The poet’s long jour ney

Exactly 160 years ago, in October 1846, Taras Shevchenko, a member of the Kyiv Archeological Commission, went on his first journey to Volyn. One of the main places that he intended to visit was Pochaiv and its famous Lavra (monastery). In his directive Kyiv’s Governor-General Dmitrii Bibikov, in whose office the commission worked, instructed Shevchenko “to set out to Pochaiv Lavra and describe the general exterior view of the monastery, the church’s interior, and the view of the surroundings from the terrace.” Apparently Shevchenko himself had expressed a desire to see Pochaiv of which he had heard so much but had never visited. This town figured in his works well before he visited it.

The poet first mentions Pochaiv in his Russian-language poem “The Blind Woman” (1842), in which the blind heroine travels to the monastery to pray for her illegitimate daughter Oksana:

“The poor blind woman did not know/Of her daughter’s woes/With a strange guide, stumbling/Among unfriendly people/Went to Kyiv and Pochaiv/To pray to the holy wonder workers.”

The beginning of the poem states that the heroine was born and raised in the Dnipro region. Nevertheless, she goes on a pilgrimage to distant Pochaiv in Volyn. The context of the poem implies that this town has a religious shrine that she regards as almost equal to the shrines located closer to familiar central Ukrainian Kyiv.

Pochaiv is mentioned in a similar context in the poem “The Blind Man” (1845) in which the heroine goes on a pilgrimage to the holy places of Ukraine to pray for her beloved Stepan:

“And at Pochaiv’s holy shrines/All tearfully she prayed/That she might have her dear Stepan/At least in dreams, surveyed.”

Later, after returning from exile, Shevchenko rewrote this poem, calling it “The Captive,” in which Pochaiv is mentioned in the same key.

In the mid-19 th century many Ukrainians regarded Pochaiv or, to be more exact, Pochaiv Monastery, as one of the greatest religious shrines and this was duly reflected in Shevchenko’s poetry.

He arrived in Pochaiv no later than Oct. 20, 1846, the date on which he recorded some folkloric works in this town. At the time Pochaiv was a small Volyn town in Kremenets district, with a population of around 1,000. According to statistics from 1870, there were 109 houses and 922 residents, almost half of whom were Jewish. This was roughly the situation when Shevchenko visited the town.

Life in Pochaiv was determined to a considerable extent by the monastery that towered, both literally and figuratively, over the town. Pochaiv was full of sharp contrasts (and still today). The wealthy and magnificent monastery stood in obvious disharmony with the squalid town nestled next to it. Quite a few town residents earned a living at the monks’ abode and the numerous pilgrims who came here.

According to some sources, Shevchenko stayed at the archpriest’s house, where other distinguished guests were usually lodged. The house is depicted in two watercolors that Shevchenko painted in Pochaiv. But a more plausible version says that the Bard stayed in a new house for pilgrims, which opened in July 1846. It stood near the foot of a hill by the monastery entrance. In addition to common rooms, there also were private rooms, one of which could have been given to Shevchenko. He may have painted the watercolor Pochaiv Lavra: Eastern View in this house. Ivan Stankevych, an ex-carpenter at the monastery, said that he saw Shevchenko’s own entry in the guestbook of the house, including the phrase “I am donating three silver rubles to the church.”

In Pochaiv Shevchenko executed four watercolors, two sketches, and one pencil drawing. Although these were just “exercises,” they demonstrated Shevchenko’s great talent as well as the new stage in his painting career. His watercolor Pochaiv Lavra: Southern View emphasizes the magnificent architectural features of the Lavra complex. It shows the Dormition Cathedral and its adjacent monastic structures, which stands against the background of a clear autumn sky. Yellow chestnut trees and the straight line of a fence seem to knit this huge ensemble together. In harsh contrast, two run-down mud houses stand in the foreground. With a few deft strokes of the brush the artist creates the impression of desolation, poverty, and even misery: a crooked fence, a wide- open gate, an empty yard, and a withered tree. Life seems to have died here. As if proof of this, the lonely figure of a pilgrim in a long robe is in the foreground. He is walking to the monastery down a path running alongside some ramshackle houses. Contrasting colors supplement this “social contrast.” The bright and light glow of the autumn sun contrasts with the long cool shadows.

The watercolor Pochaiv Lavra: Eastern View also shows the exterior view of the monastery premises. This work is somewhere between a landscape and a genre painting. The monastery ensemble does not dominate in this watercolor: it is always in the background against which the artist depicted narrow streets. In the foreground, on a hill in the middle of a street, there is a towering wooden cross with the crucified Jesus Christ. The cross is encircled by a wrought-iron fence. Another cross, made of stone with oblique ends and set deep into the ground, is on the left. Nearly parallel to the cross are two gigantic poplars bending from a gust of wind. The poplars and the fluttering purple cloth on the cross arouse a feeling of uneasiness. You can feel a barely visible fussiness in the gestures of some passersby on the street. This uneasiness seems to evaporate as you look closer at the picture, for against the backdrop of the sky you see the spires of the Dormition Cathedral, which make you feel more stable. But this is a deceptive stability — in the blink of an eye these high towers will fall into the raging whirlpool.

Shevchenko also painted the interior view of the Dormition Cathedral. In this watercolor gentle sunshine is slanting from the east. The right wall is darkened. In all likelihood, Shevchenko was painting this picture before midday, when the cathedral was closed to pilgrims. The church is almost empty; only in the foreground do we see the figure of a kneeling woman, who is praying to the Mother of God icon. A few monks are standing by the walls. Another small group of monks is near the iconostasis.

All these figures, perhaps with the exception of the woman, are lost in the majestic space of the temple. The cathedral’s interior is depicted in warm, golden tints. To preserve the integrity of this picture, Shevchenko made the walls and arcades bare of paintings and ornaments. The only decorations that catch the viewer’s eye are icons in carved frames and pilaster capitals. As in his other watercolors from the Pochaiv cycle, the artist used a cold navy blue color that contrasts with the warm golden tint.

The Bard’s activities in Pochaiv were not confined to painting the monastery. Here he recorded a number of folkloric works. Among them are the risque limerick, “There’s a tailor by my side,” a fragment of the comic song, “I drank to the dregs,” as well as the humorous and lyrical songs “Hylia, hylia, drake” and “Oh in the orchard.”

The Pochaiv folklore studies show the Bard’s indifference to the religious life of the monastery. As a member of the Kyiv Archeological Commission, he was supposed to collect folk tales, local stories, legends, and songs. Naturally, Pochaiv was full of all sorts of legends about miracles that had been wrought by the Pochaiv Mother of God, songs about her, and other types of religious lyric poetry. But Shevchenko ignored them. In any case, we will not find any echoes of this religious folklore either in his working album or his post-Pochaiv works.

Pochaiv is mentioned in several works that Shevchenko wrote after his journey to Volyn. In the plot of the poem “Petrus,” which was written in exile in approximately 1850, the heroine, a young noblewoman married to an old general, goes to the holy places of Ukraine — Kyiv and Pochaiv — to pray for her husband to die so that she can marry the young boy Petrus. The second, considerably revised, version of the poem has the following words:

“She went to make petition at Kyiv,/She even went as pilgrim to Pochaiv;/But the miraculous image did not help/Nor did the blessed power of saints assist her./And you wept ceaselessly, and agonized,/And finally abandoned all entreaties./Homeward you bore a serpent in your heart/And carried deadly poison in a phial.”

Shevchenko deliberately mentions the wonder-working icon of the Pochaiv Mother of God. He had not done so in his references to Pochaiv before the Volyn trip. There Pochaiv figured abstractly as one of the greatest shrines for Ukrainians, but here we see some specific features stemming from the poet’s impressions of his journey. One of these is the phrase “even went...to Pochaiv.” With the word “even” the poet shows that Pochaiv is very far, at least from the Dnipro region, where the poem’s heroine allegedly lives. At the same time, the context in which Pochaiv is mentioned in “Petrus” differs radically from his earlier works. For instance, in the poems “The Blind Woman” and “The Blind Man,” the poet has a generally positive attitude to pilgrimages to Kyiv and Pochaiv, even though, he declares, those pilgrimages were of no benefit to his heroes.

The situation is different in the poem “Petrus”: the general’s wife brings a vial of poison from those places and kills her husband. This can be interpreted as follows: Kyiv and Pochaiv’s shrines, including the Pochaiv Mother of God icon, do not mellow peoples’ hearts, do not make them kinder, but can even lead to evil actions.

A somewhat different, more positive, idea of Pochaiv is apparent in the story The Ex-Convict, written in approximately 1853. Out of a desire to abandon his life of robbery, the hero prepares “to set out to Pochaiv to pray to the Holy Icon,” which he eventually does.

Pochaiv unquestionably made a great impression on Shevchenko, but he had ambivalent feelings about the place, which he regarded both in a positive and negative light.