Abstract
ABOVE: Part of the Ukrainian steppe where Hryhorii Kosynka’s In The Rye is set. INSET: The Ukrainian writer Hryhorii Kosynka
CREDIT: (Danube) Andrey Nekrasov / Alamy; (Kosynka) All-Ukrainian Industry Analytical Center via Wikipedia
He had fought in the ranks of the socialist revolutionary Cossack Otaman Zelenyy’s army during the Ukrainian War of Independence and had been in contact with Ukraine’s first prime minister in exile. But the Soviet state, which in the 1920s let Ukrainians write in their own language to secure their loyalty, was watching. Kosynka was arrested on fake terrorist charges and executed aged 35 on 15 December 1934.
He was a member of the Executed Renaissance, a generation of Ukrainian language poets, writers and artists murdered or dispatched to labour camps by the Soviet regime in the 1920s and 1930s. The destruction of
Ukrainian literature was accompanied by an artificial famine, the Holodomor, in which 3.9 million Ukrainians died. Kosynka would be erased from literature until Nikita Khrushchev took over as Russia’s leader in 1953 and initiated the so-called “Khruschev thaw”, when Soviet repression and censorship were relaxed. Reading Kosynka again, one is catapulted into a revolutionary Ukraine where there was the promise of a new world. Ukrainians then fought under different flags, and rather than depict social classes, Kosynka shows individuals in this period, and their fears and joys. He uses prose like an impressionist painter’s brush and these texts are meant to be read like a painting where swatches of colour merge into half-recognisable shapes.
They listened, mesmerised, while fellow writers speculated that a demon sat within him
In The Rye (1925), a first-person account of a deserter from the Red Army running through the rye but with no catcher to save him, is set before the Red Army had fully conquered Ukraine. The vast plains of the Ukrainian Steppe grasslands, where the story is situated, were the home of the Cossacks, warriors whose role in founding a proto-Ukrainian state, the
Zaporozhian Sich, is part of national mythology. Kornyi Dizik - whose surname is a derogatory term for a deserter - meets an old girlfriend who married a landowner for security, but who, too, is adrift in a chaotic, invaded country. The fragmentary style of Kosynka’s writing, his sympathy with ideologically imperfect characters, and his use of the Ukrainian language all made him particularly subversive to the Soviets. Exactly 90 years after his death, the voice of this author speaks to our own time.
In The Rye
IT WAS ALL simple down to the smallest details: me, drowsy morning and grey steppe. I only remember dawn clearly, tearful with dew and the slightly bashful sun, bathing dimly in rye stalks.
“Well. Well… time to come out for a kiss.”
I addressed the sun because it unceremoniously toyed with the hairs on my leg, lovingly inspected the tear in my trousers and laughed at me with bees’ wings: “Dizik Dizik Dizik?”
This riled me because what does dizik mean? The word is terrifying because it reminds me of reality in two senses. Firstly, because in our revolutionary terminology, it means deserter; and secondly, I am one, comrade.
So there you are: when, I thought, the sun begins seeking deserters I won’t go to the village, it’s dangerous (this is customary with absconders) the levadas too, luckily it’s Sunday, I’ll sleep in the rye.
So I decided that, although the levadas allured me treacherously with willows and gardens smelling of wormwood and mint, my faithful comrade was the rye.
I lay in the valley where the Hordyna burial mound smoulders in the sun and before me lies the pillared track to Hnylyshche, Chornoslyvka, and further….
In the rye!
It was beautiful, ripening, and in a week or two it would be haystacks, but now it grew upwards: in my mind, scythes and sickles chimed and heavy ears of grain bent to earth but then an old stork walked solemnly through grass to the bog, bowed in all four directions, caught an unwary frog and with a dull clatter startled the wild duck on the water.
But I remembered that, when a soldier saw a green shirt in the village, they aimed carefully, as at a dead willow, and yelled, shooting in fear, “Stop, you are not from here!”
“That was a stupid frog, right?”
I said this to my sawn-off Japanese shotgun before standing resolutely, rolling up my pants and laughing at my legs, strong, balanced and hairy (which Grandma told me means strength). I looked into the waters: bonnie grey eyes smiled back, a thatch of hair blazed with sunlight and the childish face of Kornyi Dizik stared back.
I waved my fist at him and glimpsed the stork’s tracks.
I must go! But breakfast wouldn’t hurt, eh?
But I remembered that, when a soldier saw a green shirt in the village, they aimed carefully, as at a dead willow, and yelled, shooting in fear, “Stop, you are not from here!”
This happened very rarely, for we deserters are fighting folk and move carefully, especially at dusk. The village is ours then and in the morning we pass through the rye. I decided not to breakfast; is it really okay to take a morsel to your mouth before mass?
I tugged the bunched hay, scuffed it with my feet (covering my tracks), examined my gun carefully, tucked it into my waistband, pulled my cap over my eyes and followed the stork’s trail into the rye.
I didn’t walk so much as swim because I wasn’t lulled into the monotonous rhythm of the crops and the steppe was as friendly to me as my Japanese shortie, rousing me at dawn, summoning with its waves at midday and in the evening as the rye rose, falling asleep.
I followed familiar paths: wide Rozdil village welcomed with wheat, Temnyk greeted me with rye and the Hordyna burial mound wore a skirt of oats, barley and drunken buckwheat striped with blue flax flowers.
Everything was simple and clear, then suddenly dust rose from the steppe path, why?
I laid down my gun, looked askance at the track, my nerves accepted the song of the field seemingly singing along: a bee’s wings buzzed above my ears irritatingly and I desperately wanted to squash it…
I looked more intently at the dusty trail, cavalry, cavalry, a thought sparks and is extinguished in blue flax, kill two, three then what will be… shooting yourself.
However, I involuntarily laid my head on the unploughed border, stuck bare legs back into the rye and waited, nerves no longer singing but chiming ring, ring…
However, I involuntarily laid my head on the unploughed border, stuck bare legs back into the rye and waited, nerves no longer singing but chiming ring, ring…
Hooves burn beneath the sun, the rich man comes
Dzyuba, a wealthy guy from Hnylyshche, rode half a league away and halted his grey horse. The rye bore his loud, somewhat stilted conversation to me:
“Oh Brother! Zhytomyr province is full of those who won’t serve in the commune but want easy bread.”
Another guy who was on a wagon replied: “They all want to be commissars.”
“Commissars! Let them be the devil! At night they’re by the window with a rifle ‘hand it over!’”
The grey strip of sand, the white hoof of the horse and my unconquered yearning to open fire lay behind them but I remembered Otaman Hostryi’s order: “don’t emerge and don’t shoot.”
I looked at a sinewy yarrow by the unploughed strip where a bee, legs caught in honeydew, thrashed, then smiled and climbed into the thick flax.
Let it be so.
Ring. Dzyuba. Ring. This bell rang the steppe to dinner. I was stressed from hunger and to calm down I thought about Dzyuba.
But here she was now a wild steppe fruit tree, seared, tanned by the sun, her eyes two beetles
He’s probably had a good breakfast? You think that of the hero who found himself saying, “they want to be commissars.” And although they would be commissars? No you can’t say that to Hostryi. He would kill…
The ghost of the communist Matvyi Kiyanchuk, who was shot in Dzyuba’s grounds, passed before me through the rye and my heart ached.
Ring.
On the barrel I sit
Beneath the barrel a duck
My bloke is a Bolshevik
And I, a Haidamachka
And he winked! Matvyi was a good lad, as they led him away
Ring.
I don’t think about commissars, Hostryi might take me at night to bathe in the waters but still I wondered, who are they?
The steppe met the fragrant wind bowing low as it passed through the fields, warm and gentle it tugged whiskers of proud wheat, winked at oats and kissed, long, long, the curled heads of buckwheat. Drank the steppe honey.
I shook my head at it, I don’t know, I wanted to think about Kiyanchuk but willed myself to stand up before sinking again because the wind fluttered a red kerchief above the road (the kerchief was all I saw from my lair): tassels like cranberry bunches touched ears of corn.
I’d spit on Hostryi now! I’ll go meet ’em, maybe they’ll even give me pirozhki although I’m not from “our village”… everything is possible for a deserter. Oh, curl-headed lass! Oh she’s scared… Sunday greetings where are you going? I didn’t say but only thought is it Ulyana?
I pushed my cap back in surprise, what’d happen next?
It really was Ulyana in front of me, and along with her in my imagination stood the local lord’s barn, six oxen harnessed to a plough how they turned the steppe soil once…
But here she was now like a wild steppe fruit tree, seared, tanned by the sun, her eyes two beetles. She carried water.
“Hello!” She came over to me.
“Good health Ulyana!” I wanted to smile and couldn’t: she looked at me for a long time, visibly pondering and when her eye fell on my torn knee where a ladybird calmly crawled she laughed bashfully, her lips quivering like a child’s, a tear rolling unnoticed onto her plaited hair… her blue eyes asked:
Did you, Kornyi, forget the manger near Zoryan’s black ox? … and when you kissed my eyes, laughing, showing me a star through a knothole saying “they resemble that, don’t they, dearest Ulyana?”
I stretched out my hand but didn’t know where to begin, and asked stupidly, “You are unrecognisable now, Ulyana… ”
Her words fell quietly onto the road:
“I have changed.”
I don’t remember what happened next: she bustled, then rushed at me yelling hoarsely,
“What kind of enemies are we…? No, Kornyi, we don’t need to be! Let’s sit down.”
I was intoxicated… I don’t know what I asked, nor what she told me, but I only remember how rye swayed wildly, flax trembled with joy and the hot wind fell with its chest to the ground.
Ears of grain listened.
“You are still handsome Kornyi… Do you want to kiss me? Kiss me, let at least one day be ours!”
She stroked my hair which had been combed two years running by rains, snows and the wolfish deserter lifestyle…
“Do you know my Dzyuba?” she laughed, “his name may mean beak but you are the devil’s teeth!”
I laid my head in her lap listening, because she was my destiny, lost in the rye.
“Someone asked me this as if it were a song: mum only had to have three sons and three daughters…”
I was afraid of weeping and drunkenly asked:
“Is it true the rye ripens? But my lot will soon have to flee to the forest. There is the aristocratic life while we are starved as dogs and have to rob. The day passes while you wait for death. Do you have many comrades?”
“Oh, Kornyi! …ripening… Stop, you’re crazy, don’t go!”
I saw beautifully embroidered lace on the slender hems of Ulyana’s garments, a maple leaf on her breast, and everything around was intoxicated, and the red kerchief caught fire and burned the steppe from end to end!
“Dearest Ulyana.. I’m not afraid of anything now!”
My dear little Ulyana…
Ears of corn whispered, she tugged her apron shyly, threw some small apricots to me and, with a quiet, timid sadness, said:
“I’ll go to my mother’s. He went to the council and is now their hostage, also they won’t let people go anywhere…”
I delayed Ulyana by asking for the 20th or maybe last time, or perhaps I asked the maple leaf:
“Do you still love me?”
The flax blinked.
I don’t know what I asked, nor what she told me, but I only remember how rye swayed wildly, flax trembled with joy and the hot wind fell with its chest to the ground
“Oh, that’s so tactless even to ask,” she paused and added, “eat the apricot, then we’ll say goodbye.” She kissed me quietly, tore up a handful of flax, and her eyes were blue, blue, as its flower and the fire of the kerchief faded.
“Goodbye, Kornyi!”
Then she raised her eyebrow in her old manner, blinked and laughed.
The rye ripens… no more is needed, goodbye! She bowed low on the track and rolled away with the green oat grass into a cheerful Chornoslyvka village and her mother’s place.
Ding… oh ring out, steppe! I lay for a long time and listened to my heart ringing in time with the bells of the steppe. The ladybird crawled higher, I took it gently in my hand and asked: “Do you want to kneel, facing the sun?”
You can. Yes, grab your pants with your paws, then… stupid, you’ve fallen off. And how do you think I’m holding up? But, Ladybird, you don’t know, that I, Kornyi Dizik, am drunk in the rye today, ha? You drunken rye grass, stand up! Spit on the death of Hostryi, I want to sing, do you hear, steppe?!
Oh, what kind of crow is that…
Hordyna’s burial mound still burns with sunshine before me, it is Ulyana’s red scarf and I… when I remember my deserter’s life…
Are you asking about the communist Matvyi Kiyanchuk? I’ll tell you, but not now, because my destiny is lost in the rye, and I want to cry like a child, or sing, as old people sing when they remember their youth. And keep singing. ✘
Notes: 1) Levadas are green watery areas in Ukraine. 2) A Haidamachka is a woman peasant rebel. 3) Pirozhki are fried yeast-leavened boat-shaped buns with a variety of fillings.