Creator of a different world

Some talented individuals who left an indelible mark on Ukrainian literature, culture, and spiritual life came to occupy their place in extraordinary, if not impenetrable, ways. Since we recently celebrated the traditional women’s holiday of March 8, it will suffice to mention the names of several outstanding women. Olha Kobylianska began her career as a German-language writer, while Marko Vovchok (Maria Vilinska) was a Russian noblewoman by birth. The path to Ukrainian literature of Liubov Yanovska, an original writer of the late 19th and early 20th century and a master of sociopsychological novels and novelettes, was equally tortuous.

Carmen-Alfonsa-Fernanda-Estrella-Natalena Koroleva was born near the Spanish city of Burgos on March 3, 1888. Her father, Count Adrian Yurii Dunin-Borkovsky came from an ancient Polish family. Her mother Maria Clara de Castro Lacerda was born into a noble Spanish family and died giving birth to her daughter. Natalena was first raised by her grandmother Teofila, a descendant of the ancient Lithuanian-Ukrainian Domontovych family, who lived on an estate in the village of Velyki Birky in Volyn. After Teofila’s death, Natalena’s maternal uncle Eugenio, an officer in the Spanish king’s guard, took the little girl to Spain. Natalena spent 12 years in the convent of Notre Dame du Sion in the French Pyrenees. The writer said later that this was where her character was shaped and where she fully understood what goodness, mercy, and beauty were.

In the fall of 1904 the 16-year-old girl first came to Kyiv after her father married a woman from a noble Czech family, who wanted her stepdaughter to continue her education in the immortal city on the banks of the Dnipro River. The young girl amazed everyone who met her with her knowledge of history, especially ancient and medieval history, archeology, philosophy, medicine, and music theory. Besides French, which was the closest and almost native language for her, she was fluent in Polish, Spanish, Arabic, and Italian. As Koroleva admitted, she remembered “some Ukrainian from her childhood,” meaning the brief period she spent in Volyn.

Koroleva was sent to study in the Kyiv Institute for Noble Maidens, and much later, at the age of 74, towards the end of her life, she recalled her studies with these words: “In my opinion, those were horrible times and customs, which you wouldn’t even see in a nightmare!” She stubbornly declined an advantageous marriage proposal from a dashing Russian hussar and later studied at the Archeological Institute in St. Petersburg, researching ancient Lithuanian and Ukrainian history. She was fond of the theater, but she did not make a success of her theatrical career because of ill health. Koroleva traveled through Western Europe (Spain, France, and Italy) and Middle Eastern countries, and participated in archeological excavations in Pompeii and Egypt. Her first literary works, written in French, were published in some Paris journals in 1909.

In the summer of 1914 Koroleva returned to Kyiv to live with her sick father. She was here when World War I broke out and the borders were closed. The brave young woman enlisted as a nurse in the Russian army, survived three years of fierce battles, typhus, and pneumonia, was wounded three times, and awarded the Military Cross for bravery.

Her first husband, Iskander ibn Kurush, an Iranian citizen, was an officer in the Russian army. He was killed in a battle near Warsaw in 1915. In late 1919 Koroleva and her stepmother joined a group of Czech repatriates and left starving and exhausted Kyiv, which had survived so many invasions and occupations. As it turned out, she left for good.

In Prague, where Natalena settled down and found work as a teacher, she met an old acquaintance named Vasyl Koroliv-Stary, who was a writer, publisher, and cultural and civic activist. They married, and their union was stable and long-lasting. The couple settled on the outskirts of the small city of Melnik near Prague, where hey lived there until the end of their lives. Koroliv-Stary died in 1941, on the eve of his arrest by the Gestapo, and Koroleva died on July 1, 1966.

It was Koroliv-Stary who inspired his young wife to write her literary works in Ukrainian. Her first Ukrainian-language work, the short story “The Sin (From a Memorial Book),” was published in January 1921 in the Vienna-based Ukrainian weekly Volia. After this publication Koroleva continued writing in Ukrainian until the end of her life. It was hard, she acknowledged: “In Ukraine I knew only simple people-village girls, craftsmen, maids, and also soldiers during the First World War. I met Ukrainian intellectuals in emigration only when I moved abroad (in Bohemia). Whereas ordinary Ukrainians were nice and likeable, this emigre intelligentsia disappointed me: without really knowing me but aware that I was not a ‘priest’s daughter’ or a ‘village girl,’ they treated me with hostility. To the Ukrainian intelligentsia I was merely a ‘cunning Pole, or a ‘bad Pole,’ as one young talented poetess told me to my face. And no one ever thought of asking why I was in their midst.”

To a certain extent this kind of reaction is understandable but not justifiable. At the start of her writing career her editors insistently advised her: “Stop writing about all those foreigners — we’re sick of them! What do we care about your Greeks, Romans, or Arabs? Write about the Zaporozhians!” Through her works, which were written and crisp, clear language that bore no hint of mawkish parochialism, which the author despised, Koroleva contributed a new dimension of Europeanness, intellectualism, and philosophical depth to Ukrainian culture.

One of her finest works is the novel A Shadow’s Dream (originally published in Lviv in 1938; the second, largely revised, edition was published in the Slovak city of Presov in 1966). It depicts Greco-Roman civilization in 3 A.D. during the reign of Emperor Hadrian. The novel is about Hadrian and his friend and successor, a classically handsome youth named Antinous. The further course of events is determined when Antinous unexpectedly drowns.

A Novel from the Middle Ages: 1313, published in the journal Dzvony (Lviv, 1934-35), is about narrow-minded fanaticism and the spiritual beginnings of the Renaissance. The interesting plot is based on the discovery of gunpowder, which was attributed to Berthold Schwarz, a legendary 14th-century monk. The novel Ancestor published in Dzvony (Lviv, 1937-38) is a depiction of life in medieval Spain in the grips of the Inquisition. Here the writer vividly recreates the tragic pages from the lives of many of her mother’s ancestors from the Lacerda family.

The masterfully written Ancient Kyivan Legends, published in the journal Proboiem (Prague, 1940-42), are an exception: their topic is the ancient past of the Eastern Slavs. The characters include Prince Askold (Koroleva believed that he introduced Christianity to Rus’ and was killed for doing so) and Kyrylo Kozhumiaka. This series of legends is a chimerical, finely adapted, and intertwined collection of Slavic, Scythian, ancient Greek, ancient Christian, and Scandinavian legends, myths, and fairy tales.

All her life Koroleva was rebuked for the abstract nature of her historical-philosophical novels, with critics complaining that her plots and characters had little to do with Ukrainian realities. However, now that we know which of her works have stood the test of time, we can say that the value of Koroleva’s novels lies primarily in the development of a new conception of a free, value-oriented man with an all-round education, who has accepted the ideals of humanism. This achievement has thus secured the writer a special place in Ukrainian literature.