The Slap, the Feral Child, and the Steed: Pasek Settles Accounts with Mazepa Author(S): ROMAN KOROPECKYJ Reviewed Work(S): Source: Harvard Ukrainian Studies, Vol
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The President and Fellows of Harvard College The Slap, the Feral Child, and the Steed: Pasek Settles Accounts with Mazepa Author(s): ROMAN KOROPECKYJ Reviewed work(s): Source: Harvard Ukrainian Studies, Vol. 14, No. 3/4 (December 1990), pp. 415-426 Published by: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41036396 . Accessed: 11/08/2012 15:28 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and The President and Fellows of Harvard College are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Harvard Ukrainian Studies. http://www.jstor.org The Slap, theFeral Child, and the Steed: PasekSettles Accounts with Mazepa ROMAN KOROPECKYJ In 1661,on his wayfrom an armyencampment in Kielce to Belorussia,Jan ChryzostomPasek, a pettygentryman in thearmy of thethen wojewoda of RutheniaStefan Czarniecki, encountered Jan (Ivan) Mazepa, "an ennobled Cossack" and a trustedpage (pokojowy) at the court of King Jan Kazimierz.1The meetingwas not auspicious. Believingthat Pasek was relayingsecret letters from a confederation(zwiqzek) formed in Kielce by soldiersdemanding back pay to supportersin Belorussia,Mazepa quickly rode to the king in Hrodna (Grodno) and mistakenlyinformed on the unsuspectingPasek. Apparently(nine pages of themanuscript are missing at thispoint) the king's men arrestedPasek and escortedhim to Hrodna. On theway, a contingentof Lithuanianconfederates attempted, unsuccess- fully,to freehim, which further compromised Pasek in the eyes of the king.2However, at theinquisition in HrodnaPasek, an accomplishedorator, managedto convincethe senators and subsequentlythe king himself of his innocence. The king not only exoneratedthe offendedgentryman from Mazepa's accusationsbut, according to Pasek, asked him forforgiveness and gave himfive hundred ducats, saying, "A man who does a good deed shouldnot be tossedout overthe fence" (262). As forMazepa, Pasek has theking say: "He who has deceived(udat) us has alreadybeen rewarded forhis thoughtlessness (piochosc), since he has lostour favor and willnever be able to restoreit" (26 1).3 This is how Pasek describeshis 1661 encounterwith Mazepa in his Pamiçtniki,perhaps the most fascinating and idiosyncraticspecimen of Old Polishmemoiristic writing. At thetime the memoirs were being composed 1 Jan Pasek, Pamietniki,5th ed., ed. W. Czapliriski,Biblioteka Narodowa, ser. 1, 62 (Wroclaw,1979), p. 211. All referencesin the textare to thisedition. All translationsare mine,with the help, however, of C. S. Leach, trans,and ed., Memoirsof thePolish Baroque. The Writingsof Jan ChryzostomPasek, a Squire of the Commonwealthof Poland and Lithuania(Berkeley, 1976), pp. 104-22, 152-56. 2 See Czapliñski'sreconstruction ofthe events in Pasek,Pamietniki, p. 21 1, fh.259. 3 Pasek's is theonly source of informationon thismoment in Mazepa's biography,and he providesno furtherinformation with regard to exactlyhow thistemporary fall from the king's favormanifested itself. 4 16 ROMAN KOROPECK YJ (between 1690 and 1695),4 the young Cossack at Jan Kazimierz's court had already become leader of the Hetmanate (1687), a confidantof Peter I and of some of his most powerful advisers, and, consequently, an influential personage on the political landscape of Russia, Ukraine, and Poland- Lithuania in the last decades of the seventeenthcentury. It is not surprising, therefore,that a meetingwith such a prominentfigure well beforehis emer- gence into the spotlightshould merita place in the memoirs of a provincial gentryman,and all the more so since it had verynearly caused Pasek to lose his reputationand perhaps his life. The encounterof 1661 was not, how- ever, the last between the two men, althoughby the same token it could not but affectboth the tenorof theirsecond encounterin 1662 and, more impor- tantly,the manner in which the Polish memoirist figures the person of Mazepa in his narrative. Pasek's memoirs are organized chronologically, with the notation of each new year (from 1656 to 1688) constitutingas it were a separate chapter heading. Although within this scheme Pasek often discourses on the flow and meaning of largerpolitical events, he adheres primarilyto his "propositum"of describing"only. statumvitae meae, non statumReipub- licae, in order reducere in memoriam each of my actiones" (172). But, while much of the work is a ratherdry chronological account of personal experiences,there are a numberof sections thatstand out by virtueof their narrativeorganization and artistry,by theirvery tendency,as one criticput it, toward narrativity.5These sections, as Bronislaw Chlebowski was the firstto point out, were probably anecdotes that Pasek had repeated many times throughoutthe course of his life in a society particularlyappreciative of the art of storytelling.As a result,he "developed greaterease of expres- sion and a greaterperfection of form,omitting that which did not make an impressionon his listenersand emphasizing those details and expressions which were to theirtaste."6 Pasek, by the same token,is not loath to recount anecdotes heard second-handor even to project himselfas theirhero, to say nothing of his capacity for exaggeration, for blurringthe line "between actual events,both 'historical' and 'personal,' and those which are invented or anecdotal."7 As such, the best of his anecdotes share theirstructure, their methodsof characterization,their irony and humor- includingculmination 4 Cf. Czapliñski'sintroduction to Pamiçtniki,p. LIV. 3 J. Trzynadlowski,"Sztuka pamiçtnikarska Jana Chryzostoma Paska, Prace Polonistyczne 20 (1964): 273. 6 B. Chlebowski,"Jan Chryzostom Pasek i jego Pamictniki"(1879), in his Pisma (Warsaw, 1912),3:352. ' J. Rytel,Pamiçtniki Paska na tiepamiçtnikarstwa staropolskiego. Szkic z dziejowprozy narracyjnej(Wroclaw, 1962), p. 72. PASEK SETTLES ACCOUNTS WITH MAZEPA 417 in a well-turnedpointe - with that most popular of Old Polish narrative genres,the facetia? And if, as is most commonly the case, these anecdotes appear in isolation, surfacingas a solitary unit in the course of mundane descriptionsof events,they also appear as partsof cycles, some (the Danish campaigns, the wars with Muscovy) of almost epic proportions,others (the anecdotes about the trained otter, the hunting stories) limited to a few storieslinked togetherby a common subject or theme.9 Although Pasek's preferencefor the self-enclosed narrativethat tran- scends the chronological mode of organization throughassociative digres- sions and the introductionof non-personalanecdotes has led some scholars, most notably Bruckner,to overstatethe coherence of the whole or parts of the work,10the memoirist'saccount of his second encounterwith Mazepa in 1662, togetherwith the anecdote about the juvenis ursinus Lithunanus at JanKazimierz's courtand the hearsay storyabout the (now legendary)pun- ishmentinflicted on Mazepa by a jealous husband, constitutesjust such a single, consciously constructed,and most certainlyconsciously intended, narrativeunit. As I shall tryto demonstrate,the coherence of this unitis as much a functionof its formalnarrative features as it is of its "motive." In order to understandPasek's figurationof both the 1661 incident in Hrodna and the series of episodes listed under the year 1662, it should once again be stressed that the events described occurred some thirtyyears before the actual composition of the memoirs. Faulty memoryand a pen- chant for exaggeration aside, the respective fortunesof the two "protago- nists," but particularlythose of Mazepa, had changed radically over the course of this period. From a retainerat the court of Jan Kazimierz, the "ennobled Cossack" had risen to the highest office in the Hetmanate and had become a prominentactor on the East European political scene.11 By contrast,Pasek, a man proud of his gentryorigins, was at the time of the 8 Cf. J.Krzyzanowski and K. Zukowska-Billip,Dawnafacecja polska (XVI-XVIII w.) (War- saw, 1960),p. 19; and R. Pollack,"Pasek i jego Pamietniki,"in his Wsródliteratów staropol- skich(Warsaw, 1966), p. 435. 9 On cyclicityin Pasek's memoirs,see Rytel,Pamietniki Paska, pp. 75-81; and Trzy- nadlowski,"Sztuka pamietnikarska Paska," pp. 273. 274. 10 "This is thefirst Polish historical romance (history czny romans) that is worthyof standing side by side withThe ThreeMusketeers and theheroes of Sienkiewicz":A. Bruckner,Dzieje literaturypolskiej w zarysie (Warsaw, n.d.), 1:268. Cf. Czapliriski's introductionto Pamietniki,pp. XLIX-L; andTrzynadlowski, "Sztuka pamietnikarska Paska," p. 272. 11 Of the manybooks and articleson Mazepa, see, above all, F. M. Umanec,Getman Mazepa, Istoriõeskajamonografija (St. Petersburg,1897); E. Borschakand R. Martel,Vie de Mazeppa (Paris, 1931); C. J. Nordmann,Charles XII et l'Ukrainede Mazepa (Paris, 1958); O. Ohloblyn,H et' man Ivan Mazepa ta joho doba (=ZapyskyNaukovoho Tovarystva im. Sevôenka,170) (New York, 1960); and W. Majewski,"Mazepa, Jan(Iwan)," Polski siownik biograficzny,s.v. 4 18 ROMAN KOROPECK YJ writingof his memoirsan embitteredpetty landowner whose life consisted of a seriesof landsuits