Ivan Mazepa: Mykhailo Starytsky’s version
It was no accident that Mykhailo Starytsky chose to write about Ivan Mazepa: with his dilogy Molodost Mazepy (Mazepa’s Youth), and Ruina (The Ruin) he was continuing his series of historical adventure novels about the national liberation struggle of the Ukrainian people against their foreign oppressors. The series eventually grew to include the trilogy Bohdan Khmelnytsky, the Mazepa dilogy, and the novels Ostanni orly (The Last Eagles)-a depiction of the haidamak movement and the Koliivshchyna Rebellion-and Razboinik Karmeliuk (The Robber Karmeliuk). If one includes several of his shorter historical novels, such as Pervyie korshuny (The First Black Kites), Obloha Bushi (The Siege of Busha), Chervonyi Diavol (The Red Devil), and Zakliatyi skarb (The Cursed Treasure), Starytsky’s oeuvre encompassed nearly three centuries of Ukrainian history with its numerous tragic and heroic pages.
Most of these works were written in Russian. The reasons are easily explained: there was a ban on Ukrainian-language publications and a dearth of Ukrainian-language periodicals that would undertake the publication of large-scale epics. The author also needed to earn a living. After using his sizeable assets to start a theater, Starytsky was forced to support his family with literary work. He deeply regretted having to write his historical novels in a foreign language. “Is this normal?” he wrote, expressing his pain to Mykola Kostomarov. “I am forced to write Russian-language novels about Ukrainian history and life... Kievskaia Starina cannot even pay even a small fee for Ukrainian-language works.”
In any case, Starytsky’s writings were aimed at acquainting the large Russian reading audience with the key events of Ukraine’s history and presenting this history from a patriotic and specifically Ukrainian viewpoint, thereby contesting the official interpretation of the past. Each epic work in his series of historical novels is infused with this polemical rhetoric. Starytsky was spurred to write the trilogy Bohdan Khmelnytsky after reading Henryk Sienkiewicz’s novel Ogniem i mieczem (With Fire and Sword). The Ukrainian novelist adopted a clearly anti-Sienkiewicz stance (even though the Polish camp is depicted much more objectively in Starytsky’s trilogy than in the Polish writer’s novel).
Starytsky’s other novels promoted a distinct “anti-brigand” interpretation of the haidamak movement and Ustym Karmeliuk’s struggle, although he provocatively entitled one of the novels Razboinik Karmeliuk (The Robber Karmeliuk). The same polemics are evident in the Mazepa dilogy: the portrayal of the great hetman has a distinct anti-imperialistic and anti-anathematizing thrust in Starytsky’s novels.
But was the protagonist, as he was depicted in Starytsky’s novel, a hetman? In recreating the image of the young Mazepa, the writer did so with a view to his future hetmanship. The writer did not leave readers in any doubt as to whether he sympathized with the main character, and he helped them understand the rationale behind Hetman Mazepa’s future actions in 1709.
The historiosophic and artistic approach to Mazepa in Starytsky’s dilogy is characterized by various innovative features. One of them is the detailed portrayal of the young Mazepa rather than his embodiment as the hetman. There is no question that the writer was acquainted with European and Russian literary works about Mazepa. They stimulated Starytsky’s creative genius and his civic aspirations, and served as a source of ideas and as the object of polemics. A romanticist, Starytsky uses the legend of Mazepa as created by Voltaire and Byron: as punishment for his love affair with a married noblewoman, Mazepa, a young king’s page, is tied to a wild horse. The horse carries him to Ukraine, where he is miraculously saved by ordinary peasants. These are the opening scenes in the novel. This legend and young Mazepa’s famous good looks, which had women falling at his feet, fit perfectly in the context of a historical adventure novel. Moreover, the lighthearted adventure element was a way of softening the novel’s underlying historiosophic tendency, which “vexed Moscow.”
In April 1898, in a letter to Dmytro Yavornytsky, Starytsky writes: “I am writing a great novel about Mazepa now. This topic seems to be dangerous for the censors, but I cannot write in a way that will suit the censors’ taste.” A short while earlier he broached the same topic in a letter to Tsezar Bilylovsky. “Again I have been commissioned by Moscow to write a historical novel called Mazepa: I would like to write in both Russian and Ukrainian so that for now it can be published at least in Galicia...”
Starytsky had close ties with the publishers of the newspaper Moskovskii listok, where many of his prose works had been published. The newspaper was interested in historical adventure literature because it attracted readers. However, Starytsky’s subversive novel caught the censor’s eye after the first part was published. The editor of the newspaper was thus forced to suggest that Starytsky “modify” the protagonist’s image. “My dearest Mikhail Petrovich! I am sorry for not replying for so long: I have so much work that I cannot find a free moment. Nikolai Pastukhov [the publisher] suggests continuing Mazepa, but I am afraid of one thing: the first part has already caught [people’s] attention; in this part Mazepa is practically an ideal man, a hero, etc. Is he going to be the same in the second part of your novel? This would be inconvenient; if that is so, you would be better off if you chose a different topic; I am telling you this for your own sake in order to prevent any unwelcome misunderstandings.”
The editor was concerned because Starytsky had blatantly revised Pushkin’s version of the image of Hetman Mazepa that existed in Russia. The writer disregarded the editor’s suggestions: the historiosophic conceptualization of Mazepa’s image and the author’s profoundly sympathetic attitude to the future hetman were preserved in Ruina. This was inevitable, because doing otherwise would contradict the personal, social, and historiosophic principles that Starytsky professed. The Mazepa dilogy was the most distinct and consistent manifestation of the writer’s national Ukrainian worldview. Whereas in the trilogy about Khmelnytsky and in his other historical writings, including the ones that depicted Ukrainian-Polish relations, Starytsky viewed Ukraine as a sub-state (a freedom-loving and self-governing Ukraine under the rule of a just Polish king and part of the Rzecz Pospolita) the Mazepa dilogy noticeably breaks off from this sub- state discourse.
In Molodost Mazepy and Ruina Starytsky uses artistic devices in order to make frequent references in favor of full-fledged statehood, ascribing the appropriate views to Hetman Petro Doroshenko and the young Mazepa. “He [Doroshenko] dreamed of an independent Ukraine. This was his most cherished thought and most passionate dream.” “Well, well, sir!” said Mazepa, shaking his head [addressing Ivan Sirko, who championed Russian rule]. “You keep thinking that we cannot walk except in a yoke!” Naturally, this kind of historiosophy and his interpretation of Mazepa, who was anathematized [by the Russian Orthodox Church], were unacceptable to the imperial authorities, no matter whether they were tsarist or Communist-Bolshevik. This is why Starytsky’s novels about Mazepa were almost completely suppressed and relegated to oblivion, while their newspaper version, the only published edition of these novels, gathered dust deep in the archives of St. Petersburg for an entire century.
Having conceived a prose epic about Ukraine’s national liberation struggle against foreign oppressors from the age of Khmelnytsky until the Koliivshchyna Rebellion, Starytsky could not ignore the Mazepa period. In his dilogy, Mazepa is not yet a hetman but already a notable and fairly popular figure in Ukraine. Starytsky significantly accentuates his image in order to refute the labels and myths about Mazepa in a well-substantiated way, both historically and artistically, and to reveal the image of Mazepa as a European-type politician and a Ukrainian patriot. The reader quickly realizes that Starytsky does more than favor Mazepa: the writer models the hetman’s image with homage and tenderness, in a profound and consistent way. Through numerous unobtrusive remarks and situations he emphasizes that this man cannot be a traitor of his people. “I came back to Ukraine to serve it with my mind, my hand, and my heart,” says Mazepa to old Sych. “I see a lot of grief and I still don’t know where to turn. I think I will take a closer look and find out everything; where my Fatherland will be happy, there I too will be.”
According to Starytsky, young Mazepa’s attitudes and convictions were rooted in the traditions of his family and his upbringing. Significant in this context is a statement made by Mazepa’s father Stepan, who “did not want to join Moscow and sided with Ivan Vyhovsky. He was ours in body and spirit and did not abandon the Cossacks in any way!” The teachings and instructions of Mazepa’s mother also speak volumes: “The Mazepas have never been turncoats or traitors, and never will be!”
Mazepa’s interior monologue, which is equally significant in the historical perspective, is no accident either. He reflects on the principles of European politics of his time to which he subscribed even if they contradicted certain deeply rooted national political traditions. He applied these principles during his hetmanship: “Stunned, Mazepa looked at Sirko. In Europe he had observed bold and cunning politics that brooked no compromises; rather it was guided by the rule that the end justifies the means. He was astonished by Sirko’s straightforwardness or even narrowness, as it seemed to him.” Without a doubt, there was an obvious implication in these and similar phrases and situations for Mazepa’s later life and Starytsky’s time.
In Starytsky’s novels Mazepa is a young politician of the intellectual type, a patriot, diplomat, and a warrior who primarily uses his mental faculties rather than the sword. He is deft with the saber, excels at horseback-riding, plays the bandura skillfully and sings, and in general is a handsome man and practically a superman. However, all these trappings are a tribute to the style and genre of the novel, reading tastes, and, in a naive way, censorship. Nevertheless, in portraying Mazepa this way, Starytsky successfully controverts his libelous reputation as a lady-killer. At the same time, the frequent and detailed descriptions of love affairs and, above all, the classic love triangle that includes Halyna, Mazepa, and Mariana, follow the European canon (above all, Walter Scott’s contribution). Together with the fictitious adventures they have independent value, but at the same time they have a “mission to conceal” the main historiosophic and state-oriented paradigm of the dilogy in general and its protagonist in particular.
Through his Mazepa dilogy Starytsky also fulfills his historiosophic progress and in some parts challenges the views he had when he was writing the Khmelnytsky trilogy. On the one hand, Starytsky’s Mazepa continues Khmelnytsky’s activity as a statesman, but on the other, he has the task of rectifying certain reckless political steps that were made by his great predecessor. This becomes especially evident in Mazepa’s reflections about Khmelnytsky at the ruins of Subotiv and Chyhyryn and in the deeply symbolic image of Ivan Bohun. An ardent Cossackophile, Starytsky nonetheless ascribes to Mazepa his own highly critical appraisal of the unruly spontaneity of the Cossack masses and the destructive essence of the so-called “black councils,” and his descriptions of the phenomenon of the Zaporozhian Sich are marked by ambivalence and less than exaltation. Mazepa (and, of course, Starytsky) does not simply admire the iron muscles and incredible courage of the Sich Cossacks. He is also afraid of the propensity of this armed crowd to yield to momentary emotions and thoughtlessly react to some word of appeal, when “this entire mass could rush headlong and create irreparable troubles.”
Through Mazepa’s image, which Starytsky recreated in a very favorable light, and through the images of other symbolic figures in the dilogy (and Ukrainian history), such as Petro Doroshenko, Ivan Bohun, Ivan Samoilovych, Ivan Briukhovetsky, and other Ukrainian leaders, the writer succeeded in reconstructing one of the most dramatic periods of our nation and state in an artistically convincing and historically truthful manner.
In terms of the chronology in the two novels, however, this period is incomplete. There is unconfirmed information that Starytsky had intended to write a third novel called Bolshaia ruina (The Great Ruin). We could thus have had the complete history of Hetman Mazepa in the perception of our classic writer. Unfortunately, this intention, if indeed it existed, did not materialize. The dilogy ends with a brief and very telling epilogue: “At the house of Judge General Vasyl Kochubei in Baturyn, during the christening party for his daughter Matriona her godfather, Secretary General Ivan Mazepa, Colonel Hordiienko, and other Cossack neighbors are enjoying themselves. They are drinking toasts so as not to know grief in the future ...”
