The poet and the martyr

Todos Osmachka (1895–1962) is an author with an unusual fate. He had to go through NKVD torture chambers, the bitterness of emigration, and the horrible loneliness of the artist. His Lviv period is particularly interesting for historians and literary critics.

The poet arrived in Lviv in the spring of 1942. Ironically, it was the Germans that saved him from Stalin’s butchers. Before Hitler’s assault on the Soviet Union, Osmachka was an inmate at the Kyrylivsky mental hospital in Kyiv. When the German troops neared the Ukrainian capital, the staff ran away, so the freed poet set out on foot to his home village of Kutsivka, Cherkasy oblast.

How exactly he got to Lviv remains unclear. Osmachka’s friends and fellow writers helped him settle down in the new place. Soon they sent him to rest in the little Polish town of Krynica, so that the poet could recover from the mental wounds inflicted by the Soviet regime.

He was accommodated at the town’s best holiday home, the luxury villa Patria. Osmachka was instantly the center of attention — a tall blue-eyed man in his late forties. He was incommunicado, spending all of his free time roaming in the mountains or sitting quietly in his room. The Ukrainians who were staying at Patria met him only in the dining room. Their queer neighbor intrigued them a lot. Little by little, they were able to reach out to the poet, and sometimes he would play a game of cards with other men, or go to the pub with them.

This complicated stage in Osmachka’s life was also a romantic one: he met the woman of his dreams and fell madly in love. He was in love like he had never been before, and never was after, according to Mykhailo Slaboshpytsky, a well-known writer and author of a book about the poet.

Mother Superior Yosyfa, abbess of the Studite Sisters convent in Lviv, also arrived in Krynica and was staying at Patria. Her worldly name used to be Olena Viter, and she lived and studied in Kyiv. By the way, this patriotic young woman was in friendly relations with the students who fought and died at Kruty for the independence of Ukraine. Together with her mother she fled from the Bolsheviks to Lviv. There she graduated from a gymnasium and dedicated herself to the service of God.

“She was pretty, with big, shrewd dark eyes, she was cultured, merry, and witty, and had a poetic nature; she had a beautiful voice and was full of dedication and sacrifice,” recalled sister Olympia, who stayed at the same convent as Yosyfa in the 1930s.

Sister Chrysanthia, a nun at the convent of the Holy Shroud, Order of Theodore the Studite, would relate later: “She was a pretty, strong-willed woman, full of energy, with beautiful, shining eyes! Extremely kind-hearted, she would embrace all at once, and console everyone...”

During the Soviet occupation of Lviv Mother Superior Yosyfa was arrested and cruelly tortured, as the NKVD strove to wrest evidence against Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky from her. During the interrogation the woman showed immense courage. She was beaten and raped, the interrogators set fire to her clothes and threatened to burn her alive — to no avail! She signed nothing and betrayed no one to Stalin’s butchers.

That is what she told sister Olympia at a certain point in time: “Armed NKVD agents came to our convent, eight men and a woman. They rushed to me, beat me up, started to tear off my cassock saying, ‘Come on, take this off, you Metropolitan bitch, you Petliurist [supporter of Symon Petliura]! Now you’re going to change your dress and your faith!’

“I was brought to the NKVD office in Pelychenska Street. At eight in the evening they took me to an interrogation which lasted till four in the morning. The investigators changed three times — and each of them demanded that I ‘make the confession.’ They asked me three questions: What were my crimes against the Soviet regime?, How long had I been in the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, and what were my connections abroad?, and Where did I hide the weapons? Naturally, I rejected all accusations...

“They would drag me by the hair, bang my head against the wall, punch me in the face... They beat me with sticks, then rubber, then iron... They pulled out my hair and twisted my arms. At one point, I was bleeding through my mouth. The NKVD officer grabbed a dirty cloth which lay near the spittoon, and gagged me with it. Then he tore the cloth out, opened my mouth and spewed his sputum in it.

“Since the day of my arrest, they interrogated me 47 times, and tortured me during each interrogation. Once they were bringing me from the prison to the interrogation room and asked if I wanted Ukraine to be independent. I answered that I did. Then they threw me into a cellar, where rats went for me. Then they took me back to the interrogation room, tore my shirt off and passed electric current through my body...”

She would have been shot, but the Soviets ran out of time: Lviv was occupied by Germans. All prisoners were released from jails and torture cells, and the unbowed abbess among them. Metropolitan Sheptytsky immediately sent Mother Yosyfa to Krynica for medical treatment and rest after all the horrors she had been through. This is how she found herself at villa Patria and met Osmachka.

It all happened in the dining room. Mother Superior sat at one table with Osmachka. The poet was astonished by the woman’s beauty and surprised to find out that she came from Kyiv. He brightened up and started to talk to her. He kept repeating that they were fellow countrymen and even suggested that Mother Superior have a drink with him, to celebrate such an important fact. The abbess refused, and Osmachka was at a loss — he had totally forgotten how to behave in a lady’s company.

Osmachka suggested that they meet later that evening and go for a walk in the park. The woman naturally refused. This did not stop the amorous poet, and later he boasted to the other men that he was writing a poem about the nun.

The witnesses of the poet’s courtship were intrigued to see the outcome of this strange love story.

And so, Osmachka starts ... to serenade the abbess from Lviv! The other women tried to talk him out of this, but to no avail. No one knows where the amorous man procured a bandura to accompany his heartfelt songs “Dark eyes, black brows...” They say that he sang beautifully and had a great voice.

However, the result of this performance was somewhat unexpected for Osmachka. Mother Yosyfa could not stand any more of his courtship and fled villa Patria early the next morning. On arriving back to Lviv, she confessed to the Metropolitan and told him about Osmachka’s love. Sheptytsky is said to have answered, “Although a secular man, he is a great poet...”

“A fragile hope lured him and was gone. His soul obviously became dumb and desolate, like a site of fire.” This is how Slaboshpytsky describes the poet’s state.

Literary critic Olha Vitoshynska wrote this about the end of the poet’s romantic affair: “The next morning all Ukrainians in Krynica were surprised to learn that Mother Yosyfa had departed for Lviv early at dawn, without even starting her treatment...”

Osmachka’s biographers believe that Mother Yosyfa made a much deeper impact on the poet’s soul than all his other women together. This nun remained untouchable in his memory. Mother Superior was 38 at the time, and the poet was nine years older than her. Late love is always the strongest — perhaps it is because one feels the inexorable course of time more sharply, and thus enjoys every moment of transient happiness.

According to Vitoshynska’s memories, Osmachka was dumbfounded by the abbess’ prompt departure. Obsessed with sorrow and longing, he poured out on paper all of his pent up erotic fervor:

Only of her I used to dream
by starlight,
Like of a terribly
happy sin,
And I heard her skirt
passionately
Rustling something
about the charm of her legs...

No one can say what this outstanding poet’s life would have been, had he found mutual love, and a happy family. Osmachka wasn’t naturally social, and it would have been too much of a problem to get on with a woman he loved. She might have become a permanent victim to his freakish psyche and his eccentric habits. Doctor Maria Keivan, Osmachka’s close acquaintance from the 1940s, remarked that the poet was not cut out for marriage. He was doomed to loneliness, though he did not realize it.

“He carried with him the profound realization of his own tragedy. This sensation brings man close to insanity,” believes Slaboshpytsky.

Volodymyr Polishchuk, professor at Bohdan Khmelnytsky Cherkasy National University, adds: “It is also hard to picture the artist’s state of mind, depressed by his constant loneliness in a crowd of people. But it was a loneliness which the poet himself yearned for... It was in his nature. Or, more exactly, it is a hard life that made the poet so morose.”