Paying a visit to Pavlo Tychyna

On June 16 quite an unusual event called “Oh, young lady…” took place near the Memorial Flat of Pavlo Tychyna on Tereshchenkivska Street 5 in Kyiv. All interested male passers-by could write on a special board a name of their beloved woman or some other important woman, and women, for example, could write their favorite female name. For that museum staff presented them with Tychyna’s poems. Oddly enough, on this hot Sunday morning the event attracted people’s attention and even caused some excitement. Many passers-by gladly wrote the names (sometimes even more than one), read poetry, there was even an older lady, who told everyone how her grandmother became friends with the poet and his younger colleagues.

This museum has been trying for several years already to popularize the figure of Pavlo Tychyna, they do it actively and use non-standard approaches. Sometimes it even seems that they try too hard – organize numerous campaigns, performances, poetry reading marathons, solo performances, game lessons for school students, and other activities, even such as planting flowers in the flowerbeds near the building by the visitors of the museum (the author of this article also participated in this “literary gardening”), sometimes give somewhat bizarre impression and not quite of the museum nature. But it seems that it all works. More and more visitors come to the Memorial Flat, the museum regularly appears in mass media reports, there is a lot of information about it on the Internet, it is one of the leading museums that are constantly being modernized without any significant grants or other financial support. Is there a need to explain how important this is in the present circumstances?

“We do our best to win the young audience and the audience of the most socially active age,” said Tetiana Sosnovska, director of the museum (by the way, a distant relative of Tychyna). “This must be done by all museums nowadays. Otherwise, time will pass and soon we will have no visitors at all and people will no longer understand why we need museums as such.”

All these activities, perhaps, help the Memorial Flat to withstand regular attempts of the authorities of various times and colors to move them somewhere.

“EAT A BRICK” IS REALLY NOT A BETTER OPTION

The artistic heritage of Pavlo Tychyna is now in a bit strange, to say, transit state. On the one hand, the poet finally got rid, more or less, of the obsessive-pathetic image, which he had in Soviet times and for which had received dashing epigram “It is better to eat a brick than read Tychyna’s poems.” On the other hand, his early writing and other things that are far from socialist realism, are brought up to a conventional pedestal of conventional literary canon, but are still not very widely known. And the biography of the poet, full of self-denial and frank adjustments to the circumstances, seems not quite interesting to many, not worth publishing and investigating.

That’s why now is the appropriate time to once again remind about Pavlo Tychyna, about his diverse and controversial literary work. Let’s not forget, by the way, that one of the main motifs of Tychyna’s poetry is a search for balance, search for internal strength in external adverse and catastrophic circumstances. Sounds quite topical, doesn’t it?

He says he has no enemy

And never had one.

The only enemy we have

Is our heart.

Dear mom, give me your blessing

to go look for potion,

Look for potion for human folly.

We would also like to remind about his exceptional, original, both wise and naive visualization, the logic of which conforms insight, epiphany.

Dress yourself for execution! – shouted someone and knocked on the door.

I woke up. Wind opened the window. The sky was getting greener and kinder. And a large piano was playing over the entire city…

And I realized – it’s Easter.

I think this is one of the most brilliant Tychyna’s lines. Not coincidentally the motif appeared again even within one book Instead of Sonnets and Octaves:

…Wake up! – new power entered the city!

Open your eyes (‘consonance’).

On the wall the window looks like a fiery sharp sign in the light of the sun.

That’s an example of unique, high, and subtle modernism, which even though “disappeared” from poet’s writing (not completely though!), but still remained an outstanding, always important achievement of the Ukrainian national culture of the 20th century.

SECRET PLACES IN TYCHYNA’S LIBRARY

Tychyna lived in the apartment on Tereshchenkivska Street from his 40s until his death. At that time he was the Minister (People’s Commissar) of Education of the USSR, and, therefore, had five rooms all furnished, however, rather modestly. Ministers from the time of stagnation and independence would have probably laughed at such flat. More decent visitors have a chance to see the surrounding in which the poet lived and worked at that time.

This is the period of “late Tychyna.” It could seem as a complete spiritual decay – 459.67 Fahrenheit. Still, when you walk around the suffocating Memorial Flat in summer time you clearly understand – Tychyna continued to live in culture, aspired to something and even had secret places, where there still remained a little bit of “that” air, which he breathed until the inner and outer breakdown of the 1930s.

This is especially noticeable in the library. Just consider the fact that it contains around 14,000 books. Bookshelves are everywhere. And on those bookshelves next to indispensable songs about Lenin and Stalin, next to predictable classics or books, on which Tychyna worked as a translator, or simply interesting rarities such as Erasmus Roterodamus edition published in 1729, in the rear ranks the seditious books of executed, forgotten, and forbidden friends were hidden. Especially valuable are the books like Kamo Hriadeshy by Mykola Khvyliovy with an autograph saying “to my teacher and friend”! Or a collection of the “hostile” Yevhen Malaniuk with a poem dedicated to “late Tychyna” himself: “…from your clarinet a painted pipe has remained!” Thus, Tychyna’s opportunism is a bit in the spirit of Islamic principle of “taqiyya” or “ketman” – hiding of your true beliefs under persecution, which gives those grim years some mysterious flavor.

The staff of the museum will also tell you about Tychyna’s patron activity, about how he continued to make graphic images, about his continuous musical interests. In the “official” study there is a spectacular grand piano, the indispensable clarinet, and also an unusual bandura with the Soviet star, made specifically for Tychyna by a master Volodymyr Tuzychenko. In the living room the visitors can see a lot of interesting Soviet household items – dishes, furniture, TV set, refrigerator, toys, and more. And, of course, everywhere, in every room and corridors there is a huge variety of artwork.

Thus, in order to learn more about Tychyna and the spirit and texture of his time (or simply to refresh your knowledge of these things), you should definitely pay a visit to his Memorial Flat in Kyiv. By the way, in the summer time the staff of the museum begins a series of tours called “Kyiv, Where Pavlo Tychyna Lived” – these are planned as walks around the neighborhood, telling stories about interesting historic sites associated with the poet. The already mentioned campaign “Plant a Flower” is still open by the end of June and in July Tetiana Sosnovska promises to organize a new campaign “Take Care of a Flower.” I am definitely going to come and water the flowers I planted on my first visit there. More details about the events organized at the museum, its schedule, and other technical details can be found on the website tychyna.com or in museum’s group on Facebook.