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.