The hero of this article represented a Ukrainian school in Polish literature known as the ZA-GO-GRA three (Bogdan Zaleski, Seweryn Goszczynski, and Michal Grabowski). He highly praised the Ukrainian idea, valued above all the land where he was born, and always returned to his native place no matter where fate might take him. Seweryn Goszczynski broached the delicate issue of the 1768 haidamak uprising well before Taras Shevchenko by writing his best oeuvre, the poem Zamek Kaniowski (The Castle of Kaniv).
Seweryn Goszczynski was born on November 4, 1801, in Ilyintsi (now in Vinnytsia oblast). A year later his family moved to the village of Semaky. The poet’s father was property manager of Antony Pruszynski, owner of Semaky. It was in that village, rich in legends and sagas, that Goszczynski spent his childhood. What touched a special chord with him was the local graveyard, where there once was a church that allegedly had not burnt out in the times of trouble but sunk underground and you could hear its bells ringing if you pressedy our ear to the earth. Seweryn’s childhood and teen years can be called a travel because his family would change places of residence every year or two and live in what is now Khmelnytsky, Vinnytsia, Kirovohrad and Cherkasy oblasts. The future poet went to school at the village of Zaslavya. As the knowledge he received there was inadequate, the youth resorted to self-education. Then he continued his education in the village of Mezhyrich.
Three years later, the 13-old Seweryn got transferred to a secondary school in Vinnytsia. He had to start from scratch. Still, the youth was very glad because the humanities were taught there much better than at the Kremenets lyceum. In late November 1815 the Goszczinskis moved to Smiliansk district and then to Uman, which played quite an important role in the poet’s life. It was in this city that he received an education, wrote Zamek Kaniowski, and made himself a name as a poet.
UMAN, SOFIYIVKA, FRIENDS
Uman and its inimitable suburb Sofiyivka left a lasting impression in the poet’s heart. In that very place, the poet thoroughly studied such an important historic event as the Ukrainian-Polish conflict of 1768, the time when the local Polish potentate Franciszek Potocki was forcing the Orthodox into a union with the Catholic Church, thus stirring up religious intolerance. It is a proven fact that the Cossacks and peasants took merciless revenge on the oppressors. The rebels killed the Catholic priest Herakliusz Kostecki and tortured to death the students of a Uniate school. The common people looked on the Uman events differently than the nobles. This gave Goszczynski some food for thought.
In Uman, Goszczynski was growing and gaining life experience by helping his housekeeper father. He also made friends with Bogdan Zaleski, and from then on the two young poets were inseparable. According to a school tradition, they would get up at 4 a.m. and go to stroll across the Sofiyivka park before classes. The park’s fountains, lawns and all kinds of plants resembled an Eden nook and made a lasting impression on the pupils. The poet reminisced later about his rapturous sentiments as follows, “The desire was so strong that during the school Mass I mainly prayed God to help me become a poet.” Translations of Horace and a poem about Tadeusz Kosciuszko were the young Seweryn’s first works. He went on a summer vacation to Korsun, near Kaniv, in search of materials for a future poem about the haidamaks. Examining the ruined castle and speaking to Korsun residents, Goszczynski learned that there had been Cossacks who opposed the haidamaks’ movement. For example, a Cossack leader named Vernyhora urged people to follow the ways of God, not of the haidamaks, and tried to resolve the conflict bloodlessly.
The Uman vacations produced a well-known literary group ZA-GO-GRA composed of three Polish poets who liked Ukrainian subjects: Bogdan Zaleski, Seweryn Goszczinski, and Michal Grabowski. Michal Grabowski once said about those days, “The eighteen months that I spent at the Uman district school radically changed my further destiny. The school prompted me to take up a scholastic and literary pursuit. After I met Seweryn Goszczynski and Bogdan Zaleski, I felt a heartfelt desire to be a writer — much the same as in childhood I wanted to be a saint.” Soon the Uman threesome split: Grabowski entered an Odesa lyceum, and Zaleski went to Warsaw. Still, even under these circumstances, the young writers always felt the influence of Ukraine on their oeuvre and their soul.
The ZA-GO-GRA group reunited in Warsaw some time later. Then Zaleski and Goszczynski joined the secret Union of Polish Brothers in 1821. Further on, the friends had to lead an underground life. Once Goszczynski even wished to move to Greece to take part in an anti-Turkish uprising. He traveled to that country via Odesa. He had to walk home for five long months.
In 1824 in Uman Goszczynski wrote A Night in Sofiyivka and conceived Zamek Kaniowski with a real-life Cossack Nebaba as the protagonist. The undercover existence in Sofiyivka and then in Kyiv, the December, 1825, uprising roused the young poet’s heart. Goszczynski began writing his chief oeuvre, Zamek Kaniowski, in Lishchynivka, near Uman, where his family lived at the time. The author was not yet aware that he possessed a magical gift: he composed an unheard-of poem, an historically true and deeply philosophical work based on rich Ukrainian folklore. When he discussed his oeuvre with his friend Grabowski, the latter wrote to Zaleski in Warsaw that Goszczynski was on a par with Johann W. Goethe and William Shakespeare.
HE KNEW HOW TO FIND A WAY WITH UKRAINIANS
The first part of Zamek Kaniowski was created in Lishchynivka. The poet finished writing the poem in Oleksandrivka, on the river Tiasmynytsia, where he was hiding in the house of Grabowski’s mother. Grabowski, quite a well-off person, helped Goszczynski very much. He organized a tour of Kaniv and the places of Koliyivshchyna (the haidamaks’ uprising — Ed.). They discovered right there that the character named Shvachka was a Kaniv middle class man. The poet opposed the solid figure of Shvachka to the proud and tragic Nebaba. The poems heroine Orlika was also a real-life person.
Bogdan Zaleski, who was in Warsaw at the time, took a dim view of Zamek Kaniowski because he loved and respected only those Cossacks who considered themselves subjects of the Polish crown. The poem’s third part was still better. Adam Mickiewicz also mentioned Zamek Kaniowski in his epic Thaddeus. This oeuvre debunks the myth of the haidamaks’ excessive cruelty and savagery. The heroes suffer from the vagaries of time, often recall their golden youth, and are tragically tormented over “what the implacable fate decreed.” The murder of Oksana triggered other fatal crimes, which laid the groundwork for Koliyivshchyna. As for Zamek Kaniowski, it ends on a tragic note,
As the war was over, the gate of hell closed, leaving behind the same peace and the same crimes.
Goszczynski finished his legendary poem in Oleksandrivsk, where Grabowski took him from Lishchynivka.
The publication of Zamek Kaniowski caused the admiration of romanticists and the indignation of classicists, while progressive critics viewed the poem as a future way of development for poetry and other genres of literature. What especially fascinated them was the introduction to the poem, where Nebaba looks around from the oak-tree’s top and recalls his childhood, eternal and inimitable fires of St. John the Baptist’s Night. The poetic lines from this part were popular and frequently quoted in the literary circles.
A few years later, Seweryn Goszczynski wrote his second major work on the Ukrainian theme, the poetic novella Vernyhora, in Morozovychi, Volyn province. Staying there, the author studied and tried to draw strength from the Bible. His thoughts flowed from Israelite prophecies to those of Vernyhora, the Ukrainian Cossack leader. In Morozovychi, the poet drew inspiration from tilling the land, the thing he had liked since he was a child. The poet usually worked in a barn, as he had done earlier in the village of Svynarka.
In the summer of 1829 he was again on his native Ukrainian soil: he visited Lishchynivka and then Kyiv to discuss the publishing problems with Glueksberg. Yet, fate took an abrupt turn.
The summer of 1830 saw civil unrest in Belgium, a crisis in Berlin and Madrid, and a public turmoil in Paris. This created the prospect of a revolutionary movement in Warsaw. In late November 1830 Goszczynski took part in the Polish uprising, including the storming of Belvedere. The poet and warrior, who wanted all the Russian Empire’s peoples to live in freedom, again had to lie low after the uprising was crushed.
From 1838 onwards the poet was forced to live in France, where he nearly starved to death. Fate dealt him many a severe blow. Nevertheless, as his heart strengthened, so did the recognition of his talent. In early 1839, Bogdan Zaleski expressed quite a different opinion about his oeuvre than he had done before, “I haven’t opened your Zamek Kaniowski for three years. All through this time, I’ve been thinking a lot and crying from housetops that I would like to feel the unspoken joy of seeing the Cossack Nebaba, Orlika, and the whole haidamak force. I don’t want to praise you right in your eyes, but you are a devil, and you’ll be accursed for centuries to come if you abandon your field. I sowed my wild oats and woke up recently after sleeping on thorns. And you, brother, stamp your hoof and you will not only reach me but also overtake the whole lot of us! My dear Cossack, heart is the main thing, so make it better and better!”
Seweryn Goszczynski came back to Ukraine in 1872. He lived to the end of is lifetime in Lviv, as he had dreamed before. He died in this city on February 25, 1875. The great pilgrim, who had never parted with the Muse, found his last refuge at Lychakiv Cemetery.
