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Insight and Blindness in the Reception of Ševčenko: The Case of Kostomarov Author(s): GEORGE G. GRABOWICZ Reviewed work(s): Source: Harvard Ukrainian Studies, Vol. 17, No. 3/4 (December 1993), pp. 279-340 Published by: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41036529 . Accessed: 28/04/2012 10:41

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http://www.jstor.org Insightand Blindness in the Reception of áevõenko: TheCase ofKostomarov

GEORGE G. GRABOWICZ

Andye shallknow the truth, andthe truth shall make you free John8.32

Wehdem, der zu derWahrheit geht durch Schuld, Sie wirdihm nimmermehr erfreulich sein. FriedrichSchiller "Das verschleierteBild zu Sais"

In the broad and formalsense, the receptionof Sevöenko began with the reviewsin the Russian press of his firstslim volume of poetry,the Kobzar of 1840.1 While at times positive (and once or twice even enthusiastic),their basic imperialperspective allowed themto see only an instanceof talented regional writing,highlighted by a rare lyrical sensibility; the qualities, themesand topoi thatbecame touchstonesin the subsequentunderstanding of the poet wentlargely unnoticed. (At the same time,one recurringleitmotif in these reviews- "Why writein Ukrainian?" or, more pointedly,"Is it not a shame for a talentedwriter to waste his talentwriting in Ukrainian?"- did become in the course of the nineteenthcentury a major issue in Ukrainian- Russian literary relations.2) In a narrowerand more essential sense the

1. Cf. T. H. SevCenko,Bibliohrafija literatury pro lyttjai tvoröist',1839-1959, ed. Je. P. Kyryljuk(Kyiv, 1963), vol. 1 (1839-1916), pp. 8-9. In all therewere nine,and they appearedin virtuallyall themajor journals of thetime: Oteâestvennye zapiski, Syn oteéestva, Literaturnaja gazeta, Severnaja pâela, Majak, ¿urnal ministerstva narodnogo prosveSöenija,Xudoíestvennaja gazeta, Sovremennik,and Bibliotekadl ja âtenija.The same patternobtained in thefollowing few years; cf. ibid.,pp. 9-13. 2. Thus,for example, in the veryfirst of thesereviews ( Oteâestvennyezapiski, May, 1840,pt. 6, pp. 23-24) the anonymousreviewer, after briefly commenting in a favorable, butaltogether superficial way on thecloseness of Sevéenko'spoetry to folksongs, goes on to ask,"But why does Mr. Sevõenkowrite in Ukrainianand notin Russian?If he has a poetic soul- manywill say- whydoes he notconvey its feelingsin the Russianlanguage?" His liberalanswer to this not altogetherrhetorical question is thatif Mr. Sevõenko cannot expresshimself in Russianhe shoulddo so in "thesouthern dialect," and moreoversince thesewritings, like otherUkrainian (Little Russian) writings have "a moralgoal," theywill be of use to thepeasant reader. Some Soviet criticshave arguedthat the anonymousreviewer was VissarionBelinskij. Given the fact that in his later reviews and commentson Sevöenko Belinskij was unqualifiedlynegative (cf. especiallyhis reviewof "Hajdamaky"in Oteâestvennyezapiski, 1842, vol. 22, no. 5, pt. 6, pp. 12-14), the argumentis not very plausible; cf. Victor Swoboda, "Shevchenkoand Belinsky,"in Shevchenkoand the Critics, ed. GeorgeS. N. 280 GEORGEG. GRABOWICZ receptionof Sevöenko,in effectthe recognition of the immenseimpact of the poet and his poetry, began, still during his lifetime, among his fellow Ukrainianwriters, first through the rudimentary responses of such as Hryhorij Kvitka-Osnovjanenkoand JevhenHrebinka, and then,with unexpected power and depth,through the analyticaloverviews of PantelejmonKuliS.3 KuliS's responseto Sevöenko,covering the gamut from apologia and paean to diatribe and parody,is in factsui generis, but at the same time highlyindicative of (and still fundamentallyunexamined in) the context and the polarities of nineteenth-centuryUkrainian literature. If one looks at the mainstreamof the Sevöenko reception,however, its essential wellspring can be located most persuasively in the writingsof Mykola (Nikolaj) Kostomarov.This seems particularlytrue if we see an inner core in that reception which conflates the roles of genius and prophet, highlightsthe narod, its implicitperspective and its virtuallymetaphysical value, and upon this basis proceeds to postulatea new canon of Ukrainian literature.Kostomarov' s leadingrole in formulatingthis canon can alreadybe argued on the basis of several extrinsicfactors: he was one of the very first among Ukrainianwriters to respondto the appearanceof Sevöenko, and was the authorof the firstoverview of nineteenthcentury Ukrainian literature; he indeed was the firstto read Sevöenko in the context of the system of Ukrainianwriting - now perceivedas a new literature.4Along withKuli§, he was a friendand colleague of Sevöenko in theperiod 1846-47 when the three

Luckyj(Toronto, 1980), pp. 303-23. At the same time,the endorsementof Ukrainianas a languageof poetryis hardlyringing. For his part,Kostomarov turns the question around: Ukrainian writers, he says, turnto Ukrainianprecisely because they can say in it whatcannot be said in Russian,cf. his "Obzor soòinenijpisannyx na malorossijskomjazyke" (1842), M. I. Kostomarov,Tvory v dvox tomax(Kyiv, 1967),vol. 2, p. 378. 3. Cf. Kvitka'sletter of October23, 1840, in HryhorijKvitka-Osnov'janenko, Tvory u vos'mytomax (Kyiv, 1970), vol. 8, pp. 198-200; cf. also Hrebinka'sfootnote (in the style ofkotljarevSâyna) to Sevöenko's "Hajdamaky"in thejournal Lastivka: Lastôvka. Soâinenija na malorossijskomjazyke. Sobral E. Grebenka(St. Petersburg,1841), p. 371; cited as "vidzyvpro 'Hajdamaky'T. H. Sevöenka"in Svitovavelyö Sevéenka (Kyiv, 1964), vol. 1, p. 48. See especially KuliS's "Ob otno§eniimalorossijskoj slovestnosti k obSöerusskoj. Epilog k '¿ernoj rade'" (1857), "Perednjeslovo do hromady"(Pantelejmon Kuli§, Tvoryv dvoxtomax [Kyiv, 1989], vol. 2, pp. 504-512), "Õoho stojifSevöenko jako poet narodnyj" and "Slovo nad hrobomSevöenka," in TvoryPantelejmona KuliSa (L'viv, 1910), vol. 6, pp. 486-97. 4. More accurately,perhaps, a literaturewith a new vernaculararticulation, for Kostomarovis clearon the factthat a Ukrainian(Ruthenian) literature written in a bookish languageexisted much earlier (he specificallyspeaks of MeletijSmotryclcyj) and in facthad a major impacton the formationof GreatRussian literature.Cf. his "Obzor soöinenij pisannyxna malorossijskomjazyke," in IjeremijaHalka, Molodykna 1844 god (Xarkiv), no. 3, 1842 [1843], pp. 157-85; cf. also Naukovo-publicystyânii polemiâni pysannja Kostomarova,Kyiv, 1928,pp. 41-52. INSIGHTAND BLINDNESS 2 8 1 of them,in the loose structureof the so called Brotherhoodof SS. Cyril and Methodius,formed the core of a Ukrainianrevival that was as farreaching in its culturaland political implicationsas it was shortlived. He was, in fact, themain theoristand spokesmanof theBrotherhood and upon its suppression and the arrestof its members,the one who as a highlypromising assistant professorof Russian historyat Kiev University,suffered, as many thensaw it, the greatestdamage to his budding career.^ Afterhis exile in Saratov (1848-55), duringwhich he continuedhis historical,literary and ethnographic research (he also perfectedhis Greek, learned Spanish and expanded his intereststo include physics,astronomy, and archeology),served as managing editorof theSaratovskie gubernskie vedomosti, and establishedclose contacts with the critic M. G. CernySevskijand the futurescholar A. N. Pypin, he returnedto St. Petersburg.There he soon published such major historical studies as the multivolumeBogdan Xmelnickiji vozvrasâenijeJuznoj Rusi k Rossii (the firstvolume of which appeared in 1857) and Bunt StenkiRazina (1858), and the followingyear was appointedassociate professorof Russian history at the university of St. Petersburg. In the 1860s and 1870s, Kostomarovwas perhapsthe most influential and popularhistorian in Russia. Withinthe nascent Ukrainianmovement Kostomarov 's role was no less prominent.Myxajlo HruSevsTcyj,himself a directideological and intellectual descendant, forcefullyargues this in a lead article on "Kostomarov and ModernUkraine" in thefirst issue of his newlyestablished journal Ukrajina:

May 20 of thisyear marks forty years since thedeath of MykolaKostomarov, who died in 1885, on May 7 of the old calendar.This chronologicaldate must remindtoday's generations of theirunpaid debt before one of the mosteffective fightersagainst the feudal,bureaucratic, and autocraticregime of old Russia,the ideologueof Ukrainianrevival and liberation- and aboutthe unfilledgap in the historyof our communitymovement, at the head of whichthe late historian, publicist,ethnographer and poet stood forseveral decades. For despitethe great significanceof his activitiesand his individuality,Kostomarov was much less fortunatethan other Ukrainian activists of suchcaliber.

Hrushevsicyjrecounts how relativelylittle was done to collect and publish Kostomarov's works,and expresseshis own sense of guiltfor not being able to duly commemorate him. (As he tells it, his effortsto do so on the occasion of thetwenty-fifth anniversary of Kostomarov's deathwere curtailed by officialcensorship.) "And meanwhile,"he continues, alreadyin theperiod of theCyrilo-Methodians, Kostomarov was undoubtedlythe ideologicalleader of Ukraine.This becamequite clear when The Booksof Genesis

5. For a contemporaryperspective see the letterof M. A. Rigelmanto H. P. Halahan {Èevëenkov epistolarii[Kyiv, 1966], pp. 15-16). 282 GEORGEG. GRABOWICZ of the UkrainianPeople werepublished; before that it was feltonly intuitively. Later,after a ten-year-long"absence" and existence"under a lid," Kostomarov, fromthe momentof the appearanceof his Bogdan Xmel'nickij(1857), again became the generally acknowledged ideologue of the Ukrainian cause [ukrajinstvo],almost until his death,and at thevery least until the appearance of his "Zadaéi ukrajinofil'stva"(1882) throughwhich he cut himselfoff fromthe leadersof theUkrainian movement of thattime. What he was fora fullquarter of a century,1857-1882, can be deduced fromthe assessmentof him made by Drahomanov,who, despite cardinal differences in views,acknowledged in hima manwho was a trulyworthy authority for Ukrainian society - "whowas mostlike a Ukrainiangod."6

As such an authority,Kostomarov would repeatedlyturn in his writingsto Sevõenko, and his legacy, and his impacton the presentstate and the future prospects of the Ukrainian people. Arguably,his authorityalso drew its strengthfrom his closeness to the poet-Prophetand the persuasivenessof his vision of him. For all that,the nuances of his receptionof Sevöenko, and his role in codifyingits populistcast, have not reallybeen examined; and while as a resultof the recent"rehabilitation" of manyerstwhile "blank spots" (in effectareas of putative"nationalism") he is now discussed,the complexities of his stanceremain as unknownas he himselfwas untilrecently.7

*

Kostomarov's receptionof Sevöenko is seminal in both a historicaland a theoreticalsense. On the manifestlevel it encapsulates, and disseminates, - both the several key topoi- of martyr,genius and prophet and the ambivalentlycojoined attitudesof overthero worshipand covertresistance to it. While highlightingthe relationshipbetween two major figures in the Ukrainian national pantheon,this reception also delineates the complex interrelationof thebiographical and theautobiographical modes, specifically of the way in which the formeris continuallyinformed by the latter,of how

6. M. HruSevslcyj,"Kostomarov i novitnjaUkrajina," Ukrajina 1-2 (Kyiv, 1925),p. 3. 7. This is as trueof recentstudies (cf., e.g., Ju. A. Pinöuk's,Mykola Ivanovyc Kostomarov [Kyiv,1992], or the insightfulessay by VadymSkurativsTcyj "Mykola Kostomarov (1817- 1885)," in Suõasnist, no. 9, 1992, pp. 152-56), as of the older ones (e.g., Je. S. Sabliovs'kyj, "Sevöenko i Kostomarov," Zbirnykprac' p'jatnadcjatoji naukovoji Sevëenkivs'kojikonferenciji (Kyiv, 1968), pp. 23-50, or his variousearlier variants: "M. I. Kostomarov- pys'mennyki literaturnyj dijaö," Radjans'ke literaturoznavstvo,1967, no. 1, pp. 45-57; "SpravSnij Kostomarov," Vitâyzna, 1967, pp. 182-92; and "Mykola Kostomarovi Ukrajina,"¿ovten', 1967, no. 4, pp. 123-38. Cf. also I. I. PilTiuk's"M. I. Kostomarov,"Ukrajins'ka mova i literaturav Skoli, 1967, no. 1, pp. 92-94 and M. Macapura,"Sevöenko i Kostomarov,"Ukrajina, 1963, no. 6, pp. 18-19). Throughout, Kostomarov's receptionof Sevöenko is depictedwithout reference to the problemsor "contradictions"that will be raisedhere. INSIGHTAND BLINDNESS 283 both writerspresent themselves according to large,collective, and ultimately transrationalparadigms, above all of the narod, and particularly how Kostomarov determines his sense of self through his interpretationof Sevõenko. Althoughthe central notions of blindness and insightare articulatedin Kostomarov's own writingson Sevõenko, and are themselves part of the overarchingRomantic discourse, they also resonate,of course, with well- knowndeconstructive formulations. For Paul de Man, thebasic idea thateach illumination,or methodof reading,is fatedto generateits own shadow, its area of unseeing,is rooted in his particularinsight on the natureof literary, i.e., critical,language.8 These insights,particularly the notionthat "error" of perception(as in the Freudian notion of revealing slips of the tongue) can itselfcast valuable lighton the process of reading,of establishingmeaning, are particularlyrelevant here. But I also use the metaphorof insightand blindnessin a broader(and less metacritical,less self-consciouslytheoretical) way to signifynot just the mediumor ontologyof the criticaljudgment, its fatedness- by the verynature of language- to conceal-as-it-reveals,but the existentialpredicament of thecritic/reader as well. The paradigm,therefore, is also rootedin the psychologicaland in the historicalscene. For the formerit designates the state of perceiving and misperceivingacross a gamut of psychologicalforces and faultlines, and as forthe latter,no less universally, it marksthe temporal, socio-cultural contingencies inherent in all reception.It goes without saying that each of these dimensions projects a certain relativismand calls fora certainsuspension of judgement. And yet,it is not a total suspension of judgement;9 our examination of the reception,be it Kostomarov's or of any of his successors,is nottotally value-free, for there is always the question of degree and nuance,particularly in the deviationfrom conventionalwisdom and opennessto thetotality of theevidence, and just as the insighthas value, the blindness,in its negativity,also has it. And it goes

8. "All thesecritics [Lukacs, Blanchot, Poulet, the American New Critics]seem curiously doomedto say somethingquite different from what they meant to say. Theircritical stance - Lukacs's propheticism,Poulet' s beliefin thepower of an originalcogito, Blanchot's claim of meta-Mallarmeanimpersonality - is defeatedby theirown criticalresults. A penetrating butdifficult insight into the nature of literarylanguage ensues. It seems,however, that this insightcould only be gainedbecause thecritics were in the gripof thispeculiar blindness: theirlanguage could gropetoward a certaindegree of insightonly because theirmethod remainedoblivious to theperception of thisinsight. The insightexists only fora readerin theprivileged position of beingable to observethe blindnessas a phenomenonin its own right- thequestion of his own blindnessbeing one whichhe is by definitionincompetent to ask- and so being able to distinguishbetween statement and meaning."Paul de Man, Blindnessand Insight.Essays in theRhetoric of ContemporaryCriticism (New York, 1971), pp. 105-106. 9. I wouldnot be as categorical,in short,as is de Man whenhe assertsthat "'blindness' impliesno literaryvalue-judgment." Ibid., p. 141. 284 GEORGEG. GRABOWICZ withoutsaying that charting these statesonce again reconfirmsthe value and need of revisionist readings: the "errors," "inconsistencies," and "contradictions" that Soviet criticism was so set on identifyingand bemoaningare in factthe very stuff of thereception, its privilegedspace, as it were. The historyof aevöenko's reception,to be sure, provides more than one illustrationof conjoined insightand blindness.The major extrinsiccause for thisis surelythe factthat Sevöenko touchedupon and was centralto so many aspects of Ukrainiancollective life; the intersectionof the differentroles that he played and thatwere ascribedto him,the pull of the antitheticalmodes in whichhis meaningand "essence" were couched could, and easily did lead to confusionand distortion.A strikingearly instance of thisis the interpretation of Sevoenko's legacy by the foremostnineteenth century Ukrainian thinker, Myxajlo Drahomanov. His fundamentalstudy on the topic of "áevõenko, ukrajinofilyi socializm," combines acute insightsinto the poet's social and politicalresonance with a systemicinability to see the poetic textin its own right,as a non-rationalistic,non-political, but at the same time integraland multi-valent code.10 In short,Drahomanov consistently confuses the poetic withthe political,and his positivism,his activiststance, and his reliance on an altogethernormative literary criticism simply obscures what most would now consider the essential Sevöenko. At the same time, along with his characteristicallyhonest and in manyways profoundassessment of thatlarger social framein which Sevõenko functions,Drahomanov also provides- and the true value of this was hardly perceived in his time- a dispassionate démystificationof Sevëenko and his role. Some fortyyears later,speaking of the cult of Mickiewicz in Polish society and scholarship,the criticTadeusz Boy Zelenski coined the term"de-bronzing" for the process of findingthe man behind the façade of society's monument.11It was not the least of Drahomanov's achievements that he initiated this process in Ukrainian culture. The othermajor example, DmytroDoncov's, is even more strikingin its evocation of insightand blindness,especially of the latter.As the premier publicist and ideologue of integral Ukrainian nationalism in the period between the two world wars, Doncov frequentlyturns to Sevöenko to illustrateand legitimizehis own theses,and to arm himselfwith Sevöenko' s

10. M. P. Drahomanov, Literaturno-publicystyëni praci (Kyiv, 1970), vol. 2, pp. 7- 133. 11. Cf. Tadeusz Zelenski (Boy), "Mickiewicz a my," in Reflektoremw mrok (Warsaw, 1984), pp. 459-84; cf. also my "Sevöenko jakoho ne znajemo," Suâasnist' 1993, no. 11, pp. 100-112. INSIGHTAND BLINDNESS 285 aura.12 Specifically,Doncov proceeds to cast the poet as a touchstoneand precursorfor his own radical voluntarism:perhaps more thananyone before him, he perceives Sevoenko's fieryemotional core and his great power of will. Extrapolating from this, he configures Sevöenko as a nationalist ideologue avant la lettre.^ Apart from the wholly unjustified and unsubstantiatedimputation of political activism,this pictureof Sevöenko is also thoroughlyone-sided: quite absentfrom this ideological reconstructionis any sense of the poet's dualityand doubt,of his profoundscepsis and irony. While turning,to be sure,around the poet's own personaand self,these states of mind are in effectpantopic, and theyradiate out to Sevéenko's multiform social and collective projections.What ultimatelycharacterizes Doncov's method,and qualifies (or ratherdisqualifies) his partialand intuitiveinsights, however, is his all but total disregardfor the evidence, indeed for the text itself.In him, in short,we see not so much a misreadingof Sevõenko as a projectionof self througha highlystylized set of props (which includes not only Sevöenko but such figuresas Franko,Lesja Ukrajinka,Drahomanov and others)which bear only a nominalrelation to theirhistorical and existential designatum. In the áevõenko reception,however, Kostomarov provides not only the first,but perhaps also the most telling,the paradigmaticinstance of both seeing and not seeing. The writer(and reader)who so plausiblyenters history as primeinterpreter and firstcartographer, is also thefirst obfuscator, a latter- day, and almost certainlyunconscious and unintentionalSusanin leading the quest forthe "trueSevöenko." The paradox of the blind leader of a national quest, of Moses and Susanin rolled into one, is actually intrinsic,and generic: such is perhaps the very natureof the hybridfunction of poet-as- literary-historian,and misprisionappears to be the inevitableoutcome when a greaterpoet is read by a lesserone.14

12. Cf., for example, his Pravda pradidiv velykyx(Philadelphia 1952); Tuha za herojiénym(London, 1953); or Dvi literaturynaSoji doby (Toronto,1958). 13. His maincontention is thatSevõenko articulates a national, and specificallystatist program,and thathe sees the implementationof this program(and here Doncov, albeit withina differentframe, is echoingthe interpretationsof the Bolsheviks)as beingcarried out by revolutionaryforce. While this interpretationwas peculiar to the militant nationalists,the idea of Sevöenko's nationalprogram and putativestatism was quite widespreadin non-SovietUkrainian society and appearedin the writingsof such as E. Malanjuk,R. Smal'-Stoclcyj,O. LotocTcyjand others.It becamea stapleof emigréSevöenko scholarshipand commentaries,and has nowbeen broadly revived in independentUkraine. 14. Cf. HaroldBloom, The Anxiety of Influence. A Theoryof Poetry(Oxford, 1973). It is ironic,perhaps, that Kostomarov devoted a majorarticle to debunkingthe legend of Susanin in officialRusian historiography; cf. "Ivan Susanin.Istoriéeskoe isledovanie," Istoriöeskija monografìii isledovanijaNikolaja Kostomarova,vol. I (St. Petersburg,1872), pp. 429- 53. Cf. also his Autobiography,pp. 261-63. 286 GEORGEG. GRABOWICZ

In fact, the paradoxes of Kostomarov's receptionof Sevöenko resonate withina largerand no less contradictoryframe - thatis, his formulationof, and his role in, Ukrainianliterary history. For while even the well-informed studentof Ukrainianliterature is hardlyattuned to therange of contradictions in Kostomarov's readingof Sevõenko, he is surelyaware of the historian's ambivalentrole in the large scheme of mid-nineteenth-centuryUkrainian literary and indeed political history. That ambivalence, as noted by HruSevsicyjand many others,flows fromtwo significanthistorico-literary events which between themprovide the antipodesof national assertiveness and (to all appearances) self-abnegation.The first,as already noted, is Kostomarov's authorshipof the Books of Genesis of the UkrainianPeople [Knyhyby tija ukrajins'kohonarodu], which in its time,that is, in the small circle of intellectualsand studentsthat constituted the Brotherhoodof SS. Cyril and Methodius in the course of its brief existence (1846-47), was knownsimply as the "Zakon bozyj" and servedas theirbible and program.15 The text itself, an inspired reworkingof Adam Mickiewicz's biblically cadenced "gospel for the refugees" and "manual for martyrs,"the Ksiegi narodu i pielgrzymstwapolskiego (1832),16 is Kostomarov's formulationof a transhistorical,indeed millenarianvision of Ukraineas the key to a revived Slavic community,precisely in the spiritof theGospels: "the stonewhich the buildersrejected, the same is become thehead of thecorner" (Luke 20.17). In the widercontext of the Ukrainiannational revival of the nineteenthcentury, the Knyhy bytija are no less a cornerstone.By linking the poetics of Romanticismand a religiouslytinged Slavophilism to autonomistsentiments thatharken back to thehetmansfyna, they become thefirst modern Ukrainian political or protopoliticalprogram after the Istorija Rusov}1 It is almost certainthat the textof the Knyhybytija was not read outside the small circle of "brothers"- and the police officialsinvolved in theirsuppression; the full

15. Cf. KyryloMefodijivs'ke Tovarystvo (Kyiv, 1990), vol. 1, pp. 152-69. This three- volume publication of the complete police (Third Department) archives on the Brotherhood, its investigationand trial is an invaluable and still hardly exhausted resource. Cf. also P. A. Zajonõkovskij,Kirillo-Mefodievskoe ObSâestvo (1846-1847) (Moscow, 1959). In his unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,Orest Pelech stresses the informal and loose nature of the group and argues that at the time of the arrests it had, for all practical purposes, ceased functioning: Toward a Historical Sociology of the Ukrainian Ideologues in the Russian Empire of the 1830's and 1840's, Princeton University,1976, pp. 206-13 and passim. 16. Cf. WiktorWeintraub, The Poetry of Adam Mickiewicz (The Hague, 1954), pp. 194- 207. 17. Hcmopi* Pycoe-b uau Müaoü Pocciu, conunenie Teopiin Kohuckozo, ApxuenucKona BtAopycKazo was published in Moscow in 1846. It was writtensometime at the turn of the centuryand was widely circulatedin manuscriptform in the firstdecades of the 19thcentury. INSIGHTAND BLINDNESS 287 text was published only in 1918.18 But with a twist of poetic justice, its prepolitical,millenarian message regardingUkraine's past,present and future was reformulatedand given thebroadest possible dissemination- preciselyin the poetryof Sevõenko. And Kostomarov- whetheras authorof the Knyhy bytija, or as contributorto Sevöenko's broadlyresonant message of national reassertionand revival- seemed to have his role in thatrevival permanently assured. Or, perhaps,not altogetherpermanently. In his lateryears Kostomarov comes to be identified with a defensive reading of Ukrainian literary,and by extension political life, that in the eyes of succeeding generations,and especially in the lightof nationalistthinking, appears as nothingless than a betrayalof the nation's cause. At issue is his formulation,and espousal, of Ukrainianliterature as a literature"for home use," as a literatureexpressly intendedfor and focused on "the people," the narod, as an addendumto the imperialor "high" Russian literature,an addendumnot in a regional,but in a "class" sense, so to speak. Kostomarov's movementtowards this reading is alreadyclearly visible in his 1871 articlein Gerbel's well-knownanthology, Poezija slavjan, in which he speaks, on the one hand, of the best in Ukrainianliterature - áevõenko- as intrinsicallyand exclusivelythe voice of the common folk (in all theirdignity, authenticity, beauty and pathos, to be sure), and on the otherof the impossibility,the artificialityof tryingto raise the Ukrainianlanguage, and hence, too, works writtenin it, to the level of normal,that is, educated and sophisticateddiscourse.19 Concomitantwith

18. Cf. Pavio Zajcev's publicationof M. Kostomarov,"Knyhy bytija ukrajins'koho narodu",NaSe mynule, 1918, no. 1, pp. 7-35, cf. also Kyrylo-Mefodijivs'keTovarystvo, vol. 1, pp. 12-14. 19. N. V. Gerbel', Poèzija slavjan, Sbornik poetiâeskixproizvedenij slavjanskix narodovv perevodaxrusskix pisatelej, izdannyjpod redakciejuNik. Vas. Gerbelja (St. Petersburg,1871), pp. 160-2. Kostomarovis muchmore categorical about this in "Zadaöi ukrainofíl'stva"(Vestnik Evropy, 1882, vol. 1, bk. 2), the article which,as HruSevsTcyj notes,signalled his finalbreak with the Ukrainianmovement. To be sure,in principle,he does see a purposein translatingworld literature into Ukrainian, but with qualifications: We fullyshare the desire to see the Ukrainianlanguage developed to thedegree that one can, withoutstraining, convey everything which constitutes the achievementsof cultured language,but this requires time and a considerableimprovement in theintellectual horizon of thenarod. His conclusion,however, is harsh: Betterleave the Byrons,Mickiewiczes etc. in peace and not attemptforcefully to forge words and expressionswhich are not understoodby the narod' and indeed the works themselvesfor which these things are craftedare notcomprehensible to thecommon man and at the presentare notcalled for.As to theclass of the intelligentsiain LittleRussia, such translationsare even moreunnecessary, since theycan becomeacquainted with all of this eitherin the originalor in translationsinto the all-Russianlanguage, which they know as well as theirnative Ukrainian dialect. Naukovo-publicystyânii polemiâni pysannja Kostomarova, pp. 296-97 and 298. 288 GEORGEG. GRABOWICZ this is his claim (rooted in the loyalist attitudesof the eighteenth-century Cossack starsyna, and animatingnineteenth-century Ukrainian federalist thinking,particularly in Drahomanov)that the Russian language (he uses the key nineteenth-centuryterm: obsëerusskij) is the common product and patrimonyof both the Great Russian and the Ukrainian people.20 But the concludingnote in thatarticle, the referenceto the Valuev circularof 1863, which began the official Russian campaign against the Ukrainian printed word, is most telling as it throwslight on the externalcircumstances - the atmosphere of growing repression and fear of even harsher measures. Kostomarov's later writingsclearly reflectthe impact of furtherofficial sanctions against the Ukrainian movement,particularly the Ems ukaz of 1876, as well as the officially sanctioned ukrainophobia in the Russian press.21His entirediscussion of Ukrainianliterature, and Ukrainophilism,as the Ukrainian national movementwas then known, is couched largely in defensive terms- the need for popular education, support for the disenfranchisedpeasantry, and so on.22 The notionof a "literaturefor home use," a literatureimplicitly confined to peasant themes and a popular (or populist) audience, a literature in which translations from Byron or Mickiewicz have no raison d'être,is a logical constructof thisdefensiveness, and even more so an inevitable end product of the logic of his own fundamentalpopulism. Even if we understandhis motivation,however, we cannotbe blind to his denial of fullor normalstature to Ukrainianliterature, and the nationthat stands behind it.23 And the factremains that the historian and writerwho morethan any otherfigure in Russia in thethird quarter of the nineteenthcentury represented and defendedthe Ukrainian cause, was also the one who forall practicalpurposes condemned it to essentialsecondariness.24

20. Thus in Gerbel: "KpoMe Toro co3HaBajiocb hto oõujepyccKHft *3biK HHKaic He HCKJiioHHTejibHoBejimcopyccKHfl, a B paBHoftcTeneHH h MajiopyccKHtt."Gerbel', Poezija slavjan, p. 163. Cf. also SemenDivovyõ, "Razhovor Velykorossii s Malorossijeju"(1762) and M. Drahomanov, "Literatura rosijs'ka, velykorus'ka,ukrajins'ka i halyc'ka," Literaturno-publicystyönipraci u dvox tomax(Kyiv, 1970), vol. 1, pp. 80-220. 21 . Regardingthe Ems ukaz and thepolitical and intellectualatrmosphere of thetime, cf. FedirSavöenko, The Suppressionof the UkrainianActivities in 1876 (Munich,1970). ll. 'x. also my Kussian-Ukrainian Literary Keianons: a rormuiaiionoi me rrooiem, in Peter J. Potichnyjet al., eds., Ukraine and Russia in their Historical Encounter (Edmonton,Alberta, 1992), pp. 214-44. 23. Halyna Mukhinain her "Teorija 'xatn'ohovzytku'. Do stolittjasmerty Mykoly Kostomarova,"Suâasnist', Feb. 1986, no. 2 (298), pp. 31-41, defendsKostomarov as purportedlynot really meaning it. Her argumentis unpersuasiveand at variancewith the publishedrecord. ¿4. Une shouldnote mat me notionor a literatureior nomeuse naa in iaci aircauyocen laid downby Belinskij,who in his variouswritings on Ukrainiantopics, but particularly in his reviewof thealmanac "Lastivka" and Kvitka's"Svatannja na Honöarivci,"categorically answeredhis own questionof "aojihchojih h mojkhojih nticaTbno-MajiopoccHttcKH ?" by INSIGHTAND BLINDNESS 289

Somehow he was both a beacon and an obstacle on the path of national revival, both a source of light and a distortingpresence for the national perspective.Indeed because of him,and his experience,we are forcedto ask ourselvesas to thereal contentof theidea of "nationalperspective." How is it possible, in otherwords, that someone of his centralityand staturecould go so "wrong?" *

Kostomarov's reading and reconstructionof Sevöenko can be captured in several keys or topoi, each of which projects a contradiction,a self- deconstruction,and also an (apparentlyunconscious) assertion-cwm-negation of theobject of his depiction.They are presentedhere in an orderof ascending complexity,both in the psychologicaland the historicalsense: Sevõenko as (1) a man, (2) a historicaland (3) a universalphenomenon, and (4) as a poet. The first and the fourth keys are personal and turn specifically on Kostomarov's relation to Sevöenko. The second and the third relate to Sevöenko's collective resonance.In large measure,the lattertwo aspects, of poet and of universalphenomenon, continue to informthe ongoing,popular receptionof Sevöenko, and thus illustrateKostomarov's exceptionalrole in shapingSevöenko's collectiveimage and mythicalpresence.

1. SEVÒENKO THE MAN

In late 1875 Kostomarov wrote a brief piece entitled "Vospominanija o Sevöenko," whichin thefollowing year became one of two shortintroductory articlesto volume I of the Prague editionof Sevëenko's poetry.25He begins

saying that the higher strata of Ukrainian society had long outgrown Ukrainian ("aro oömecTBo BbipaataeTcboh nyBCTBah noturriuiHe Ha MajiopoccHttcicoM,a Ha pyccKOMh aaace Ha 4>paHuy3CKOM«unax") and thatwhatever will be writtenin Ukrainian will invariably be confined by peasant topics and peasant perspectives. And that, to him, is hardly an alluring prospect: "Xopouia jiHTepaTypa, KOTOpaa TOJibKOh äwuiht, mto npocTOBaTOCTHio KpecTwiHCKoro43biKa h Ay6oBaTOCTHK)KpecTbiiHCKoro yMa!"; cf. V. G. Belinskij, Polnoe Sobrante Soâinenij (Moscow, 1954), vol. 5, pp. 176-79; here: pp. 177 and 179. The contiguities notwithstanding,Kostomarov's attitude toward this general position, and specifically to Belinskij, still needs to be examined. At the same time, in the overall process of Ukrainian literature,above all the multifaceted kotljarevSöyna and the general narodnyctvo with which he clearly resonated, the ground had already been laid for reconsidering (decentering) the relationship between "the principal" and "the secondary." For an interesting metathematic elaboration of this relationship see Virgil Nemoianu, A Theory of the Secondary. Literature, Progress, and Reaction (Baltimore and London, 1989). " " Cf. also my forthcomingstudy, The Meanings of KotljarevSâyna. 25 . T. Sevöenko, Kobzar, z dodatkom spomynokpro Sevâenka Kostomarova i MykeSyna, 2 vols., ed. F. Vovk and O. Rusiv (Prague, 1876), pp. vi-xii. This, it should be noted, was the firstuncensored edition of Sevöenko' s poetry. 290 GEORGEG. GRABOWICZ his recollection with a disclaimer that to anyone acquainted with the biographiesof these two men would appear somewhatoverstated. "Although in manyrespects my fatewas thesame as Sevöenko's," he says,

I cannotreally boast of anyparticular closeness to him,and in thisrespect I knew peoplewho had muchcloser spiritual ties to himthan I, and who weremuch better acquaintedthan I withthe details of his life.26

If not hyperbole,it would seem to be a classical modestytopos. It is not a solitaryinstance, however. Four years later,in a letterto M. I. Semevskij, editorand publisherof Russkaja sfarina,Kostomarov again returnsto it in describinghis relationshipto Sevöenko:

You askedme to commenton myacquaintance with T. H. áevõenko,assuming, on yourpart, my closeness to thelate poet.Although I alreadyhave had occasion to speakof himin print,I will again,by yourleave, recountthe honest and true story[iskrennjuju i pravdivuju istoriju] of myacquaintance with that personality, on the understandingthat you will use whatI writein a manneryou findmost suitable.In general,it wouldbe a mistaketo thinkthat I was particularlyclose and friendlyto him; on the contrary,my friendshipwith him occupied only an insignificantpart of our lives, and, as laterbecame apparent,I was unawareof muchof whathappened with him, and I learnedof it fromhis otherfriends: with me he was muchless friendlyand openthan he was withmany others. My closenessto himwas almostexclusively literary, whereas some others were close to himnot as to a Ukrainianpoet, but simply as to a man.27

Again, perhaps,a modestytopos, but withstriking undertones: the allegation (with more than a hintof hurt)that other friends were allowed to become closer to him ("withme he was muchless friendlyand open thanhe was with manyothers"), the oppositionof the literaryand the personal,and withit the veiled suggestion that the literary association that fell upon him was somehow part of the public domain, and even superficial,and the wholly unexpected,indeed egregious assertion that "my friendshipwith him occupied only an insignificantpart of our lives." To anyone attuned to Ukrainian history,and the Ukrainian national revival, and the role of the individual - ("Genius") withinboth - and Kostomarovwas quintessential^ so attuned this last assertionis stunning.For to suggest thattheir friendship, the first part of which was coterminous with their admittedly short,28 but

26. Ibid.,p. vi; cf. also Spohadypro Tarasa Sevâenka(Kyiv, 1982),p. 145. 27. "Pis'mo N. I. Kostomarova k izdatelju-redaktoru'Russkoj stariny' M. I. Semevskomu,"Russkaja starino 1880, bk. 3, March,pp. 597-610; citedin T. G. Sevöenkov vospominanijaxsovremennikov (Moscow, 1962),p. 154. 28. By his own account,in the"Vospominanija o Sevèenko"that appeared in thePrague edition(cf. n. 33), thiswas a matterof slightlyless thana year,from May of 1846 to late March,1847, whenall themembers of theBrotherhood were arrested by thepolice. In his INSIGHTAND BLINDNESS 291 unquestionablyformative participation in the Brotherhoodof SS. Cyril and Methodius, was somehow an "insignificant"part of theirlives is to deny meaningto both the historyand the revival- and to what was centralin the lives of both individuals. In light of the known facts, however, all of Kostomarov'sself-deprecations, and notjust thelast denial,appear to be wide of themark. Evidence of a relationshipthat must have been much closer and certainly more intense than what these disclaimers suggest comes in various forms. One source is Kostomarov's own Autobiography,beginning with an early variantpublished in 1885.29 His firstmention of áevõenko stressesthe speed and ease with which they established rapport."On the very next day," he says, "we were using the familiarform of address [govorili drug drugu 'ry']."30And bothin this,and in thelater, more extensive authorized version, he speaks of thedepth of thebond betweenthem:

This was the most active period for his talent,the apogee of his spiritual strength.I saw himfrequently and was thrilledby his works,many of which,still unpublished,he let me see in manuscript.Frequently we would spend long eveningstogether, long intothe night,and withthe comingof springwe would frequentlymeet in the small orchardof the Suxostavskij's,which had a purely Ukrainiancharacter. ..31

The relationship, was resumed more than ten years later- after Kostomarov's altogether lenient and productive administrativeexile in Saratov and aevöenko's incomparablyharsher sentence as a front-linesoldier (officiallyforbidden to writeor paint) in the steppesof Orenburgand on the shoresof theAral and Caspian Seas. Duringhis exile áevõenko corresponded with Kostomarov and on his way back to St. Petersburg,in the summerof 1857, stopped to visit Kostomarov's motherin Saratov. He stayed a few hours and left with her a poem dedicated to her son, "N. Kostomarovu" ("Vesele soneöko xovalos'...") fromthe superbcycle of poems "V kazemati"

AutobiographyKostomarov suggests that they met shortly after his motherarrived in Kyiv on February1, 1846; cf. N. I. Kostomarov,Avtobiografija; Bunt StenkiRazina (Kyiv, 1992),p. 133. This is butone of manyfactual inconsistencies, however. 29. An abbreviated"Avtobiografija Nikolaja IvanoviöaKostomarova" was publishedin Russkajamysl', May, no. 5-6, 1885. It was dictatedby Kostomarovto N. A. BilozersTca,but apparentlynot verified by him,and thusit has beenquestioned as an "objectivesource" (cf. N. I. Kostomarov,Istoriëeskie proizvedenija. Avtobiografija [Kyiv, 1990], p. 706). In spite of that,it is oftencited, and its referencesto the topicat handseem moreforthcoming; cf. below. 30. T. G. Sevëenkov vospominanijaxsovremennikov (Kyiv, 1962), p. 149. In the later, authorizedversion Kostomarovsays much the same, if more drily: "UznavSi o nem [Sevöenko] ja poznakomilsja s nim i s pervogo íe raza sblizilsja." Istoriëeskie proizvedeniia.Avtobiografìia, p. 475. 31. Ibid.,p. 475. 292 GEORGEG. GRABOWICZ depictingthe timeof theirmutual imprisonment in St. Petersburgin 1847. In this poem, which Kostomarov later quite accurately describes as one of Sevöenko's best,32he addresses Kostomarov as "brother,"evokes in his (Kostomarov's) grievingmother an image that foreshadowsthe universal grieving motherin "Neofity" and later (as Mary, the Mother of God) in "Marija," and findsa new level in his treatmentof the perennialthemes of solitudeand expiation:

...I ÓaTbKO H MaTH E flOMOBHHÍ I acaJieM cepue 3aneKJiocb, Ilio HiKOMy MeHe 3raaaTH! flHBJiioci»- TBOfl,Mitt 6paTe, MaTH, HopHime HOpHOÏ 3eMJii, Ifle, 3 xpecTa HeHane 3Hjrra... Mojuoca! TocnoAH MOJiiocb! XBajiHTb Te6e He nepecTaHy! lijo ^ HÍ 3 KHM He nORlJlK) Moio TiopMy, moï KattAaHHÎ

A year afterthat the two finallymet again. As Kostomarovdescribes it in his "Vospominanija":

In thesummer of 1858,while in St. Petersburg,I looked up Sevéenkoand saw him forthe first time after a separationof manyyears. I foundhim in theAcademy of Arts,where he had receiveda studio.Taras Hryhorovyõdid notrecognize me, and lookingat me fromhead to toesshrugged his shouldersand said decisivelythat he cannotguess the nameof theperson before him. When I gave himmy namehe threwhimself on myneck and cried for a longtime.33

Their contactsduring the next two and a half years were, withbut a few hiatuses,regular and frequent:when at the end theywere meetingonce or twice a week, Kostomarovcharacterizes this as "not so frequently."He was one of thelast to see Sevöenkobefore his death:

Hearingthat Sevöenko was sick I visitedhim twice, and on thesecond time in February,a few days before his death, I heardfrom him that he was fullyrecovered; in thecourse of thishe showedme a newgold watchhe hadjust bought- thefirst in his life.He promisedto dropin on me soon.34

32. Cf. his letterto M. I. Semevskij,T. G. Èevëenkov vospominanijaxsovremennikov (Kyiv, 1962), p. 159. 33. "Vospominanijao Sevõenko,"in T.G. Sevëenkov vospominanijaxsovremennikov (Kyiv, 1962), p. 145. 34. Ibid.,p. 146. INSIGHTAND BLINDNESS 293

The account concludes withSevöenko's death,his funeral,and the efforts of the Ukrainian communityof St. Petersburgto transferhis remains to a finalresting place on the Dnieper. Kostomarovmakes no mentionof his own role in these events,or of the feelingsthey evoked in him.There is, however, a nuanceddiscordant note that runs through the restrained tone and somewhat drydiction of thispiece - Sevoenko's apparentreluctance, as Kostomarovsees it, to bare his soul, to discuss his poetry,to speak of his exile, or of his ill- fated attempt at marriage (to Lykeria Polusmakova), or to discuss the "unpleasanthistory" (i.e., his arrest)during his 1859 tripto Ukraine. The versionof theirrelationship in the subsequentletter to Semevskij is considerablyricher in detail and mellowerin tone,and in its overall effectit confirmsa sense of genuinedepth to theirfriendship while at the same time throwinginto sharperrelief the initialdisclaimer which seems to cast doubt as to whetherthere was a close friendshipat all. In additionto expandingon such key momentsas theirfirst meeting, or theirreunion after a decade of exile, it bringsto lightevents which furtherilluminate both their relationship and the characterof Sevõenko (and, obliquely,that of Kostomarovas well), eventsand details which we findin no othersources. The particularkey into which they tend to fall is that of Sevoenko's "cudacestvo." Thus when Kostomarovlearns (in earlyJune of 1846) thathe was unanimouslyelected to the Chair of Russian historyat the Universityof St. Vladimirin Kiev he first shares the news with Sevöenko, whom he had just met in the street. Overjoyed at his friend'sgood fortuneSevöenko startssinging a Ukrainian folksong:

People were passing us by and Sevõenko,paying no attentionto what was occurringaround us, was beltingout his song virtuallyat thetop of his voice. It was a paroxysmof eccentricity[âudaëestva] remindingone of the ancient ZaporozhianCossacks, something which showed through in our poet,albeit rather infrequently.35

On anotheroccasion (just aftertheir reunion in St. Petersburg,when the two, as Kostomarov notes, were meetingevery day) they agree to go to a bookstoreto searchfor rare books, "äevöenko appeared,"Kostomarov writes, and proceededto walk withme along the NevskyProspekt dressed in a white jacket,tattered and coveredin paint,in bad shoes,in a wornand torncap on his head,his appearancereminding one of Kozak Holotafrom the Ukrainian duma or a éinovnikdrunk and expelledfrom work turning to passers-bywith the cry: "please helpa poornobleman." That this was a ratherunique eccentricity was reflectedin thefact that neither before or afterdid Sevöenkogo outin sucha fashion.36

35. Ibid., p. 156. 36. Ibid., p. 161. 294 GEORGEG. GRABOWICZ

Still again, thereis the timewhen Kostomarovasks the visitingSevöenko to leave so he can preparehis lecturesfor the nextday; Sevöenko leaves, but goes to the inn next door and pays the musicians there to loudly play preciselythose arias whichKostomarov had told him he hates.37Clearly, the "öudaöestvo"expresses unconventionality and personalfreedom, and, notleast of all, épatage of thestraight-laced professor. We also see fromthis account that Sevöenko was hardlyas reticentabout his poems as Kostomarov suggestedin the "Vospominanija": as described here, he "frequently"and "gladly" showed them in manuscriptform and allowed Kostomarov to see (or, as he later put it, "to peer into") the very process of theircreation.38 The degree to which this access actuallyshaped Kostomarov's understandingof thepoetry is a separatematter. Finally,there is the revealinghint of a trait(and a modality)which while mutedin Kostomarov'sdiscussion of theman and thefriend, becomes central in his considerationof thepoet. It is thequality of prescience,proroëestvo?^ Apartfrom the definingrole thatit will play in his understandingof poetry- as-inspiration(a formulationwhich, like the political and historiosophic notionof messianism,Kostomarov is most likelyto have absorbed fromhis reading of Mickiewicz), this quality of proroëestvo clearly resonates with thosefeatures of openness,spontaneity, and "eccentricity"which Kostomarov is quick to perceive (if not unequivocallyapplaud) in Sevöenko. Along with

37. "Haca ABa cpflAy,"Kostomarov continues, "MVMHJiaMeHfl 3Ta MV3biK.a,HaKOHeu He CTajio TepneHHü:noHHMaa, mto sto IUeBMemcoHapoMHO Apa3HHT MeHa ä BÔeataji b TpaKTHph yMOJiflJiero, paAH McnoBeKOJiioÔHfl,nepecTaTb Tep3aTb mchjiTaicoio nbmcoio." Ibid., p. 162. 38. "B pa3roBopax o cbohx jiHTepaTypHbix3aH*THJix, oh oblii co mhoiocooomaTejibHee, MeMo cbohx npoiiJJibixatHTettcKHx npHKJiioHeHHJix; oh Macro h oxotho acjihjicíi cbohmh CTHXoTBopeHHíiMH,euje He BHAaBuiHMHCBeTa, HHoe npoH3HOCHJiHa naMflTb,Apyroe MHTajino coôcTBeHHOpyMHOHpyKOiiHCH, h caMyiopyKonHCb, no MoeMyxcejiaHHio, ocraBJiiiJi y mchíiHa BpeMü." Thesemanuscripts also includedthat most precious of Sevoenko'sautographs, and now a virtualrelic of Sev£enkiana,the "Mala knyika,"in whichhe wrotedown his "bootleg poetry"of 1847-1850.As Kostomarovdescribes it: MeatAy npOMHM,noKa3biBaji oh MHe TorAa MajieHbKyionepenjieTeHHyio KHHatemcy,b KOTopoH HanHcaHbi6biJiH npoH3BeAeHH* Toro ropbKoro BpeMeHH,KorAa oh HaxoAHJicab BoeHHOHcjiyacoe. EMyTorAa 6biJio3anpemeHO nwcaTb, h oh Aepacaji 3Ty KHHateMKyHe HHane KaK b canore Ha cBoettHore, h, no cooctbchhum cjiOBaM ero, ecjiH 6w y Hero HauiJiH3Ty KHH^ceHKy,to noABeprcji 6bi oh ^KecTOMaítuietlotbcctbchhocth y^ce 3a oaho to, mto ocMejiHJicflnHcaTb, BonpeKHBbicoMattuieMy 3anpemeHHio, He roBOpíi o tom, mto õojibma* nojiOBHHaCTHXoTBOpeHHH, HanHcaHHbix ero pyicoiob stoh khhacmkc, 6biJiano coAep^aHHio HeueH3ypHoroCBOttCTBa . Ibid., pp. 162-63. 39. Thus, theirlast prison meetingatter interrogationana oeiore exile: liocjie Aonpoca, BO3Bpamaacbb cboh HOMeph ha* p*aom co mhoio,Tapac TpHropbeBHMnpOHCHec MHe no- MajiopyccKH:'He acypHca Mhkojio; AOBeAeTbCiiu^e HaMyKyni ^chth'. (He yHbiBatt,HHKOJiaH, eme AOBeAeTCÄHaM ^cHTb BMecTe).3th nocjieAHHecJioBa, cjibiiiiaHHbie TorAa ot IlIeBMeHKo, 0Ka3ajiHCbBnocjieACTBHH no othouichhio k HaMo6ohm npopoMecKHMH."Ibid., p. 158. INSIGHTAND BLINDNESS 295 thequalities of strengthand resiliency40these traits coalesce intoan image of Sevöenko as a quintessentialnatural man. And again, thequestion is precisely the degree to which this paradigm facilitates or impedes a better understandingof bothman and poet. The natureof the relationshipbetween aevöenko and Kostomarovis also illuminatedby a varietyof externalevidence. The extantepistolary legacy between them is rathermeager - five lettersby Kostomarov and one by Sevöenko- and the small outputmost probablycaused by the inadvisability ^ of two political offendersmaintaining a correspondence.4 In these letters, however,there is a real warmthof feeling- which is maintainedthroughout and which contrastsin no small measure with the hot and cold cast of the correspondencebetween Sevöenko and Kuli§.4^ A tellinginstance of this warmth(which Kostomarov,however, does notbring out in his recollections) is the fact that he asked Sevõenko to be best man at his wedding; indeed Sevõenko was arrested dressed in formal tails and on his way to the ceremony.4^For his part,too, Sevõenko reciprocatedthis warmth, as we see

40. Thereis ampleevidence, particularly in the officialtranscripts of the inquest(cf. Kyrylo-Mefodijivs'keTovarystvo, passim), that of all the accused,Sevöenko was by farthe least apologeticand mostself-possessed in thecourse of thetrial; cf. below. Kostomorov's recollectionsfully bear this out: "Bo Bee BpeM4 npomBOACTBacjieacTBim Tapac FpHropbeBHH6biJi HeH3MetiHo 6oAp, Ka3ajicflcnoKoftHMM h Aa^ce Bece/ibiM.IlepeA AonpocoM KaKOtt-TOHcaHAapMCKHtt o4>Huep cKa3aji eMy: 'Bor mhjiocthb, Tapac FpHropbeBHM:bu onpaBAaeTecb,h bot TorAa-TO3anoeT Baiua My3a' UleBHeHKOOTBenaji no-MajiopyccKH:"He jiKHftMopT Hac ycix cioAH 3aHic, koJin He ca õicoBa My3a!' (He KaicottnepT Hac Bcex cioAa 3aHec, KaK He 3Ta npoKJiuTaxMy3a!)." Ibid., p. 158. 41. Cf. Sevöenko,Povne zibrannja tvoriv u testytomax, vol. 6 (Kyiv, 1964) and Lysty do T.H. Sevêenka,1840-1861 (Kyiv, 1962). The hypothesisof politicalexpediency is supportedby thefact that Sevöenko' s correspondencewith Kuli§, for example, picks up only whenhe (Sevöenko)is releasedfrom exile. Thus KuliS's firstletter to Sevöenkoafter their arrestis datedNov. 26, 1857 (Sevöenkoreceived word of his impendingrelease on April7, 1857); however,on June17 he writesin his Diary thathe had alreadyreceived some books fromKuli§, particularly the first volume of his Zapiskio JuinoiRusi . 42. Tellingin thisrespect is thefirst letter Kostomarov wrote to Sevöenkoafter the latter was releasedfrom exile and in NiïnyjNovgorod, on his way to St. Petersburg(October 28, 1857; cf. Lystydo Sevôenka.p. 107. Sevöenko'sresponse is also revealingin its mixtureof irony,good humorand genuineconcern: ..nojiyMHJiriHCbMO ot KocTOMapoBa H3 CapaTOBa. YMeHbiflHVAaic ühuict, mto HanpacHO npoatAaJimchü Aße HeAejiH b FleTepöypre h He xoTeji CAcnaTb cTa BepcTa Kpyry, hto6u noceTHTbMeHfl b Hh^hcm. A CKOJibKO6bi paflocTHnpHBe3 cbohm BHe3anHbiMnoiiBJieHweM. HHHero He nwuieTMHe o cbohx rjia3ax h Booóme o CBoeM3AopoBbH. Diary,Nov. 5, 1857; Povne zibrannjatvoriv, vol. 5, p. 162. 43. Kostomarov,by thistime, was alreadyin jail in St. Petersburg.The circumstancesof Sevöenko's arrestled to Funduklej's(the Kyivan governor's)witticism - "FAe aceHHxTaM h 6oapHH...";cf. Pavio Zajcev,¿yttja Tarasa Sevõenka(New York,1955), pp. 168-69. 296 GEORGE G. GRABOWICZ

fromthe poem, fromhis letter,and the various referencesto Kostomarovin his Diary.44This, of course,was also evidentto variouscontemporaries.45 Sevöenko' s death, as we learn fromvarious sources, had a devastating effecton Kostomarov. The account by S. N. Terpigorovof Kostomarov's appearanceat Sevöenko's gravesideis particularlymoving:

Kostomarov stood without a hat, in a raccoon coat that had slipped off one shoulder, looking lost and as if he had been weeping. At the time he seemed unspeakably grief stricken and orphaned. Someone, I think it was Kuli§, was standingnext to him and saying somethingto him, but he did not hear him and was continually turninghis head this way and that, waiting for something: for the moment when they would bring in, in order to lower into the grave, his bosom friend[ego zakadyânogo druga] Sevöenko, or for somethingelse, but standingas if weighed down by some burden, he was continually turninghis head, getting caught up in his coat untilat the end he suddenlystumbled and fell. I rushedto him and along with some others who had run up helped him get up and in some way clean himselffrom the mud, sand and earth that clung to him. "Thank you, thank you, I am grateful"- he mumbledthrough his tears,catching those who helped him and squeezing theirhand - "Oh Lord, Lord, what a loss!" he kept repeating...46

From that time on, the memory of Sevöenko continued as a major focus for Kostomarov's activities. On April 14, 1861, at a literary evening dedicated to Sevöenko thatwas held at the University,Kostomarov read his memoiristicessay "Vospominanieo dvux maljarax,"which he also published thatmonth in Osnova. At theend of Aprilhe again spoke to those assembled at the transhumationof Sevõenko's remainsfrom St. Petersburgto Ukraine, urgingthem to continuethe cause begun by Sevöenko, and, as laterreported in police sources, casting himselfas executor of his will.47 In the months and years thatfollowed Kostomarovrepeatedly wrote about Sevöenko, was co-editorof the 1867 St. Petersburgedition of his poetry,helped organize annual celebrationsdevoted to his memory,and, despite growing official repression,would even read at such celebrations Sevöenko' s proscribed works.48 As recountedby his widow, Kostomarov,in the last days of his

44. Cf.,e.g., theentries for September 22 and 23, and forOctober 16, 1857. 45. Cf., e.g., the memoirsof E. F. Tolstaja-Junge,Vospominanija o Sevcenko, T.G.Èevëenkov vospominanijaxsovremennikov (Moscow, 1962),pp. 279-80 and 457. 46. S. N. Terpigorov,"Vospominanija," ¡storiaeskij vestnik, 1896, no. 4, pp. 57-58, cited in Je. Sabliovs'kyj, "Sevöenko i Kostomarov,"Zbirnyk prac' p'jatnadcjatoji naukovoiiSevôenkivs'koji konferenciji (Kyiv, 1968), pp. 42-43. 47. Cf. Je. Sabliovs'kyj,"Sevöenko i Kostomarov,"p. 44. 48. Ibid., p. 46. The climate of these years (particularlythe 1870s) is best conveyed by Kostomarov himself: "K öojibiuoMy coacajieHHio, b nocjieflHee BpeMA mu 3aMenaeM TaKoe - ABJietiHe:nyrb TOJibKOnoaBHTca b cbct MajiopoccHflcKaa KHHXcKa b ra3eTe CMHTaioT MTO 06n3aHH0CTbK) TOBOpHTb He O TOM, XOpOLUa JIH OHa HJIHAVpHa, a HaHHHaiOT TOJIKOBaTb, nHcaTb no-MajiopyccKH oTHioAb He cne/iycr. HeAOÖpoatejiaTejibCTBO ko BceMy INSIGHTAND BLINDNESS 297 life, pushed about in his wheelchair,would turnto speak to the bust of his long-dead friend.49And characteristically,after his death, Kostomarovwas remembered,among otherthings, as one of Sevöenko's closest friends.50 How, then,is one to reconcilethis evidence withhis disclaimers- thathe was not reallyclose to Sevöenko, thathe did not reallyknow him verywell? Are theynot a denial of a major facet of his life, and, to the extentthat he saw himselfas an apostle of a new cause, a distantecho of Peter denying Christ(with the denial made all the more puzzling in thatit comes not at the beginningbut at the end of a fruitfulapostolic career)? At the veryleast, do theynot appear to be a remarkablecontradiction of theevidence, a willfuland apparentlyself-abasing blindness to theobjective existence and importof this relationship? The nature of this problem- Kostomarov's psychology, his possible motivation- does not allow for definitiveanswers. As in any such case we can only postulatehypotheses, and perhapsalso pose some furtherquestions. We can also take note of a few salient points. The firststems from the narrativemomentum of the autobiographicmode. It is evident,for example, thatfor Kostomarov the treatment of "Sevõenko-the-man"invariably becomes that of "Sevõenko-the-friend."Perhaps it is precisely here that he finds something lacking, an absence of sorts. Somehow, in the secondary elaborationof his recollectionsthis friendship was not all it could have been, or all thathe wantedit to be. Justas the somewhatstaid professor,as we see fromhis own account, is at times the foil for,or, as we could now say, is deconstructed by the poet's blithe spirit, so Kostomarov's version of Sevcenko-the-man,which is indeed the attemptto reconstructSevõenko-as- friend,is overshadowed (more accurately perhaps: overexposed) by his awareness of §ev£enko-the-Poet.Significantly, in the Autobiographywhich he wrote in the last years of his life, the firstmention of áevõenko, and of theirfirst meeting and quick friendshipis furtherqualified as "this was the most active period for his talent,the apogee of his spiritualstrength."51 It would seem that poetry,whose power he can evoke with high Romantic eloquence, and specifically Sevoenko's poetry, into which he has

MajiopyccKOMy aoxoaht ao Toro, hto, KaaceTCfl, cKopo CTaHyT npH3HaBaTb HenpejiHMHbiM b nopüAOHHOM oómecTBe 3aB0AHTb peMb o MajiopoccHflcKOM HapOAe h ero íUbiKe. Flopa 6bi xoTfl JiK>A*M3ApaBOMbicjiJimHM, ocTaBHTb Taicott

2. SevCenko,history, and Russia

Kostomarov's conception of the context in which Sevöenko appears, the historicalas well as the implicitlypolitical framefor his life and work, is fully consistentwith his understandingof the role of Ukrainian literature withinthe largerImperial Russian contextand, beyondthat, with his general federalistand basically conservativeperception of Ukrainian-Russianliterary, cultural,and politicalrelations. What is consistentand plausible on the level of ideas, however,can become dissonantand false in thereading of thepoet. At its most concrete, this is a matterof recurringformulations. Thus, Kostomarov concludes his "Vospominanija o Sevöenko" in the Prague Kobzar with"[Of Sevöenko] as a man I can say thatI know him to have been an impeccablyhonest personality, deeply loving his nationand his language, but withoutfanatical hostility to everythingforeign."52 One must,of course, accept the statementat face value; and the ideas contained in each of its clauses - love of one's own and lack of hostility to others- are both commendable. The juxtaposition, however, especially the implication of having to make it, is troubling,and tellinglydefensive. And one cannot but hear a foreshadowingof Työyna's "Poete ljubytysvij kraj neje zloöyn- koly ce dlja vsix." Much earlier, this leitmotifalso sounded in Kostomarov's gravesideoration, where he stressedthat Sevöenko' s grave is not surrounded by foreigners,that he had become nativeto the Great Russians as well, and thatthe power of poetrytranscends local originsand is imbuedwith universal

52. "Vospominanijao Sevöenko,"in T.G. Sevéenkov vospominanijaxsovremennikov , p. 147. INSIGHTAND BLINDNESS 299 meaning.53 And here, too, the claim and value of universal significanceis unimpeachable.But the clearestarticulation of thisline of reasoningappears in his "Vospominanieo dvux maljarax,"a textwhich Kostomarov wrote soon after Sevöenko's death, and which he read, as noted above, at the commemorativeevening for Sevöenko on April 14, 1861. It also containsthis note:

Havingsuffered all his life,Sevöenko at theend of his days was surroundedby well-earnedfame. His nativeland, Ukraine, saw in himher national poet; the Great Russiansand thePoles acknowledgedin hima greatpoetic gift. He was nota poet of a narrow,exclusive nationality: his poetrytook higherflight. He was an all- Russian poet, a poet not of the Ukrainianpeople, but of the Russian nation generally,even thoughhe wrotein one of thetwo historicallyexisting dialects of thatnation, the one whichhad remainedwithin the folk sphere, and had notbeen subjectedto enforcedchanges in school,and was thereforemore suitable for giving Russiaa poettruly of thepeople.54

Kostomarov's goal, of course, is to argue Sevoenko's universality,and this, especially when contrastedwith narrow,ethnic parochialism (tesnoj iskljuöitel'noj narodnostï), cannot but appear- then as now- as an

53. "Ilo3T He ocTajica nyxcAbiMh ansi BejimcopyccKoro njicMeHH,KOTopoe BOcnHTajio ero, oueHHJioh npHK)TH.nob noc/ieAHHHahh ero, nocjie AOJirHXKHTettcKHx cTpaAaHHtt... TaKOBa cHJiaiio33hhLB Kaicott-6biHCKJiiOMHTejibHOH (J>opMe HH npoäBJifljiacb OHa, Kaic-6bi TecHO HHcoeAHHAJiacb OHa c HapoflHOCTbK)h MecTHOCTbK), - ee ooujenejioBeHecKHHcmmcji He MoaceT yicpbiTCflh cucjisncsi oõujhmaoctoähhcm." Naukovo-publiëystycnii polemiöni pysannja Kostomarova, "Slovo nad hrobom Sevöenka," p. 85. Understandably,the firstpart of this passage became a major topos in Soviet treatments of the subject (cf. Sabliovs'kyj: "...KocTOMapoB He Ti/ibKH He npoTHCTaBJixeIIIeBHeHKa Pociî, a HaBnaKH TpaKTye npoBÌAHi iaeï TBOpHOcriKo63ap* b cbítjií cahoctí h Hepo3pHBHOCTÍyicpaÎHCbKoro h pociftcbKoro HapoAÌB, ïx icTopHHHoro cnÍBpo6ÍTHHUTBaft pÌBHonpaBHocTi." Sabliovs'kyj, "Sevöenko i Kostomarov," p. 48. The last word here is also an echo of the relativelyliberal mid-1960s). 54. Since in this passage Kostomarov uses the term narod and its cognates in at least three or four differentsenses (as nation/ethnos, people/population, folk/common people, etc.), it is essential to also look at the original formulation: IlpocTpaAaBUiH bcio *H3Hb, LLIeBMeHKO,npeA kohuom ahch cbohx, 6uji oöJieHeH sacjiyaceHHottanaBoio. Ero poAHHa- MajiopoccH* - BHAcnab hcmCBoero HapOAHoronosTa; BejiHKopoccH^iHeh IIojuikh npH3HaB&/iHb hôm Be/iHKoe noeTHMecKoe AapoBaHHe. Oh He 6uji no3TOMTecHOH HCKJiiOMHTejibHOH HapoAHOCTH; ero no33Hü npHHAJia6ojiee bucokhh nojieT. 3to 6biJino3T oómepyccKHH,nosT HapoAa He MajiopyccKoro, a Bo6me pyccKoro HapoAa, xoTü h nHcaji Ha oahom h3 AByx hckohh cymecTBOBaBiiiHXHapewHit SToro HapoAa, OCTaBUieMC^BHyTpH HapOAHOH CC^epbl, He HCnUTaBUieMUIKOJIbHblX H3MeHeHHfl H nOTOMy-TO 6ojiee cnocoÕHOMp,jin Toro, hto6 AaTb Pocchh hcthhho HapoAHoro no3Ta. "Vospominanie o dvux maljarax," Naukovo-publicystyânii polemiöni pysannja Kostomarova, p. 89. It is also clear thatthe term"russkij" is used basically synonymouslywith "East Slavic" or "Rusian," what in Ukrainian would be "rusTcyj."For its part, this is also consonant with Kostomarov' s ideological reading of the nature and future of Ukraine within Russia; cf. below. 300 GEORGEG. GRABOWICZ unassailablevalue. The fact- supportedby massivebiographical evidence and clear literaryresonance - thatSevöenko spoke withseemingly equal power to his Russian and Polish as well as to his Ukrainian readers, needed to be perceived, articulatedand inscribed into the emergingcanon; and it is to Kostomarov's creditthat he was the firstto do so. But he also does more,or indeed- in a mannerquite specific to his time, and his own ideology and temperament- less. For the universalitythat is postulatedin the firstpart of the quoted passage ("...the Great Russians and the Poles acknowledged in him a greatpoetic gift.He was not a poet of a narrow,exclusive nationality: his poetrytook higherflight") is redefined,or concretizedin mid-passageas the (official, political) goal and value of "all-Russianness" (Èto byl poèt obScerusskij,poèt naroda ne malorusskogoa voobsöe russkogo naroda...). That thisis nota rhetoricalflourish nor a casual aside is made clear somewhat furtherin the essay when Kostomarovreturns to this idea and provides an extensiveelaboration. "We have said," he remindsus, thatbeing a Ukrainianpoet in formand language,Sevöenko was at thesame time an all-Russianpoet. This is preciselybecause he is thearticulator of nationalsong [narodnyxdum], the representative of nationalwill [narodnojvoli], the exegete of nationalfeeling [narodnogo õuvstva].55

The narod, and the mannerin which the poet articulates,represents and illuminatesits essence (narodnosO is, as we shall see directly,the central and certainlythe most influentialand long-lived paradigm in Kostomarov's receptionof Sevöenko. And it is preciselythe transcendenceof the narod, its ontological superiority,so to say, to the veryprocess of historythat allows Kostomarovto so elide the question of identity.56The way in which this is effected,however, the contextualizationof the poet's role in society and history,is also highlyinstructive. In the passage thatfollows, Kostomarov provides a remarkablegamut of motifswhich meld insight and personal conviction,or indeed bias, and tread,as HrushevsTcyjpointed out, a thinline betweenofficial (and ratherpragmatic) patriotism and barelyconcealed anti- bureaucratic,anti-centralist, and basically oppositionist populism.57 The central thesis regardingthe interrelationbetween the Ukrainian and the Russian peoples is one thatKostomarov was thenworking on withparticular intensity:a monthearlier he had publishedin Osnova a major articleon "Dve russkie narodnosti,"in which the national, and historicallyconditioned,

55. Ibid.,p. 91. 56. The prioritizaionof ethnographyover historyis characteristicnot only of Kostomarov:cf. below. 57. Myxajlo HruSevsicyj,"Z publicystyönyxpysan' Kostomarova,"introduction to Naukovo-publicystyânii polemiëni praci. pp. [iii]-iv. INSIGHTAND BLINDNESS 30 1 characterof each of the "Russian" (i.e., Rusian) nations/peoples(narody) is anatomized, and theiressentially complementary profiles are presentedas historical inevitability,as fate.58 Here the motif,and the essence of the argument,is reiterated- succinctlyand moreeloquently:

Fate has unitedthe Ukrainianand the GreatRussian peoples withunbreakable bonds. Only a casual [legkomyslennoe]skating along the surfaceof political eventswould lead one to concludethat there is onlya stateconnection between thesetwo peoples, and look at Ukraineas nothingmore than a countryannexed to the Russian Empire;although, on the otherhand, only forcefulcentralization whichkills everyhuman freedom and everyform of spiritualdevelopment of a thinkingbeing can, withshut eyes, claim the totalselfsameness of the Russian people. An understandingthat is based on studyingRussian historyand ethnographywill alwaysadmit that the Russiannation [russkij narod] shouldbe understoodin the sense of two nationalities;between these nationalitieslies a deep, unbreakable,spiritual bond of kinshipwhich will never allow themto questiontheir political and social unity- thatbond which was notdestroyed under the weightof historicalcircumstances that soughtforcefully to sunderthese nationalities,that bond whichwas not torneither by internalstrife, or by the Tatars,or Lithuania,or the Poles, thatbond whichto thisday inclinesGalicia, whichseveral centuries ago had strayedinto another sphere, toward the Russian horizon.Neither the Great Russians without the Ukrainians, nor the latter without the former,can completetheir development. The one people is indispensablefor the other;the one nationalitycomplements the other;and the more orderly, equitable,reciprocal is the complementarynature of thisrelationship, the more normalwill be Russianlife.

And thisbecomes thelarge purpose of Sevoenko's historicalrole:

Sevöenko,as a poet of thepeople [poet narodnyj],felt this and understoodit, and thereforehis ideas and his feelingswere never, not even in themost difficult momentsof his life, besmirchedeither by hostilitytowards the GreatRussian nationalityor by quixoticdreams of local politicalindependence: not the smallest shadowof anythinglike thiscould be foundin his poeticworks. And this,among otherthings, reaffirms the high virtue of his talent...59

The ultimateproof for this rests in the narod, in Sevoenko's multiform openness to it, and specificallyin the fact- as Kostomarovsees it- thathis poetryis perfectlyintelligible to, and is appreciatedby, theGreat Russians.60

58. Cf. N. I. Kostomarov,Dve russkienarodnosti (Kyiv, 1991). 59. "Vospominanijao dvuxmaljarax," p. 91. 60. "FIOST HCTHHHO HapOßHblft, OH eCTeCTBCHHO flOJDKCH6bIJl BUpa^CaTb TO, MTO, ÖVflVMH flocTOÄHMeM MajiopyccKoro ajieMeHTa, HMe.no b to *ce BpeMJi h oömepyccKoe 3HaneHHe. OTToro no33Hü IUeBHeHKa noHüTHa m poflCTBeHHa BejiHKopyccaM. J'nsi Toro, mto6 conyBCTBOBaTb eMy h ypa3yMeTb ero aoctohhctbo, He Hy*HO 6biTb HCKJiiOHHTejibHO MajiopyccoM, He HyatHO Aaate r'ny6oKO b noapoOHOcT^x H3yMHTb MajiopyccKyio 3THorpa<})Hio... IlIeBMeHKOBy no33HK> noftMeT h ouchht bcjikhh, kto TOJibKO 6J1H3OKBooöme 302 GEORGEG. GRABOWICZ

Kostomarov'sconception of Sevöenko's "national"(political) role, his "all- Russian" resonance, draws on several motifs- and contains an essential circularity.Historically, as Hrushevskynotes, it articulatesthe thencurrent Ukrainianstance of dual loyaltyand faithin federalism,of rejectingany claim to political separatismwhile appealing for equality and legitimacyon the historicaland ethnographiclevel: "Ukrainianpatriotism [at thattime] does not contradictall-Russian statenationalism."61 As pragmaticas it may have been, it reflectedthe consensus of patrioticthought, and to see it as a hedging on one's Ukrainiannesswould be quite ahistorical.62 At the same time,this conceptionarticulates a deeply held and genuinely non-pragmaticbelief in thepriority of the ethnographicover the historical,in effect, the primacy of the narod with respect to any and all cultural institutions.Now the historical experience that shaped the cultural, and consequently also the ethnic separateness of the Ukrainian vis à vis the Russian (GreatRussian) people was thecenturies-long existence of theformer withinthe political and culturalstructures of firstthe Lithuanianstate and then the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The whole thrust of Kostomarov'swritings, however, beginning with his Bogdan Xmel'nickijand extendingto numerousshorter and polemical works,and echoing the theses of official Russian historiography,is to cast this experience as largely a Babylonian captivity,an aberration,or simplya detourfrom the broad track of the "all-Russian"unity that existed in the Kyivan periodand has now been

K HapOAy,- KTO cnocoöeH noMHMaTb HapoflHbie TpeõoBaHH* h cnocoö HapoAHoro BbipajKeHHJi."Ibid. Or, again: "B comhhchhjixero Taie MHorooómepyccKoro, hto BejiHKopyccbiHHTaiOT ero Aaace b Hpe3BbmaflHOíijioxhx CTHXOTBopHbixnepeBOAax: KaK hh HCKaatajiH ero He nepeBOAHHKHBce-TaKH He MorjiH HcnopTHTb ao Toro, hto6 nepBopoAHaa no33H* BbicKa3biBajiacbHapyaty. Flo HauieMymhchhio, nepeBOAHTb IUeBHeHKa OTHioAb He cjieAyeT: - AOCTaTOMHO6yAeT HanenaTaTb ero c oõ-bíiCHeHHíiMHcjioB, HenoH^THbixA-n* Bejiwcopycca, Aa h cjioB Taicyx6yAeT coBceM He MHoro." Ibid., p. 92. 61. "This," he goes on to say, "was the task of Ukrainian tactics ot the 18oUs.' As tor Kostomarov, he "never ceased asserting and proclaiming that for the Ukrainian people their attachmentto their way of life and their language did not prevent full loyalty towards the Russian state and the Great Russian people, and the Ukrainian intelligentsia, with Kostomarov at theirhead, while adheringto Ukrainianculture, and developing it as best they can, sees itself nonetheless as "Russian" [rusicoju], state-patriotic,and so on. The article first found ["Knjaz' Vladimir Monomax i kazak Bogdan Xmel'nickij,"in which this is argued] his Galician sympatheticresonance in Ukrainian circles and Drahomanov strongly urges correspondentsto study it so that they understand this dual nationalism of contemporary Ukrainians- one of whom at that time was Drahomanov himself." Myxajlo HruSevsicyj,"Z i publicystyõnyxpysan' Kostomarova," Introduction to Naukovo-publicystyâni polemiéni pysannja Kostomarova,p. xvi. 62. In its own rightit also echoes historicalattitudes, i.e., me auai íoyaiiyoí me Cossack elite (starSyna) of the 18th century;cf., e.g., Semen Divovyö's "Razhovor Velikorossiiz Malorossijeju." INSIGHTAND BLINDNESS 303 reestablishedin post-Petrineimperial Russia. Kostomarov's stance,however, goes beyond the official statisthistoriography of the eighteenthand early nineteenthcentury in that his focus, in self-avowed opposition to the Karamzinist tradition,is not on the state, but on the narod. And this providesa two-fold,augmented reason forseeing a basic similarityin thetwo "Rusian" peoples: the objectively existing ethnographic and linguistic similaritiesand contiguitiesbetween them,on the one hand, and, on the other,the devaluation or simply the bracketingout of the state, here the Polish-LithuanianCommonwealth, and its role in shaping the historically, structurallyconditioned distinctness,indeed separateness, of Ukrainian culture.^ This also, however,establishes an essential circularity- in order for the Ukrainiannarod to be close to the Great Russian it mustbe seen in ethnographicterms, and in large measureits historicalexperience (not to say its elites) must be edited out of the picture.For all the explicit claims of equality between Great and Little Russia, the price of "all-Russianness" is dear- it is the role of the "younger brother,"and with it the path for eventuallyseeing Ukrainianliterature as a literaturefor "home use" is already markedout. Ultimately,the mesmerizinghold of the narod, and the search for an overarchingall-Russianness in Kostomarov's writings,should perhaps be soughtin his roots and in the innermostlayers (and traumas)of his psyche: in the fact thathis fatherwas a Great Russian nobleman and his mothera Ukrainianpeasant, indeed his father'sserf, whom he marriedthree months afterNikolaj was born;in thefact that while she was thusfreed from serfdom he was not; in the factthat when Nikolaj was ten,and attendinga pension in Moscow, his father(whom Kostomarovlater described in his Autobiography as guided by a "liberalism and democratism" commingled with a "pradedovsk[oe] barstvo") was murderedby his serfs,for motives,as the sources say, of bothrevenge and robbery;in the tellingcircumstance that his mother,after long negotiations,had to cede the bulk of her widow's estateto his two uncles in order to buy Nikolaj out of serfdom. Or, as he later describesit, in his intellectualdiscovery that the truefabric of historywas to be foundnot in the chroniclesand documents,but in the pulsing life of the - masses which pulsation,quintessential^ the oral literature,came totallyto captivatehim.^

63. In principle,of course,this must also be appliedto Muscovy- forthe questionof distinctness/separatenessis determined by the actions,cultural policies, and so on of the stateson bothsides of theborder. 64. Thus in his Autobiography. "Cicopo a npHiueJik yoeacaeHHio, hto HCTOpHioHyatHO mynaTb He TOJibKO no MepTBbiM JieTonHcaM h 3anHCnaM, a h b jkhbom Hapo/je. He MoaceT 6biTb HToõbi BeKa npoLLieAuieft jkh3hh He OTnenaTajiHCb b jkh3hh h BOcnoMHHaHHJix noTOMKOB: HyjKHo TOJibKO npHHüTbCü noHCKaTb-H, BepHO, HaftAeTCb MHoroe, hto ao CHX nop 304 GEORGEG. GRABOWICZ

Whateverthe intellectual and emotionalorigins of Kostomarov'sparadigm, and desideratum,of "all-Russianness,"its application to Sevõenko is more false than true. The question of the accessibility and intelligibilityof his poetryfor the Great Russian reader is the least of the problems. For one thing,it is clear that to claim this is to skate (to use Kostomarov's own image) along thelexical-semantic and socio-thematicsurface of thepoetry and hardly confrontits profoundcultural and symbolic and indeed historical resonance.How can one assume thatthe Cossack past, the dumy,the gamut of Ukrainianfolkloric motifs, and indeed the relianceon the stylisticdevices of the nascentUkrainian literature, particularly the legacy of KotljerevsTcyj, and above all a syncreticand mythicalsense of Ukrainianvictimization, can be intelligibleto those who are not attunedto thiscode? (And the existence of the code is rootednot only in language- which is, of course, a given that immediatelyestablishes limits to accessibility outside of itself- but even more in the fact thatthe formalmedium, the literature,is then still largely undifferentiatedand still highly dependent on its implicit generating principles and values of intimacy,familiarity and privity; in fact, it is preciselyat thatformative stage of language-and literature-and self-assertion whereit is mosthermetic and mostresistant to extrapolationinto other codes or contexts. Thus, too, intertextuality,specifically with referenceto the contextthat is beyondor outsidethe ethnicrealm, is highlycircumscribed at this stage of Ukrainianliterature.) In fact,already in Kostomarov's time,the storyof Sevöenko's reception- which forour purpose here must be strictly definedas the consideredresponse to his poetry,and not, for example, the generaland all but openly"dissident" adulation that was showeredupon him in St. Petersburgafter his returnfrom exile - illustratesthe difference between his Ukrainianand his Russian readers.For even if one excludes fromamong the latter those like Belinskij and Senkovskij who were unabashedly - hostile,65 the response fromthose who were supportive which includes

ynymeHo HayKoio. Ho e nero HanaTb? Kohchho, c H3yMem«i cBoero pyccKoro HapoAa; a KaK a Minn Torfla B MajiopoccHH, to h HawaTb e ero MajiopyccKOtt bctbh. 3Ta Mbicjib oöpanuia Meli* K MTeHHK) HapoAHbix iiaMJiTHHKOB.FlepBbitt pa3 b JKH3HHAOÕbiJi * MajiopyccKHe necHH H3AaHH* MaKCHMOBHHa 1827 roAa, BejiHKopyccKHe necHH CaxapoBa h npHtuuicü HHTaTb hx. Me Hfl nopa3HJia h yBJieicjia HenoAAeJibHaji npejiecTb MajiopyccKott HapoAHoft iio33hh; a HHKaK He noAO3peBaji, mtoõu Taicoe H3JimecTBO, Taicaa rjiyÓHHa h CBeacocTb HyBcroa õbiJia b npoH3BeAeHH5ix HapoAa, cra/ibno 6jiH3Koro ko MHe h o KOTOpoM a, KaK yBHAeJi, HHMero He 3Haji. MajiopyccKHe necHH ao Toro oxBaTHJiH Bce Moe nyBCTBO h BooõpaaceHHe, hto b KaKoft- HHÕyAb Mecím a yxce 3Haji HaH3ycTb côopHHK MaKCHMOBHMa, noTOM npHHJUic* 3a Apyrott côopHHK ero ace, no3HaKOMHJicii 3 hctophmcckhmh AyMaMH h eme öojiee npHCTpacTHJiCJi k no33HH3Toro HapoAa." Pp. 446-47. The sameis assertedby KuliS in his "Vospominanijeo NikolajeIvanoviõe Kostomarove," Nov', 1885,vol. 4, no. 13, p. 63. 65. Cf. VictorSvoboda's "Shevchenkoand Belinsky,"in Shevchenkoand the Critics 1861-1980, ed. GeorgeS. N. Luckyj(Toronto, 1980), pp. 303-323. INSIGHTAND BLINDNESS 305 such disparate people as Turgenev,whose well-intentioned,but ultimately ratherlimited memoirs served as an introductionto one volume of the Prague edition of Sevöenko's poetry,or CernySevkij,or Dobroljubov, or Princess Barbara Repnina, who continuedto hold a special affectionfor Sevõenko- also shows thatfor them, large, indeed definingaspects of his poetryand his thoughtremained invisible. The real problem,however, is simplywhether the idea of all-Russianness can be reconciled with the meaning,particularly the overarchingsymbolic meaning,of Sevoenko's poetry,and the new social and political,in a word national reality that that poetry startedto generate from the moment it appeared and, as Kostomarovwas one of thefirst to see, began to irrevocably reshape its readers. Much depends, of course, on the meaning Kostomarov places on "all-Russian." On the level that he himself stresses first- the absence of hostilityor rancortowards the Great Russians - his claim is surely true,though with some qualifications.In Sevoenko's prose, in his Diary, his lettersand thecumulative evidence of his everydaylife, enmity towards other groups, specifically the Great Russians among whom he counts so many friendsand benefactors,beginning with Zukovskij and Brjulov, is simplynot a factor.His poetryis also remarkablyfree of ethnicor groupbias, but at the same timeit is deeply informedby collectiverepresentations and animatedby a profoundsense of collective victimization.It is withinthis frame that what mightseem a hypersensitivityto what is native and what is foreignasserts itself;and it is in thiskey thathe mergeshis voice withthe kobzar (minstrel) and enjoins the seduced and abandoned village girls to make love, but not withRussian soldiers:

KoxattTecflHopHoöpHßi, Ta He 3 MOCKajiflMH...

("Kateryna,"11. 1-2)66

A ratherdifferent angle on thisaspect of Sevöenko (and on therelationship between him and Kostomarov) is provided by the ever acerbic and unpredictableKulis' Afterdescribing how aevöenko (in 1846) charmedhis freshacquaintance, the learnedKostomarov, and his dotingmother, and their servantThomka with his irrepressiblehumor, and song, and readiness to

66. The term moskal', as has so often been pointed out, referredin Sevöenko's time to both "soldier" and "[Great] Russian." Sevöenko at times (e.g, in "Moskaleva krynycja" [The Soldier's Well]) uses it explicitly in the formersense; in one exile poem, "Xiba samomu napysat'..." , he in fact speaks of himself as a moskal': "Ta, MaöyTb, b any nepeflay/ I3 MOCKajiiB,a He Ai^KAycb!... In "Kateryna"and the broad context of victimization the moskal' is unequivocally the Russian. Ultimately,of course, the two are coterminous: to be made a soldier, a moskal', is to be made alien. 306 GEORGEG. GRABOWICZ imbibe,and after"thus leaving the last Ukrainianminstrel on Kostomarov's hands in Kiev and departingfor the St. Petersburgthat seemed so mysterious and attractivefor a provincial,"Kuli§ notes:

...I musthasten to add thatunder those external clothes that Taras loved to show offbefore the people he worea differentset - of a black color. Like Byron,our Ukrainiankobzar was at timesa "grimmartyr" who

Suffered,loved and cursed.

Fromthis side, his languageacted upon both of us as a disease[kak zaraza]. In our youthfulheart, blissful and peacefulunder the influence of all-Russianlearning and poetry,a woundwas made by the unknownauthors of thoseparadoxes that fill KonysTcyj'schronicle, the outstandingHistory of the Russes [Istoriija Rusov]. Sevöenko,brought up on his readingof the pseudo-Konysicyjexacerbated this wound,and we becamehaters not only of thosewho, in our childishviews, were guiltyof the miserablestate of our nativeUkraine, but of the Great Russians themselves[samyx moskalej], a coarse people,who in our opinionat the time, wereincapable of anythingelevated and whomwe called kacapy. Sevöenkowas inexhaustiblein his sarcasm,anecdotes and sayingsregarding the poor Great Russians whom we so severelydeprived of a legacy in the votõinaof the Rurikovidsand the Romanovs.In muchhe mustcertainly have given way to Kostomarov,but Kostomarov,too, could not be free of his influence.In his recollectionof Sevéenkohe speaks evasivelythat he purportedlydid not know himvery well. I have thebasis to thinkthat in myabsence they became as close as couldbe expectedof twopeople who wereso generouslyendowed by nature,who wereso young,and wholived under the circumstances of thejust but severe reign of Nikolaj Pavloviö.67

KuliS's reminiscence- forall its levels of irony,his sarcasticvariations on the themeof his, and Kostomarov's,and Sevoenko's, youthful(indeed, as he says, "childish") naivete, his (altogether characteristic) melding of an encomium to and a debunking of Kostomarov (in what is, after all, an obituary),his all but unseemlydismissal of the Brotherhoodof SS. Cyril and Methodius (also as "childish"),and his overall tone of somehow ambiguous loyalty- stillhas the ringof truth,perhaps precisely because differentmotifs and feelings clash in dissonance ratherthan rising in some orchestrated harmony.Thus, in contrastto thetone of tolerantcondescension and patience, there is a certain dissonance in the phrase "in my absence"- with its implication of being somehow left out, of being supplanted in the relationshipof truefriendship with "the last Ukrainianminstrel." Such, too, is the apparentvolte-face in his discussion of Pletnev.As Kuli§ describes it,

67. P. Kuli§, "Vospominanija o Nikolaje Ivanoviöe Kostomarove," pp. 64-65. The quote is fromPuSkin's "Kto znaet kraj, gde nebo bleSõet." I am gratefulto ProfessorWilliam Mills Todd III for bringingthis to my attention. INSIGHTAND BLINDNESS 307 he abandons underPletnev's magisterialinfluence the Utopianpolitical ideas thathe had been sharingwith Kostomarov, and retreatsinto an "ethnographic patriotism."But it is also on thisvery ground that he refusesto accommodate his mentor's goal of "Russian cosmopolitanism"and proceeds not only to assert his unprestigious"local" patriotism,but to redefine"Russianness" as somethingaltogether incomplete without the Ukrainian component.68 If KuliS's versionof Sevoenko's attitudesis true,however, what lightdoes it shed on Kostomarov's constructionof Sevoenko's all-Russianness, and particularlyhis claim thatwith regard to the Great Russians the poet never evinced even a shadow of hostility?The simplestanswer - adumbratedby what we have already seen of Kostomarov's tendencyto reconfigurethe past- is thatit is questionable,perhaps even false. A morequalified response would distinguishhere at least two levels of response or discourse. The one to which Kostomarovis implicitlyattuned is the ethical or moral level, and his judgmentis true: Sevõenko not only was not bigoted,but his creativity, above all his poetry,moves toward an ever more assertiveuniversalism.69 But thereis also a contingent,non-idealistic, emotional and concretelyhuman level to which Kostomarov,who shrinksfrom spontaneity and "eccentricity" and who even doubts (or evades, as Kuli§ charges) his own friendshipwith Sevõenko, is not attuned.He does not see it, or if he does he glosses it over in order to furtherhis larger scheme, to frame his idea. For his part, Sevõenko, whose sensitivityto injusticeis exceeded only by an honestythat seems to shrinkfrom nothing, and particularlynot his emotions,cannot but expresshis feelings- especially if it is impoliticto do so. In a word,as much as he is part of all-Russian society, as close as he is to a great numberof

68. "H3 6e36peatHOumpoKott oojiacTH iiojihthkh a, He CMymaaMoero noHTeHHoro Apyra HHKaKHMH npH3HaHH AMU, MaJIO-fiO-MaJiy BOllieJI B y3KyK) CpaBHHTeJibHO OÕJiaCTb 3THorpa4)HMecKoro naTpHOTH3Ma: * cAcnajica khcbckhm pycimeM, He HCKJiiOMaBuiHMyace H3 - oömoro HacjieACTBa npoHHx pycHMett KJiJi3bMeHCKHx,mockobckhx, HOBropoacKHx h npon. B 3TOM OÖJiaCTHOMIiaTpHOTH3Me A 6blJl BIlOJIHe OTKpOBeHeH C IleTpOM AjieKCaHApOBHHeM; HHorAa CBOHMH napaAOKcaMH buboahji ero Aaace H3 TepneHHJi. Oh CMOTpeji Ha Moe - yKpaHHCTBOBaHHe, kük Ha oahh h3 mohx HeAOCTaTKOB, noacajiytt KaK Ha rnaBHbift H3 hhx, h, 6e3 COMHeHH* KJIOHHJI CBOe BJlHJIHHe Ha Me Hil K TOMy, MTOÕbl A CAeJiaJICü pyCCKHM KOCMOnOJIHTOM.Ho TyT OH BCTpeTHJI BO MHe yKpaHHCKyiO MOJIHaJIHByK)OnnO3Hl|HK), HeMy AOKasaTejibCTBOM cnyacHT MeacAy npoMHM "HepHaa paAa", KOTOpyio b KHeBe Hawaji a nncaTb Ha ji3UKe riyuiKHHa, a b FleTepóypre HanHc&n Ha *3biKe LUeBMeHKa. ... Hto KacaeTCA FLneTHeBa, to nojiHOMy HauieMy cOJiHaceHHio Meuiajia TOJibKO moä MajiopyccKaa HauHOHajibHOCTb. 3a ero He3HaHHe MajiopyccKoro ü3biKa, a CMOTpeji Ha Hero KaK Ha nejioBeKa, He nojiyHHBiuaro enoAne pyccKozo JiHTepaTypHoro o6pa3OBaHHa. 3a Moe npHCTpacTHe k yKpaHHiuHHe, oh CMOTpeji Ha MeHü KaK Ha nojiyypoAa. Ilocbuiau b ero ÖHÖJiHOTeKy MOH yKpaHHCKHe coHHHeHHx BnocjieACTBHH, a HaAnHCbiBaji, hto HacraHeT npocBemeHHoe BpeMü, KorAa noTOMOK ÜJieTHeBa 3thmh KHHraMH Bocnojib3yeTc^ rjia HCTopHHpyccKOH HapoAHOCTH" (emphasis in the original). Ibid., pp. 65-66. 69. Cf. my The Poet as Mythmaker:A Studyof SymbolicMeaning in Taras Sevâenko (Cambridge,Mass., 1982), especiallychapter 4, "The MillennarianVision." 308 GEORGEG. GRABOWICZ

Great Russian friends,as free as his poetry is of ethnic animosity,the sarcasm, the anecdotes, the sayings that KuliS speaks of and which cumulativelyarticulate a rebellionagainst, or a subversionof thecanonic role of the"older brother," are entirelyin character.70 Kostomarov'sgeneral claim is moreplausible if it is takennot in the sense of a mutualRussian/Ukrainian linguistic and culturalintelligibility, and not as an articulationof fraternalaffection (this metaphor,with its odious foreshadowingof much laterSoviet dogmas, should not reallybe laid at his door), but as historical,social, and intellectualcommon space. A sense of Russia as somethingthat contains (not to say dominatesor "owns") Ukraine is ever-presentin Sevoenko's prose,his Diary,his letters,and so on;71 in and of itself it is nothing more than a basic reality principle, and as such (somewhat tautologously)it is the definingfeature of what I have called Sevoenko's "adjusted personality."72It is much less pronounced,but still in evidence in his poetry,most prominentlyas an ominous presence in his so- called political poems ("Son," "Poslanije" ["I Zyvym i mertvym i nenarozdennym"],and most directlyperhaps in "Kavkaz"), or in such late poems as "Neofity" (where Imperial Rome seems to blend with Imperial Russia), "Jurodyvyj,"and "Saul" (anothermeditation on the meaning and originsof "Tsars," in which an impliedRussia ["w nas"], like China, Egypt, Babylon, or biblical Israel, is takento exemplifyuniversally repressive, self- aggrandizing,and essentiallyevil statepower). But the essential space and modalityof Sevoenko's poetic world is not intellectual (i.e., historicist,or social, or political), but symbolic and mythical,and the question that must be put is: How does Kostomarov's paradigmof all-Russiannesscorrelate with this poetic reality,which, after all, was then, and remains now the core of the significance and meaning of Sevöenko? The answer mustsurely be - hardlyat all. Indeed, in lightof the poetry,Kostomarov's basic political claim that Sevc'enko's "ideas and his feelings were never, not even in the most difficultmoments of his life, besmirchedby... quixoticdreams of local politicalindependence," appears as

70. Sevoenko's early lettersare particularlyinteresting in this regard. On the one hand, he speaks of writing poetry in Russian to prove to the Russians that he can master their language ("LUo6 Ha Ka3ajiH Mocicajii,mo a ïx ji3HK.aHe 3Haio"; letterto H. S. Tarnovslcyj,25 January1843); on the other hand, not infrequently,he complains of not hearing Ukrainian spoken, of missing "normal" (i.e., Ukrainian) speech, and, most tellingly, berates himself for tryingto write in Russian: "...aKHtt MeHe MOpTcnmcaB i 3a ükhü rpix, mo a ou.e cnoBiAaiocä KauanaM, nepcTBHMKauancbKHM cjiobom"; letter to Ja. H. Kuxarenko, 30 September, 1842. 71. And this is augmentedby (and contingenton) the fact that the prose, the Diary and a large portion of the letters are written in Russian. Cf. my "The Nexus of the Wake: Sevoenko's Trizna'," Harvard Ukrainian Studies 3^t (1979-80), pp. 320-47. 72. Cf. Poet as Mythmaker,pp. 8-9 and passim. INSIGHTAND BLINDNESS 309 a seriousdistortion - or a remarkableblind spot. For even if we allow thatthe poet's thought,and the Ukraine thathe conjures up, are definedby mythic, not historiciststructures, that the state and indeed the whole political realm are basically rejectedin favorof a millenarianvision, it is clear thatin those structures and in that vision Ukraine is seen as fully separate and autonomous.In Sevöenko's poetryUkraine is characterizedprecisely by the fact thatin its raison d'être and mode of existence- symbolic, emotional, experiential- it is conceived quite withoutRussia. His focus,in short,is on Ukrainenot as partof the Russian empirebut as Ukrainetout court. Even in the benighted present where (as he sees more sharply than any of his compatriots, with the only possible exception of Gogol) it is only a somnolentand victimizedprovince, it is stillnothing less thana transcendent value, as he says in his "Epistle,"

HeMa Ha cbìtì YicpaÏHH, HeMae apyroro Amnpa...73 or, even moredirectly, in "Son" ("Hory moji vysokiji..."):

51 TaK ïï, a TaK jiioõjik) Moio Yicpamy yóory mo npoKJieHy CBaToro Bora 3a Heï Aymy noryÕJiio

In the concludingpoem (No. 12) of the cycle "V kazemati,"which begins Sevoenko's exile poetry(as noted above, the seventh poem of this cycle, "Vesele soneöko xovalos'," is dedicated to Kostomarov),Ukraine is both an object of prayerand a legacy:

Mh mh me 3iftAeMOCü3HOBy? MH Bace HaBÍKH pO3ÍttllIJIHCb? I CJ1OBOnpaBflH i JIK)6OBÍ B CTenH i fleópi po3HecjiHÎ Hexatt i TaK. He Haiua Ma™, A AOBejiocfl noBaacaTH. To BOJia TocnoAa. FoAÍTb! CMHpiTecü, MOJiiTecb Bory I 3raAyttTe oahh Apyroro. Cbok) Yicpamy JiioõiTb.

73. The statement"nema na sviti Ukrajiny" is subtly ambiguous, for it can be taken as - literal negation "there is no Ukraine in the world out there"- or, anticipatingthe following line, can simply mean "there is no other Ukraine in the world." The oscillation between the two is semantically significantand subliminally disorienting. Cf. also the occultist reading that L. PljuSõ gives this and similar passages in his Eksod Sevcenka. Navkolo "Moskalevoji krynyci" (Edmonton, Alberta, 1986), pp. 277-78 and passim. 3 10 GEORGEG. GRABOWICZ

JIio6ÍTb ïï... Bo BpeMü JiioTe, B OCTaTHK) TiHKKyiO MHHyTy 3a Heï FocnoAa MOJiiTb.

Such examples could be adduced at will, since this stance is essentially coterminouswith the poetry:Ukraine, throughout, is a separateand uniquely privilegedentity. And it is only statingthe obvious to say thatsince she is above all an emotionaland moral category- symbolizing,in the recentpast and in the present,the status of victimization,and in the futureuniversal humanrebirth74 - thereis no commonground with Kostomarov' s historical and political paradigm. In Sevoenko's poetic vision, Russia and all- Russianness simply do not determineUkraine, and Kostomarov's, and his contemporaries', implicit belief that Ukraine is "inconceivable without Russia" standsrevealed as an extrinsic,imperial mindset. As one who was deeplymoved by thepower of Sevoenko's poetry(and, as KuliS remindsus, knew so much of it by heart),75there is littledoubt that Kostomarovwas aware of this essential distinction,between (to put it most basically) a Ukraine "within"and a Ukraine "without"Russia. From all we know, he could not but know. How then should one read his classical misprision? Its mechanicsor rhetoricare fairlyclear. Treadingon the alreadyslippery surfaceof an argumentfrom absence, Kostomarovsubtly identifies modality with logical conclusion: the fact thatSevoenko's poetryis simply directed beyond political considerations,that it does not have an immanentpolitical articulation,serves as evidence thathe does not supportor value "quixotic dreams of local patriotism,"in effect,political separatism.(This inference may well be furtheredby Kostomarovimplicitly "pooling" the evidence of the poetrywith thatof the prose- even thoughhis subsequentjudgements will show that he is eminently aware of their essentially different perspectives.)But even withoutthe political articulation, and indeed precisely because the mythiccode thatstood in its place was so much more powerful and resonant,Sevoenko's message was as separatist,as non- or indeed anti- all-Russian as was humanlypossible in his time and setting.It is couched in pre-political,millennarian-prophetic, and in some measure even in nativist terms,and it bypassesthe various questions (of historicallineage and of equal

74. Cf., therefore,his quintessential millennarianstatement: I Ha OHOBJieHÌft3eMJli Bpara He 6yAecynocTaTa A 6yAechh i 6yae Ma™ 1 6yayTbJiiofle Ha 3eMJii.("I Arximed i Halilej...") 75. "KocTOMapoBy He HyatHO óbiJio hx [ero KHeBCKHecthxotbopchhä ] cnncbiBaTb: BbicoKOopHrHHajibHbie no3Mbi h Ko63apcKHe njiaMHTapaca oh 3Haji ot cjioBa ao cjiOBa Ha naM*Tb." "Vospominanija o Nikolaje IvanoviCe Kostomarove," p. 67. INSIGHTAND BLINDNESS 3 1 1 right to the Rus' legacy, of social underpinningsand institutions,and ultimatelyof federalism)that so occupied Kostomarov and Kuli§ and later Drahomanov,but it constitutesa watershed:it cracksthe hegemony of the all- Russian model in Ukrainianthought and in so doing preparesthe groundfor modernUkrainian national consciousness. It mustseem highlyironic that the premier Ukrainian historian, author of the text- the Knyhy bytija ukrajins'koho narodu - that forshadowed this break, was somehow impervious to this sea change in Ukrainian history. Kostomarov, the historian,was seeminglycondemned to seeing only thepast. As his otherresponses will show, however,it was not so much a case of not seeing as of seeing and not wishingto see, of repressingthe knowledge. To this,and especially the question of motivation,we shall return.The idea that enables him to thwartthis insightis one that was destined to be the largest in his and his contemporaries'intellectual life, and one which- in historicalperspective - offeredup themost slippery surface of all: thenarod.

3.SevCenko and the narod

Kostomarov's focus on the narod as the essential paradigm for conceptualizingUkrainian (and Russian) history,and the nation's collective existenceas such, dates fromhis earliestwritings and resonatesfully with the hegemonyof this idea in the formativestage of modernUkrainian national consciousness. Already in his "Obzor soöinenij,pisannyx na malorossijkom jazyke," publisheda fullthree years before he metSevöenko, he speaks of the idea of the narod as nothingless than a prime cause: "When the idea of turningto the narod (ideja narodnosti) appeared in Europe, imitationgave way to originalityand bookishnessto talent...",or "Now the idea of turning to the narod has revitalizedour literature:both the reading public and the writersconsider a turningto the narod the main virtueof every belletristic work,"or, finally,

Andso theidea of turningto thenarod, which had animatedRussian literature, broughtforth within it a separatesubset [otdel] - Ukrainianliterature, which in its directionis purelyRussian, and authenticallyethnic [svoenarodnaja]. Many contemporaryreviewers call this tendency to write in Ukrainian an incomprehensiblewhim, but theirthinking is withoutbasis, forthis is a need of thetimes, since it stemsfrom that source which vitalizes contemporary society. The Ukrainianvernacular language [narodnyj jazyk] - like every vernacular languageprior to theappearance of theidea of turningto thenarod - practically did not have until now any writtenworks, but insteadthis language secretly containedrich treasures of poetry- folksongs and tales. For a long timeno one 3 12 GEORGEG. GRABOWICZ had any interestin this,and only recentlyhave people turnedtheir attention to them.76

When Kostomarovfor his partturns his attentionto Sevõenko in this,the firsthistorical overview of modernUkrainian literature, the key in which he reads him,and thevery formulations he uses, are thosehe will returnto again and again. At theircore is theidea of a perfectconsonance between the voice of thepoet and thatof thepeople:

The worksof Sevõenko,which have been published in a separatebook under the titleof Kobzar, show theauthor to be uniquelygifted. He is notonly brought up on Ukrainianfolk poetry, but he has fullymastered it, he has subordinatedit to himselfand he givesit an elegant,educated form. The featuresof thecharacters he presents- Kateryna,the minstrel-kobzar, Perebendja - are the same thatwe know fromnature; but along withthat they contain a universalpoetry, understood by everyone.The feelingsof thepoet are characterizedby wearinessand despondency; he takesto heartthe fate of thepeople, but his griefis notsomething that has been learned- thisis theentire people [celyjnarod] speaking with the lips of its poet.

These insightsare remarkablein theirpower and accuracy,and, it is hardly surprising(and poeticallyjust) thatthey came to be deeply imprintedon the entire Sevöenko reception: to this day they are the major leitmotifin the popular or officialsocietal response,and a major presence in the traditional scholarship.But Kostomarovgoes beyondthis. His idea of the poet speaking with the voice of the people (eto celyj narod govorjascyj ustami svoego poèta) actually anticipates much later thinking,specifically Sevöenko's essentialreliance on thearchetypal and themythical:

His soul has actualizedan empathyand a likenessbetween his stateand the feelingsof the entirepeople; along with the movementof the heart,which belongsto thepoet, there is a vitalconfluence which is commonto everyonewho is able to respondemotionally. Because of thiseveryone - as long as he has the minimumof those feelingswhich fill the innerworld of a Ukrainian- will be transfixedby Sevöenko'spoetry to suchan extentthat he will forgetwhether it is externalto him, taken fromoutside, or entirelyhis own, somethingthat has appearedin the realmof theheart, from time immemorial, like the firstideas of childhood.77

Some twenty years later, in his "Vospominanie o dvux maljarax," Kostomarovreturns to his centralthesis of the consonance betweenpoet and people. He does so immediatelyafter asserting (as we have already seen)

76. Cf. IeremijaHalka, "Obzor soõinenij pisannyx na malorossijskomjazyke," Molodyk na 1844 hod (Xarkiv,1843) and in M. I. Kostomarov,Tvory v dvoxtomax (Kyiv, 1967), vol. 2, pp. 377-78. 77. Ibid., pp. 388-89. INSIGHT AND BLINDNESS 3 1 3

Sevoenko's role as an "all-Russian" poet, as one who speaks to and for the primal, trans-historical and trans-political community that is formed by the "dve russkie narodnosti." And it is in this connection that he contrasts him with the poet who in the Russian society of the time was most often identified as a narodnyj poèt:

Some myopic judges of literaturehave compared him [Sevöenko] with Kol'cov, and have even formeda higheropinion of the latter.This came as a result of the fact thatthey did not understandwhat is a poet of the people [narodnyj poet], and could not raise themselves to an understandingof his qualities and significance. According to theirconcept, the poet of the people is the one who can successfully depict the narod and speak in its tonality.And such indeed was Kol'cov; in some of his works he performedthis task excellently, and his name shines honorably among the outstandingfigures of Russian literature.Sevcenko was not such a poet and such was not his task. Sevöenko did not imitatefolk songs; Sevöenko did not have as his goal either to describe his people or to copy the folk tone: he had nothingto copy, since by his very naturehe did not speak in any other way. As a poet Sevöenko was the narod itself continuing its poetic creativity.Sevöenko' s song was by itselfa song of the people, but a new one, the kind of song thatcould now be sung by the entire people... Sevöenko was chosen by the people in the direct sense of the word; it is as if the narod chose him to sing in its place. The forms of folk song entered Sevöenko' s verse not through learning, not by - deliberation where to use what, where this or thatexpression is best put- but by the natural development in his soul of the whole limitless thread of folk poetry... Sevöenko said what every man from the people would say if his folk essence [narodnoe susëestvo] could rise to the task of expressing that which is at the bottomof his soul. A holy treasure,it was hidden thereunder the weight of life's prose, and was invisible, unnoticed even by the common man himself until the momentthat the life-creatingsounds of a genius would touch the soul's concealed mysteriesand with their entrancingmelody jolt the muteness of his thought,and reveal to his senses thatwhich was his property,but of which he was still unaware. Waked from his prosaic apathy by the voice of such poetry the common man is ready to cry out with tremblingand delight: "I was just now ready to say the same thing,precisely the way it was said by the poet." This was not granted either to Kol'cov or to any other Russian poet, with the only exception of PuSkin (though he spoke not for the common man, but for the higher Russian class). Kol'cov would speak in the tone of the people; Sevöenko speaks in the way the narod does not yet speak, but how it was already preparedto speak, and was only waitingfor a singerto be found withinits ranks who would masterits language and its tone. And following such a creatorso also will speak the whole narod, and it will say in one voice: this is mine...78

The poetic eloquence thatso moved his audience on thatcommemorative evening in 1861 is still audible in these lines, and its source is the author's

78. "Vospominanieo dvux maljarax,"Naukovo-publicystycni i polemicni pysannja Kostornar ova, pp. 89-90. 3 14 GEORGEG. GRABOWICZ unmistakableand unalloyedempathy for his subject- both the poet and the narod withwhich he so firmlyidentifies him. In termsof the argumentitself, the intellectual,logical means for linking the seemingly totally disparate realms of the collective and the individualis the notionof Genius, which,as we shall see directly,is one of the poles and touchstonesof this essay. A furtheranimating moment, conjoining the intellectualand the emotional,is Kostomarov's sense of the impending demise of Ukrainian folk culture (which forhim, we should remember,is coterminouswith Ukrainian culture as such). "HapoflHaa yicpaHHCKaa no33H* bhahmo npHÖJiH3aeTC>ik yracaHHio," he says and goes on to project this onto a broad gamut, of performanceand repertoire,quality and content,and of the pure and archaic folk consciousness itself.Ultimately, of course, the death of áevõenko is a synecdochefor the passing of a whole way of life.79

79. This idea was also voiced,virtually at the same time,by ApollonGrigor'ev in his obituary,"Taras Sevéenko,"published in Vremja (1861, vol. 2, no. 4, pp. 634-40). His seeminglyboundless estimation of Sevõenko,whom he bracketsalong with PuSkin and Mickiewicz,is stillqualified, however, by whatGrigor'ev takes to be Sevéenko's wholly local (i.e., Ukrainian)resonance as well as by his exclusiveidentification with the narod: 3HaneHHe yTpaTbi, KOTopyio cjiaBüHCKHe JiHTepaTypbi noHecjiH b Tapace TpHropbeBHMe IlIeBMeHKe-ecjiH He paBHocHJibHO 3 VTpaTaMH, noHeceHHbiMH hmh b flyiuKHHe h MHUKeBHHe- - npeACTaBHTejiJix cjiaBüHCTBa nepeA uejibiM HejiOBewecTBOM, to bo bcükom cjiynae HHCKOJibKOHe MeHbuie 3HaneHHJi yTpaTbi Forojifl h KojibuoBa.* (And here Grigor'ev provides his footnote: TaK-KaK y Hac bo BceM h BcerAa Hy^cHO oraBapHBaTbCfl, to h cneiUHM cica3aTb, mto paBHOCHJibHOCTb stoh yTpaTbi mu npM3HaeM TOJibKO OTHOCHTejibHO MajiopoccHttcKOH JiHTepaTypbi, b KOTopott Tapac LUeBMeHKO 3aHHMaji orpoMHoe MecTO. ) And then he continues, Hto Tapac LLJeBMeHKO6biJi bcjihkhh nosT, b 3tom coMHeßaTbca MoaceT TOJibKO ra3eTa "BeK" - Ha cTOJib ace pasyMHbix ocHOBaHHflx, Ha KaKHx He conycTByeT OHa LLlHJiJiepy.Ho hto C ApyrOH CTOpOHbl TapaC llIeBHeHKO 6bIJl TOJibKO 3ap5I, BCJIHKHH I1O3T TOJibKO MTO HaMHHaiOmettCÍI JiHTepaTypbi F1O3T HCKJIIOHHTeJlbHOHapOAHblH, nO3T O KOTOpOM TpyAHO CKa3aTb - nocjieAHHil jih sto h3 cjienux Ko63apefl hjih nepBbitt H3 MacTepOB h xvaoìkhhkob, - TaK HaHBHa ero KpacoTa h BMecTe Tan yace apTHCTHMHa, sto Toace He noAJieacHT cnopy. Flo KpacoTe h cHJie, MHorne nocTaBJiüJiH ero HapaBHe c IlyujKHHbiM h Mhukcbhmcm: mu totobu - hath Aa^ce a a Jibuie b stom y Tapaca LUeBMeHKH ecTb Ta Haraíi KpacoTa Bbipa^ceHH^ HapOAHOH no33HH, KOTOpaÄ Ha KaacAOH cTpaHHue "Ko63ap^" nopa3HT Bac y llleBHeHKH... LUeBMeHKO eme HHMero ycjiOBHoro He oohtcä; HyÄHbi eMy MJiaAeHMecKHH JieneT, HapoAHbiH lOMop, CTpacTHoe BopKOBaHbe, oh HH nepeA neM He ocTaHOBHTca, h Bee sto y Hero buhact cBe^co, HaHBHO, Moryne, cTpacTHO hjih ^capTJiHBO naie caMoe AeJio. y Hero AettcTBHTejibHo ecTb h yHOC^ma«, nacTO Heo6y3AaHHaa cTpacTHOCTb MnuKeBHwa, ecTb h npejiecTb - nyuiKHHCKOH ächocth TaK hto AettcTBHTejibHO, no AaHHbiM, no CHJiaM CBoero BejiHKoro TajiaHTa, oh ctoht Kaic 6bi b cepeAHHe MeacAy AByM« bcjihkhmh npeACTaBHTeji^MH cjiaBüHCKoro Ayxa. HaTypa ero nosTHHecKaíi uiHpe CBoeio MHorocTopoHHOCTbio HaTypu - Hauiero Morynero, ho oAHOCTopoHHoro KaK caMa ero poAHHa npeACTaBHTejiü pyccKott YKpaHHbi, KojibuoBa, cBeTJiee, npome h HCKpeHee HaTypu rorojia, BejiHKoro nosTa MajiopoccHH, nocTaBHBiuero ce6ii b Jio^Hoe nojiOÄeHHe 6biTb noaTOM coBepuieHO ny^cAoro - eMy BejiHKopyccKoro 6biTa... Aa! UleBneHKO nocjieAHHtt KOÔ3apb h nepBuft bcjihrhh no3T HOBOH BeJIHKOHJiHTepaTypbi CJiaBüHCKOrOMHpa. ApollonGrigor'ev, Soâinenija, I. Kritika(Villanova, 1970), pp. 386-87. INSIGHTAND BLINDNESS 3 15

For all the formaland psychologicalinsights of this readingand with all due allowance forits emotionaltone and elegiac mode, the interpretationof Sevöenko thatemerges is still highlyproblematic. The firstand basic reason is thatthe notionof the narod was and is profoundlyambiguous. On the one hand it refersto the total collective, "the people," indeed "the nation,"and draws its cognitiveand emotionalpower fromthis totalizingthrust. On the otherhand - and thisreflects convention, history and social reality- it refers to the "folk,""the commonpeople," specificallythe peasantry.Kostomarov, forwhom the narod is the essential concept,the touchstoneof his thought, also exemplifiesthe interminglingand frequentfusion of these two levels. In one passage, sometimesin one sentence,he will use it to referto the peasant, the "prostoljudin" and to the "Ukrainian"or "Russian people," or indeed the totalityof Rus'.80 The problemsthat flow fromthis are several. The fusion of the idea of the "folk" with that of the "nation" sharply narrowsdown, or even bracketsout history;Kostomarov, the historian,finds himselfin the odd positionof suspecting,and suspending- by virtueof his populist paradigm- much of the contentof what in his time is considered history,i.e., political history.The totalizingpower of the idea of the narod necessarilyleads to the furtherpremise of its undifferentiated,"class-less," and ultimately"democratic" essence. This legacy of Romanticism, and particularlyHerder, becomes the warp of Kostomarov's writingsand in turn theenduring legacy of Ukrainiannarodnyctvo or populism. When applied to Sevöenko (and the narod and aevöenko's narodnist' become centraltopoi in the subsequentreception), this paradigm cannot but obscure the overall historical, social and indeed political impact of his message. As much as Kostomarov is intuitivelycorrect in stressing the "collective unconscious," in effectthe mythical,transhistorical tenor of his poetry,Sevöenko's inclusion in his vision (albeit in the guise of the new secular religionof Romanticismand its cult of the narod) of the autonomist and corporatepatriotism of the Cossack elite of the past century,and even more so his abilityto identifyand speak to preciselythe differentstrata of

The issueof Sevéenko'snarodnist', and his totalidentification with it, had been put as forcefully,and at greaterlength, only a fewmonths earlier in N. Dobroljubov'sreview of the Kobzar of 1860 (Sovremennik,1860, vol. 80, no. 3, pp. 99-109). The possibilitythat this perceptionof Sevöenko,and of all of Ukrainianliterature, may have been not only a gross simplification,but also a strategicsubordination to the authorityof the all-Russian discourse,in effecta marginalizationvis à vis the center,is somethingthat could not be raisedeither in Stalinistor in post-StalinistSoviet criticism. For an earliertreatment of this cf. M. Plevako's "Sevöenkoj krytyka(Evoljucija pohljadiv na Sevõenka)," ÖervonyjSljax, 1924, no. 3, pp. 97-120 and nos. 4-5, pp. 108-142; reprintedin Statti,rozvidky j bio- bibliohrafiönimaterijaly (New York-Paris,1961), pp. 164-268,especially pp. 176-78 and passim. 80. Cf. n. 52 above. 3 16 GEORGEG. GRABOWICZ

Ukrainiansociety, and, most importantly,his abilityto visualize a historical and, for all practicalterms, national continuum of "the dead, the living and the yet unborn,"remain something Kostomarov-the-historian cannot see. In fact,his inabilityto discernthis turnsinto a principle,an unwillingnessto countenancea new paradigm,and ultimatelyto accept a new historicalreality. Its culminationis the theoryof a "literaturefor home use" and the rather unseemly pose of chiding his colleague and erstwhile friend,Kuli§, for translating Shakespeare into Ukrainian- where it is plain to him (Kostomarov) thatwhat the implied (in effect,peasant) reader of Ukrainian requiresis simplerand morepractical fare.81 The identificationof Sevõenko as a poet of the narod, or a narodnyjpoet, also has the unavoidableconsequence of downgradinghis social and esthetic role. The comparisonwith Kol'cov, and thenwith PuSkin, is indicative:while Sevõenko is judged superiorto Kol'cov as a narodnyjpoèt, he speaks to the common masses, while PuSkinspeaks to the upper classes. In a later article Kostomarovputs it muchmore directly:

...forSevõenko there will always be a place in thepleiad of thegreat singers of the Slavic world.In artisticdevices he gives way to suchpoets of our tribeas PuSkin and Mickiewicz,as he indeedgenerally gave way to themin education- although thislack was stronglycompensated by thestrength of his creativegenius. But in the vitalityof his ideas, in the nobilityand universalityof his feelings,in his naturalnessand simplicity,áevõenko is superiorto them.His significancein historyis notin literature,not in society,but in thewhole mass of thenarod*2

This juxtaposition,or moreprecisely the termsin which it is made, points to the second major problem in the paradigm of the narod: how is individualitypossible if it is literallythe whole people (be it folk or nation) that is speaking throughthe poet's voice? Or, specifically, how can we - discernihzpoèt in Kostomarov's Sevõenko? By all indications only in dim

81. Thus: "HaM Kasajiocb-õbi,HeT HafloÕHOCTHnepeBOAHTb Ha loacHO-pyccicoeHapeMHe UleKcnHpa, Taic Kan bcjuchH Majiopycc, nojiyMHBUiHttHa CTOJibKOpa3BHTHa, htoöij HHTepecoBaTbcamtchhcm llIeKCimpa, MoaceT npoMHTaTbero b pyccKOMnepeBOAe, Aa HHorAa Aaace c öojibiiiHMyAoôcTBOM, neM b watHO-pyccKOM,noTOMy hto peAKHftCKOJibKO-HHÓyAb o6pa3OBaHbiftMajiopycc He 3HaeT pyccitaro KHHatHaro «buca b paBHoftcTeneHH c cbohm npHpoAHbiMHapeHHeM, nepeAaBaTb-ate no-pyccKH llIeKcnnpa b HacToaiuee BpeMüJierne neM no-MajiopyccKH, Aaace h TaicoMy 3HaTony MajiopyccKaro cjioBa, naie caM r. KyjiHiu." (Kostomarov goes on to say, however, that this does not apply to the Ukrainians living in Austria-Hungary:since both Polish and German are "foreign" languages, the need to make Ukrainian into a full-blown literary language ["...pa3BHBaTb poAHoe HapeHHe h npeo6pa3OBaTb ero b KyjibTypHbitt«uk"] is evident and justified.) "P. A. Kuli§ i ego poslednjaja literaturnajadejatel'nost'," Kievskaja starino 5, 1883, p. 223-24. 82. N. Kostomarov, "Malorusskaja literatura," foèzija siavjan, p. loi. wniie snaring some basic assumptions with Grigofev (cf. n. 79, above), Kostomarov's formulation is still more analytical and more perspicacious. INSIGHTAND BLINDNESS 3 17 outline.While seeing the creativerole of Sevoenko's narodnist',his reliance on the folk idiom and the vernacularlanguage, the gamutof emotional and expressive devices associated with the folkloricor oral modality,and most strikinglyhis resonancewith the collective unconscious,Kostomarov simply does not see Sevoenko's manifestand complex individuality,his doubt and his irony,his experimentationwith formand his subtle use of voice, his modulationof emotionand his variationson intellectualdistancing. It would appear that even while Kostomarov is the firstto speak of Sevöenko's genius- and all of the above would normallyinhere in the idea of poetic genius- in actual fact,both the idea itselfand its contentare overshadowed by his supremeand ultimatereference point, the narod. Despite this seeming reductiveness,it must be noted in Kostomarov's defensethat the meaningthat he ascribes to the narod appears at timesto be nothingshort of sublime: it is the essence of commonhumanity, the core of human values, virtuallya religiousor metaphysicalcategory. This tendency to expand the meaningof the narod froma simple designationof the peasant masses to a vision of common humanity is most pronounced in Kostomarov's last extensive treatmentof Sevcenko, his already mentioned introductionto the section on Ukrainian literature in N. V. Gerbel's anthology,The Poetryof the Slavs. Here he again stressesthat Sevöenko, in contrastto the otherwriters creating the new Ukrainianliterature, was a man literallyof the common people, a "prostoljudin"^ and he repeatsvirtually word forword his earlierformulation that "Sevöenko's poetryis thepoetry of the entirenarod" it is "that which the narod only felt in its sorrow,but could not yetclothe in clear consciousness,"that "which the narod trulysang withthe lips of its chosen one..."84 But thenhe goes a step further:

A poet like Sevöenkois not only a painterof the people's life [narodnogo byta], not only a singerof the people's feelings[narodnogo cuvstva],of the people'sdeeds - he is a nationalleader [narodnyj void1], one whoawakens them to new life,a prophet.85

And from this he takes a still furtherstep: "His poetry,"he says, "is deeply Ukrainian,but at the same time its meaning is in no sense merely local: it continuallycarries a universalsignificance." Thus,

83. Thus: "HapoAHOcTbKbhtkh, kük h Booõme ToraaiiiHHx HapOAO-H3o6pa3HTejiett- sto 3epKajio HaBeAeHHoeHa HapoAHbitt6biT... Ho LUeBHeHKO6biJi caM npocmnioAHH,TorAa-KaK Apyrne 6ojiee hjih MeHee öijjih nam>i h naHHHH,JiioõoBaBiiiHec^ HapoAOM, HHorAa h AecTBHTejibHOh JiioÓHBiiiHeero, ho b cymHOCTH,no poacAeHHio,BocnHTaHHio h cnpeMJieHHJiM ^KHTettcKHM,He cocTOBJiüBQiHee HapoAOMoAHoro uejiaro." "Maloruskaja literatura,"Poezija slavjan, p. 160. 84. Ibid. 85. Ibid. 318 GEORGEG. GRABOWICZ

Sevéenkois notonly a poetof theUkrainian common people, but generally the poet of the commonpeople [poèt prostogonaroda], of the commonhumanity [ljudskoj gromady]that had long been suppressedby the conditionsof social existence,but stillsenses the need forother conditions, and is alreadybeginning to movein thatdirection, though it does notyet see a truepath and oftenfalls into despairand despondencyeven when hope for a distantfuture looks into their soul.86

Separately and cumulatively,the prescience of these formulationsis stunning."National leader," "prophet," "poet of commonhumanity" are terms which accuratelyreflect the contemporaryunderstanding of Sevöenko: the formertwo virtuallydefining the conceptual(in effect,rhetorical) axis of the popular,cultic and "patriotic"responses, and thelatter serving as a touchstone fora broad rangeof approaches,from the ideological to the analytical.87The presentdiscourse on Sevõenko,whatever its level of sophistication,is simply inconceivablewithout recourse to these terms.In layingthe groundworkfor thisedifice, the sublime meaningwith which Kostomarovinvests the notion of thenarod also definesthe quality that enables and, intellectuallyspeaking, - legitimizes the whole subsequent receptionof Sevõenko the idea of his universality.In earlierreadings, in KuliS's gravesideoration, in Kostomarov's own early responses which we have already discussed, the frame for consideringthe poet's impact was Slavdom or "all-Russianness"; now it is somethingmuch more compelling: "common humanity."88

86. Ibid. The awkwardsyntax, the arrayof subordinateclauses, seems to reflectthe author'sslippery task of giving voice to social disaffectionwithout crossing over into politicaldissent. 87. In thelatter I would also includemy own reading."Poet of commonhumanity," - especially when associated with collective, unconscious emotions and a hoped-for, providentialsolution - is as close as one can come to speaking of communitas, mythopoesis,and a millennarianperspective without benefit of theoriesand systemsof analysisthat were still far in thefuture. Cf. Poet as Mythmaker,passim. 88. In thelate Sovietperiod a subtleand sophisticatedrearticulation of thisidea by the criticVadym Skurativslcyj created a majorliterary scandal: the author was bannedfrom print forseveral years and theeditor of thejournal that ran his piece,the poet Dmytro Pavlychko, was sacked. Presumably,the offensein Skurativs'kyj'sessay, "Sevöenko v konteksti svitovojiliteratury," Vsesvit, 1978, no. 3, pp. 184-109, was that it ascribed to the Ukrainian poet absolute- not contingent,not indebted-to-Russian-revolutionary- democratic-thought,butabsolute - priorityin articulatingthe cause of enslavedhumanity: CaMe IlIeBHeHKO Bnepuie b icTOpiï (i He jiiTepaTypM, a JiwflCTBa) BopyuiHB uio thc^mojiìthk) HÌMOTy, caMe nepe3 Hboro Bnepiue npoxonHJiacii cjiobom, a He JiHiue kphkom, fioro caMa 3a3ByHajia, ük Ka3ajiH cepeAHbOBÍMHÍ TeoJiorH, "cyócTaHuia neitJia", MOTOpoiima, b neKJio- tvt HacKpi3b nponeneHa cTpaatAaHHiiM "penoBHHa". Tvt He Oporei* cnycTHBca floro ctíhh fi panroBO 3acnißajio, 3aTyacHJio b iiobhhh tojioc yce floro KaMÍHHíi, yci CKJienÏHH*. y*BÌMO CO6Ì Ha XBHJlHHy,IMO COÖOpHHtl nJiaM aHTÌJlbCbKHX HeBÌJlbHHKÌB pariTOBO cbocï noBepHyBCü b cjiobo, BÌAHafiuioB fioro, ocìb y HbOMy, He BTpaTHBOiH npH ubOMy acoAHOÏ CJlbO3H. y^BÌMO CO6Ì, mO BÌH, Ì3 CB06Ï AO-3HaKOBOÏ, Heo6xÌAHOl Heo4>OpMJieHOCTÌ Ì INSIGHTAND BLINDNESS 3 19

The notionof Sevöenko-as-Prophethas long become equally centralto the discourse. Already in 1879 Myxajlo Drahomanov was devoting the first chapterof his seminal studyof Sevöenko to a surveyof the way in whichhis "prophecy"was being parsed and exploited by virtuallyevery political and socially articulate segment of Ukrainian society.89 For his part, Kostomarov's achievementrests not only on the factthat he was one of the very firstto articulatethis idea and bring it to collective consciousness (a consciousness that quickly moved from the literaryand cultural to the political), but thathe also soughtto defineit. The paradigmhe chose- that of Genius- was surelyfamiliar to his readers.His treatmentof Sevöenko's prophecy, and the genius that underlies it, however, turns out to be as ambivalentand prone to self-deconstructionas any thathe was to apply to áevõenko.

4. áEVÍENKO THE GENIUS

The text in which Kostomarov confrontsthis problem,the Urtextand the Rosetta Stone of his áevõenko reception,and the text around which we ourselvesare somehow fatedto circle in puzzlementand fascination,is again the "Vospominanie o dvux maljarax." Few thingsare more indicativeof the present-daytorpor in Sevöenko scholarship,particularly its treatmentof his reception,than the factthat the profound ambiguities of thisremarkable essay have neverreally been examined.^ Criticsand commentatorswould cite the inspiredand eminentlyquotable passages withoutseeming to notice thatthe overall text in which they were imbedded was saying something quite

CTHxiftHocrine pe firnob y 3HaKH 3 ycÌMa ïxhîmh npHKMeTaMH,¿ikoctìimh, yMOBaMH, - o6oB'ä3KaMH y 3HaKOBy peajibHÌCTb mobh, 36epiraioHH BOAHonac cbok) cTHxittHy, HeBiAnopHyCHJiy, cboio AopeoJuieKTHBHy,AopaujoHajibHy míiu>.I3 cbocï 6e3-MÍpHOcribíh npHftiiiOBao MipH,B rpaHHMHOBHBipeHHft npocrip Bipiiia, y nic^aropeflcbKynepioAHHHicTb MeTpa ft pHTMy, npH ubOMy 3ajiHiuaiomfCb no cyiï CBOift 6e3MÍpHHM, nocriftHO nepeKpHBaioHHbcí pHTyajiHpo3Mipy ft pHMH. CyMa TaKHx ysBJieHbi Ha6jiH3HTb Hac nonacTH no po3yMÍHHüBcieï rpaHAÍ03H0CTÍft 3araAK0B0CTÌflBHiija IIIeBMeHKa, ao floro njiaHeTaptioro 3HaneHHfl.Bnepiue floro cjiobom 3arOBOpHJIHCBÍTH, SIKÏ 3a/IHLUa./lHCflTaCMHHUeiO 3a CÌMOMa 3aMKaMH RJISIeJlÌTapHOl KyjibTypH,HH He rjisi Bcix ïï JiiTepaTypHHXeKcneAHuitt, TyAH cnopaA^ceHHx" (p. 187). The argumentis nuancedand forceful,but its conceptual matrix, its (in all likelihoodquite subliminal)paradigm is Kostomarov's. 89. Cf. his "Sevöenko,ukrajinofily i socializm," Hromada, no. 4, 1879, pp. 101-230. (Cf. also M. P. Drahomanov,Literaturno-publicystyëni praci u dvox tomax(Kyiv, 1970), vol. 2, pp. 7-133.) 90. Cf., for example, two of the more substantiveand balanced treatments- Je. Sabliovskyj's "Sevõenko i Kostomarov," Zbirnykprac' p'jatnadcjatoji naukovoji Sevöenkivs'kojikonferenciji (Kyiv, 1968), pp. 23-50 and M. P. KomySanoenko'sZ istoriji ukrajins'kohoSevêenkoznavstva. Tvorâist' T. H. Èevëenka v ocinci doiovtnevoho literaturoznavstva(Kyiv, 1972), pp. 169-79. 320 GEORGEG. GRABOWICZ different;alternatively, in some editions the text was abbreviated and the implicit"contradictions" simply deleted (withoutthe least hint,of course, thatwhat was leftout mightradically change thepicture).91 In effect,the passages in question articulatethe firstserious attemptto look at the total meaning of Sevöenko, with special referenceto both the historical existence and the consciousness of the nation. In terms of identifyingthe issue, to be sure, theyare preceded by only a few weeks by KuliS's article,or "letterfrom the homestead,""6oho stojit'Sevöenko jako poet narodnyj,"which appeared in O snova in March of 1861. In it, the other high priestof the nascentUkrainian secular religionspeaks of Sevöenko as one who gave voice to Ukrainiancollective feelings,who firstshowed the sublimepower and dignityof the narod, who firstcommuned with the mute burial mounds,in effectwas the firstto understandthe Ukrainiannational past, and who, like Moses forthe Israelites,led the narod fromits bookish (!) bondage.92But KuliS's insightsare couched in characteristicallypragmatic terms- the emancipation of the narod from its own muteness and the - insignificanceimposed upon it by the "city's" canon and characteristically are not attuned to the personal and human dimension. Kostomarov's advantage is that his are; and for him, Sevöenko's role is shown as

91. Cf., e.g., T. G. Sevdenkov vospominanijaxsovremennikov (Kyiv, 1962), pp. 151-53. 92. Thus: "...aac TyT UleBMemco rojiocHO Ha bcio Yicpamy 03BaBc^, mob yci ciiíbh Hapofltii i Bei JiioACbKi cjibO3H pa3OM 3aroBopHJiH. Iüahüb bíh 3 flOMOBHHH HÌMy Haujy naM'^Tb, BH3BaB Ha cyA Haiuy MOBMa3Hy cTapocbBÍTMHHy i nocTaBHB nepeA Heio yitpaiHijji, jikhh bíh - ecTb Tenep, íikhm bíh Mepe3 icTopiw cTaBca"; "llIeBMeHKO Ham noeT i nepBHft icTopHK. IUeBHeHKO nepme bcíx 3anHTaB Haiui hímí MorHJiH, mo bohh Taice, i oAHOMy Ti/ibKO ttoMy AajiH bohh acHy, *k Eoace cjiobo, OAnoBÎAb. llIeBMeHKO nepme bcíx AOAyMaBca, hhm Hauia CTapocbBÍTMHHa cjiaBHa i 3a mo npoKJiflHVTb ïï rpjiAymi Poah"; "IIIeBneHKO hhcthm noABHroM cjiOBecHHM AOKÌHHHB timo, 3a KOTOpe reTbMaHH Hauii HeHHCTHM cepi^eM öpajiHCü. llIeBMeHKO, BO3ABHruiH Í3 ynaAKy rojiocHy MOBy yicpaÎHCbKy, Ha3HaMeHaB mnpoici rpaHHui HauioMy Ayxy HapoAHbOMy. Tenep yace He MeneM Haiue HapoAHe npaBO Ha Bpaxcnx TBepAHH^x 3apy6aHe, He uinaprajiaMH i nenaTbMH cynpoTHB jiyicaBCTBa JiioACbKoro i CTBepAateHe: y THcanax BipHHx jyyui yicpaÏHCbKHX boho Ha caMOMy ahí 3axoBaHe thcahojiíthímh cnoMHHKaMH 3aneHaTaHe"; "Thm-to He xto, xk xyTopüHe Ta cerume, 3HaioTb b i HyiOTb Ayuieio, Horo ctoüb IUeBHeHKO. Bíh ïx bhbíb, Hane bpaiJia, Í3 KHHatHboï HeBOJii, KOTopy 6yjiH ropoAflHe b3^jih bcjikhh po3yM nHCbMeHHHíi; bíh CKHHyB 3 hhx raHbõy BCeCBÍTHK), U'O BOHH JlIOAe HÍ AO MOro; BÍH BO3BeJIHMHBÏX O6pa3 AyXOBHHH í BHCTdBHB HOrO Ha B3Íp nepeA UHBÌJlÌ3OBaHHMMHpOM..." "Õoho stojitSevõenko jako poet narodnyj",Tvory Pantelejmona KuliSa, vol. 6 (L'viv, 1910), pp. 488, 490, 492 and 494. The senseof a sacerdotalcast to KuliS's- and Kostomarov's-roles was feltby both principals.As describedby Kuli§in his remembranceof Kostomarov(see n. 135, below), in theirpost-exile period (and priorto theirestrangement in the late 1870s) theyspontaneously cameto addresseach otheras "Otee Nikolaj"and "Otee Pantelejmon"-and correspondin a formof Old ChurchSlavonic (see, for example, Ihnat ¿ytecicyj,"KuliS i Kostomarov (Nedrukovanelystuvannja 1860-70 rr.),"Ukrajina, bk. 1-2, 1927,pp. 39-65). Whatbegan as a donnishmockery of theirown bookishnessand archivalismbecame a self-fulfilling prophecy- and a revealingmetatext on thenational revival. INSIGHT AND BLINDNESS 321 inseparablefrom his individuality.The imageryhere does echo Kuli§, but it clearlyrings with Kostomarov's own voice, and it draws its strengthfrom the personal,autobiographical connection. Kostomarovbegins by saying thatwhen he firstmet Sevöenko therewas nothingattractive or warm about him: he was cold and dry,though straight- forward.In this Kostomarovprofesses to see the characteristic,historically conditionedreserve and suspicionof thepeasant. "But," he continues, in a shorttime we came togetherand became friends.Taras Hryhorovyõread me his unpublishedpoetry. I was overcome with fear: the impact theyhad on me reminded me of Schiller's ballad "The Veiled Image at Sais." I saw thatSevöenko's muse was tearingin two the veil of national life. It was frighteningand sweet and painfuland intoxicatingto peer inside!!! Poetry always takes the lead, always takes the bold step; history,scholarship and practical activityfollow in its footsteps. It is easier for the latter,but difficultfor the former.One must have keen eyesight and strong nerves so as not to be blinded or to fall senseless fromthe sudden flash of truththat is thankfully concealed from the meek crowd that follows the beaten path alongside the mysteriousveil - not knowing what is concealed behind that veil! Taras' s muse broke through to some underground dungeon which for several centurieswas closed by many locks, sealed by many seals, covered up by the earth which had purposefullybeen tilled and seeded so as to conceal fromthe descendants even the memory of the place where the undergroundcavern was to be found. Taras' s muse, with its inextinguishable light, boldly entered this cavern and opened up behind it a path for the sun's rays, and freshair, and human curiosity.It will be easy to enter into this cavern now that air has been let in; but what human strengthmust it take to stand up to the age old miasma that can kill in an instant any living force and extinguish any earthly flame! Woe to the bold poet- he forgetsthat he is a man, and that if he dares to be the firstto enter he may fall... But poetrydoes not fear deadly miasms- if it is true poetry.And its light will not be doused by any historical or societal fumes, for that light burns with an eternal fire,the fireof Prometheus.93

When somewhat furtheron he speaks of the "life-giving voice of genius,"94 he is clearlybuilding on these inspiredimages. And it was surely thispathos thatelicited the initialenthusiasm for his essay.

Judging by the subsequent reception of Kostomarov as a reader of áevõenko, this vision became the centerpiece of his critical legacy. The passage draws its power froma syncretismthat clearly means to evoke the poetic world and the multifacetedimpact of Sevöenko: the echoes of mythical,biblical, and archetypalimagery, of Prometheus("Kavkaz"), and of the Ur-poet,Orpheus, who throughhis music made mankindhuman, and was

93. "Vospominanijao dvux maljarax,"pp. 88-89. 94. Ibid.,p. 90; cf. also n. 80. 322 GEORGEG. GRABOWICZ also the firstto descend to Hades,95 the allusions to literarycraft and to the critic's own model of perception (Schiller's poem), and the opening of history'scrypt ("Rozryta mohyla," "Velykyj l'ox"), the not-so-veiled allusion to society's (the government's!)strictures, the "miasms" thatstifle opposition and freshthought, and, above all, the overwhelming,personal immediacyof the experience of reading the poetry:"It was frightening,and sweet, and painful,and intoxicatingto peer inside!!!" Despite all that,however, the experienceand theinsight are qualified,and thenundercut. They are qualified,on the one hand,by the intellectualthrust of the whole argument.As we have seen, Sevoenko's narodnist',his identificationwith the narod, his role as its spokesman or indeed porte parole are consistently superimposedon the individual,the role of genius-as-such.For everyphrase or image of the above passage there are two or three sentences, even paragraphs,that elaborate and varythe thesisthat his poetryflows fromand articulatesthe voice of the people. The sheervolume of the rhetoricenforces this perspective and reinforces our sense that Kostomarov's notion of genius- forall the eloquence he investsin describingSevöenko's individual power and originality,his virtuallysuperhuman effort in transcendingthe limitations of normal mankind- is essentially Herderian: genius is understandableonly withinthe contextof the nation,the Volk, the narod.96 Even moreeloquent is theoverall conceptual frame of thisessay, which,after all, is entitled"A Remembranceof Two Painters."Sevöenko, we know,was a painter- even thoughthis is not what gave him his orpheicand promethean character.Who, then,was theother painter? There is certainlyno suspense, for Kostomarov tells us this at the very outset.The essay, in fact,begins like an anecdote,or the tale of an amateur ethnographer:

95. The image of the common man's everyday life as a living hell is a striking topos in Sevöenko; cf., for example, in "Jakbyvy znaly panyöi": ..B tím raw y -rittxaTHHi, y paio fl 6aMHBneKJio... 96. Cf. Giorgio Tonelli, "Genius, from the Renaissance to 1770, Dictionary of the that this History of Ideas (New York, 1973), vol. 2, p. 295. It is important to note the conflationof genius and nation (narod) had deeply permeated the intellectual climate of time. See, for example, the passage in a letterof V. M. Bilozerslcyj to M. I. Hulak, which is one of the firstrecorded responses thatdefines Sevöenko in these terms: Hanncaji Bnepa 6ijji y mchüHßaH 5Ik[objicbhh ] ntocaaemco] h cKa3aji, hto UI[eBMeHKo] Kaicoro HOByio nosMy «MoaHH Tycc». 51 noHeBOJie npH*THO mmAyMajica Haa tcm, reHHajibHoronejioBeita mu HMeeMb Tapace rp[HropbeBHHe],h6o tojii>ko reHHttnocpeacTBOM k rjiyooKoro nyBCTBa,cnocooeH yraaiJBaTbnoTpeÖHOCTH HapoAa h aaate uejioro Beica, neMy He npHBeAVTHHKaitaii Hayita, hh 3HaHHü,6e3 orna noanmecicoro h BMecTe pejiHrHO3Horo. Kyrylo-Mefodijivs'ketovarystvo, vol. 1, p. 105. INSIGHTAND BLINDNESS 323

In one village of the easternUkrainian territories there lived, and maybestill lives today, a highlyremarkable personality. This personalityis capable of evokingmany thoughts in one*s soul and of leavingindelible impressions; this was thepeasant HrycTco, by professiona painter.As is well known,a painteris a frequentoccurrence in Ukrainianpeasant life. Painting is usuallyone of the first stepstaken by a peasantwhen his individualtalent leads himout of theagrarian cycle. A painteris usuallyalso literate;art leads him to curiosity;the painter paintsthe Virgin, holy men and women,and it is usefulto knowhow to represent them;there appears the desire to knowwho theywere and whathappened to them in life,and thepainter reads Holy Writ and theLives of theSaints...97

Kostomarov continues in this tone of sympatheticcondescension for several pages: we get details of how HrycTcogrew up as an orphan,how he was a strangechild, put to work as a herdsmanand considered somewhat retardedby thevillagers; how his masterrecognized his talentfor drawing and decided that there would be more use fromhim if he were taughtto be a painter;how he learnedto read and as a typicalpeasant auto-didactsought to make sense of the world by studyingthe Bible and popular Russian novels (by such as Bulgarinor Marlinsky),after which he advanced to popularworld historyand simple mathematics.When Kostomarov(so the storygoes) loses sight of him, he is still a serfand still engaged in paintingicons and other primitives.^** The storyof HrycTcoserves as a ratherlengthy introduction to Sevöenko. The transitionitself is moreor less plausible:

That year when forthe last timeI saw HrycTcothe painter,on the opposite westernpart of UkraineI metby accidentanother painter. His earlyfate is similar to thatof HrycTco;but nature,which was generousto both,gave to thispainter other gifts and thus ordained anotherpath. This painterwas called Taras HryhorovyöSevöenko. There is no need hereto recountthe story of his youthor his early upbringing:he himselfhas describedit in his autobiography.This painterdid not succumbto thechains that had entangledhim at birth- his talent burstthem and led himfrom the narrow sphere of obscurityinto that of elevated thoughts,deep sufferingand immortality."He was theglory of his time,"Ukraine willsome day sayof him,as was once said of one of herHetmans."

The bulk of the essay, of course, deals with Sevöenko himself,and in it, as we have seen, Kostomarov elaborates not one, but all fourof the basic modalitiesor keys of his treatmentof Sevõenko; by reason of this synthetic approach, but especially by virtue of the passion and intensity that continuallyinform his multi-leveledargument, this remains the central text of his áevõenkiana. It is highly significant,therefore, that at the end of this

97. "Vospominanijao dvuxmaljarax," p. 86. 98. Ibid., pp. 86-88. 99. Ibid.,p. 88. 324 GEORGEG. GRABOWICZ crowningwork Kostomarovagain returnsto the themeof the two painters. And he does so not to contrastthem, but to reinforcethe similaritybetween them.Having touchedall the bases (and beyondwhat was alreadydiscussed this also includes a brief,but characteristicallysharp rebuttalof Polish attemptsto "tame" Sevöenko), Kostomarovties his whole reminiscenceinto one focusedpointe: "In thepresent time," he says,

whenthe greatepoch of nationalrenewal [èpoxa obnovlenijanarodnoj zizni] is beingconsummated, I turn with sorrow to myremembrance of thetwo Ukrainian paintersthat I knewin mylife. The liberationof thenarod will notbe of anyuse to my two poor painters.Hrycico the painterwas borntoo earlyand lived the betteryears of his lifeunder the oppression of serfdom,which prevented him from developinghis remarkabletalent for his own spiritualhappiness and the good of others;Taras thepainter died early,missing by onlysix daysthe day whichwould have been thehappiest day in his martyr'slife: for it was thatday thatbegan the consummationof thatwhich was thesoul of Taras's poetry. But is it right,you will say,to mourntwo painterswhen millions are rejoicing forthemselves and theirdescendants? It is right- becausewith this rememberence - of two painters thousands and milions crowd the imagination painters, wheelwrights,carpenters, herdsmen, farm workers, and all typesof servants: lackeys,drivers, yard-keepers, to manyof whomnature may well have givenat birththe right to be somethingother that what they actually became; while at the sametime others, the great men of wordand deed - writersof books,artists, men of jurisprudence- should perhaps, in view of theirtrue abilities, be performingthe dutiesof theformer. It is right-because even the greatest of humanadvances will notput an end to theobstacles that stand in theway of manfulfilling on thisearth his naturalcalling. It is right,finally, because withevery remembrance of a man who did not achievein life thatfor which he stroveyou are obligedto confront thosecrushing, unanswerable questions: Why are we mortal?Why are we stupid? Whydo we growold?...100

This concluding coda surely reveals Kostomarov at his rhetoricalbest: combiningreason and passion, a sense of the righteouscause withgenuinely poetic insightinto the emotionswhich animatehis audience and which were the creativewellspring of the poet whose memorythey have come to honor. Not the least of its achievementsis thatits pathos so effectivelyobscures the odd narrativeconstruct that animates this essay. For if one looks at it more closely, the idea of "the two painters"cannot but give rise to a numberof puzzlingquestions. All of them turn on the profound asymmetryof juxtaposing the outstandingUkrainian cultural figure of his time with an anonymous and semiliteratepeasant painter. The most basic question that arises here is simply:Was thereever a Hrydko-malj ari What evidence is adduced forhis

100. Ibid., pp. 92-93. INSIGHTAND BLINDNESS 325 existence? For virtuallyeverything that is said of him cries out "topos" or "type".101 He seems nothing so much as a literaryfiction, an echo of preexistingmodels. Thus, the device of contrastingpeasants in orderto show theiressential individualityand humanityand to dispel the contemptuous notion thatthey were a mere faceless mass was at the heartof Turgenev's Zapiski oxotnika(1852), particularlythe first,programmatic story, "Xor and Kalinich."1^ But despite the literarystylization, and the possible echoes of Turgenev,HrycTco the painterwas real- as we can see froma letterhe wrote to Kostomarov in 1868 requesting help in a family matterand clearly referringto a meetingsuch as the one with which the memoirbegins.1^ (WhetherKostomarov did answer and help is not evidentfrom the historical record.) Within the narrativeof the "Vospominanie o dvux maljarax" the problemis more specificand acute: thejuxtaposition of Taras Sevõenko and HrycTcothe painter,or, specifically,the depiction of HrycTco'searly life, seems to functionprimarily as a parody of Sevõenko. The signals may be more or less subtle, but they are unmistakable. For one thing, what is presented as HrycTco'schildhood and early years largely follows that of Sevõenko' s; later in the text Kostomarov himself alludes to this directly ("Pervonaöalnajasudaba ego byla poxoza na sudlni GricTca"1^), but curiously it is Hryclco,not Sevöenko,who providesthe frame of reference.Thus:

He was borna serf.In childhoodhe losthis parents and was leftto be broughtup by his relatives.He was putto herdingthe lord's herd,I do notrecall which one. Therewas somethingstrange in theboy; thepeasants thought he was dull-witted [Sëitali ego pridurkovatym].There is no pointof tellinghow he avoided the children'sgames and how the boys pinchedhim and roughedhim up for this. Otherwise,one would be forcedto repeatwhat we so oftenencounter in the descriptionsof childhoodin thelives of saints.When on windlessdays the millers

101. This is suggested by an apparent indefmitenessin the narrative,beginning with the opening line: "B oahom cejie BocTOMHoro MajiopoccHttcKoro Kpaa..." and various generalizations; thus, only in the first paragraph: "KaK h3bcctho, b MajiopoccHftCKOM - KpecTbiiHCKOM 6biTy, Majiüp 4BJietfHe nacToe," or "Majiap, oõbiKHOBeHHO, BMecTe c TeM h rpaMOTHbitt..." or "Ho h3bcctho, hto MajiopoccHJiHHH, KaK TOJibKOCAejiaeTCfl ÓJiaronecTHBHM HejiOBeKOM, cettnac HamiHaeT

Here, and in subsequent passages, these same moments(variations, in effect,on the themeof the poet's humbleorigins and unique calling) which will resonatewith a special pathosin thefuture canon of Sevöenko biography, are presentedas typical and ratherbanal. The narratorsuggests as much throughhis own casual lack of interestin the details: "Ego pristavilipasti gospodskoe stado, ne pomnjukakoe," or "...iz nego skoree vyjdetfcivopisec, öem svinar ili ovöar," or "... i otdal ego v nauku kakomu-toxudoEniku v svoem uezdnom gorode." At the same time, the irony of the referenceto hagiography- the notion is applied, afterall, to the life of a HrycTco- is pointedand inescapable. Given the parallels thatare set in motionhere, that irony, by the process of an excluded middle, implicitlydevolves upon Sevöenko. In the purely formal sense, the overall asymmetryof the narrative- thejuxtaposition of the premierUkrainian cultural figure with an unknownpeasant - can onlyfunction as parody. There is another,no less strikingelement of asymmetryin the narrative, however(and, as in all such instances,this overdetermination suggests causes and a level of meaning more profound than the merely formal or conventional). For in effect,having postulatedby the title and the initial focus on Hrycicothat he will be dealing with "two painters,"Kostomarov, when he does turnto áevõenko, does not discuss him as a painterat all- otherthan by applyingto him an identicalformula: "Taras-maZ/ar."106 The entire treatmentof Sevõenko is focused on his poetry,its unprecedented power and resonance, and above all its narodnist' . That he was also a professionaland highlytalented painter, who throughhis paintingand his studyof art had normalaccess to high culture- the fact,in a word, thathe was not a maljar, but a xudoinik who precisely because of this, and notwithstandinghis roots in the Ukrainianpeasantry, could also fitinto that high society designated by Kostomarov as "knigopiscy, xudozniki, zakonniki"- thisremains totally blocked out.107In effect,a remarkable,and

105. Ibid., p. 86. 106. To be sure, he does note thatin 1858, when they met afterlong years of exile, it was withinthe walls of the Academy of Arts (in St. Petersburg);ibid., p. 89. 107. A good example here is Xudoinik. (A richlyillustrated depiction of the world of high art implied or alluded to in its pages is found in Povest' Tarasa Sevâenko "Xudoinik". The Artist,A Story by Taras Shevchenko [Kyiv, 1989].) Kostomarov may have known this INSIGHTAND BLINDNESS 327 complementarydouble distortionoccurs here:just as Sevöenko's poetrywas placed and discussed exclusivelyin the frameof folkpoetry, of Kol'cov, the narod, and so on, so also the startingpoint and basic criterionfor the overall discussion of the "two painters" is determinednot by Sevöenko but by Hrycico.For the "normal"and "logical" juxtaposition,the frameprojected by manifest,social reality,would have required,for example, thatSevöenko be comparedwith his teacher,Brjulov, or withhis friendand fellow art student Shternberg- but not by any stretchof the imagination with an all but anonymous HrycTco.(By the same token- although some time needed to pass - the comparison to Kol'cov would also appear more and more inadequate.) The factthat Kostomarov does indeed construethe framein the way he does suggests thatwhat is at issue are not "two painters"but "two Ukrainianpainters," or, given the factthat for him thecategory of Ukrainian is coterminouswith and quite indistinguishablefrom that of the narod, "two paintersfrom the narod'' in effect"two peasant painters."In sum, the entire essay is built on this paradigm,and the finalcoda, where the formulaof the "two painters"is yetagain invoked,is only its mosteloquent articulation. Does it follow from this that Kostomarov's underlying intent is to somehow debunkor deflateSevöenko? Certainlynot consciously.For all the complexitiesof his relationshipto thepoet, Kostomarov' s overall conception, and his various formulations,are guided by the large task of payinghomage to the one who already then was being identifiedas the greatestson of the Ukrainiannarod. None of Kostomarov's contemporaries- notthe audience at the commemorativeevening that first heard him read his essay, not Kuli§ and Bilozersicyj who immediatelyprinted it in Osnova, not any of the many critics and memoirists that wrote on Sevöenko, and on Kostomarov- perceived anythinguntoward in it. In fact,as was already noted,to this day the criticaltradition has not focused on it as an issue of implicithistorical or estheticmisprision, or even as a problem in the receptionof Sevöenko. But thedual perspective,the narrative that proceeds not as a storyabout Sevöenko but as one about "two painters,"clearly suggests a fundamentalredefinition of the poet; the various rhetoricaland narrativedevices, beginningwith the belletrizationitself, the notes of irony(particularly as regardsthe inevitable tendencyto engage in hagiography),the intimationsof parody,all contribute to a serious conceptual, even "ideological" purpose. That they were not perceivedas such, thatKostomarov' s revisionwas not recognizedfor what it

novella even as he was writingthe "Vospominanie o dvux maljarax." To be sure, in 1862, it was M. Lazarevsicyj who was in posession of the manuscriptsof Sevöenko's novellas and was in fact announcing their sale. In time they all came into Kostomarov's possession. At the very least, however, Kostomarov certainly knew Sevöenko' s biography, his life in St. Petersburg,and his participationin the world of art,culture, and society. 328 GEORGEG. GRABOWICZ was, simplyunderscores the degree to whichhis paradigmresonated with the collectiveperception, indeed was so fullyincorporated into it. The dual focus on Sevöenko and Hryc'ko-maljar itself has a double, implicit function.On the individual level it reminds us of our common humanity.The elegiac conclusionof the essay, withits unmistakableechoes of Thomas Gray's "Elegy Writtenin a CountryChurchyard,"108 particularly its separation(in life) and thenconflation (in death) of the mightyand the lowly of this world,clearly intendsto bringus back to a sense of our own mortality,to the reality before which we are all equal, and all equally vulnerable: "...3aneM mm CMepTHbi?- 3aneM mm rviynbi?- 3aneM mm CTapeeMCJi?..."Apart from its universal,and existentialimport, however, the contemplationof these questions cannot but functionas an antidoteto the - new hagiography- the nascent cult of Sevöenko that Kostomarov had already hinted at. With some prescience, he seems to be cautioning his audience against thatvery apotheosis of the poet thatwould ultimatelyblur both his image and his message. That this was a vain hope, thatthe tide of the collective refiguringof Sevöenko was inexorable,is highlightedby the factthat a scant ten yearslater, such an apotheosisdetermines Kostomarov' s new readingof Sevöenkoin thealready mentioned article in Poèzija slavjan. At the same time,the focus on the"two painters"conveys an "ideological" message- preciselythrough the oppositionof "Genius" and narod. Despite the fact thatin this essay Kostomarovis the firstto articulatethe issue and scope of Sevcenko's genius,and thatthe eloquence withwhich he does this still resonateswithin the criticalreception, the narrativeleaves no doubt that thatgenius is subordinateto the narod. In thisopposition the latteris clearly sovereign:the narod gives him birthand infuseshim withits power (its own genius, in effect)and ultimatelyprovides the sole frame or paradigm for understandingthe poet. Kostomarov's essay thusbecomes an ideological set piece. For nothingis more eloquent thanthe simple fact thatKostomarov' s eulogy for Sevöenko is cast as a "rememberanceof two painters,"HrycTco- - maljar and Taras HryhorovyöSevöenko indeed in thatorder. And the issue, of course, is not the semi-anonymousHrycTco (although his existence as a real-life figure lends a special psychological authenticityto the entire narrative), but the narod, because, to repeat Kostomarov, "with this remembrance of two painters thousands and millions crowd the imagination- painters,wheelwrights, carpenters, herdsmen, farm workers..." And both painters,not just HrycTco,but Taras as well, and the genius thatis withinhim, are an emanationof thiscommon humanity.

108. "Sel'skoe kladbiSõe," ¿ukovskij's Russian translation,appeared as early as 1802. INSIGHTAND BLINDNESS 329

On the immediatehistorical and ideological level the subordinationof the individual, even the "Genius," to the fate of the narod is justified by the issue of serfdom;this is the inhumanitythat calls forthe largerperspective, and elicits the essentialpathos of Kostomarov's text.But serfdom,of course, is only the narrowercontext; beyond thatis the largerframe of referenceof growing national consciousness, and beyond that still, in the more distant future,the awareness that both the historical experience and theconsciousness are shaped by a variantof colonialism. In the broadercontext of Ukrainian political and intellectualhistory, the subordinationof the individualbecomes a centralstructure of the populistthought that dominates the second half of the nineteenthcentury and extendswell intothe twentieth.As has oftenbeen argued,Kostomarov plays a centralrole in establishingthis mode of thought, a mode thatis paramountin the Sevöenko reception:in thepopular mind, and in much of traditionalSevõenko scholarshipas well, the notionof "genius" is prominent,and invariablylinked to the narod. At the same time,however, "genius" is invoked solely to stress the collective dimension. And this formulation,as I have already argued,only serves to obscure the totalityof Sevöenko as it ignores the centralfeatures of an individualityparticularly attunedto doubt,to ironyand self-irony,to openness and ambiguity.109 A furtherunhappy, but altogetherinevitable development was thatthe first functionof Kostomarov's vision of two painters,namely his emphasis on Sevöenko's humanity,his implied caution against hagiography,was largely forgotten.If it did appear, its strengthwas always inverselyproportional to the collectivistperspective that Kostomarov himself had helped inculcate in Ukrainiansociety. The need for a culturehero clearly came to overshadow considerationsof individuality- especially sensitivityto, and perspectiveon, thereal man behindthe rapidly expanding myth. The skewed collective perception of Sevöenko clearly recapitulates Kostomarov's own blind spots. Given his seminal role in formulatingthe reception, and his prominence as the premier exegete of Sevöenko, his historical,or opérantresponsibility for this developmentis plain. To argue this, however, is merely to state a tautologyof intellectualhistory: each formulationor programachieves the resonanceand "influence"that "history" (in effect,cultural readiness and a host of otherfactors) will allow it. The question of value is extrinsicto the process itself- althoughcertainly central to our conceptualizationof it. In the case of Kostomarov,therefore, our task is not so much to apportionresponsibility and blame for"distortion" (and in some measure it is simplydistortion, with no quotationmarks), but, having surveyedits contentand context,to cast a glance at its mechanics.

109.Cf. my "Sevõenko jakoho ne znajemo,"Suéasnist', no. 11, 1992,pp. 100-112. 330 GEORGEG. GRABOWICZ

On the one hand, this is the question of intellectualrigor and honesty. Kostomarov'sflaw or "sin" is thathe knew,but chose not to know. He chose to turna blind eye to the evidence. He certainlywas not privy to all of Sevoenko's thoughts, and he indeed might not have witnessed such sentimentsas the "moskalenenavidenijcT which Kuli§ recountswith such relish.110 But more than any of his contemporaries,and much more than most of the latercritics, he had access to the texts.From his own words we see thathe knew theirbroad range- the illicit,"subversive" poems fromthe "Try lita" period,written just beforethe two of themmet, the "bootleg,"exile poetryof the Mala knyzhka,which Kostomarov himselfsays could never hope to pass the censor, the extensive evidence of the prose, where the narrator,far from being a man of thepeople, a "prostoljudin"is sophisticated and cosmopolitan.111 The evidence they provide, individually and cumulatively,goes far towards refocusingor correctingthe picture that Kostomarovchose to draw. But draw it he did. What remains,therefore, is to considerhis reasons.

5. THE QUESTION OF MOTIVES

Admittedly,an inquiryinto motives relies primarilyon inferenceand runsthe riskof conjecture.In thiscase, however,it can hardlybe avoided. For even if one does not need to provide reasons for the flash of brilliantinsight, one cannotspeak of blindness,of a certainintellectual, and particularlysystematic obfuscation,without attempting to identifythe underlyingcauses. That said, we can discernseveral distinct areas of motivation. The firstof these- basic and banal- is fear.A small, but tellingexample of the climatein whichthe poet, or critic,or scholarhad to work is provided in a reminiscenceof Kostomarovwritten by a close friend,the minorpoet OleksandrKorsun. The incidenthe describesoccurred when he was a student at Xarkiv University,and Kostomarovhad just finished(the time is around 1840), and concerns anotherminor Ukrainian poet, Amvrosij Metlynslcyj (pseudonym:Amvrosij Mohyla) who was thena professorthere. Its point is simple: Korsun and Kostomarovwere thendoing comparativeSlavic work and the formerhad borrowed fromthe universitylibrary a three volume editionof Mickiewicz in orderto translatehis "Crimean sonnets";to get the books he had used a blank signed by Metlynslcyj,which the latterhad given

110. Cf. n. 69 above; cf. also Drahomanov'scomment on theliterary tradition (which he sees as going back to Kotljarevs'kyj,Kvitka, and the early Gogol') of such "moskalenenavidenija":"Sevöenko, ukrainofily i socializm," Literaturno-publicystycni praci, vol. 2, pp. 14-15, n. 3. 111. Cf. above,passim, especially nn. 39 and 109, and Drahomanov'scomments, below. INSIGHTAND BLINDNESS 3 3 1 him as a matterof routine(the systemrequired professors to sign out books). When MetlynsTcyjheard of whathad been borrowedover his signaturehe sent a messengerwith a note demandingthat Korsun "'immediately,as soon as possible', returnMickiewicz to the library.""He was in horror,"Korsun explains, "at my boldness- taking out these disgraceful books in his 112 name." Korsun notes in passing that the edition in question was published in Vilnius, with the official censor's approval. He does not commenton MetlynsTcyj's panicked reaction. But the event that showed- with the greatest public and historical resonance- that the governmentwas utterlyserious about the danger of Ukrainian separatismwas the trial and conviction of the members of the Brotherhoodof SS. Cyril and Methodius.This, of course, is a separateissue and deserves separateattention, but the recentpublication of the voluminous files on thiscase of the Tret'e Otdelenie does oblige the historianto reopen it.113 Even a preliminaryglance shows two discerniblepatterns. The firstis thatthe authorities(a) were not workingwith any clearly definedsense of what constitutes criminal activity in the purview of literature,and of historicaland ethnographicresearch, and the right(or lack of it) to associate (somethingnot unexpectedin an authoritarian,despotic state), and (b) were not at all persuadedabout the criminalintent of most of the accused; in fact, the assessment is repeatedly made that most were guided by excessive enthusiasm,indiscretion and naivete,not by subversiveintent.114 Indeed, the only one deemed to be clearlyguilty is Sevõenko. At the same time (and this clearly flows fromthe preceding),the investigatorswere inclinedto pounce on anything,even the seemingly trivial- KuliS's drawing of a severed Cossack head, withan eagle on it,his conceitof appendingthe phraserukoju vlasnoju as he signed his letters(this, presumably echoing the practiceof the Cossack hetmans),or the factthat someone used the word kacap (derogatory for"Russian") - if it could illustrateUkrainian patriotism, separatism or anti- Russian feeling.115 The second pattern,or the overall strategy,is more sophisticated.It draws theconclusion - fromthe historical perspective, surely justified- thateven seeminglyinnocent expressions of Ukrainophilismare potentiallydangerous and subversive,and it sets in motion a broad set of measures to carefully monitor all educational, cultural and intellectual

112. AleksandrKorsunov, "N. I. Kostomarov,"Russkij arxiv, no. 10, 1890, pp. 206- 207. 113. Kyrylo-Mefodijivs'keTovarystvo, ed. I. I. Hlyz'et al. (Kyiv,1990), vols. 1-3. 114. Cf., forexample, the officialconclusions regarding KuliS's culpability(ibid., vol. 2, doc. no. 48, pp. 80-81), and thatof Kostomarov(ibid., vol. 1, doc. no. 366, pp. 307- 308. 115. Most tellingin thisregard is the interrogationof KuliS; cf. ibid.,vol. 2, doc. no. 36, pp. 47-59. 332 GEORGEG. GRABOWICZ activitiesas theypertain to the issue of Ukraine and Russia and to root out 16 any dangeroustendencies.1 The policy of instillingthe fearof God into all real and potentialUkrainian or Ukrainophiledissidents is thus spelled out well beforethe more concreteactions of the Valuev circularof 1863 and the Ems ukaz of 1876. Not surprisingly,fear, attenuated into political caution,became formany the verywarp of theirpublic self-identification.Thus, Drahomanov,writing withgreat forthrightness (but still fromthe safetyof Geneva) speaks of the disconcertingreadiness of Sevoenko's friends,colleagues and exegetesto deny his most basic and passionate commitments.For as much as Sevoenko's formulationsare devoid of, or simplyunatuned to, the politicaldimension as such, his allegiance is to Ukraine,and her freedomand separatenessfrom Russia is the cornerstoneof his vision. And it is preciselythis "patriotism" and "separatism"that his friendsand exegetes are the firstto deny.117The priority,as Drahomanovcorrectly observes, must go to KuliS, who

... in the Epilogue to Corna rada, which was publishedin the Moscow Russkaja beseda in 1857,and notyet daring to call Sevéenkoby name,speaks of this"outstanding poet of southRussian poetry, the singer of humaninjustice and his own fierytears" thus: They call him a fanatical[bezumnyj] patriot, but amongother things it is he who struckthe first blow againstthat pernicious local patriotismwhich raises up its own historicalheroes and turnsits eyes away fromthe achievementsof the neighboringnation [narod], thatpatriotism which posits its glorynot in the successand securityof thewhole country, but in thevictory of someparty or even some individuals,at times,indeed, to thedetriment of thewhole population... Yes, he wouldbecome fanatic [doxodil do bezumija]in pouringout his angerat human injustice;he was possessedwhen he calledupon heaven and earth[to punish]those whomhe heldresponsible for the suffering of fellowman. But who willjudge the poet forthe factthat succumbing to the unbearablepain in his hearthe did not maintainmeasure in his cries?1*°

As forKostomarov, a few years laterhe would deny thereeven was a sin of "bezumnyjpatriotizm" Drahomanov adduces here the already cited notion from the "Vospominanie o dvux maljarax" ("Neither the Great Russians withoutthe Ukrainians,nor the latterwithout the former,can completetheir development. The one people is indispensable for the other; the one

116. See, forexample, O. F. Orlov's draftof his summaryreport to NicholasI regarding the society,ibid., vol. 3, doc. no. 426, pp. 306-308. 117. For his part,Sevöenko seems to have been prescienton thisissue as well: cf. the endingof "Marija." 118. M. Drahomanov,"Sevõenko, ukrainofily i socializm," Tvory v dvoxtomax, vol. 2, p. 8. INSIGHTAND BLINDNESS 333 nationalitycomplements the other..."119),and shows thatit was not only a standardleitmotif, but an idea thatinformed the thinkingof many:

Withsmall differences,the words of Mr. Kostomarovwere always spoken by the Ukrainophilesin Russia when therewas occasion to speak publicly of Sevõenko [emphasismine - G.G.G.]. We ourselvessaid somethingsimilar in Nedelja in 1874 and theKievskij telegrafia 1875. And suchthings were said not frominsincerity but from the fact that when some Ukrainophiles in Russiatruly did notwish to appearas "separatists,"each fortheir own reasons,of course(thus Mr. Kostomarov,in his scholarlyworks written after 1857, would come out withideas aboutthe "federal principles" in all of Rus';others were heading in thedirection of universalsocialist thought)- thenthey simply did not want to admit,even to themselves,that their "prophet" was at anytime a "Ukrainianseparatist."120

In the final analysis,however, the premisethat fear as such is an opérant motive is not altogetherpersuasive. Here, again, Drahomanov provides a succinct statementof the problem.In a shortarticle entitled "ObSöerusstvo Kostomarova" (which is actually a letter to the editor of the Galician newspaper Pravda), he responds to a polemical article, "UkrajinsTce pys'menstvoi M. L. Kostomarov.Vidpovid' M. P. Drahomanovu,"that had appeared earlier thatyear (1892) over the signature"Cernyhovec"' (the pen name of Illja Srag)121 and notes thatthe only real issue in theirpolemic is whetherKostomarov was sincere in his loyalist views.122 An answer, he argues,could be providedby some new documentation- letters,diaries, and - so on which at thatmoment was simplynot available. He also points out that the strictures(especially before 1876) were hardlyso severe that one could not take a stand:

119. Ibid., pg. 8. Cf. n. 60 above. 120. Ibid., pp. 8-9. Even though the attacks were scurrilous, Kostomarov would more than once defend himself against the charge of separatism; cf., e.g., "Ukrainskij separatizm," "Otvet g. Malorossu-Volyncu," and "Otvet Malorossu-Volyncu" (all written in 1864); Naukovo-publicystycni praci, pp. 193-200. An inkling of the tenor of this discourse is conveyed, for example, by the concluding paragraphof his "Otvet g. Malorossu-Volyncu": riycTb ace r. Majiopocc-Bojibmeu, hjih KTO-HH6yAbApyrott H3 ycepAHbix puuapett, cpaataiomHxcfl c cenapaTHBHHMbinpH3paicaMH, oahh pa3 Ha BcerAa oójihmht mchíi b npecTynmjx 3aMbicjiaxh BpeAHuxnoóyacAeHH^x h npeAacT cnpaBeAJiHBOMycyAy oömecTBa h BJiacTett; a ecjiH 3to hcbo3mo>kho, to npoiuy H36aBHTb Moe hmü ot AByMbicjieHHbix HaMeKOB, othocjhuhxc* K oÖJiacTH yrojiOBHoro cyAa a He jiHTepaTypu. Ecjih r. Majiopocc- BojibiHeu necTHiJH MejioBeK, to oh AOJiaceH oótJiBHTb cBoe HacTOfliu.ee hm«. Ilocjie Tex KJieBeT, KOTOpbie pacTowajiH b cbohx õpouiiopax üojiükh npoTHB MajiopyccKHX nHcaTcnefl, OOBHHüa HX B pa3pyUIHTeJlbHOM KOMMyHH3Me, npeBpaTHOM COUHaJlH3Me H H3*JIBJ1ÄÄ VAHBJieHHe: Kaie sto PyccKoe npaBHTejibCTBO TepnHT nofloÕHoe 3JioBpeAHoe HanpaBJieHHe, HaM coMHHTejibHO, HTo6bi 3T0T "BojibiHeii" 6biJi "Majiopocc." Ibid.. d. 198. 121. Cf. O. I. Dej, Slovnyk ukrajins'kyxpsevdonimiv (Kyiv, 1969), p. 391. 122. M. Drahomanov, Lysty do Iv. Franka i ynSyx. 1887-1 895 '; vydav Ivan Franko, L'viv, 1908, pp. 388-404; here p. 399. 334 GEORGEG. GRABOWICZ

Whoever wanted to could express himselfin print,even after the lex Josephoviciae- as, forexample, Ol[ena] Pöilka,who did so in Russia,or Neöuj [Levycicyj]in Austria,and thatgiven the factthat Neöuj, whose real name was longknown in Russia,was indeedserving as a teacher.To thinkthat Kostomarov wouldfear the squinting eye of somebureaucrat, even if a minister,and wouldthus not dare expresshis real thoughtsin a matterthat was afterall not politicalbut literary,is to ascribeto Kostomarovsomething that is indeedmuch worse than opportunism.

One may agree withthis or not,and Drahomanovmay well be projecting his own responses. But what follows is more persuasive, namely the argumentof internalconsistency:

The main thingis thatKostomarov' s "all-Russian"[obSâerus'ki] views in mattersof literaturefully correspond to his historicalviews, which he expounded in all his scholarlyworks. It is difficultto assumethat a personlike Kostomarov couldlie forall thoseyears, in twenty-fivevolumes of scholarlywork!! In all these works,Kostomarov, even while admittinga certainnational distinctness in the Ukrainianpopulation, not only did not denyRusianness [rus'kosti] either to the Belarusiansor the GreatRussians, but looked at themas his own people,much closer thanthe otherSlavs. More thanthat: for all his Ukrainianautonomism (which,to be sure,after 1847 Kostomarovnever fully elaborated in relationto the present),he looked at the annexationof Ukraineto Muscovy as something organic,and on the Muscovitestate, and the new Russian Empire,as direct descendantsof the old Kyivan Rus'- and thus he also deemed organic the consequencesof Russianstate history of the eighteenthcentury, specifically the - culturalunity of Ukraineand Muscovy;he saw the- "all-Russian,"as he calledit literatureof PuSkinand Gogol' and otherslike themas native[ridnoju] to the Ukrainiansas well,and in thislanguage he wrotealmost all his works,indeed all the worksthrough which he made himselfimmortal both in Ukraineand in Muscovy.123

The second majorarea of motivationrelates to Kostomarov's temperament, the quirksand predilectionsthat for the most partwere more apparentto his contemporariesthan to latergenerations. His tendencyto challenge received wisdom and specificallyto debunk historicalfigures that popular lore and hagiographiehistorians had turnedinto national heroes had alreadyelicited in his lifetime a number of attacks and polemics. In his Autobiography Kostomarov speaks of the resentment and anger released by his demythologizationof such Russian "national heroes" as Susanin or his revisionistviews on DmitriDonskoj and the battleof Kulikovo. Thus of the formerhe says:

123. Ibid., p. 400. INSIGHTAND BLINDNESS 335

Since I had attemptedto showthat the history of Susaninhad been ornamented by variousadditions of idle fantasy,and theevent could not have taken place in the formwe have beenaccustomed to seeingit and evenreading of it in thetextbooks, thereimmediately appeared defenders of patrioticglory who soughtto see in my actionsomething malicious. A rumorbegan to spreadthat I have set formyself the task of devaluingglorious Russian [historical]figures and, so it was said, of removingfrom the pedestal and debunkingRussian heroes.124

While Kostomarov's defense is persuasive, there is some truthto the charge: he did engage in the kind of scholarlyinquiry that revises received knowledgeand in so doingruffles the feathers of complacentand self-satisfied "society."This is only to his creditas a historian,but he apparentlydid enjoy his role as gadfly and debunker(albeit an academic one). This penchant, however, can hardly be confined to his Russian ("all-Russian" or "Great Russian") topics: as a mode of inquiryor turnof mind it surelymust extend to his Ukrainianthemes, and in a small but veryconcrete guise we do see it in his oblique referenceto the danger of hagiographyin the accounts of Sevoenko's life. And, afterall, theissue hereis thepsychological tendency to debunk- and thatcertainly would not be confinedor restrainedby the ethnic context.His larger,conscious and "ideological" frame,the need to juxtapose genius and narod, and the "tempering"or qualificationof the formerby the latter,is also consistentwith such "revisionism." The othercharacter traits that are mentionedby his contemporariesand historians- his illness and irritabilityin later life, his tendency to unnecessaryconflicts born of a "childish" stubbornness- may also have a bearing on his perspective on Sevöenko, but, given the chronology,they relatemore to his overall biography,or his alienationfrom the mainstreamof the Ukrainianmovement in his declining years, than theydo the reception proper.125 More complex, psychologicalmoments may also play a role. One such is envy: a "Salieri complex." The notion certainly has been applied to Sevöenko's othergreat friend,exegete, and rival- KuliS.126 Leaving aside the inherenttenuousness of this model, and mindful of Drahomanov's rejoinderthat any such allegation can only be weighed against some new documentation(or at least internalconsistency), one is left with only one

124. Avtobiografija,p. 591. 125. Cf. D. L. Mordovcev,"Istoriöeskie pominki po N. I. Kostomarove,"Russkaja starino, 1885, vol. 46, pp. 617-48; herep. 648; and Osyp Hermajze,"M. Kostomarovv svitliavtobiohrafiji," Ukrajina, 1925, nos. 1-2, pp. 79-87, herepp. 84-87. 126. Cf. especiallythe developed use of this metaphorin P. P. Cubs'kyj's (Myxajlo MohyljansTcyj's)"KuliS i Sevöenko,"in PantelejmonKulis (Kyiv, 1927), pp. 102-126; here,pp. Ill, 117, 126 and passim [=Ukrajins'kaAkademija Nauk, Zbirnykistoryõno- fílolohiõohoviddilu, no. 53]. 336 GEORGEG. GRABOWICZ piece of evidence- and even thatis an absence. But it is a structuredabsence: forlike KuliS, Kostomarov,who had been a publishedUkrainian poet, with two collectionsto his credit,virtually stopped writing poetry when Sevöenko appeared on the scene. AfterSevöenko's death Kuli§ returnedto writingand publishing poetry; Kostomarov did not.127 He wrote only a handful of poems after1841, and indeedthe prose and dramahe wroteor publishedafter the appearanceof Sevöenko was writtenin Russian.128Does thisconstitute a retreatfrom Ukrainian writing and fromthe undoubtedly daunting prospect of being comparedto Sevöenko? Is theresentment that this may implysufficient to supporta "Salieri complex"? The line of reasoningis not specious, and the psychologicalmoment (especially since it has so long been repressed)bears furtheranalysis, but its abilityto shed lighton Kostomarov's peculiar blind spotsremains uncertain. The second momentis also not certain,but is surelymore profound,and its context,and textualunderpinnings, now standrevealed. It again shows the workings of fear- now, however, raised to the level of panic. The psychological issue is guilt, born of recantation.Its locus, providing an emblematicinstance of recantation,was the behavior of Kostomarov (and Kuli§ as well) during the trial of the Brotherhood of SS. Cyril and Methodius. As the recordsof the investigationshow, therewere some, like Hulak, who were remarkablystrong (at least at first), and some, like - Bilozersicyj,who caved in at the veryoutset. The one who stood out in not - recanting,or denyinghis work, or indeed apologizing for anything was Sevõenko.129 Kostomarov's performancewas perhapsthe poorestof all: he was the one who gave the most answers and redid his testimonythe most times. He continuallyrelied on intellectualelaboration and obfuscation;he was evasive and he contradictedhimself, denying that he had writtenanything - and denouncingwhat he had writtenas terrible;he was apologetic and in the end he threwhimself at the mercyof his inquisitors.His incoherenceand agitationwere such thatstill in thecourse of theinvestigation the police came to the conclusion thathe was losing his mind.130On his behalf it should be

127. Cf. Kostomarov'sintroduction to the firstposthumous (1867) edition of the Kobzar,which he also edited.As KuliS latersaw it, its thrustwas to concede thatafter Sevõenkoone couldhardly try to competein thatmedium ("...nocjie HeroHanpacHO CTaji 6u KT0-HH6yAb3B0HHT B ero crpyrnj...");"Vospominanija o NikolajeIvanoviöe Kostomarove," Nov' 1885,vol. 4, no. 13, p. 73. 128. It is also revealingthat Kostomarov began the story"Sorok lit" in Ukrainianin 1840, but only wrotethe firstchapter. It appearedin printin Russian (with a wholly reworkedfirst chapter) in 1876. 129. Cf., e.g., theprotocol of his interrogation:Kyrylo-Mefodijivs ke tovarystvo, vol. z, doc. no. 261, pp. 324-28. 130. Thus in theofficial medical report ot May ¿, 184/,signea oy stairpnysician apis: INSIGHTAND BLINDNESS 337 notedthat apart from the factthat of all those arrestedhe had the mostto lose (his buddingcareer, his reputation),his treatmentat the hands of the police was not only calculatedlybrutal (after his arresthe was confinedfor almost a day in a shed thatresembled a pig sty), but specificallydevised to findhis weak pointsand to breakhim psychologically. In time, the legacy of this trial and theirrespective responses may well have become forKostomarov a quintessentialburden of guilt: he had denied his beliefs and his writings,and áevõenko had not.131Both had faced their momentof truth,but one had flinched.Kostomarov had survived(first in the relativecomfort of Saratov and thensimply by living longer) and Sevöenko, in Kostomarov's own words, had "boldly enteredthe cavern... forget[ting] thathe is a man, and thatif he dares to be the firstto enterhe may fall..." The ensuingpattern of contradictoryfeelings, of identificationwith and praise forthe hero, of denial of thisand seemingflashes of amnesia,and thenfurther compensation for it, would appear to point to a central dark area in the relationship,a truthfrom which - forKostomarov - the veil could simplynot be lifted. *

It is much easier, in comparison,to anatomize the conceptual schemata of Kostomarov'sreception of Sevõenko. To be sure,to speak of themas motives clearlycourts the danger of circularity,for they inhere in thetexts and animate the basic methodof his discourse;as such theyneed to be distinguishedfrom motivestaken as psychologicalor ideological causes. Still, these schemataor paradigms are not only presentin the texts,but, as we can tell fromthe overall evidence of Kostomarov's beliefs and writings,they antedate and determinethe texts;they constitute the overall matrixby which he organizes his experience,here specificallythe receptionof Sevõenko,and thusfunction as a kind of philosophical motivation.They are basically two. The first,to which we have already devoted much attention,is the idea of the narod, an idea, as we have seen, to which Kostomarov the historiancan subordinate even history(in effect,making it secondaryto ethnography),or even Genius. For Kostomarov,the ability of this idea to obscure or distortseems to be directlyproportional to its hold on his thought.

"...KocTOMapoB B npOAOJiJKeHHHAByx AHeftoõtiapyjKHBaji npH3HaicHOMpaneHHa yMa, KOTopoe b nocjieAHee BpeM* 3HaHHTejibH0yMHOKHJiocb, npH tom ace TcnecHbie sibjichhsi, KaK-To: B3rjiüA h nyjibc 3acTaBJiíiioTonacaTbCJi eme óojibuioro ycHJieHHflcyMamecTBH«, noneMy a npH3Haio HeoõxoAHMbiMana npeAOCTopoacHOCTHnoMecTHTb ero b õojibHHiry (AJiü)yMaJiHiueHHbix." No. 354, Kyrylo-Mefodijivs'keTovarystvo, vol. 1, p. 294. 131. One is tempted to find implicit confirmation of the depth of the trauma and its repression in the fact that in his Autobiography Kostomarov hardly refers to this episode - but this, again, would be an argumentfrom absence. 338 GEORGEG. GRABOWICZ

The second is the paradigm of poetry.It rests, of course, on a central Romanticvalue - the apotheosis of poetryas divine speech and of poets, in Shelley's much cited words, as the "unacknowledged legislators of the world."132The main difference,however, is thatif in the West the poets are indeed unacknowledged (the hyperbole of Shelley's claim may well be activatedby poetry'sgrowing marginalization in theface of new middleclass values), in the Slavic East, the nationalpoets, as exemplifiedby Mickiewicz and Sevõenko,become prophetswho legislatefor their respective societies in all but the literalsense of the word. The cult of Sevöenko, like the cult of Mickiewicz, with its projectionof the sacrum and its attendantstrictures, becomes a despotic extension of such "legislation."133 In this process a major contributingrole is played by such as Kostomarov,who directtheir intellectual and institutionalauthority to furtheringthe notion of the sovereigntyof poetryand as a firststep in thisdirection prostrate themselves 13^ before its power. Thus throughoutthe Vospominanie o dvux maljarax (and in various passages in other texts), Kostomarov's discussion of Sevöenko is couched in a language thatis not only consistentlyawestruck in the face of truepoetry, but in its relianceon metaphoricdiction seems to be as autotelic as poetry itself. (This applies, moreover, not only to his evocation of the Poet, his role, his task,and so on, but also to such attendant mattersas the narod. Clearly, this discourse does not and is not meant to subordinate itself to dispassionate analysis; as an articulationof higher - truths- precisely as in the poetry of Sevöenko it is resistant, even dismissive,of cold reason.) To be sure,Kostomarov's contemporaries, Kuli§, and later Drahomanov, seek to temperand balance these claims, and the modalityitself, but the Romantic faithin the sovereignpower of poetryis hardlyaffected and is revivedwith redoubled strength by the voluntaristsof the early twentiethcentury. The "derzava slova^ the belief in the liberating (later:nation-building) power of theWord thatis a touchstonein the thinking of such nationalists as Malaniuk or Lypa, does indeed find its fully acknowledged basis in the poetry of Sevöenko, and his words from his podrazanie of the EleventhPsalm, "BO3BejiHHy/MajiHX othx pa6ÍB hímhx!/ 51Ha CTopo>KiKOJio ïx nocTaBJiK)cjiobo" serve here as the ideal epigraphto this swellingdiscourse. But the firstcritical articulation is Kostomarov's; he is the Paul of thisnew secularreligion.

132. Cf. his Defenseof Poetry(1821). 133. For a recenttreatment of thecult of Mickiewicz,cf., for example, Balsam i trucizna. 13 tekstowo Mickiewiczu(Gdansk, 1993), especiallythe essay by Boleslaw Oleksowicz"O potrzebie'Czarnej legendy' Mickiewicza," pp. 145-56. 134. In the case of the Polish wieszcz,there was the furtherexpectation of direct propheticinstruction; cf. Józef Bohdan Zaleski's apotheosisof Mickiewicz,cited and discussedin Oleksowicz,ibid., p. 148 and passim. INSIGHTAND BLINDNESS 339

At its centeris the equivalence thatis posited betweenpoetry and social, collective reality.The two domains appear to be unmediatedand virtually coterminous.In time, the overarching(and in termsof Ukrainian cultural historythe overwhelming)effect of thisconflation will be the impositionof social involvementand social dutyon all of Ukrainianliterature. Admittedly, this sense of total engagementwill also draw its strengthfrom positivist and utilitariannotions, but (perhapsparadoxically) its roots lie in a transcendent sense of poetry'ssublime role and authority. As for Sevõenko, the furtherarticulation of his role and authoritywill be animatedlargely by Kostomarov's vision (and generallyspeaking the overall receptionof Sevöenko will become the lever for interrelatingliterature and societyand the yardstickfor measuring the collectiverole of the writer).The firststep is the identificationof the man withthe poet, or, the perceptionof the whole Sevõenko phenomenonthrough the prismof poetry.In the often cited "Vospominanie o dvux maljarax" Kostomarovis at pains to deny that Sevcenko can be perceivedas a "citizen":"he remainsa poet- in literatureand in life."135 The inversion of Ryleev's well known formularesonates, of course, with Kostomarov's overall constructionof Sevoenko's meaning: the idea of "the Poet" serves the double function of depoliticizing, even dehistoricizingSevöenko (and in practicalterms, removing, as Drahomanov was to observe,the spectreof separatism),and at the same time stressingthe universality,in effect,the all-Russianness of his appeal. (Thus, it is no surprisethat for Kostomarov the receptionof Sevcenko, the fact thatpeople immediatelyrecognized him for the poet thathe was ("sto - bcjihkhíínosTÎ") is above all an argumentfor proving a common,all but undifferentiatedall- Russian audience.136 The course of historysoon demonstratedthe hollowness of these notions. But the paradigmitself was not eclipsed: in the emergingand soon dominant canon, "the Poet" came to fillin the whole space of "Sevcenko," and the fact of his non-poeticwork and persona, of his prose, his Diary, his letters,his painting,and most generallyhis fullsocial personalitywas simplyleft out of the equation. That this, among other things,is detrimentalto an adequate

135. K TaKHMÄe He3pejibiMcy^KAeHH^M (the comparison is to the idea that Kol'cov can be thought superior to Sevöenko) mu aojukhij othccth h to, KOTopoe 6pomeHO 6buio HeaaBHO Ha CBeatyio MorHJiynosTa, - cyacAeHHe npH3HaBuiee ero rpa^AaHHHOM, a He no3TOM. Ha AeJie bhxoaht HaoõopoT: LUeBMeHKorpa^KAaHHHOM-TO HHKorAa He 6biJi,h ocTaBaJicflII03T0M h B JiHTeoaTVDeh B JKH3HH."VosDominanüa o dvux maliarax " d. 92. 136. "B coMHHeHMJixero TaK MHorooõmepyccKoro, hto BejiHKopyccu HHTaiOTero Aaxte b Mpe3BbiHaHHOluioxHx cTHXOTBOpHbixnepeBOAax: KaK HH HCKajKajiHero nepeBOAHHKHBce- TaKHHe MorviHHcnopTHTb ao Toro, hto6 nepBopoAHaflno33HA He BbicKa3biBajiacbHapyacy. Ilo HaiuoMyMHeHHK) nepeBOAHTb IlIeBHeHKa OTHiOAb He cneAyeT..." "Vospominanija o dvux maljarax," p. 92. 340 GEORGEG. GRABOWICZ understandingprecisely of the poetryand the natureof Sevoenko's poetic persona was by and largealso notperceived. A basic featureof such totalizationwas thatthe poetic word was takenas the literal,ideal truth,the image behindthe veil. There is no more dramatic and moving instance of this than the fact thatthe site of áevoenko's final burialplace was determinedon thebasis of his poetry.As Kostomarovtells it in his Autobiography,immediately after Sevöenko's funeraland burial in St. Petersburg,his countrymenbegan making effortsto secure permissionto reburyhim in Ukraineaccording to the wishes he expressedin an 1845 poem "Jak umruto poxovajte...," generallyknown as "Zapovit" (The Testament). Kostomarovcites theopening lines of thepoem (and theseare in factthe only lines of Sevöenko thathe does cite in thiswork) as irrefutableproof that this was indeed the historically,socially obligatorytestament.137 Over the years thispattern was repeatedcountless times as Sevöenko's poetrywas made into a direct and unmediated accompanimentto various forms of social and politicalaction - as slogan and instruction,as exhortationand injunction. This, then,was the second step- the inevitable but surely unconscious actualization of the idea that poetry,especially a poetry deemed to be - prophetic,is coterminouswith the collective. In thisconjunction, the latter - as the principalcultural value and touchstone must dominate,and poetry comes to be seen as but the voice of the collective. At the end we have a genuine,and genuinelymelancholy paradox: the collective image of one of the most individualisticof poets is totallydetermined by his social roles and the variousfunctions imposed on himby his culturalresonance. In thecourse of time, the propheticand then the cultic images will come to dominate society's perception,and in the long darkness of Soviet rule, this will be furtheradumbrated by a triumphalistcast. In a mannerall too familiarfrom history,the individual,the textuallyand historicallygiven authorwill hardly be perceptiblebehind the canonic and opportunisticelaborations. Is Kostomarovin any way responsiblefor this? No morethan any writeror thinkeris responsiblefor the resonance and evolutionof his ideas. What is clear, however,is thathis perceptionof the new lightthat was Sevõenko, his fusion of seeing and not seeing left a lasting afterimage in Ukrainian consciousness. Harvard University

137. N. Kostomarov, Avtobiografìa, p. 537. For his part, KuhS says virtuallythe same thing: "Mu xopoHHJiHero TOpacecTBeHHo,h iiotom OTOcjiajiH ero rpo6 Ha AHenpoBCKHJi BbicoTbi, corjiacHo cTHxoTBopHOMy3aBemaHHK> no3Ta"; "Vospominanija o Nikolaje Ivanoviöe Kostomarove," p. 70. Cf. also Smert' i poxorony T. G. Sevöenko (Dokumenty i materialy) (Kyiv, 1961), especially the accounts of P. Lebedyncev and H. ÕestaxivsTcyj.