Or Thoughts Along the Dnipro
Early last December, looking out the hotel window at the blowing snow, I thought “Well, I’m in Kiev.”
Every time I end up in some out-of-the-ordinary place, it takes my mind a while to catch up. Landing in the Ukraine at 4 pm it was already dark, and suddenly winter seemed very grim and cold following spring in Wellington a couple of days before. After checking in at the hotel (“You get passport back when pay. No credit card.”) and getting the key from the etachenaja, being mildly surprised by light switches at eye level (after fumbling about in the dark at a more habitual height) and debating on the relative merits of actually using the bathtub, my mind finally caught up.
After a fashion. (I did appreciate the guest literature left for me in the hotel, which seemed to be entirely about what to do in case the place unexpectedly burned down around my ears. After suggesting that one first try to put out any fires oneself, the flyer reccommended leaving the room, but not forgetting to tell the hotel staff the room was an inferno. “Remember that a closed door will otter (sic) you sufficient protection from excessive heat for quite a long time. To stop infiltration of smoke, seal the door…” Now, while all the references to aquatic mammals are certainly reassuring, I’m glad I don’t smoke and besides, it sent my mind skittering off into the realms of speculative fiction, which was no help at all.)
Kiev suddenly seemed very chilly and formidable, above all as since there were only a few minutes to get ready and head off to give the conference. The two days in Neuch̢tel between trips had also been rather a whirlwind of sorts too, with the (very beautiful) medieval opera, but hardly the kind of time I need for my mind to catch up Рespecially as I got home, dropped my bags, fished out my camera and headed straight off to the dress rehearsal (turnaround time: approximately 45 seconds).
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Left: The evil King Marmorinus meditating on his throne… with lighting conditions best described as “ambient”, one is grateful for actors who hold still.
Right: Another view of the king on his throne. The church is turn-of-the-century, and actually built out of red-tinted concrete (apparently a rather daring innovation for the time) and is decorated in typical early 1900’s fashion.
Somehow my mind seems to travel at a rather more leisurely pace than my body, the latter being seriously propelled forward by the 21st century and my mind still travelling as people did when a steam engine was considered speedy… I’ve always admired people so centred they are always right wherever it is they are. I always feel tattered (not unhappily) at the edges, like a flag too long in the wind, and vaguely blurred, until I can focus again.
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Left: Looking out over the Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independance Square), in fact. The statue of Berehynia was erected in 2001. Berehynia (or Bereginia) is a vila, or female spirit. It’s very tempting (and evokes much more exciting imagery too – by the way, why isn’t there an word in the English language to describe the origins and history of images, like “etymology” so handily does for words?), to decide her name is derived from the Slavic “bereh” meaning river bank, which would make her a river naiad, Slav cousin of Melusina, but it’s more likely the name comes from the Ukranian “berehty” meaning to guard and protect.
Right: Just what the can opener was doing in my room atop the (dismally empty) minibar, I hesitate to guess. (That’s the story of my life – continually re-focusing between the end of my nose and the horizon, lost between the metaphysical and the physical, between monumental statues and can openers – a kind of short-sighted presbyopia.)
The Ukraine is a big country. The largest European country, actually, weighing in at just over 600,000 square km. It’s also a country about which, besides Tchernobyl and the odd political event or curiously calm revolution, I know really pretty much nothing – ignorance I am pretty sure I share with most people on this side of the now-only-a-memory Iron Curtain. So, looking out the hotel window, I thought, well, if I’m going to get to know the Ukraine in one day, I better not waste any time. There was a knock at the door. It was my mind of course, a bit out of breath, but just in time to head out.
The exhibition was very nicely presented, the conference was good fun, as these things usually are, with the added benefit of everything being translated, so one has time to ponder one’s next declaration while the interpreter is transmitting what you just said. (It does put a kink in the telling of jokes, though, since time-delay humour is a hard card to deal spontaneously.)
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Bemused contemplation seemed to be the order of the evening, waiting for the official speeches (of necessity vaguely boring) – and their translations (by nature incomprehensible) – to end, there was plenty of time to suddenly begin wondering about the origins of Cyrillic.
Saints Cyril and Methodius invented Cyrillic (but of course – one wonders what it would have been called had Methodius possessed the stronger personality). The good saints based their alphabet on the Greek uncial script, “adding ligatures and consonants from the older Glagolitic alphabet to cover the sounds not found in Greek”. Glagolitic? The oldest known Slav alphabet. For more on that, see the famous BaÅ¡ćanska ploča, oldest evidence of the glagolitic script, found on the island of Krk. Krk? In the Adriatic, tucked away up in the corner; it now belongs to Croatia. (The Italian name is Veglia.)
Born into a senatorial family in Thessaloniki in the 9th century (their mother was possibly of Slavic origin), the brothers became priests and went to Constantinople, where the younger of them, Constantine (he took the name Cyril when he became a monk much later), became a librarian at Saint Sophia. In 860, he conducted an unsuccessful mission the Khazar Khanganate, to counter the spread of Judiasm there. (The Khazar Khaganate, near the Sea of Azov, was one of the most extraordinary kingdoms ever to exist; it was destroyed by Sviatoslav I of Kiev.) In 863 the brothers were en route for Great Moravia, to teach the Scripture in the vernacular at the request of Prince Ratislav. They translated some sacred texts into Slavonic, devising the new script that would later become known as Cyrillic. (According to some sources, the brothers invented Glagolitic, but its origins are probably earlier.) After a run-in or two with German missionaires who weren’t pleased to see Scripture in the local tongue (a monopoly is a monopoly after all), they returned to Constantinople and from there on to Rome, with a baggage full of holy relics of Saint Clement as a gift for the Pope. Saint Cyril was buried in the church of San Clemente, where a fresco depicts his funeral. The date of his canonization is unknown; it’s very likely he was fast-tracked to sanctity before canonization became reglemented. He is also the traditional patron Saint of Bohemia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Moravia, Slovenia, and (much more recently, in 1980) of all of Europe.
As for Methodius, he became archbishop of Sirmium (Pannonia) and returned to Moravia. In 879 he was called to Rome to answer charges of heterodoxy and disobedience. Cleared of both, he returned to Moravia as archbishop once more, and died on February 14, (and 6 April – the Orthodox church still uses the Julian calendar) 869, at Velehrad in Czechoslovakia.
The following languages use Cyrillic script: Abaza, Abkhaz, Adyghe, Avar, Azeri, Balkar, Bashkir, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Buryat, Chechen, Chukchi, Church Slavonic, Chuvash, Dargwa, Dungan, Erzya, Even, Evenki, Gagauz, Ingush, Kabardian, Kalmyk, Karakalpak, Kazakh, Komi, Koryak, Kumyk, Kurdish, Kyrghyz, Laz, Lak, Lezgi, Lingua Franca Nova, Macedonian, Mansi, Mari, Moksha, Moldovan, Mongolian, Nanai, Nenets, Nivkh, Old Church Slavonic, Ossetian, Russian, Ruthenian, Serbian, Slovio, Tabassaran, Tajik, Tatar, Turkmen, Tuvan, Tsez, Udmurt, Ukrainian, Uyghur, Uzbek, Votic, Yakut, Yukaghir, Yupik.
I don’t know about you, but lists like this make my poor head ache, mainly because I can only recognize a dozen names at best. Yupik? The Inuit people whose territory spans Alaska and Siberia. They use Cyrilllic? The Alaskan and Siberian Yupik apparently adopted the system of writing used by Moravian Church missionaries during the 1760s in Greenland. Moravian Church missionaries in Greenland? The Moravian Church was founded by the Bohemian heretic Jan Hus, for which King Wenceslas (yes, the good king who went out on the Feast of Stephen, while the snow lay round about; he was also the one who chucked John of Nepomuck off the Charles Bridge in Prague, thus making him patron saint of bridges, notably in Saint- Ursanne) let him be burned at the stake in Constance in 1412… Aspirin, anyone?
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Saints Cyril and Methodius, hard at work inventing Cyrillic, despite the inclement weather.
Dinner that evening in a curiously steppe-themed restaurant, where of course one can engage in the all-time favourite pastime of English-speakers abroad: reading the English translations of local menus. I passed in the boiled bull’s balls (no, I am NOT kidding) and the “fat with garlic” (that was a main dish) and although the smashed potatoes sounded intriguing, I settled on something I felt safe trying. My ignorance of the Ukrainian cuisine does not extend to borscht, by the way, there are towns out in British Columbia settled by Ukrainian immigrants (Ukranians are Canada’s ninth largest ethnic group, just after Chinese and before the First Nations peoples). Also, like most kids growing up in Canada in the 60’s, I of course had many chums whose parents spoke some arcane European language (spurned by their ungrateful offspring, eager to dump all audiblly incriminating evidence of their heritage) and who served prodigious helpings of funny foods, (for me anyway, for whom meat and potatoes was limited to… meat and potatoes) borscht foremost amongst them. As it was, I timourously ordered something reliably bland.
My only other piece of knowledge about the Ukraine also dates from my childhood, when the Doukhobors made headlines, generally in protest marches, generally stark naked.
The Doukhobors are a pacifist group, originating in the 17th century in the southern Ukraine for the most part, who rejected secular government, church liturgy and militarism. The name was coined in 1785, by Archbishop Ambrosias of the Russian Orthodox Church, who called them “Dukhobortsi”, a derogatory term meaning “spirit wrestlers”, denouncing their struggle against the Holy Spirit. (Prior to that, they were known as “Ikono-bortsi” for their refusal to acknowledge icons.) Persecuted in the 18th century, they were equally poorly treated by the Tsars and eventually 7400 left for Canada in 1888-89, which was , at the time, big and empty and eager for immigrants. (Many settled in Saskatchewan, and a group eventually ended up in B.C.) In many ways typical of other anabaptist and utopian movements, they established communities, lived frugally, worked industriously, and largely kept to themselves, except when they bickered with their own dissident minority, the Freedomites, who had a propensity for naked protest marches.
In May of 1903, Freedomite Doukhobors went on a nude march and fell afoul of the authorities. (In 1902, an “Army” of Doukhobors set out in late winter from Yorktown, Saskatchewan to evangelize the world, which would have been quite a hike. They were persuaded to turn around and head back home.) In the early 1920’s a rash of school burnings, in protest against compulsory public schooling, caused quite a stir. In 1932 the B.C. Government arrested 900 of them for public indecency and stuck them on Piers Island for three years. (Canada also imprisoned 22,000 Japanese, most of them Canadian citizens, in eight prison camps during the second World War. The majority lost all their land and possessions. The government only grudging compensated their descendants, in what can only be qualified as an appallingly miserly fashion, in 1988.)
At any rate, I still recall newspaper headlines and photos of ranks of strapping housewives, clad only in rubber boots and headscarves, facing off with the decidely uncomfortable and hesitant RCMP. Even though these were my formative years, it seems clear enough that with with naked matrons and beetroot soup pretty much summing up my prior knowledge of the Ukraine, I certainly had a good deal of catching up to do.
The next day, we were picked up by a driver and a wonderfully enthusiastic guide, and set off to discover Kiev. First stop, the monastery of St Michael of Vydubichy, where our ebullient guide, who seemed to know the full population of Kiev by their first names, introduced us to the head priest.
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Left: His Grace archpriest Mithrophan, of the Holy St Michael of Vydubichy Monastery in Kyiv (the correct Ukrainian spelling for Kiev) flanked by two rather cold visitors from Switzerland (I packed in a real hurry; what Patrick’s excuse was I’m not sure).*
Centre: The main gate, with (all those haloes pored over finally came in handy) a mosaic Veronica. The Orthodox church I was told (I asked) does not go in for crowns of thorns, nails, lances and the like. Another fascinating detail is the tiny diagonal bar on the Orthodox cross, which is a direct reference (I asked a lot of questions) to Dismas and Gesmas, a reminder that in matters of faith, one has a choice.
Right: Another triangular halo for my collection. The spoked circle is a sun symbol (I must have been a right nuisance) and, according to our guide, a symbol incorporated from paganism. Missionaries from Byzantium only reached the region in the 10th century, and Perun’s statue was still standing on a hill in Kiev. (Perun is basically Thor by another name, complete with thunder and chariot, goats and hammer. I did forget to ask if thunder marks are still engraved on roof beams in country houses, but I suspect they are. How I wish too that I could know what that statue looked like. There was a reconstruction in a museum but it was not particularly convincing – archaeologists are rarely very good at fantasy – and modern ones, like those employed by the Romuva, are just too 20th-century – pagan chain-saw art.)
The Ukrainian church is of course Russian Orthodox with a few local differences. Orthodox churches, to someone who grew up hunched uncomfortably through interminable Sunday services on a rock-hard straight-backed pew in a whitewashed Anglican clapboard church, are delightful places. First off, there are no pews. Secondly, they are not bare and grim inside, but painted throughout, with little sculpture or statuary, as if all the inside of the building is a giant canvas. And, lots of candles. (It had been ages since I’d seen real beeswax candles.) And of course the Julian calendar is still in use, having only come into fashion with the Orthodox Chuch in the 14th century. (Before that, dates were calculated from the creation of the Earth, a difference of some 5800 years.) It’s like stepping into another world. In fact, it is.
While I confess to not having a religious bone on my body, I am always entranced by the patina of faith of any sort, especially where icons are involved. It’s not the place here to go into the whole evolution and meaning of icons, but they are intensely personal things (one translation for icon is “window”) and often beautifully executed. Nor are they signed, as the painter considers himself the vehicle through which the image comes, not the author or creator.
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Left: Archangel Michael is the patron saint of Kiev. (There are seven archangels; the other six are Barachiel, Gabriel, Jegudiel, Raphael, Selaphiel and Uriel.)
Centre: Our guide asked if we could visit the chapel upstairs, and even the stairs themselves were a revelation. A wide spiral staircase, with each step having a supplementary step towards the outer wall. According to our guide: outer steps for women (skirts oblige) and the inside steps (rather taller) for men. I admit I was just enchanted by the simple idea, which would never have occured to me in a hundred years. (It has been filed away for a painting or a concept drawing one day, and is exemplary of those wonderful details one stumbles over – quite literally – from time to time.) I often wax extatic about this kind of detail in conferences and there is invariably someone who raises the question “So what?”, at which point I have to reply that if you aren’t paying attention to this kind of detail, then you might as well stay home…
Right: Door handle of the church, polished by countless hands. Another detail filed away for future reference…
Then it was back into the car (heater on full), towards the banks of the Dneiper, to visit a statue. (I had put in a request for monumental statues.) The huge one atop one of the seven hills of Kiev is obviously the Motherland, a very martial-looking giantess who holds up her shield like a trophy and brandishes a colossal sword. (The blade was originally somewhat longer, but the local religious authorities complained the tip was taller than the spires of the highest church, which would certainly not do at all, so it was shortened and now Mother Ukraine brandishes a somewhat stubbier sword.) Other projects have been put forward to replace the sword and shield with a child, less militant and more politically correct, but these have thankfully gone nowhere. Quite frankly, if you’re going to indulge in monumental statuary, it’s to make a statement, not conduct an opinion poll…
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Left: Sixty-two meters tall, (on a plinth of 40 meters), the Motherland statue was built in 1981. The sword alone apparently weighs 12 tons.
Centre: The legendary founders of Kyiv. The staute is the work of the sculptor Vasily Borodai and the architect Nikolai Feshchenko.
Right: Lebid on the prow of their boat.
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Left: Another view of the statue…
Centre: …this time with tourist to provide scale.
Right: The waves were particularly beautiful (but then, I’m partial to spirals.)
Kiev was possibly the first Slav city, founded in 482, on a site that was already inhabited in the late Paleolithic. And of course, there’s a legend too…
Once upon a time, four royal orphans – three brothers named Kie, Shchek and Khoriv, and their beautiful sister Lebid, fled the Eastern invaders who had destroyed their kingdom in a dark storm of swords and burning. Arriving on the banks of the wide river Dnipro, they built a boat and sailed to the western shore where seven fine green hills arose against the dawn. There, they built a city, and named it Kyiv, after the eldest brother.
The best part about the statue, though, is the clear image it gives of river running, sailing swift currents down wide waterways, with a velocity and purpose far more focused than statuary dealing with ocean-going vessels (at least before Kate Winslett on the prow of the Titanic – and they’re heading for an iceberg, which offers a rather different and icy-cold subtext), which deal more in wide horizons and bravery in the face of the unknown, but do not convey the momentum of river travel. The young lady in the prow raises her arms in wind of their own motion, and with the promise of a future not darkened by the past. “…the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.”
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Left: Kiev Pechersk Lavra, also known as the Kiev Monastery of the Caves. Under the prim little gazebo is a chunk of the original Dormition Cathedral, destroyed in World War II. The new cathedral is just behind it.
Centre: Bronze bell, with the four familiars of the Evangelists – ox of Saint Luke, eagle of Saint John, lion of Saint Marc and angel of Saint Matthew.
Right: The angel’s wings cover his mouth, a reminder that when the bell rings it is wise to remain silent and listen.
During the 8th and 9th centuries, Kyiv was an outpost of the Khazar Khaganate. The Khazars were a semi-nomadic Turkic people who occupied a large part of southern Russia – the Pontic steppe and the North Caucasus – from the 6th to the 11th centuries. (The name ‘Khazar’ may mean “wanderer”, but the etymology is uncertain.) In the 7th century, the Khazars founded an independent kingdom or Khaganate in the Northern Caucasus along the Caspian Sea. Initially Tengri shamanists, (Tengriism comes in several forms, depending on the peoples that adopted it, from China’s Xiongnu to the Bulgars; it also features, in common with Nordic myth, the notion of a World Tree holding up the heavens) they seem to have had a refreshingly tolerant attitude to other creeds, many of them converting to Christianity, Islam, and other religions. Judaism became the official faith in the 8th century.
Then in 882 the Vikings arrived. (The Viking centuries are still a matter of some animated debate, something I unwittingly provoked one evening at dinner, with some embracing that episode and others claiming it was “purely administrative” and had no cultural influence. No, I did NOT ask if 50 years of Communism were “purely administrative”.) Notwithstanding, Kievan Rus’, (the Viking or Varangian era of the Ukraine, referring to the Scandinavian voyagers who traveled by land and rivers into Russia in the 9th and 10th centuries), is often considered the Golden Age of Kiev. (The Vikings also founded the Ryurik dynasty that ruled Muscovy and much of Russia from the 9th century until the death of Fyodor, son of Ivan the Terrible, in 1598, and was succeeeded by the Romanovs. It was reputedly founded by a Varangian chief who settled in Novgorod in 862.)
Now, the Vikings, despite the fearful voices of a number of Irish monks hiding out in the heather and watching their monasteries burn, were perfectly entrepreneurial merchants for the most part. (Admittedly, when they were off a-viking – from the work “vik”, meaning bay; basically coasting or bay-hopping – they did indulge in asides like burning Paris and a few other notable cities.) Also, given that their ships did not have the capacious holds from which later vessels would benefit, they were luxury merchants: amber, gold and jewellry, furs and other fine goods.
In 882 a Viking leader, Oleg, moved down the Dnieper, seizing the town of Kiev. In 911, he skillfully negotiated a commercial treaty with the Byzantine empire. (The Vikings and Byzantium have a long relationship, the history of Basil II’s Varangian Guard – the pelekyphoroi barbaroi or “axe-bearing foreigners” – reads like an adventure novel.) Two generations later Kyiv was the centre of trade between civilized Byzantium in the south, the steppe and lands farther East, and the endless forests of the north. Kyiv was the place where come “all goods gather from all parts: gold, clothes, wine, fruits from the Greeks; silver and horses from the Czechs and Hungarians; furs, wax, honey and slaves from the Rus’.”
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Nicholas Roerich, before setting off on his quixotic quest to the Himalayas to find Shambhala, did a number of genre paintings, notably of Vikings.
From left to right:
1. Guests from Overseas, the Varangians in Russia, 1899.
2. Slavs on the Dnieper, 1905.
3. The Portage, ancient Russians pull their ships from river to another, 1915.
4. Longships Are Built in the Land of the Slavs, 1903.
5. A Russian Prince takes Tribute, 1908.
Nikolai Konstantinivitch Roerich had a long and unusual career. Born in 1874 in Saint Petersburg, he trained in the arts and law, developed a pronounced taste for mysticism and reputedly had close ties in the Ukraine. He created the stage designs for Stravinsky’s premiere of The Rite of Spring in Paris in 1913. After a stint in the US, where he is said to have had a hand in designing the more esoteric elements of the dollar bill, and spending five years in Tibet chasing rumours of the sacred valley in the late 1920’s, he was nominated for a Nobel Peace prize in 1929 and finally settled down in Punjab, India, where he died in 1947 at the age of 73. His paintings of the Himalayas are among the most moving and unusual mountainscapes ever painted, reputedly inspiring H. P. Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness.” At any rate, Roerich has the dubious honour of being frequently mentioned in his novels; a distinction shared with Gustave Doré, Sidney Sime – “There’s something those fellows catch – beyond life – that they’re able to make us catch for a second. Doré had it. Sime has it.” – and the Swiss Henry Fuseli. (Another subject for a newsletter… ” Weird Artists in Lovecraft”… but didn’t I make a resolution not to get so easily distracted by things that had never occurred to me before?)
6. Prince Oleg Contemplates the Bones of his Horse, Ivan Bilibin, from the Song of Oleg, by Alexander Pushkin.
”…Full-mournfully the Prince rode out
Towards the river, with his son,
The gallant Igor, thronged about
By his old warriors, till they won
Unto the Dneipr’s shore, where strewn
On a high hill, ‘mid sand and stones,
‘Neath waving grass, in glare of noon
Lay bare the old rain-whitened bones.
With gentle foot, and bowed with grief,
Touching the skull, Oleg then said:
“Sleep well, my friend! Our day is brief;
Though I live; thou art with the dead:
Nor, at my funeral feast, fullnigh,
Sword-spilt shall thy warm life-blood fall
Upon me dead, when even I
Drop to the dust that ends us all…”
The tale of Prince Oleg is a very popular one. When Oleg asked the wizards what the manner of his death would be, they replied “You will die because of your favourite horse, whom you always ride, Prince.” Oleg vowed never to mount his horse again, and ordered it to be fed and cared for and put out to pasture, never to be brought to him again. Years later, recalling the horse upon his return from his campaign against Constantinople, he asked for news of it. Told that the steed had died, Oleg rode out to see his horse one last time, and placing his foot on the skull said “How may you be my death now that you yourself are dead?” A poisonous snake emerged from the skull and bit him on the foot.
Between 965 and 969, Khazar rule over the eastern Ukraine was broken by Sviatoslav I of Kiev, and they became a subject people of Kievan Rus’. In 980, King Vladimir was proclaimed prince of all Russia in 980 after capturing Kiev from a rival. In 988, Vladimir, who had spent the first portion of his life in good Viking style (chronicles credit him with 800 concubines), must have experienced a change of heart and sent out envoys to discover the best religion. Convinced Orthodox was the best one on offer, he accepted Christianity. The people descended to the Dnipro River to be christened by Greek priests from Byzantium. Vladimir built the Desyatina Church, and in 1036 his son, King Yaroslav the Wise, built Saint Sophia as a sister cathedral to the famous Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. (Alas, we missed his statue, which is near the reconstructed Golden Gate – one of three built by Yaroslav in the mid-eleventh century. Reputedly modelled on the Golden Gate of Constantinople, it was partially destroyed by Batu Khan’s Golden Horde in 1240. Used until the 18th century, it gradually fell into ruin and was totally rebuilt in 1982 for the 1500th anniversary of the city.) The gold mosaic wall of the Virgin Oranta of Saint Sophia has watched over the destiny of Kyiv for nearly a thousand years. The figure of the Virgin herself is quite spellbinding. Placed as she is, high in a wide rounded alcove, the slightest shift of the viewer’s position makes her seem to move. We spent long minutes gazing at it, wondering how much was due to a chance encounter or architecture and image and how much was planned by her creators.
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From left to right, by Viktor Vasnetzov:
1. Battle between the Scythians and the Slavs, 1881.
2. A Knight at the Crossroads, 1878.
3. Bogatyr Horsemen.
4. The field of Igor Svyatoslavich’s battle with the Polovtsy, from the Tale of Igor’s Campaign. (The Tale is an epic poem possibly originating as early as the 12th century, something of a Slavic Song of Roland. The plot is based on a disastrous raid of Prince Igor Svyatoslavich of Novhorod-Siverskyy against the Polovtsians, (or Cumans, also known as Kipchaks, Kuns or Comani – a Turkic noamdic tribe related to the Pechenegs) living in the southern part of the Don region in 1185.)
5. The Bogatyrs.
Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov (b. May 15 1848, Lop’jal – d. Moscow, June 23, 1926)) is one of Russia’s best-known Russian Revivalist painters, specializing in historical and mythological subjects. From 1884-1889 Vasnetsov laboured on a series of frescos in the St Vladimir’s Cathedral of Kiev. (Which we missed – darn it – that’ll teach me not to do my research beforehand…) While there, he met the young Michael Vrubel from Siberia, who was also involved in the cathedral’s decoration and would go on to become the figurehead of the Russian Symbolist movement. While in Kiev, Vasnetsov painted what might be his most famous painting, “The Bogatyrs”.
6. Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of Turkey (also known as Cossacks of Saporog Are Drafting a Manifesto), Ilya Repin, 1880-1891.
Mehmed was only seven years old when he ascended to the throne in 1648. In 1676 his forces fared poorly against the Zaporozhian Cossacks, who thrashed his army and drafted a frankly crude letter of insults in reply to his demand that they surrender nevertheless. (Their reply, probaly apocryphal, isn’t printable here, but it does make entertaining reading.) One wonders what the Sultan’s reaction was upon reading it. Whatever the case, it provided Russian painter Ilya Repin (b. 5 August 1844, Chuhuiv � d. September 29, 1930, Kuokkala, Finland), who had a great admiration for the Cossacks, with the occasion to paint one of his more memorable canvases. Begun in the late 1870s, it was only completed in 1891, and was immediately purchased by the Tsar, who paid 35,000 roubles for it, the most ever paid at the time for a Russian painting.
(Concerning the Sultan, if you’ll pardon me for straying, there is a quite fascinating aside: in 1658 a young Quaker woman named Mary Fisher turned up at the Ottoman court, asking to speak with Mehmet IV, claiming that God had sent her to speak with him. According to Mary Fisher’s report, she was politely received as an ambassador and Mehmed IV patiently listened to what she had to say (through an interpretor). How Mary Fisher came to believe that she should go to Turkey and explain her beliefs to Sultan Mehmed IV is something of a mystery. She was, however, nothing if not strong-willed – upon her arrival in Smyra, she addressed herself to the British consul with her request. His response was to tell her she was mad and put her on a ship home. Undeterred, she got off at the next port and persuaded the Grand Vizier to grant her an audience. Whatever may have been the Sultan’s thoughts, Mary Fisher returned to England with the belief that her mission had been fulfilled. Isn’t that an extraordinary meeting of lives and fates? Ships in the night, perhaps, but one has to admire Miss Fisher’s single-minded determination; I dream of one day finding a book on remarkable people who dedicate their lives and energies to extraordinary quests and ideals for little or no result. It also says something of the Sultan’s tolerance – the Quakers were far more poorly treated in England. As for Mehmet, he was deposed in 1867 and imprisoned in the Topkapi Palace. He died in 1693. Perhaps, in his gilded cage, he occasionally wondered whatever had become of that curiously earnest ingiliz woman he met briefly many years before.)
7. Burial of Igor the Old of Kiev in 945, Henrykem Siemiradzkým (1845-1902). Assasinated while repressing the revolt of Drevilian Slavs (or collecting rightful tribute, depending on who you read), Prince Igor was replaced by his wife Olga, who was rather less tyrannical… Their son, Sviatoslav I of Kiev, was the first ruler of the Kievan Rus’ to have a Slavic name, his ancestors’ being of Old Norse heritage. (A little more than “purely administrative”, I dare say.)
The name “Ukraine” is first mentioned in the chronicles in the year 1187, replacing ancient name of “Rus’”.) In 1240, the Mongols swept through the Ukraine and the kingdom of Kievan Rus’ came to an end. The Mongols destroyed Kiev, at the time one of the largest cities in the world.
In 1321, Kiev was conquered by Grand Duke Gediminas of Lithuania. From 1569 the city was controlled by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, becoming capital of the Kijów Voivodeship. In the 17th century, Kiev was transferred under rule of Russia. The last of a series of short-lived Ukrainian states of the 19th century was caught up first in World War I, then the Russian Civil War and Revolution, then World War II, finally becoming a Soviet republic. The Declaration of Independence of Ukraine was proclaimed in the city by the Ukrainian parliament on August 24, 1991.
The Ukraine is full of folk tales and legends, many shared with the rest of Slav world, many the result of the cultures that have passed through. The best known is perhaps Baba Yaga, the crone who travels on a mortar, propelling herself with a pestle and a broom, whose cabin is perched upon long chicken’s legs, lighted by glowing skulls on posts.
Others are Byelobog, the”white god,” who appears as an old man with a long white beard, dressed in white and carrying a staff, giver of light, traveling only in the daytime, leading the lost out of dark forests (his alter ego is Chernbog, lord of darkness); Dazhbog, the sun god, the Ukrainain Zeus, he travels across he sky each day like Helios; Khors, also a sun god, (probably of Persian origin); Devana, goddess of the hunt; Dodola, goddess of clouds and rain; Dogoda, god of the gentle west wind; Jarovit, the god of war; Kolyada, the winter god (Perun represents the summer); Lada is the goddess of spring, the Slav Persephone, she lives in the Otherworld Vyri, emerging at the spring equinox; Krukis, god of blacksmiths; Marzanna, the personification of death and winter, tricking her can prolong life; Mokosh, earth goddess, commonly called Mati-Syra-Zemlya, or “Moist Mother Earth” she is also known as Mother Friday; Musail, king of the forest spirits; Myesyats. the moon deity, consort of the sun-goddess; Perun, god of rain, thunder and lightning, the Slav cousin of Thor, carries an ax or mace (his sacred animal is the bull, his sacred tree is the oak) and is the slayer of the dragon Volos; Rarog, god of whirlwinds, who can appear as a hawk, a falcon or a dwarf; Rod, god of fertility and light; the Rozhanitsy, mother and daughter goddesses of fertility; Ruevit, who has seven faces, the god of autumn; Stribog, god of wind, storms and dissension; Svaroh, the sky god, (the Slavic Hephaestus); Triglav (or Tribog), god with three faces, representing the sky, earth, and underworld; Varpulis, god of storm winds; Volos, (also called Veles or Walgino), god of death and cattle; Yarilo (the Ukrainain Dionysus), who goes barefoot, leading a white horse, carrying a bunch of wheat ears in his left hand, and a human skull in his right; the Ukrainian fates, the Zorya (Zorya Utrennyaya, goddess of dawn; Zorya Verchernyaya, warrior goddess of dusk; and the goddess of midnight Polunocnica, who lives in swamps and torments children with nightmares); and lastly emaciated but immortal Koschei Bessmertnyi charging on his gaunt horse, sword held high and beard and hair floating in the wind.
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Left to right:
1. Baba Yaga, by Ivan Bilibin, from Vassilisa the Beautiful, by Alexandr Pushkin, originally published in Moscow, Department for the Production of State Documents, 1900.
2. Vassilia approaches Baba Yaga’s house, Ivan Bilibin, from Vassilisa the Beautiful, 1900.
3. Koschei Bessmertnyi, Ivan Bilibin.
4. Veles, illustration by Klimenko.
5. Detail from Ivan Bilibin’s watercolor illustration, “Illya Muromets and Svyatogor” from The Tale of the Capital Kiev and the Russian Bogatyrs.
6. Perun, illustration by Klimenko.
7. The Mighty Hero Dobrynia Nikitich Fights the Seven-Headed Serpent, Nicolai Vasnetzov, 1913-1918.
8. The Flying Carpet, Viktor Vasnetsov, 1880.
Otherwise, the wings of the main stage are filled with other beings and creatures, often less appealing and occasionally very dangerous: the Bereginy, river bank nymphs, who steal babies and leave changelings; dragons, guardians of the aspen-wood bridge over the fiery river which leads to the Other World (there is also a guelder-rose bridge over a river of fire, where Little Rolling-pea and his two companions Overturn-hill and Overturn-oak fight a dragon, methodically lopping off all its nine heads one by one; many-headed dragons are a staple of Slav folklore); Kikimora, a tiny invisible female house spirit; Leshy, a forest spirit who dies in the beginning of October, and returns in the spring (His wife is called a Lesovikha); Mora, a malevolent spirit who chokes people and sucks their blood, she can take the shape of a white horse, white shadow, a white mouse, cat, or snake; Nightingale the Brigand, a half-bird, half-human, who lives in the tree blocking the road to Kiev (you don’t want to meet him on a dark and stormy night); Ovinnik, a barn spirit who appears as a huge black cat; the Rusalka, spirits of children who died unbaptized or of drowned virgins, who live in lakes and have long, wavy green hair and often fishes’ tails like mermaids (best not to dance with them when they emerge along the rivers in midsummer, or you must dance until you die); the Simargl, a winged dog or griffin (possibly of Persian origin); Sirin, a bird of paradise with the face of a young girl, comes down from heaven for dying men who, listening to her song, forget strife and regrets and die peacefully; the Skritek, hobgoblins and household spirits; the Pozemne Vile, gnome-like earth spirits, who guard underground treasure; Slava, the messenger bird of Perun, often a flame-colored owl; the Vukodlak, a cross between a vampire and a werewolf (to kill one, drive a hawthorn or aspen stake into its body, put a nail in its head, decapitate it, dismember it, and/or burn the body); Eretiks, undead who leave their graves to devour people; the eretsun, a living vampire created when the soul of a sorcerer possesses a dying human (always best to make sure the newly deceased’s eyes are firmly closed, and the coins will do for the ferryman as well); Vodyanoy, a malevolent water spirit who enjoys drowning humans; the Vodni Panny, pale water nymphs; the Vila, young, beautiful warrior women with long hair, who can shapeshift into animals and leave fairy rings where they walk; werewolves; Zaltys, the Slavic Yggdrasil, the hungry wyrm coiled at the roots of the World Tree; Zmei Gorynich, the Serpent of the Mountain, and ally of Baba Yaga (he loves to kidnap princesses), who dwells in mountain caves and or the bowels of earth.
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Cimmerian weapons in a little museum in the Kiev Pechersk Lavra. The displays are very 19th-century – a pell-mell collection of artefacts dug up in Kiev and the surrounding area. There was pretty much something from everywhere – Viking, Persian, Greek, Scythian, Khazar, Byzantine and more – everyone but Roman, as far as I could tell. This seems to sum up the Ukraine – settled, traversed, conquered, inhabited by a kaleidoscope of peoples and cutures, and emerging as a quite unique and fascinating culture – a little of everything, but now all distinctly Ukrainian.
This is also the land of the Trypilians, Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans, Antae, Roxolanians, Avars, not to mention the legendary Amazons. Cimmerians! Seeing the name printed on a card in a little museum display case of most unusual axeheads suddenly sent my mind reeling double tilt through the novels of Robert E. Howard and the few wisps of history I can recall from my eclectic and disordered reading.
The Cimmerians were nomads and horse-riders. Herodotus calls them Kimmerioi and places them north of the Black Sea, in the Ukraine, in the 7th and 8th centuries B.C. They likely moved in on the lands of the Trypilians, a Neolithic and Bronze Age culture that existed east of the Dneiper from about 4500 to 2000 B.C. Most probably Indo-European in origin, the Cimmerians are first mentioned by the Assyrians in 714 B.C. They leave the scene when the Scythians appear. They too were nomads, and horse-riders, but spoke Persian. The main part of their empire was further east, on the northern shores of the Black Sea and extending from southern Russia to the borders of Persia. It flowered between the 8th and 2nd centuries B. C.. (There was one of those beautifully elegant Scythian stags of hammered gold in another of the display cases.) They were eventually conquered by the Sarmatians and Roxolanians, who in turn were overrun by the Goths. The Alans went through Kiev too on their way to Spain and ultimately Carthage (and considerately left a few artefacts in another glass case). As for the Antae, they fought the Goths, themselves fleeing westward from the Huns in the 4th century. In the early 6th century they joined in Slavic raids against the Byzantine Empire but were nearly annihilated by the Avars, who passed through their lands c. 560. Busy times. (Robert E. Howard places his Cimmerians rather rather north, near Vanaheim, Asgard and Hyperborea, in the mythical map of his own devising, so curiously reminiscent of Tolkien’s maps of Middle- Earth.)
And the Amazons? Herodotus tells us they were known to the Scythians, who called them Oior-pata, which probably means “man-slayers”. Defeated in battle by the Greeks, the Amazons seized the ships in whose holds they were being shipped to captivity and, unable to sail them, eventually drifted ashore at Cremni. There, they captured wild horses and carved out an empire on Scythian lands. These strange women warriors intrigued the Scythians, and eventually peace was made, followed by many marriages, though the reversal of roles wasn’t easily accepted by the young Scythian men, who were not enchanted at the idea of sewing, cleaning, cooking and looking after the children. Nevertheless, the Amazons persuaded their men to leave the land, and they moved beyond the Taranis, in the land now called Ukraine.
Herodotus says this new people was known as the Sauromatae, whom the Romans later called the Sarmatians. (The Amazons didn’t leave anything in the display cases, though. It’s a shame.)
Speaking of the Sarmations, they have a novel connection to King Arthur, of all people. Where did Arthur get his cavalry? Most scholars presume it to be a later medieval addition to the myths, but there is a source closer to home. In 175 AD, a Sarmatian cavalry unit – 5,500 horse – was posted to Britain to act as auxiliaries to the VI Legion Victrix. Instead of returning home after their service was over, they settled in Bremetannacum (now Ribchester, Lancashire). They are still mentioned as late as 428 as a “troop of Sarmatian veterans” (cuneus veteranorum Sarmatorum).
Now, while all this sounds a little far-fetched, consider this: The Sarmatians were heavily armoured and fought on horseback, not at all a typical European style of fighting for the time. They used dragon-shaped windsocks (or rather, a handful of images exist of dragon-shaped windsocks, and do get a lot of mileage in speculative terms) and Arthur’s symbol is a dragon, dragon standards not being at all… standard for Europe either, although the Romans reportedly borrowed the idea from the Sarmatians. Arthur’s Round Table and egalitarian attitude thus implied (once again curiously out of place for the time) echoes Sarmation ethics. (This is perilously far out on a limb, since the Round Table is a rather late additon to the mythos, first mentioned in 1155 in Wace’s “Roman de Brut”.) The symbol of the war god of the Sarmatians was a sword stuck into a hill or a raised platform. Hmmm… swords, hills, anvils… Then there’s the Kalybes, a Sarmatian tribe famed for their skills in smithcraft and sword-making. Klaybes, Caliburn, Excalibur… Now, is following the trail of the Kalybes via “chalybus” (steel) and “ebumus” (white), optimistically alliterate or maybe just illiterate? Lastly, (and this is the best part) the Ossetians, who reportedly preserve much Sarmatian oral tradition, have a tale of a legendary tribe of heroes, whose principal hero, Batradz, “has his life bound up with his magic sword, which has to be thrown into the sea by his last companion, after he is mortally wounded.” Said companion first tries to rescue the sword by deceiving the dying Batradz, but he is unable to report what sign he should have seen upon consigning the weapon into the deep. Finally, he does as bidden, and the sea turns blood-red and turbulent. Perhaps brave Bedivere has a Sarmatian primogenitor?*
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Ravens of course accompany Odin, so Hugin and Munin have their Slav counterparts. These are one of two pairs in a run-down courtyard in the middle of Kiev. Ravens figure prominently in much European myth, as you might expect. The Vikings had raven banners (in Old Norse word for raven is “hrafn”, in Old English “hraefn”). Branwen Means “beautiful raven” from Welsh bran “raven” and gwen “fair, white, blessed”. In the Mabinogion, she is the sister of the British king Bran and the wife of the Irish king Matholwch. The Morrigan appear as ravens, and ravens wheel and shout in the sky over battlefields when the Valkyrie come riding. Cuchullain’s father Lugh is often seen with ravens and Owain has three hundred (they attack King Arthur’s men in “The Dream of Rhonabwy”). The raven was originally white. According to Greek legend, when Coronis, the daughter of Phlegyes became pregnant by Apollo, he left a white raven to watch over her. But, Coronis married Ischys just before giving birth. When the crow brought Apollo the news, he killed Coronis and Ischys, and turned the bird black for being the bearer of bad news.
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Trees have a special role in Ukrainian myth and culture, perhaps because Christianity arrived so late in the region. Our guide took us to see several that had been sculpted. When a tree dies on a city street, it is turned into a work of naïve art before being ultimately replaced by a new sapling. It is a delightful idea.
After a day of studious tourism at full tilt in Kiev, several newspaper and magazine interviews, a surreal coffee in the bar of the Modern Art Museum (Clockwork Orange, but blue neon) and a much-prolonged dinner, we got back to the hotel well after midnight, cautiously observing from a safe distance the unseasonably lighty-dressed ladies who occupied the lounge at the front desk, retrieved our keys from the little desk in the corridor (the etachenaja waved a sleepy arm from a sofa in one corner) and tried to get a little sleep before getting up at five to head to the airport.
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A sign in the airport said “THERE IS NO INFORMATION HERE!!!” and I idly thought – my mind was already getting left behind again – “Quite to the contrary, there was actually quite a lot indeed.”
SKETCHTRAVEL
The Sketchtravel sketchbook has left on its modest odyssey again, towards the south of France, after one stop in Switzerland (I optimistically sent e-mails to all my wee colleagues in illustration or comics – or at least those I had e-mail addresses for – to ask if they were interested in participating, but given the underwhelming response – nobody replied – it has gone onwards without). Naturally, I kept the sketchbook for weeks and weeks and did the sketch in a mad rush on the last evening before I was to turn it over to the next person. Typical.
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*Thanks to Patrick Gyger for allowing me to use his photos from the trip
**(For further reading, see “King Arthur, A Casebook”, a collection of essays edited by Edward Donal Kennedy, 1996.)
