Fathoming the secrets of time

The outstanding Ukrainian playwright Ivan Kocherha (1881-1952) was an uncommon artist. According to a legend (or perhaps a true story?) the writer kept a skull, ancient medieval manuscripts, an hour-glass, and a red rose on his desk. He was a reserved and somewhat reclusive person, who shunned crowds and press interviews. The impression was that he did not yearn for glory, preferring to remain in the shadows during that formidable, merciless, and all-destructive era, for Kocherha lived in a cruel time, when human life and freedom’s values were grossly devalued.

This man of letters made a major contribution to Ukrainian culture, seeking to preserve the humanistic and freedom-loving ideals of the past and fathom the closely-guarded secrets of that age in his best works, the finest of which were historical. The historical dramas The Diamond Millstone (1927), Svichka’s Wedding (1930), and Yaroslav the Wise (1944-46), which marked the peak of Kocherha’s creative heritage, are rightfully considered among the best Ukrainian classics. Although not all of Kocherha’s works are of equal worth, the cognitive and philosophical value of his best plays ensures them a place among the greatest achievements of 20th-century Ukrainian literature.

The writer’s literary career was difficult, contradictory, and emotionally dramatic. He was born in Nosivka, Chernihiv gubernia, into the family of Anton Kocherha, a railway employee and former captain of the Russian Army, who was dismissed for his rebellious character and incorruptibility: he used to report to his superiors about cases of corruption, which entailed foreseeable consequences. The future writer spent his childhood moving frequently with his family from place to place: Central Asia, the Caucasus, Poland, and Russia.

Finally, in 1891, his father obtained permanent employment in Chernihiv, where Kocherha spent his childhood and youth. The boy initially studied at home and then at a Chernihiv high school, which he completed in 1899. Then he read law at Kyiv University and after graduating in 1903, he found a dull bureaucratic job at the Chernihiv Auditing Chamber.

The writer first revealed his literary talent in a somewhat unexpected way. Kocherha made his debut as a theatrical critic in 1904, when he began writing reviews of theater productions for Chernihiv’s provincial newspapers. In 1910 he published his first play (in Russian), a romantic fairy tale called Song in a Wineglass. Kocherha, who wrote his theatrical reviews only in Russian, did not seem at all enthusiastic about the Ukrainian theater and its potential. This is not surprising, considering the overall atmosphere of those times, as illustrated by the following passage from a 1905 issue of the newspaper Chernigovskie gubernskie vedomosti: “Little Russian drama has ceased to develop; there are just a few relatively good works that have exhausted themselves in describing simple Ukrainian everyday life and primitive Ukrainian passions.”

But the same Kocherha, who was raised on this kind of review, later made this comment on the opera Taras Bulba in 1929: “As a result of the scornful attitude of Russian ‘great-power’ chauvinism to ‘Little Russian’ art, the Ukrainian theater came to be regarded as slapstick comedy that can only entertain Russian audiences with vodka, sausage, and the hopak, while even such a prominent musician as Rimsky-Korsakov failed to see the true beauty of Lysenko’s opera: it is common knowledge that he could not distinguish between Ukrainian music and ‘Little Russian dumplings.’” This comment reveals the striking evolution of Kocherha’s views.

Kocherha’s life and work are full of contrasts. He was both an exemplary young bureaucrat on His Majesty’s Service (Collegiate Assessor Kocherha was awarded the Order of St. Stanislaus, 3rd degree, in 1915 “for irreproachable performance of duty”), and a Ukrainian playwright, who created (or had to create?) expedient plays “for the needs of the times,” which “correctly” depicted the “rural socialist transformations” in the late 1920s (Nature and Culture, Of What the Rye Sings).

But in all fairness, it should be emphasized that talented artists should primarily be judged by their finest works. In Kocherha’s case, these are his Ukrainian historical dramas The Diamond Millstone, Svichka’s Wedding, and Yaroslav the Wise.

Surprisingly, Kocherha wrote his first Ukrainian-language play — a witty, merry, and fine romantic comedy called The Bitter Almond Fairy (which could be successfully staged today) — in 1925, when he was 44. What is even more surprising is that the writer organically and naturally entered the Ukrainian language element; to see this clearly, one should read his mature and perfect works, starting with The Diamond Millstone.

This historical tragedy is set in 1768, immediately after the defeat of Koliivshchyna, a powerful popular uprising of Cossacks and peasants against Polish serf-owning landlords. It may be said that Kocherha picks up where Taras Shevchenko left off in his glorious poem “Haidamaky.” Tsarina Catherine II betrays the insurgents, and their leaders are treacherously handed over to the Polish occupation authorities, who punish the rebels with incredible cruelty. In the small town of Kodnia in Zhytomyr region, the butcher of the Ukrainian people, commander of the Royal Army Jozef Stempkowski, subjected his captives to brutal torture: they were impaled, quartered, and skinned alive.

The unbreakable haidamak Vasyl Khmarny hurls unforgettable words at the slaughtering “judges” of Zhytomyr: “The people go on living and Ukraine will never die, and you will never enslave a free and gallant nation!” The play was written in 1927, when the Ukrainian Renaissance (also known as the Executed Renaissance) was on the rise. Thus, it is easy to understand what the words that the author put into the mouth of the swashbuckling Ukrainian Cossack really meant to him, a reticent and self-conscious man, once a pro-Russian intellectual.

The entire drama is permeated with the multifaceted and powerful symbol of the Diamond Millstone: it is a sign of authority and wealth gained at the cost of the blood and toil of enslaved people, a kind of a “life ransom” (it is this diamond millstone that can save the Khmarny’s life), as well as perpetual revenge against the enemies.

Kocherha mostly gravitated towards symbolic and profound generalizations that convey the spirit of the bygone era and the wisdom of past centuries, which we too need so badly. The symbol in the celebrated drama Svichka’s Wedding is a tiny and fragile Svichka (Candle), perhaps the last little island of hope and goodness for the oppressed people whom the cruel authorities want to condemn to an eternal life of darkness.

The drama is based on historical fact: in 1506 the government of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, which included the Ukrainian lands, issued a ban forbidding the residents of Kyiv to use any light at night (even candles) in order “not to set the city on fire.” However, the Kyiv voivode’s luxurious palace was shining with lights. The drama’s leitmotif is the defense of man’s personal and national dignity, the right to freedom and happiness. Kocherha’s characters, ordinary and lowborn people, know only too well: “When no one gives us light in good faith, we must seize it, not pray for it. For all prayers are worthless without a fight.”

The gem in the crown of Kocherha’s oeuvre is the historical and philosophical drama Yaroslav the Wise. Power and people, the qualities that a truly great ruler should have, the unity of the people who rally to defend their land and create a new state are some of the problems that always preoccupied Kocherha.

Critics once admonished the playwright for his excessive idealization of Yaroslav. There may be a grain of truth in this. But Kocherha’s main concern was not to show an ideal ruler but one who was above all a just, selfless, and far-seeing sovereign, who knows how to wield the sword and, if necessary, to forgive even an enemy, conduct sensitive diplomatic negotiations, build temples for centuries to come, and seek wisdom in ancient books at night. This deeply philosophical play spurs readers to think, forces us to reconsider the sense of life not only of our distant ancestors but our own.

“The law comes before grace”; “Wisdom is drawn from quests and bitter mistakes, not from commandments”; “Whosoever drinks the Dnipro water even once will never forget Kyiv” — these and other aphorisms uttered by Kocherha’s characters have left a deep imprint on our memory.

This outstanding Ukrainian playwright reveals countless portraits of the mysterious and immensely remote past. This has earned him the grateful remembrance of his descendants.