Prominent Ukrainian writer, historian, ethnographer, and translator. He was born into an impoverished Cossack-gentry family. After completing only five years at the Novhorod-Siverskyi gymnasium he enrolled at Kiyv University in 1837 but was not allowed to finish his studies because he was not a noble. He obtained a teaching position in Lutsk in 1840. There he wrote his first historical novel in Russian Mykhailo Charnyshenko, or Little Russia Eighty Years Ago (2 vols, 1843). Mykhailo Maksymovych promoted Kulish's literary efforts and published several of his early stories. His first longer work written in Ukrainian was the epic poem Ukraina (1843). In 1843鈥�5 Kulish taught in Kiyv and studied Ukrainian history and ethnography. There he befriended Taras Shevchenko, Mykola Kostomarov, and Vasyl Bilozersky; their circle later became the nucleus of the secret Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius. Panteleimon Kulish was the first person known to translate the whole of the Bible into the modern Ukrainian language and was also the first to write historical novels in Ukrainian. His most famous contribution in this field was the novel Chorna Rada (The Black Council) which was set in Cossack times. Kulish was also active in historical writing, composing a brief history of Ukraine in verse (under the title Ukraina) and a much larger History of the Reunification of Rus in three volumes. The latter dealt with the era of Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky in the seventeenth century. His two-volume collection of Ukrainian folklore, Notes on Southern Rus retains its scholarly significance to the present day.
This is the first Ukrainian historic novel, first published in 1846 by one of the prominent Ukrainians 鈥� , who among other things created the first modern phonetic alphabet for the Ukrainian language, which with changes is used today, made the first Ukrainian translation of Bible, as well as translations of Shakespeare, Goethe and Byron. The English title is The Black Council and it refers to the election of Hetman in 1663. It is currently almost a clich茅 to say that these or those historical periods are 鈥榡ust like the Game of Thrones鈥�, after a famous TV series based on 鈥檚 work. In this case, the situation on Ukrainian lands was no less tense and filled with heroics and betrayal but I think it was interesting in itself, without references to anything else.
I鈥檝e re-read it now because this year I plan to read more of Ukrainian classics, so I took (Ukr) and decided to go through the list as it is composed, i.e. chronologically. This is the #1 in the list.
The story starts quite slow by introducing the main characters, goes with: Late in the spring of 1663 two travelers mounted on good horses were approaching Kyiv from the direction of Bilhorod. One was a young Cossack, armed for battle; the other, by his dress and white beard, appeared to be a priest, but by the long sword under his cassock, the pistols at his belt and the long scars on his face, looked like an old Cossack. Their horses were tired, their clothes covered with dust鈥攖hey had obviously traveled a long way
As readers soon find out, the younger Cossack is Petro and his father, former Cossack Colonel Shram (Scar) go for a visit to one of Shram鈥檚 comrades Cherevan (Bellied) before going to Kyiv and then to the current Hetman Somko. Here the story goes not a little bit cringy for modern readers, for among pleasantries Shram and Cherevan decided to marry their children who only just met and while Petro is eager, Cherevan鈥檚 only daughter Lesia is much less so, but she cannot say no and only her mother, who is way smarter than her dad, manages to turn the situation into a joke. As we find out soon after, the mom had a dream years ago that her child as a princess will marry a prince, and as this prince both mother and daughter see in Hetman Somko, a man twice her age, who kisses her into forehead as a daughter. As if this hasn鈥檛 been enough, there is the third candidate for Lecia鈥檚 hand, a Zaporizhian Cossack Kyrylo Tur (Bull). Zaporizhians are less like men and more like a force of nature, fickle weather that may give a great harvest one day and destroy everything with a flood another. A short quote that shows Tur鈥檚 attitude. After taking part in a feast as an honored guest instead of thanking the lord and lady of the house he quips: 鈥淭hank God and me and not our host. If he doesn鈥檛 feed me, someone else will and I shall not die of hunger.鈥�
Kyrylo, who as it turns out, once saved Shram from Poles, constantly claims that he鈥檒l steal Lesia and take her with him to Montenegro, leading her to a nervous breakdown, while men laugh at those too-impressive women. Kyrylo does what he has promised鈥�
All these troubles for Lesia are not as much to show gender roles of the period, but as an allusion to the fate of Ukrainian lands, for the second part of the story deals with the Black Council, an attempt to set another man as a Hetman. At the moment there are two 鈥� on the left (Muscovite) and right (Poland-Lithuanian Commonwealth) banks of the river and there is a third, backed by Zaporizhians. By using populist rhetoric the latter gets the support of the poor peasants by offering them equality while bribing a Muscovite mission鈥�
It is a very interesting story on many levels: as the earliest historic novel that at the same time doesn鈥檛 fall in the usual romantic heroization of people who give their lives for their native land, but makes a lot of characters self-serving bastards; as a critique of populism way before most of the globe had democratic regimes, but monarchies; as a critical view on internal discontent instead of 鈥榚vil foreign invaders and heroic locals鈥� trope. At the same time, even if historically correct, the depicted male chauvinism, anti-Semitism and some other issues may trigger sensitive readers
That wasn't very bad, but it was very boring. if it wasn't my school assignment I definitely wouldn't read it... Generally, the story describes separate Ukraine in the 17th century and Ukrainian Cossacks fighting with each other. It's a chronic and it says us about the fictional dark times of Ukraine after a great board of Bogdan Khmelnitsky, so it wasn't a new for me that I didn't find it both: super exciting and interesting.
The Black Council, a novel written by Kulish in 1857, a historical novel and rather political one with minor elements of a love story. The black council was a name for a public assembly usually comprising of military leaders of the region of Ukraine or as it was commonly called back then, Malorossia (meaning the lesser Rus). The narrative is set in the mid 17th century and although the events around perhaps the most known black council are described and constitute a decent chunk of the plot, the novel also presents variations on friendship, patriotism, family relations as well as a love story. The black council illustrated in the novel was famously inclusive of not only the military heads of Cossacks but also peasants and local merchants.
I personally distinguish two specific aspects of the novel that a modern reader can find interesting. One is political. At the time Ukrainian Cossacks were a local military power to be reckoned with in order to control the region. Russian czardom, Polish and Lithuanian monarchies, Ottoman Empire, even Swedish kingdom, all fought for the land for decades. Several times Cossacks were tempted and did change sides for the promises of autonomy and independence. The novel explicitly emphasises the longing for liberty and freedom of the young people populating the region of Ukraine. The longing eventually was the people's undoing when its opinion was swayed by populist rhetoric of one of the factions within Cossack army. Some could say that attempts to gain power by promising independence while being backed by other foreign states are being made to this very day, whichever end of political spectrum you look at. Still the surprising part is not that a small regional power is being seduced into alliance by several major powers at once, it is rather a commonplace situation, arising around most small states in the modern still politically and economically polarised world; the surprising part is rather that in Ukraine this political swaying has been happening for already more than 300 years and the end of this motion can hardly be seen with the ongoing military conflict in the east showing no signs of extinguishment. Another even more paradoxical thing is why this keeps happening despite there being such a vivid representation of this political dilemma in the national culture and art for already so substantial amount of time. This question may be left unanswered for time.
But to turn to a less dire and less upsetting elements of the novel, just prior to reading the Black Council, I finished a volume of essays by Jung on archetypes and the collective unconscious, which certainly added a psychoanalytical twist to my perception of the novel. Despite a rather trite love story, the novel exhibits limpidly the Old Sage archetype in the character of colonel Shram, having to advise his old friend, his son and eventually the captive Hetman (the legitimate leader of Ukrainian Cossacks, in the novel betrayed and imprisoned by the rebelling faction of the army). Say what you will about the scientificity of Jung's psychoanalytical theories, but his extensive analysis of mythologies and fairytales of various cultures and finding common motifs, heroic figures and villains amidst them is indisputably a good bit of solid culturological research. Considering how folkloric the Ukrainian literature has been in its cradle, that is throughout the whole of 19th century, it is no wonder that mythological archetypes have found their way into a historical novel that is so expressly political.
This has been the gist of this novel for me, to use such a powerful archetype, omnipresent in cultures all across the world in all times and to parallel it, to juxtapose it against the perpetual political indecision, crisis and manipulation that even by the time the novel was published has been present in that geographical region for ages. As if in a time loop, political directions kept changing with ascendence of new elites to power; and yet the new sages came too and advised and kept watching others ignoring their advice and failing because of it.