Fate often metes out undeservedly severe punishments to creative people. This happens when the finest creations produced by a God-given talent do not find a proper response from his contemporaries. The reasons vary, ranging from unresponsive critics, readers, or listeners, to the artificial or deliberate isolation of a Master from society (which is all the more tragic when an author is ahead of his time).
Eventually mistakes are corrected, although this may take decades, even centuries. Then renowned figures in the national Pantheon, who are familiar even to schoolchildren, suddenly emerge in an altogether different light. Parts of the creative heritage, which have remained in the gray zone of oblivion owing to our unpardonable negligence or slipshod attitude, suddenly turn out to be very important, surpassing the narrow confines of a given period.
A graphic example is the general public response to the creative legacy of Ivan Karpenko-Kary (pseudonym of Ivan Tobilevych), a distinguished Ukrainian playwright of the second half of the 19th century. To the average reader and theatergoer, Tobilevych is primarily the author of such classical comedies as Martyn Borulia, One Hundred Thousand, The Master, and Vanity. Meanwhile, the tragedy Sava Chaly, which marks the peak of his creativity, remains little known, even though as soon as it was staged by the “Society of Little Russian Actors led by P. K. Saksahansky and M. K. Sadovsky” (Kyiv, Jan. 21, 1900), Sava Chaly won public and critical acclaim.
This tragedy topped the repertoires of many Ukrainian drama troupes. Ivan Franko, the brilliant and demanding author and critic, who never paid empty compliments, wrote that Sava Chaly deserved being placed “at the summit of our literature.” This is how Franko understood the plot: “ Sava Chaly is a tragedy set in the 18th century, rooted in the periods of decay and vacillation of Ukrainian national feeling; it is the tragedy of a turncoat who decides to serve the enemy for his own benefit and, as a result of the natural reaction from the healthy remnants of national life, dies precisely when his treacherous plans are close to being implemented.” Franko sums up: “...this drama was of great importance to contemporary Ukraine, branding the intentions of contemporary national renegacy.”
Therefore, the “tragedy of the turncoat” and “national renegacy” are the very problems that Karpenko-Kary raises in his tragedy. Is it really worth stating that these problems are still current in Ukraine one hundred years later? Does the author’s fearless attempt to grasp the terrible essence (and hidden causes) of our outdated national diseases not make it clear to us why the Soviet authorities had a very cautious attitude to this tragedy while not officially banning it?
Karpenko-Kary was aware of his responsibility as a playwright. His wife Sofia, his closest friend, recalls the way the tragedy was conceived and staged (1898-99): “The folk ballad about Sava Chaly prompted Ivan Karpovych to take a closer look at that period of Ukrainian history during which a haidamak chieftain could operate after turning traitor to the people’s cause. The hero’s act of treason (siding with the enemy) was not an interesting event per se for Ivan Karpovych. The information about the treachery described in the ballad was too insignificant. The traitor’s comrades in arms punished him for his “silks and damasks” and for other gifts that the Polish nobility awarded to the traitor for his assistance in the destruction of his former friends and fellow warriors. Ivan Karpovych wanted to complicate the traitor’s emotions, instilling in him a seemingly sincere desire to save his native land from the bloody battles between the haidamak insurgents and the nobility (the key to understanding the tragedy! — I.S.). The writer thought long and hard about the Sava Chaly theme, about developing the plot involving the tragedy of a man who remained true to his homeland deep in his heart, but who chose the road of treachery. Ivan Karpovych wanted to write this play truthfully from the historical point of view, and at the same time depict Sava in a new light; to show his grievous error, not just his foul treachery.”
This testimony by Sofia Tobilevych (from her book Moi stezhky [My Footpaths]) is extremely valuable. At the same time it serves to nudge open the door of the literary studio of the great Karpenko-Kary. Indeed, if one compares the historical data on Sava Chaly (the young Mykola Kostomarov also wrote a play about him in 1838) with the image created by Karpenko-Kary, it is easy to see that the author added complexity and depth to the tragic conflict and thus avoided simplifying the portrayal of his hero.
The historical Sava Chaly was born in Komarhorod, Yampil county, in the Vinnytsia region. He was a burgher and served as a captain of cavalry (company commander, according to other sources) in the court guards of the Polish prince and magnate Jerzy Lubomirski. A powerful insurgent movement began in the Vinnytsia and Cherkasy regions and other territories of Right-Bank Ukraine in 1734. A militia regiment under Verlan’s command (including Chaly) took an active part in the movement. When he was in Uman toward the end of May, Chaly swore allegiance to Russian empress Anna Ioanovna and shortly afterward led a band of 200- 300 brigands, who raided nobles’ mansions and merchant caravans traveling under the Russian tsar’s protection, sometimes plundering small cities, like Sharhorod. Chaly thus earned the enmity of both the Russian and Polish authorities, with the former accusing him of breaking his oath and the latter condemning him as a highwayman. The Russian authorities managed to capture Sava, but in the spring of 1735 he vanished from the Bila Tserkva prison with part of his “regiment.” According to Polish archival documents, Chaly resurfaced as a “Cossack colonel” the following year (1736), in service to the Polish Crown. He actively collaborated with the nobility to destroy the haidamaks. (Some sources say that Sava returned to serve the nobility, counting on the pardon promised by Crown Hetman Potocki; Chaly’s successful marriage to the widow of a Sharhorod cobbler also played a decisive role; other sources used by Karpenko-Kary claim that Chaly married Zosja Kurczinska, daughter of a local Polish aristocrat.)
It is important to note that when Karpenko-Kary was analyzing the motives behind this marriage, he emphasized the true feelings of his heroes rather than Sava’s career expectations. Even more importantly, he does not doubt Chaly’s love for Ukraine. We see this character not merely as an outright traitor, criminal, and renegade, but also as a man who believes (he has convinced himself to believe) that “peasant and aristocratic interests are the same: peace and well-being” and on this basis tries to achieve what we would describe today as class peace between the nobility and serfs in the countryside. Chaly says, “We will save our faith, our people, and our land from new destruction!” Sava cannot abide the idea that Ukraine was “destined always to drown her sons in fraternal blood, to burn and destroy everything by fire so that, having lost her glorious children, she will don the yoke once again and groan beneath its weight...” Sava’s cherished dream is tranquility, an end to the massacre and bloodshed, and peace in the long-suffering land.
Chaly’s fatal error was his belief that it was impossible to consolidate and even reconcile the two hostile camps whose interests, world views, and aspirations were absolutely incompatible. Unfortunately, peace and quiet was not what Crown Hetman Potocki had in mind. His credo (emphasized in the play) is: “A peasant was, is, and shall remain a jackal. The stake and the gallows! This is my motto!” Even if Potocki needed consolidation and peace, then it would only have to be that “golden peace,” when the peasants would still remain humble slaves. But when Chaly, of whom Vedmid the haidamak says, “There are lords everywhere here — they’re only afraid of Sava Chaly, but they never fear the likes of us, they’re so used to treating us like cattle,” begins to serve the Polish nobility, he embarks on a deadly road leading not to glory and peace for Ukraine but to a fratricidal war against his recent comrades in arms; Orthodox churches burned by his gang in the heat of combat; his betrayal of his former ideals; and finally, his inglorious death at the hands of haidamak leader Hnat Holy, Chaly’s former brother in arms.
Karpenko-Kary never betrayed his ideals, among them national freedom, which was as important a component as social justice. It is no wonder that tsarist censor Verzhbitsky demanded that the tragedy Sava Chaly be prohibited, because it “contains here and there lines saturated with Ukrainian patriotic sentiment” and “incites class animosity”). The words from a letter that this premiere Ukrainian playwright wrote to his son in December 1900 act as a reminder to us: “Never forget your lofty ideals! The program of ideals is limitless, yet only he who carries even a small part of these ideals in his heart, protects them like a sacred object, and fulfills them according to his strength, has satisfaction, for it is difficult to achieve something eternally beautiful in life, whereas work for the benefit of something wonderful is limitless and always keeps a man on the noble height of vital tasks!”
