Report from Lyavki for the 140th anniversary of Yanka Kupala's birth
Lyavki became a hospitable refuge, a place of power, as they say now, for our famous Bard. Yanka Kupala lived well here, breathed freely, and perhaps his best poems originated from here. Even now, the poet is well remembered here, and stories of those who had the good fortune to know the renowned countryman are passed down from mouth to mouth.
"We'll have to take the train to Orsha, and then another twenty kilometers," Yanka Kupala told Yakub Kolas. Ivan Dominikovitch first found himself in Lyavki with other writers in April 1935 during a business trip: the writers were speaking at collective farm meetings and parties. The poet was so impressed by the village, the people, and the surroundings that he spent the entire summer living here with the forester Shimansky's family. He liked the area so much that after the government's decision to build a dacha in honor of his 30th creative anniversary, he answered the question "Where?" with "Only here!" Petrus Brovka, who died in March 1980, recalled that it was hard to imagine a more wonderful corner. Standing over the particularly beautiful and spacious Dnieper River in Lyavki, Kupala said: "Just look, Petrusyok, at the grandeur of this river, and it connects all of us – Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians." How bitter it is to read these fraternal and heartfelt words of the Bard today, when such things are happening between us Slavs.
The fact that it was truly difficult to imagine a better place for a summer residence is also described in the novel-essay by the prominent Belarusian literary critic Oleg Loyka (who passed away in 2008). He writes that over the dacha on the steep bank, ancient, pensive pines swayed their sprawling branches in the high blue sky. They "gave Kupala mushrooms, berries, and zubrovka – the silky fragrant grass of the European bison, which grows only in Belarus." In the trunk of the "Chevrolet," a car gifted to the poet by the government in 1939, along with "the best herbs for a hospitable tincture," were "white porcini mushrooms in brown-black, gnarled caps, fiery red saffron milk caps, oily slippery jacks, and red-headed birch boletes." Yanka Kupala also participated in the quiet and pleasant hunt for them.Kolas. Besides him and Brovka mentioned above, Mikhas Lynkov, Pyotra Glebka, and Andrey Alexandrovich also visited. Writers from the union republics also visited the host – they translated poems into their languages, compiled collections of them…
This was told to me during my work at "Sel'skaya Gazeta" by the former director of the Yanka Kupala Literary Museum, Zhanna Kazimirovna Dapkyunas, the daughter of the poet's niece Yadviga Yulianovna Romanovskaya, the keeper of his literary and archival heritage. According to Zhanna Kazimirovna, along with Ivan Dominikavich, his wife Uladislava Frantsevna visited Levki, of course, as well as his younger sister Leokadiya with her sons Yanka and Ulada, middle sister Maria, nieces Uladzya, Nina, Vatya, and Yadviga.
Memorial complex "Yanka Kupala's Dacha".
According to Kolas's memories, when he first arrived in Levki, Kupala took him to explore the surroundings. First, the forest, which was often intersected by deep ravines. Crystal clear springs gushed from their slopes. They formed murmuring streams at the bottom of the ravines, which merged into one and rushed swiftly into the Dnieper, into the bank of which the steep slope, densely overgrown with lush bushes, abutted. On a summer morning, before sunrise, the poet was impressed and excited, delighted and inspired by the scene they observed from the window of Kupala's dacha. A slow, majestic barge with a red lantern. Following it – a fiery spot reflected in the clear water. Fishing boats. And in the distance, two kilometers upstream – the silhouettes of Kopys buildings…
I also became acquainted with Kolas's first memory of Kupala with great interest. Here it is: "My first direct meeting with Yanka Kupala took place only in the summer of 1912, almost a year after my release from prison. (The poet was imprisoned in Minsk for participating in the Belarusian Teachers' Union. – U. B.)
…I lived with my relatives on the Neman, one and a half kilometers from the village of Mikolaevshchina. At that time, I was in the village with one of my friends. And suddenly one of my sisters runs up. Excited, tired from the fast walk, she immediately with запаThe mother said: "Yanka Kupala has come to see you!" These words struck me deeply. I immediately said goodbye to my friend and hurried home to meet the poet, whom I had known for a long time, but had never seen before, and whom I so desperately wanted to see.
Kupala was sitting at the table. Seeing me at the doorstep, he slowly rose and walked towards me. A gentle smile, a clear young face, cheerful light-brown eyes with a barely perceptible mischievous glint – this was Yanka Kupala in my eyes. He lives like this to this day in the most cherished corner of my memory.
...Usually, Kupala rarely engaged in long conversations. He mostly responded with short and apt answers and remarks. His tone of speech always carried good-natured notes of jest and humor. He kept his cherished thoughts to himself, not scattering them. And only after bringing them forth, having lived through them, did he give them freedom in his works. He also disliked talking about his creative intentions and plans...»
Literary and documentary exhibition. The poet was there – he was already well-known to old and young – of medium height, with a cane and a colorful skullcap. And about two weeks later, he came on foot, as he often did, alone. He brought his grandfather a bottle of personal zubrovka, and his mother – candies and a new book "Song to Construction". It had just been published and was kept in the Anikovichs' house in Gorodok until the very end of the war (there, on the outskirts, next to a large swamp, his grandfather built a tiny house during the Great Patriotic War). Ivan Dominikovich also visited Kopys with his wife Vladislava Frantsevna, who was once very offended by her neighbor-friend: she didn't tell her that in her absence, Yanka had played at the dacha at night not only with poet friends but also with local beautiful girls. Afterwards, he had to replace all the windows at the dacha! In general, young people gathered in a large club, the construction of which was organized by the Komsomol aktiv. A respectable house was named in the style of the time – "Chyrvony araty" (Red Ploughman). Kupala wrote:
*Party at the collective farm,*
*In "Chyrvony araty", —*
*Stepkas, Petkas, Vas'kas came,*
*Zoskas, Stas'kas, Kas'kas came,*
*And the accordion plays and plays.*
These are lines from the poem "Party", which is included in the famous "Liaukowski Cycle".
Despite temporary life misunderstandings, which were immediately forgotten, Vladislava Frantsevna spoke very warmly about her native places: "When I remember Lyavki, where our dacha was, I always see the high bank of the Dnieper, the old pine forest, thoughtful, rustling... Near the Dnieper, there are overgrown bird cherry bushes, hazelnuts, and in the tall green grass, trenches, dugouts – a memory of the First World War.
Rafts pass along the Dnieper, beyond the Dnieper, wide collective farm fields are visible, greening with crops in spring, and later – golden in heavyof grain.
The raftsmen sang songs that carried over the water for a long time, echoing in the pines. All day long the forest was filled with birdsong, at night and in the morning the whole space trembled with the singing of nightingales.”
Descent to the Dnieper.
Once again, the grandfather passed on the peculiar medicine to Kupala during his visit to Kopys Secondary School, where his mother was then studying in the seventh grade. She worked as a nurse for almost half a centuryat the hospital of our factory, and I never heard her called anything but Illinichna – without a first or last name. "Kupala visited our school several times," Illinichna recalled. "I especially remember when he came in 1938, seemingly with Brovka. Our teacher, Anna Yakovlevna Borodintseva, invited him, as we younger ones found out, to the graduation party. Kupala arrived, and one couldn't help but notice, in a beautiful gray suit with a white shirt and tie, very neatly groomed. Students, teachers, and villagers gathered – everyone who happened to be at the school at that moment. He was so pleasant, modest, and bright, more interested in local affairs than in talking about himself. He asked how many graduates there were, where they planned to work, who was staying to study, where their parents worked, what they enjoyed doing most, what the school urgently needed, and if anyone wrote poetry. He himself read about a father calling his sons and asking what they would do."
Some time later, I learned that this was the poem "Sons" – the first one written by the poet in Lyavki, which was included in the aforementioned "Lyavkovsky Cycle." For those who remember, it also includes "Old Trenches," "Belarus of the Order-Bearer," "Alesya," "It Seems Like Yesterday," "When I Was Young," "Flax," and, of course, the immortal "Boy and the Pilot."
With this and other poems by the poet, in my first years, I earned New Year's gifts not only for myself but also for Maxim, Shkred, and Valik. The head of the auxiliary farm of the Orsha Flax Combine, a small, cunning, and bold man named Kostyuchok, gave the coveted treats for free only to those children who could recite a particular poem by heart. My friends couldn't do it, so I recited what was allowed for them.
As for "The Boy and the Pilot," the story of the appearance of this famous poem deserves to be told. On the village street, Kupala became so engrossed in conversation with a friend that he forgot everything. Suddenly, a sun-tanned boy with white flaxen hair ran out from a gate towards them. The interlocutors stopped in surprise. The boy, on the run, was spinning around in front of himself with his hands.and buzzed like an airplane. His face was serious, focused on a single thought. The image so impressed the author of "Heritage," created in 1918, that he shouted after the boy: "What do you want to be?" And without stopping, he resoundingly replied: "A pilot!" Soon, music by composer Viktor Bely was born to the words.
By the way, during the Great Patriotic War, the poem "The Boy and the Pilot at War" appeared as a continuation. Five days after its beginning, the Bard, who would write the popular poem "Belarusian Partisans," was in Lyavki (together with his wife and Kolas) for the last time...
Now, one of the four branches of the Kupala Museum in Minsk is located here. Two more are in the Maladzyechna region (Vyazynka and Yakhimowshchyna) and one is in the Logoysk region (Akopy). I was introduced to the Orsha branch by Tamara Kryna, who was assisted by Oksana Platonova, Svetlana Galetskaya, Lyudmila Menshova, and Dmitry Akulov. The local branch is a memorial reserve covering an area of 19 hectares, established in October 1978. Guests are welcomed at the restored dacha, which burned down on July 3, 1941, from a direct hit by a German shell from the other side of the Dnieper; the former office building of the Kopys forestry, which survived the war; the driver's house, the hotel, utility buildings; the monument "Poet's Autumn" by sculptor Anatoly Anikeychik, who passed away at 56; a section of mixed forest, a public recreation area, and, of course, the garage. It houses the very "Chevrolet" that the classic used from 1939 to 1942, which attracts everyone. In 2010, the outstanding rarity was restored and exhibited for a time in the capital's museum, and then returned to its "homeland." Today, the cost of the car, which I, a seventh-grader from a now-defunct school, "drove" during my first meeting with Lyavki, exceeds one hundred thousand euros.
The "Chevrolet" car, gifted to Yanka Kupala in 1939 by the government of the BSSR.
I remember how, with bated breath, I examined the new literary and documentary exhibition that had just been created in the former forestry office. It embodied the image of "The Guest," which the Bard developed in the poem of the same name, one of seventeen written in June 1935:
...Such an honor I have never had,
As long as I have lived on this earth,
To be welcomed with bread and salt like this,
And not in some dream, but in reality...
Monument to Yanka Kupala in the урочище Lyavki of the Orsha district.
As in Kupala's works, each museum hall has its own personal, unique voice. Where have you been before, modern multimedia equipment?! With your help, I feel the atmosphere of that time and the presence of the poet more deeply. I listen to the wonderful melodious songs set to his golden words and the nightingales of Lyavki, which sing only in their homeland. Perhaps, along with the guests who come and go to Lyavki to pay homage to the genius of the Belarusian word and spirit, Yanka Kupala himself hears them too...
"SB"
"Look, Petrusyok, at this river"
"We'll have to take the train to Orsha, and then another twenty kilometers," Yanka Kupala told Yakub Kolas. Ivan Dominikovitch first found himself in Lyavki with other writers in April 1935 during a business trip: the writers were speaking at collective farm meetings and parties. The poet was so impressed by the village, the people, and the surroundings that he spent the entire summer living here with the forester Shimansky's family. He liked the area so much that after the government's decision to build a dacha in honor of his 30th creative anniversary, he answered the question "Where?" with "Only here!" Petrus Brovka, who died in March 1980, recalled that it was hard to imagine a more wonderful corner. Standing over the particularly beautiful and spacious Dnieper River in Lyavki, Kupala said: "Just look, Petrusyok, at the grandeur of this river, and it connects all of us – Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians." How bitter it is to read these fraternal and heartfelt words of the Bard today, when such things are happening between us Slavs.The fact that it was truly difficult to imagine a better place for a summer residence is also described in the novel-essay by the prominent Belarusian literary critic Oleg Loyka (who passed away in 2008). He writes that over the dacha on the steep bank, ancient, pensive pines swayed their sprawling branches in the high blue sky. They "gave Kupala mushrooms, berries, and zubrovka – the silky fragrant grass of the European bison, which grows only in Belarus." In the trunk of the "Chevrolet," a car gifted to the poet by the government in 1939, along with "the best herbs for a hospitable tincture," were "white porcini mushrooms in brown-black, gnarled caps, fiery red saffron milk caps, oily slippery jacks, and red-headed birch boletes." Yanka Kupala also participated in the quiet and pleasant hunt for them.Kolas. Besides him and Brovka mentioned above, Mikhas Lynkov, Pyotra Glebka, and Andrey Alexandrovich also visited. Writers from the union republics also visited the host – they translated poems into their languages, compiled collections of them…
This was told to me during my work at "Sel'skaya Gazeta" by the former director of the Yanka Kupala Literary Museum, Zhanna Kazimirovna Dapkyunas, the daughter of the poet's niece Yadviga Yulianovna Romanovskaya, the keeper of his literary and archival heritage. According to Zhanna Kazimirovna, along with Ivan Dominikavich, his wife Uladislava Frantsevna visited Levki, of course, as well as his younger sister Leokadiya with her sons Yanka and Ulada, middle sister Maria, nieces Uladzya, Nina, Vatya, and Yadviga.
Memorial complex "Yanka Kupala's Dacha".According to Kolas's memories, when he first arrived in Levki, Kupala took him to explore the surroundings. First, the forest, which was often intersected by deep ravines. Crystal clear springs gushed from their slopes. They formed murmuring streams at the bottom of the ravines, which merged into one and rushed swiftly into the Dnieper, into the bank of which the steep slope, densely overgrown with lush bushes, abutted. On a summer morning, before sunrise, the poet was impressed and excited, delighted and inspired by the scene they observed from the window of Kupala's dacha. A slow, majestic barge with a red lantern. Following it – a fiery spot reflected in the clear water. Fishing boats. And in the distance, two kilometers upstream – the silhouettes of Kopys buildings…
I also became acquainted with Kolas's first memory of Kupala with great interest. Here it is: "My first direct meeting with Yanka Kupala took place only in the summer of 1912, almost a year after my release from prison. (The poet was imprisoned in Minsk for participating in the Belarusian Teachers' Union. – U. B.)
…I lived with my relatives on the Neman, one and a half kilometers from the village of Mikolaevshchina. At that time, I was in the village with one of my friends. And suddenly one of my sisters runs up. Excited, tired from the fast walk, she immediately with запаThe mother said: "Yanka Kupala has come to see you!" These words struck me deeply. I immediately said goodbye to my friend and hurried home to meet the poet, whom I had known for a long time, but had never seen before, and whom I so desperately wanted to see.
Kupala was sitting at the table. Seeing me at the doorstep, he slowly rose and walked towards me. A gentle smile, a clear young face, cheerful light-brown eyes with a barely perceptible mischievous glint – this was Yanka Kupala in my eyes. He lives like this to this day in the most cherished corner of my memory.
...Usually, Kupala rarely engaged in long conversations. He mostly responded with short and apt answers and remarks. His tone of speech always carried good-natured notes of jest and humor. He kept his cherished thoughts to himself, not scattering them. And only after bringing them forth, having lived through them, did he give them freedom in his works. He also disliked talking about his creative intentions and plans...»
As if on yeast
In Kopys, two kilometers from Lyauki, on the very bank of the Dnieper, stood the house of my maternal grandfather, Ilya Nychyparavich Ignatenko, which was hit by a fascist bomb in 1941... The town, where the author of the poignant "My Prayer" created in 1906, loved to visit, is first mentioned as a city of the Principality of Polotsk in the Nikon Chronicle in 1059. In the mid-12th century, it was a collection point for customs duties levied by the princes of Smolensk on goods transported along the Dnieper, and inn fees from guest houses. For four centuries, the town was the center of ceramic craftsmanship, the so-called "Kopys tile." Before the Hitlerite invasion, a well-known bakery in the district operated here, where grandfather and grandmother Marya worked diligently. Ilya was good friends with Shimansky, who introduced him to Kupala. Mother Nastassia Ilyinichna, who turned 12 in 1936, heard her grandmother telling a neighbor that Kupala paid great attention to his handsome face. And when red bumps suddenly began to appear on his white cheeks, the poet was advised to drink powdered pills for a whole month.yeast. His mother, unlike the older ones, had never heard of them. Nor did she know that her grandfather had exchanged ordinary baker's yeast for the necessary ones through acquaintances. Kupala and Shimansky came to her grandfather for them.Literary and documentary exhibition. The poet was there – he was already well-known to old and young – of medium height, with a cane and a colorful skullcap. And about two weeks later, he came on foot, as he often did, alone. He brought his grandfather a bottle of personal zubrovka, and his mother – candies and a new book "Song to Construction". It had just been published and was kept in the Anikovichs' house in Gorodok until the very end of the war (there, on the outskirts, next to a large swamp, his grandfather built a tiny house during the Great Patriotic War). Ivan Dominikovich also visited Kopys with his wife Vladislava Frantsevna, who was once very offended by her neighbor-friend: she didn't tell her that in her absence, Yanka had played at the dacha at night not only with poet friends but also with local beautiful girls. Afterwards, he had to replace all the windows at the dacha! In general, young people gathered in a large club, the construction of which was organized by the Komsomol aktiv. A respectable house was named in the style of the time – "Chyrvony araty" (Red Ploughman). Kupala wrote:*Party at the collective farm,*
*In "Chyrvony araty", —*
*Stepkas, Petkas, Vas'kas came,*
*Zoskas, Stas'kas, Kas'kas came,*
*And the accordion plays and plays.*
These are lines from the poem "Party", which is included in the famous "Liaukowski Cycle".
Despite temporary life misunderstandings, which were immediately forgotten, Vladislava Frantsevna spoke very warmly about her native places: "When I remember Lyavki, where our dacha was, I always see the high bank of the Dnieper, the old pine forest, thoughtful, rustling... Near the Dnieper, there are overgrown bird cherry bushes, hazelnuts, and in the tall green grass, trenches, dugouts – a memory of the First World War.
Rafts pass along the Dnieper, beyond the Dnieper, wide collective farm fields are visible, greening with crops in spring, and later – golden in heavyof grain.
The raftsmen sang songs that carried over the water for a long time, echoing in the pines. All day long the forest was filled with birdsong, at night and in the morning the whole space trembled with the singing of nightingales.”
Descent to the Dnieper.“I Have Never Had Such Honor”
It is thought that Kupala was immediately and forever captivated by these unique celestial birds. My good acquaintance Viktor Rabkov, who worked at the National Museum of History and Culture, upon returning from the Orsha region, asked if I had ever heard the nightingales of Lyavki. And, without waiting for an answer, he "began to sing": "Imagine, the sun had not yet set, and a high cloud was still golden in the sky in the distance, when from your Dnieper hills unexpectedly... their chirping. At first quiet and as if timid, which with each turn gains strength and vigor, until it subsides on an unexpected note. After the first, barely discernible, long-legged, brownish one, the second gave its voice, then the third... And a melodious, healing, and joyful resonance spread throughout your surroundings..." It seemed to me then: I was again in Lyavki, contemplating the grandeur and beauty that enveloped Yanka Kupala. A year later, I myself was among the foliage, from which the nightingales drank dew, and enjoyed the concert of local masters. The whistling, warbling, and clicking sounds, the unhurried tempo, and the great variety were simply enchanting. By the way, this amazing bird, slightly larger than a sparrow, sings only in its homeland! And it is the males who do this a week after returning home. With such celestial art, they seek their second half. The older ones succeed better. Whatever one may say, their repertoire is richer. Nevertheless, it is believed that half of all the males never find a mate... If you look closely, you can see how, next to the first, the second stands on its legs and wags its tail, the third tramples behind him... I couldn't figure it out myself, people told me: these are the younger ones learning the high art from the older ones.Once again, the grandfather passed on the peculiar medicine to Kupala during his visit to Kopys Secondary School, where his mother was then studying in the seventh grade. She worked as a nurse for almost half a centuryat the hospital of our factory, and I never heard her called anything but Illinichna – without a first or last name. "Kupala visited our school several times," Illinichna recalled. "I especially remember when he came in 1938, seemingly with Brovka. Our teacher, Anna Yakovlevna Borodintseva, invited him, as we younger ones found out, to the graduation party. Kupala arrived, and one couldn't help but notice, in a beautiful gray suit with a white shirt and tie, very neatly groomed. Students, teachers, and villagers gathered – everyone who happened to be at the school at that moment. He was so pleasant, modest, and bright, more interested in local affairs than in talking about himself. He asked how many graduates there were, where they planned to work, who was staying to study, where their parents worked, what they enjoyed doing most, what the school urgently needed, and if anyone wrote poetry. He himself read about a father calling his sons and asking what they would do."
Some time later, I learned that this was the poem "Sons" – the first one written by the poet in Lyavki, which was included in the aforementioned "Lyavkovsky Cycle." For those who remember, it also includes "Old Trenches," "Belarus of the Order-Bearer," "Alesya," "It Seems Like Yesterday," "When I Was Young," "Flax," and, of course, the immortal "Boy and the Pilot."
With this and other poems by the poet, in my first years, I earned New Year's gifts not only for myself but also for Maxim, Shkred, and Valik. The head of the auxiliary farm of the Orsha Flax Combine, a small, cunning, and bold man named Kostyuchok, gave the coveted treats for free only to those children who could recite a particular poem by heart. My friends couldn't do it, so I recited what was allowed for them.
As for "The Boy and the Pilot," the story of the appearance of this famous poem deserves to be told. On the village street, Kupala became so engrossed in conversation with a friend that he forgot everything. Suddenly, a sun-tanned boy with white flaxen hair ran out from a gate towards them. The interlocutors stopped in surprise. The boy, on the run, was spinning around in front of himself with his hands.and buzzed like an airplane. His face was serious, focused on a single thought. The image so impressed the author of "Heritage," created in 1918, that he shouted after the boy: "What do you want to be?" And without stopping, he resoundingly replied: "A pilot!" Soon, music by composer Viktor Bely was born to the words.
By the way, during the Great Patriotic War, the poem "The Boy and the Pilot at War" appeared as a continuation. Five days after its beginning, the Bard, who would write the popular poem "Belarusian Partisans," was in Lyavki (together with his wife and Kolas) for the last time...
Now, one of the four branches of the Kupala Museum in Minsk is located here. Two more are in the Maladzyechna region (Vyazynka and Yakhimowshchyna) and one is in the Logoysk region (Akopy). I was introduced to the Orsha branch by Tamara Kryna, who was assisted by Oksana Platonova, Svetlana Galetskaya, Lyudmila Menshova, and Dmitry Akulov. The local branch is a memorial reserve covering an area of 19 hectares, established in October 1978. Guests are welcomed at the restored dacha, which burned down on July 3, 1941, from a direct hit by a German shell from the other side of the Dnieper; the former office building of the Kopys forestry, which survived the war; the driver's house, the hotel, utility buildings; the monument "Poet's Autumn" by sculptor Anatoly Anikeychik, who passed away at 56; a section of mixed forest, a public recreation area, and, of course, the garage. It houses the very "Chevrolet" that the classic used from 1939 to 1942, which attracts everyone. In 2010, the outstanding rarity was restored and exhibited for a time in the capital's museum, and then returned to its "homeland." Today, the cost of the car, which I, a seventh-grader from a now-defunct school, "drove" during my first meeting with Lyavki, exceeds one hundred thousand euros.
The "Chevrolet" car, gifted to Yanka Kupala in 1939 by the government of the BSSR.I remember how, with bated breath, I examined the new literary and documentary exhibition that had just been created in the former forestry office. It embodied the image of "The Guest," which the Bard developed in the poem of the same name, one of seventeen written in June 1935:
...Such an honor I have never had,
As long as I have lived on this earth,
To be welcomed with bread and salt like this,
And not in some dream, but in reality...
Monument to Yanka Kupala in the урочище Lyavki of the Orsha district.As in Kupala's works, each museum hall has its own personal, unique voice. Where have you been before, modern multimedia equipment?! With your help, I feel the atmosphere of that time and the presence of the poet more deeply. I listen to the wonderful melodious songs set to his golden words and the nightingales of Lyavki, which sing only in their homeland. Perhaps, along with the guests who come and go to Lyavki to pay homage to the genius of the Belarusian word and spirit, Yanka Kupala himself hears them too...
"SB"