HE FOUND HIS LOVE IN UKRAINE

I was deeply impressed in my youth by Honore de Balzac's novel La peau de chagrin (The Ass's Skin). The story of a young Parisian Rafael Valentin, who became capable of realizing any wish by sorcery but never reached true happiness, made me look even then upon life from the standpoint of the price we pay for our own hopes and desires. Only much later, after becoming familiar with the life story and correspondence of the author of La comedie humaine (The Human Comedy), did it occur to me that Balzac had to an extent prophesied his own destiny in his novel. His life was full of exhausting work, powerful surges of creative genius, and simultaneously bitter disappointment of his fondest hopes and dreams. And Balzac died precisely when, after marrying his beloved, his dream seemed to be coming true.

HE LOVED HER WITH ABANDON

Volumes have been written about the love story of Honore and Eveline at various times by historians, philologists, and creative writers in France, Ukraine, Poland, Russia, and elsewhere. One of the first (if not the first) Ukrainian scholars to tackle this theme was the historian and literature expert Fedir Savchenko. In a 1924 issue of the Ukrainian-studies quarterly Ukrayina (then edited by Academician Mykhailo Hrushevsky) he published "Balzac and Ukraine" based on his research of the famed Frenchman's correspondence. "On February 28, 1832," Savchenko writes, "Balzac received from his Paris publisher a letter postmarked Odesa and signed with the romantic words "A foreign lady." As the intrigued and equally romantic Balzac learned later, the letter was penned by Eva or Eveline, Hanska, nee Rzewuska, born in the village of Pohrebyshche in Kyiv guberniya" (now this is a small town in Vinnytsia oblast with a nearby railway station until recently named Rzhevutska - Author). The letter contained some opinions about Balzac's works, in particular on his already published La peau de chagrin.

Let us put aside Savchenko's study for awhile and turn to other sources. It is known from archival documents that Eveline was born on December 24, 1800. "The old family from which she descended gave Poland some powerful and ambitious individuals," the Russian historian of literature L. Grossman wrote in Balzac in Russia published in 1937. At the same time, as some Polish researchers noted, it was characteristic of the Rzewuskis to combine innate culture and good manners with a proclivity to antics and criticism resembling, to some extent, mysticism. The great novelist's oeuvres, noted Polish journalist Jan Kozieski in a series of articles called "Balzac in Verkhivnia" published in 1992, often contained the repercussions of Eveline's narratives of her ancestors' heroic feats. In 1819 she was married off to a rich Polish magnate Wenceslaw (Waclaw) Hanski, 22 (25 by other data) years older than his bride. The couple settled in the ancestral Hanski estate in Verkhivnia (now Zhytomyr oblast). Four of their five children died young, with only the daughter Hanna surviving.

After receiving several letters, Savchenko continues, Balzac informed Madame Hanska, as she had suggested herself, about receiving his epistles in the newspaper Le quotidien. These cautious and at first timid contacts by mail later led to a personal meeting (in secret from Mr. Hanski) in the Swiss town of Neuchatel in 1833. On returning to Paris, Balzac would write to Eveline, whom he called his Northern Star, "I love you like a child, with all joys, superstitions, and illusions of a first love." And more: "My dear, my beloved little lady..., a new and indescribably beautiful life has come upon me. I saw you, I spoke to you, our bodies entered into the same union as did our souls." And there also were other secret meetings of the lovers (in general, Balzac rather often rubbed shoulders with the Hanskis when they went abroad and maintained a respectful relationship with the family head): in 1834 in Geneva and 1835 in Vienna.

Mr. Hanski died in late 1841. Now in almost every letter to Verkhivnia, the writer doggedly tried to persuade Eveline to marry him. However, they only met in 1843, eight years after the previous date in Saint Petersburg. Later, in the spring of 1845, there was a rendezvous in Dresden, from where, as Kozielski writes, all four of them (including Eveline's daughter Hanna and her fiancО Jerzy (Georges) Mniszek) set out on a tour of Europe, Paris included. Balzac's paramour became pregnant during the journey. Balzac even chose a name for the expected son, Victor-Honore. But the child was born premature. "There was no Victor; a girl was born and died," AndrО Maurois wrote in his 1966 book, Prometheus: The Life of Balzac. The baby was buried in a small chapel at Verkhivnia, next to Eveline's first husband and their deceased children.

HE CAME HERE IN SEARCH OF HAPPINESS

From the very beginning of Honore's relationship with his Northern Star, he dreamed of visiting Ukraine and staying on her estate. But Balzac first came to Verkhivnia only in the fall of 1847 and stayed there until February 1848 with short intervals. Savchenko points out that Balzac hoped to improve both his moral and material situation. He lived in these places for the second (and last) time from September 1848 to April 1850. While visiting Ukraine, the novelist would go to Kyiv, Saint Petersburg, Berdychiv, and other places. In Verkhivnia he worked on a play, The Stepmother, a short story, "The Initiated," and other pieces, thinking over grandiose commercial projects never to be implemented. In one of his letters from Verkhivnia, he wrote, "I have here a luxurious small suite: a drawing-room, a study, and a bedroom; the study is finished with pink marble and has a fireplace, wonderful carpets, and comfortable furniture; the windows are made of pure glass without foil and overlook a beautiful landscape from all sides..."

"The French guest," the researcher Liudmyla Zhuravska writes in her 1966 study, "familiarized himself with Verkhivnia's everyday life and nature, and writes about it in detail in his letters to friends and relatives in Paris, is delighted with E. Hanska's skillful serfs, and records 77 recipes for making bread." "The park around the palace," she continues, "was the place for frequent strolls. The lanes were paved with red bricks, which allowed him to wander over them even after rains. There was a bridge spanning a ravine in the park - all this has been preserved in Verkhivnia." And the Hanski Palace itself with Balzac's small suite now houses an agricultural college. Some sections of the building are kept as Balzac memorial rooms.

However, the author's health had already been undermined. He suffered frequent and long illnesses in Verkhivnia, especially during the second visit. At the same time, various circumstances forced the wedding to be postponed: awaiting for the Russian Tsar's permission, Eveline's property litigation, and her family's disapproval. But still, on March 14, 1850 (by the Gregorian calendar), the wedding did take place at St. Barbara's Church in Berdychiv, far from the inquisitive eyes of the provincial public. Only those closest to the couple were present: Eveline's daughter Hanna and best men Gustave Olizar and Georges Mniszek. The ritual was conducted by a Roman Catholic priest Viktor Ozarowky assisted by Berdychiv parish canon Jozef Bjeloblocky. The Zhytomyr oblast state archives still keep the church register recording the wedding.

A month after the wedding, the couple traveled from Verkhivnia to Paris. This journey lasted almost a month due to the muddy spring roads. Balzac, as Eveline wrote to her daughter, arrived in a terrible state.

IN LIEU OF EPILOGUE

...Even before their marriage was blessed, Eveline Hanska did not entertain special hope for her future, knowing about Balzac's ailing condition. "I know only too well," she wrote to her brother Adam Rzewuski, "that Mr. Balzac is doomed and cannot hold out long even if attended to very well... However, the awareness of being indispensable to this great mind and this big noble heart is also a reward. I will give him all the happiness he deserves, and, by doing so I will be happy myself. He has been betrayed so often, so I will remain faithful to him unlike all the others, and... let him die with my hand in his hand and my image in his heart..."

Balzac died exactly like this: Eveline's hand held his hand to the last moment. Such devotion is perhaps every man's dream.

After Honore's death, his widow repaid his large debts. The Northern Star outlived him by 32 years. They lie buried side by side at the Pere-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Eveline's daughter Hanna and her son-in-law also found eternal rest there beside them.