rich style, deep intuition of man in time and eternity.
By the way, when in 1995 Swedish critic Sigvard Lindqvist, who was very fond of Ukrainian poetry, translated it and took interest in Ukraine, came to Kyiv, a lot of what we had imagined was confirmed. He interviewed in poets, including me. They also talked, among other things, about the world avant-garde. About my writings he suddenly told me that he considered them the poetry of the future. But I think that somehow he saw all modern Ukrainian poetry in its best works in the same light. Moreover, Sigvard Lindqvist stated that the modern Ukrainian poetry was more advanced than the European one. Of course, it is not a matter of top ranking. The main thing is that the authoritative Swedish critic recognized the phenomenon of Ukrainian poetic domain a major achievement in global spiritual and artistic vision.
By the way, Sigvard Lindqvist compiled and published an anthology of contemporary Ukrainian poetry in his own translations Det Okände Ukraine (The Unknown Ukraine), 1995. His article about my poetry “Intuitive Modernist” was published in the Swedish newspaper Tisdag on 01.08.1995 and its shortened variant appeared in Chornovil’s newspaper Chas. Time translated by Olga Seniuk (23.02.1996).
So, 1976. This year was extremely eventful. Ivan Sokulsky had just returned from his imprisonment and was still under observation. And I wished to finally meet with Ivan and Orysia. They said that he should not meet with anyone otherwise he exposed himself to a risk… But there was something higher and more significant than all cautions and warnings. Those controversies and vanity were nothing compared to the power of truth, true free action, especially the fate of Ukraine!
It seems, we met with Ivan in the same suburban electric train, Sirenko and he were going to Dnipropetrovsk. There instantly emerged an atmosphere of trust and finding of something long overdue.
Ivan’s appearance looked rather strange. He stood out among his acquaintances due to special spirituality of facial features. He looked like being out of the top drawer. He had unusual light in the expression of his eyes, majestic bearing of his head. He had his own distinctive features: the rare and great range of intonations and feelings comprised infantile tenderness and admiration, lofty calmness and delight and cold skepticism, caustic irony and sarcasm. He was both a mystic and activist: quite a rare combination.
Soon Ivan invited me to baptize Mariya. The christening took place on 25 May. At the time she was a tiny baby.
When I arrived, there was Yuri Vivtash. We met there for the first time. It looked like a heavenly sign. Yuri and Ivan were acquainted already. We were waiting for Mykhailo Romanushko: he was expected to be the godfather. But he arrived two days later. Therefore Yuri had to become a godfather.
Yuri Vivtash was perhaps one of the biggest victims of the system. He came from the old Kozak Village of Kytaihorod, Tsarychana Region (08.08.1951). He worked in Krynychky as a newsman. Earlier he studied at Moscow University, faculty of journalism he was expelled for the so-called anti-Soviet activity.
V. Ovsiyenko: When was it?
R. Lysha: In 1971. From the very beginning did not fit into that ideology, in all those clichés of communist regime. He had an extraordinary talent, imaginative, syncretic vision of how things worked. In addition, he had an independent, courageous character. He hated the pretence.
In 1975, near the hotel Dnipropetrovsk he was beaten and booted down the stairs, but a miracle only he was not crippled. There were two brutal beatings. In 1982, when we already had our own apartment, he was beaten again. I was out. A seemingly normal friend called Yuri to set up an appointment with him in downtown at 19.00. It was March. Yuri went to that meeting, and in an alley four karatekas attacked him, broke his nose with a heel, beat badly, and he had a concussion of the brain… When I came to see him in the hospital, I was terrified. You cannot imagine his disfigured face! To make it worse, they forcibly poured wine into him so that he would look drunk and everyone would think that he had fallen by himself. But in reality he was sober. Fortunately, there was a telephone booth nearby, and Yuri, having recovered consciousness, called an ambulance. Still he had capacity to do it. By the way, it leaked out that somebody from the city health department called the hospital and made inquiries about his condition and advised to treat him…
When we met, Yuri was already the author of the wonderful book of innovative prose The Black Dandelion. He then read us excerpts from it. Later, in 1992, he printed the magazine Rodnik (Spring) in the Baltics. As regards this book, there is a good saying: misfortunes never come singly. As in Bulgakov’s novel Master suffered for his work, so Yuri came to grief for his literary creativity. By the way, the officials told Yuri, that his destiny was considered at the All- level. That is, he was treated as an exceptional person.
V. Ovsiyenko: Let us make the remark that the Rodnik was a literary and art magazine published in Latvia, Riga. # 6 (66), 1992. It is said that this novel was written in 1973-76 here is the date.
R. Lysha: In 1980, when the KGB officers searched our apartment, there was no such magazine it it was launched around 1986 it was the first magazine to publish Nabokov in the USSR[8].
Fragments of the Black Dandelion first appeared in the independent magazine Porohy which we published with Ivan Sokulsky in 1988-90, then in the Kuryer Kryvbasu, magazine Ukraine, in the newspaper Nasha Vira, in Ukrainian, in the author’s translation. In general, it is past time to publish this book in Ukraine. Not only that, but also poetry and prose written already in Ukrainian, his journalism and essays. His works have been silenced until now.
At the time there were many carbon copies that Yuri distributed among his friends and acquaintances. One copy he bound by himself it was confiscated during the search, the one with the artistic collages by Yuri. The book Black Dandelion was published by the Parish of the Intercession, Village of Rubanivske, Vasylkiv Region, 2012. There is an article by Petro Perebyinis in Appendix about Yuri Vivtash.—R.L.].
In short, it seemed that the baptism of Mariya blessed our creative circle. This baptismal ceremony was something really special. On the road to the church we crossed the sand reserve plot near Ohrin which contained in its depths relics of many centuries. The sun shone, the smell of grass was in the air, and camomiles were blooming. Yuri bore Mariya awkwardly and Volodymyr Sirenko helped him. The world in May looked newly born. The candlelight flickered inside the church. The words of prayer were blossoming out, the smell of sanctity, closeness of the invisible God and the wings of angels showed up white. It looked like we were not on earth at that moment.
And for some reason the old women on the church porch looked puzzled and asked us: “What is your ethnic origin?” and we happily answered, “Ukrainian”.
What made us happy despite the hardships of life, hard time with work, with everything? To my mind, it was spiritual discovery of something: of ourselves, our land, our language, as well as understanding, friendship, and communication. The space was filled with something that needed your attention and definition. The people have forgotten about it but it lives on…
For example, I have a poem where I mention Kalytva: Mount Kalytva near Tsarychanka where the Kozaks kept the watch in the 16th century. From the mount the Kozaks on patrol could see approaching Tatars. The plowmen are Kozaks at the same time. But the plowmen work in the gully and the village is in the gully and Kozaks are on patrol on the mount. When the Kozak sees enemies, he signals waving kytaika[9]. Then people fly to arms, hide their children… This legend I knew from my childhood, it was retold in my village. But I was afraid that people might forget it, and forget the mount. I liked very much the very word Kalytva and I deliberately included it into my poem about Kalytva, the mound became a mysterious symbol for me. This mount is mysterious indeed: the last glaciations created it and did not go further…
We intuitively used to find these significant words in our environment. At least I had the feeling that they were flying to meet me. This time was very fruitful for me, Ivan, and Yuri…
Ukraine, its space revived in our communication and expanded fantastically. In this sense the meetings and friendship with Mykhailo Horyn and Yaroslav Lesiv were of utmost importance for us.
In 1976 (or maybe in 1977), when Yaroslav came to Ivan and Orysia, we felt in him the enormous bulk of Carpathians, ancient Ukraine and thereupon Europe. And he wanted to know very much Eastern Ukraine and whether it existed at all, because at first he expressed some doubt. We brought him to Petrykivka, showed him landscapes, adornment, and offered our explanations. We showed him the Scythian and Polovtsian stone images in the historical museum… We did our best to show him the animating though invisible story of our past against the dull background of Soviet reality. And Yaroslav finally said: “There is a live Ukraine, I feel it”. And many a man disparagingly maintained that there was nothing but a desert.
Perhaps Yaroslav understood Yuri as no one else: he did not bear him malice, ignored occasional inflammatory remarks. Yaroslav treated him in a fatherly manner. It was Yuri who wrote about his poems in 1988: it was a preface to the book of collected poems Droplets on Bars manually sewn together by the author.
By the way, when Yaroslav was already a priest, he used to say: “I feel myself a Kozak priest”. That is, he had an underlying Ukrainian universal principle. And during the symbolic observation of the 500th Anniversary of Kozaks Father Yaroslav was treated as a real natural Kozak priest.
Actually I noticed that all events in which Father Yaroslav participated became significant, large-scale and truly powerful.
In 1977 Yaroslav invited us to Luzhky. And we—Ivan, Orysia, Yuri and I