Mountain Spirits and a Summer of Shepherding: Kotsiubynsky’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

Іван був дев’ятнадцятою дитиною в гуцульській родині Палійчуків. (“Ivan was the nineteenth child in the Hutsul family of the Paliichuks.”)

Opening line of Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (English translation for this article)

The novella Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Тіні забутих предків), set in a village of the Hutsuls (гуцули), who live high in the Carpathian Mountains of western Ukraine, was written in 1911. Its author was Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky (Михайло Коцюбинський, 1864–1913). In Japan, Sergei Parajanov’s film based on this novel, released there under the title Hi no Uma (“Fire Horse”), may be better known than the book itself. This article deals with the novella itself, not the film.

A Writer Who Worked as a Statistician

According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (IEU), published by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) at the University of Alberta, Kotsiubynsky was born on 17 September 1864 in Vinnytsia, in the Podillia region. His birthplace is now the Vinnytsia Literary Memorial Museum; according to the museum, the writer, born in this house, lived here — apart from periods away — until 1897, and the museum opened on 8 November 1927.

In his youth he became involved with the Narodnik (populist) movement and came under police surveillance. On how the surveillance began, IEU attributes it to his expulsion from a seminary in 1882, while the Dictionary of Ukrainian Literature (Ukrainska literaturna entsyklopediia, published 1988–95 by the Institute of Literature of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine) attributes it to an incident in 1884; both, however, state that the surveillance continued for the rest of his life.

To support himself, he worked as a private tutor and on a commission investigating the vine pest phylloxera, among other jobs, before moving to Chernihiv in 1898 to work as a statistician for the zemstvo (local self-government body). IEU writes that, pressed by his work and local activities, he had little time to write, and that this contributed to his early death. An organisation supporting Ukrainian scholarship and literature awarded him a pension, allowing him to give up his job, in 1911, and two years later, on 25 April 1913, he died of heart disease. IEU gives Kyiv as the place of death, while the Dictionary of Ukrainian Literature gives Chernihiv. According to the Dictionary of Ukrainian Literature, he was buried on Boldyna Hill in Chernihiv.

IEU regards Kotsiubynsky as one of the finest Ukrainian writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, moving from an early ethnographic realism to become the most talented modernist writer working in Ukrainian. The Dictionary of Ukrainian Literature links his style to impressionism.

A Stay in a Carpathian Village

According to IEU, Kotsiubynsky stayed in the Carpathian mountain village of Kryvorivnia (Криворівня) in 1910 and 1912. This village, now in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, was where many writers and scholars — including Ivan Franko, Mykhailo Hrushevsky and Lesia Ukrainka — spent their summers in the early 20th century (IEU).

The novella was written in 1911, between these two stays. According to the Dictionary of Ukrainian Literature, he wrote it at his house in Chernihiv, which is now a memorial museum to Kotsiubynsky. IEU gives 1913 as the year the novella was published as a book.

IEU describes the work as a psychological novella depicting Hutsul life, drawing extensively on pagan beliefs in evil spirits and folk legend.

Two People Born into Feuding Families

The novel begins with Ivan’s childhood. The Paliichuk and Hutenyuk (Гутенюки) families had long been feuding, and on the way home from a church festival the men of the two families come to blows with axes (bartky); struck on the head, Ivan’s father dies the next day. On the day of that fight, young Ivan meets Marichka, the Hutenyuk family’s daughter.

As they grow up the two become lovers, but while Ivan is away working at the high summer pasture (polonyna), Marichka, trying to cross the Cheremosh River, is swept away by a sudden flood. Ivan disappears, and nothing is heard of him for six years. Returning to the village in the seventh year, Ivan marries Palahna, the daughter of a wealthy family. Yet his heart never leaves Marichka. In the words of the Dovzhenko Centre, Ukraine’s largest film archive, in its description of the film, Ivan finds happiness only in a vision before death.

Summer at the Polonyna

The scenes at the polonyna are among the most extensively written passages in the work. The shepherds call out “Risht!” as they pass the sheep, one by one, over the milking pail. At the pasture hut, the head shepherd (vatah) reads notched wooden tallies while waiting for the milk to set. Who has entrusted how many sheep, and what they are to receive, is carved into this “wooden book.” Round wheels of “budz” (будз, cheese made from sheep’s milk) dry on shelves, and pails hold the whey, “zhentytsia” (жентиця).

At night, in a tale told by his companion Mykola, it is said that in the beginning of the world there were no mountains, only water. The evil spirit Aridnyk (арідник) created the sheep, and made and played a violin, which God then stole. It was also Aridnyk who devised fire to keep off the cold; he spat on God’s campfire, and that is why fire has smoked ever since.

Mountain Spirits and a Sorcerer

The work is peopled with spirits, one after another, that live in the mountain forests: the forest spirit “nyavka” (нявка), who appears in Marichka’s form, the “chuhaister” (чугайстир), and the vanishing spirit “shcheznyk” (щезник), among others. Ivan’s neighbour Yura, a hail-averter (градівник), is portrayed as a sorcerer, a “molfar” (мольфар). The Dictionary of Ukrainian Literature holds that Kotsiubynsky, in this work, turned toward mythological thinking, using folklore and ethnographic material to depict the question of the good and bad that civilisation brings.

The Novel Made into a Film

This novel was made into a film in 1964 at the Oleksandr Dovzhenko Film Studios in Kyiv. It was directed by Sergei Parajanov, shot by Yuri Illienko, and starred Ivan Mykolaichuk as Ivan (Dovzhenko Centre). The Centre places this film first in its own “Top 100” of Ukrainian films, positioning it as a turning point in the development of Ukrainian culture in the latter half of the 20th century. In Japan it is known under the title Hi no Uma (“Fire Horse”), and some sources give the production year as 1965. Differences in how the country of production is described are covered in the article on the five things “Ukrainian film” can mean.

According to the Dictionary of Ukrainian Literature, the novel was also made into a ballet by the composer V. Kireiko in 1960, and staged as a play at a theatre in Ivano-Frankivsk in 1989.

Both Kotsiubynsky’s birthplace and the house in Chernihiv where he spent his final years are now literary memorial museums. According to IEU, the Vinnytsia museum opened in 1927 and the Chernihiv museum in 1934. For more on Ukrainian writers, see the article on where to start reading Ukrainian literature and the article on Ivan Franko, who likewise spent summers in Kryvorivnia.