during one such “air-treatment” session, a slim smiling man in a buttonless overcoat walked up to Lypynskyi. It was rather cold—the tail end of November—and a biting wind was mercilessly flapping the edges of his garment, which the man was pressing to his body with his elbows.
“Mr. Lypynskyi, you haven’t become my comrade in misfortune, have you? A fellow tubercular consumptive?”
Lypynskyi wiped the hoarfrost from his mustache.
“With all due respect, I just have pleurisy.”
The man laughed. Only then did Lypynskyi recognize him. Vasyl Domanytskyi was the soul of the Ukrainian national movement. He was also a talented publicist, poet, historian, archaeologist, and ethnographer. Most importantly, he was the editor of the first complete edition of Taras Shevchenko’s Kobzar. Shevchenko, less than fifty years after his death, was already considered a pivotal figure in Ukrainian literature, and Kobzar, his debut collection of poetry from 1840, had been republished by Domanytskyi in 1907 in a massive and unparalleled print run of six thousand copies, causing quite a stir among Ukrainians.
Everyone knew Domanytskyi. Female students fell in love with him at first sight, while men, especially professional colleagues, considered him their best friend after the first handshake. He was a sprightly man who was forever hurrying off somewhere, forever captivated by something, forever disheveled. If he disappeared for a week or two, it was because he had found and was now lost in some interesting old family archive. He didn’t walk, he flew, which earned him the nickname The Wind. He was known for wearing a pince-nez and this old gray overcoat, buttonless from age. Domanytskyi had been vagabonding like this, without any buttons, for many seasons already. That’s why he looked disheveled. And that’s also why he, most likely, contracted tuberculosis. Alongside all this, he managed to produce an incredible amount of editorial work and writing, and was a regular contributor to the two most important Ukrainian newspapers: the Lviv-based Dilo, and the Kyiv-based Rada, which had launched in 1906.
Domanytskyi could have easily had a robust career in Russian publishing, yet he stubbornly worked on the development of Ukrainian literary projects for paltry pay instead; for this reason, many described him as a saint. There was talk that he didn’t marry simply because he wouldn’t be able to support a family. No one knew or wanted to know how Domanytskyi was financially getting by: he was flaunted like a diamond on a pile of simple river stones, and only when he began to crack—however impossible that may have seemed—did all of Kyiv’s Ukrainian society chip in for treatment.
The publication of Shevchenko’s Kobzar in St. Petersburg had brought Domanytskyi great fame but also a great deal of trouble. The tsar’s censors had gathered their wits only after the appearance of the book and were now viciously taking vengeance on its compiler, sentencing him in absentia to three years in exile in Vologda Governorate north of Moscow. With a counterfeit passport, the ill Domanytskyi had been forced to flee west. But the exile had nowhere to go. A month’s stay in a “Zakopane hole in the wall,” as the Jeżewo Sanatorium was described by Ukrainians, cost a good bit of money—two hundred fifty rubles, to be exact—and Domanytskyi’s initial sojourn there was covered by a collection from Kyiv society (so that he spend time in the benefit of his health). Scrounging from the Kyiv sugar magnates, and not for the first time, Rada’s publisher Yevhen Chykalenko ardently proclaimed, “Ukraine doesn’t have the right to squander this man!”
Lypynskyi was rather flattered that Domanytskyi had approached him—someone six years his junior and still completely unknown.
“Vasyl Mykolaiovych! I’m genuinely surprised that you recognized me!”
They knew each other very superficially, owing to a series of illegal meetings of the Ukrainian intelligentsia that used to be held in the Kyiv apartment of the wealthy landowner Maria Trebynska. At the time, Lypynskyi had been in his final year at the First Kyiv Gymnasium, a prestigious preparatory school, while Domanytskyi served as the private teacher of Trebynska’s children and the informal leader of the regular meetings in her home. During these jours fixes, the gymnasium students such as Lypynskyi were permitted to sit and listen, but didn’t take part in the discussions. The young Lypynskyi, among other things, acted as the senior errand boy. Usually he was entrusted with obtaining literature banned in tsarist Russia, a rather innocent task, since the banned literature circulated around Kyiv almost unhindered. One time, however, he was caught red-handed with a copy of Mykhailo Drahomanov’s On How Our Land Became Not Ours; only his notable lineage saved him from several months’ imprisonment.
Domanytskyi pulled up a lounge chair closer to the reclining Lypynskyi, lay down beside him, and likewise covered himself with a sheepskin. Then the two of them set to breathing together.
“Pleurisy, you say?”
“Yes, just pleurisy. Dr. Vilchynskyi said my odds at a full recovery are very good.”
“He said the same thing about me. Projecting good odds is his job. And our job is to squander these odds.”
Lypynskyi steered the conversation to a topic he found less irksome: “What’s the news from Kyiv? Are they still doing searches?”
“The searches are much worse, my friend, much worse.”
lypynskyi and domanytskyi quickly became inseparable in Zakopane. In the morning, they’d breakfast together in the sanatorium’s dining hall with its huge windows overlooking the mountains, exchanging news from the newspapers they’d read and the letters they’d received. Next, it was time for respiratory procedures. They’d lie face up in the cold, discussing the pitiable situation of Ukrainian education and politics, and devising intricate plans to save them. It was through these exchanges that they founded the publishing house Peasant Booklet, with its series of accessibly written brochures on various behavioral-economic topics. The first brochure, “How Peasants in Other Lands Prosper,” written by Domanytskyi, was published early the following year, in 1908, and cost twenty kopiykas. Lypynskyi borrowed the money for its publication—a total of four hundred rubles—from his father. Subsequent booklets were scheduled to be devoted to selling eggs abroad and silkworm breeding.
After lunch, Lypynskyi and Domanytskyi would stroll through the nearby hills and, on their way back, stop for dinner at one of the local restaurants. There they would be joined by other consumptives infected with the virus of Ukrainian community-building. The time passed swiftly and merrily. Lypynskyi spoke little, listening mostly. He addressed Domanytskyi by only his first name and patronymic, Vasyl Mykolaiovych, while Domanytskyi half-jokingly called Lypynskyi “gente Polonus,” Latin for “a Pole by pedigree.” Lypynskyi would frown in offense but quickly get over it. He forgave his older friend’s didactic tone because in him he saw a worthy guide into Ukrainian culture, someone dignified who would vouch for him in front of others. Domanytskyi lived up to this task brilliantly. He was first to recognize in Lypynskyi a historian who had long since passed the stage of archive-lover, someone who could even compete with the recognized luminaries of historical science. Truth be told, there weren’t all that many of them. The master of Ukrainian historiography, Mykhailo Hrushevskyi, who lived in Lviv, was just then preparing the seventh volume of his magnum opus, a ten-volume History of Ukraine-Rus’. His figure cast such a titanic shadow that all the other historians seemed like tiny insects puttering around in the leftovers from the master’s table. For a long time, Lypynskyi couldn’t find the courage to become one of them. He had prepared a few articles but hadn’t sent them off anywhere, as if awaiting the approval of someone he could trust, someone like Domanytskyi. Beyond offering mere approval, Domanytskyi considered Lypynskyi his equal and, by extension, the equal of every intellectual working with Ukrainian culture—a field that, due to its tiny parameters, was often cramped and reeking of intrigue and competitiveness.
By the 1908 New Year, Lypynskyi had sent his first two historical articles in Ukrainian to the editorial office of Rada. He declined any honorarium, of course, considering himself—a descendent of Polish colonizers—as a priori guilty before the Ukrainian people for the rest of his life. The formal induction into Ukrainian intellectual circles was a success: the articles were immediately printed, and the author was discussed with great interest.
“Now you can call yourself a Ukrainian historian without reservation,” Domanytskyi said, which Lypynskyi diffidently eschewed because he had never formally studied history and would forever be just a well-versed dilettante.
Lypynskyi and Domanytskyi resembled each other physically, both having a stoop that likely resulted from the uncertainty of their chosen paths. One was nearing the end of this path, while the other was just embarking on it. In pulmonary weakness, too, Domanytskyi had advanced much further, having been spitting up blood for a long time already. People nonetheless found his company easy and comforting. Domanytskyi tried to approach everything with a sense of humor, and it seemed as though he didn’t take his illness seriously—as if it weren’t grabbing him by the throat but was merely a fleeting phase. Only the dark circles under his energetic eyes and his inflamed cheeks alluded to the impending end to his virtuoso performance.
“What are your plans for the spring?” Lypynskyi would inquire persistently, but he never heard an intelligible answer. Domanytskyi would’ve gladly stayed at the sanatorium, but his money was inexorably running out.
“Whenever I leave here, I’ll likely die,” he would joke dismissively.
At the time, with no earnings of his own, Lypynskyi was fully living off his parents. Nonetheless, he scraped up a sufficient sum of money from his allowance for Domanytskyi to remain in Zakopane for another three months.
“This isn’t a gift,” he told his friend when he began to resist. “Don’t even think that. It’s just a loan till better times. You’ll give it back when the peasant books start to turn a profit.”
but in february, the always cheery Domanytskyi suddenly became taciturn and withdrawn: a certain individual whom he hadn’t seen in over two years and with whom his last meeting had ended rather unpleasantly was coming to Kraków, just a little over a hundred kilometers away. This individual had informed him of her arrival in a letter, expressing a desire to meet again. Domanytskyi carried the letter in the inside pocket of his vest but didn’t reply to it, just reread it a few times a day or simply fidgeted with it as if wanting to shake an ounce of her essence out of the piece of paper. Lypynskyi didn’t ask any questions because he wasn’t in the habit of meddling in other people’s matters of the heart; just once, over dinner, did he carefully convey that he was ready to help if necessary. Domanytskyi sprang to life.
“Be my courier! Go to Kraków tomorrow, meet her at the train station, and pass along a message from me.”
“If that’s what you want, I’ll go. I need to go to Kraków myself anyway to take care of a few private matters. What should I pass along?”
“That I’m very troubled, and that’s why I can’t meet with her.”
having obtained precise instructions, Lypynskyi left early the following morning. Upon his arrival in Kraków, he still had enough time to stop at home and was wonderfully surprised by Kazimiera’s heartfelt welcome. She spent an entire hour relaying the latest news about her sister’s fiancé and then suddenly announced that she’d been taking swimming lessons for a month.
“Swimming? That’s a strange pastime for a woman, but if you find enjoyment in it, then I have nothing against it.”
“I want us to go to the sea again, Wacław. I want to be able to swim in the sea. We’ll go again, won’t we?”
Lypynskyi nodded without giving it much thought. He too had something to tell.
“There’s something important that I want to share with you. I’ve established a publishing house with Vasyl Domanytskyi, the Ukrainian activist from Kyiv, who’s staying in Zakopane with me. We’re going to publish pamphlets for the Ukrainian peasants. The matter is very important, and I’ll need to live in Kyiv to oversee the work, probably for about three years.”
“Why doesn’t Domanytskyi oversee it there?”
“He’s forbidden from entering Russia.”
“Is he a criminal?”
“Who in Russia isn’t a criminal?”
Kazimiera turned away.
“Have you made up your mind to move to Kyiv for three years?”
“I don’t know. For now, I want to explore if publishing is even for me. I was going to go and try it for at least a year.”
“And me?”
This question didn’t catch Lypynskyi by surprise, but he fell silent, hanging his head timidly. He had the urge to crush her in an embrace, to tell her that she was his wife and had to follow him—no, he couldn’t force her, but if she loved him, then she had to go and not think twice. Without her by his side, wherever he may be seemed like exile. Without her, the entire world felt like a prison; he felt like his own prison.
“I walk through the interminable prison of myself,” he muttered softly under his breath.
“What did you say?”
“Nothing. You should decide for yourself what it is you want. It would make me happy if you came with me, but I don’t intend to force my wife into doing anything she doesn’t want to do.”
With that, Lypynskyi retrieved some things from his room, and they said goodbye.
“Come visit me at the sanatorium for a night or two,” he added on his way out. “Dr. Vilchynskyi promised he wouldn’t charge you for a short visit.”
Kazimiera replied that she didn’t know if she would manage to make it.
The train station was just a few minutes’ walk from Hugona Kołłątaja Street. The apartment’s proximity to the train station had always seemed uncomfortable to Lypynskyi, as if the city weren’t letting him in all the way, and the blare of the locomotive’s horn was constantly reminding him that just as he had arrived, so he would leave, and it would be best to seek the refuge he’d so been dreaming of elsewhere. He walked out onto the platform just as a train from Lviv was pulling in. There were few passengers on it. Lypynskyi patiently waited for everyone to exit, then opened the door to the third compartment. A young woman gazed at him with surprise.
“Don’t be scared, young lady,” Lypynskyi said matter-of-factly. “I’ve been authorized by our mutual acquaintance to meet you and convey a verbal message.”
“Domanytskyi isn’t coming?” The young woman was Lesia, the daughter of the landowning Maria Trebynska, in whose home the jours fixes of the Ukrainian intelligentsia had regularly taken place. Domanytskyi had been her private tutor.
“Ms. Lesia, Vasyl Mykolaiovych is very troubled that he couldn’t come today to Kraków. He asked that I apologize on his behalf and help you with your baggage should you need it.”
“Coward!” Trebynska exclaimed. “He didn’t have the guts to come himself, so he sent an errand boy.”
“I’m no errand boy. I’m simply doing a friend a favor.”
“Yes, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you. Lypynskyi, no? I remember you.”
The courier couldn’t tell if the woman was crying or boiling with rage.
“Thank you for coming and letting me know. Otherwise, I would have waited in vain for this . . . buffoon.”
“He truly feels terrible, but there was just no way for him to come.”
Trebynska considered the situation agitatedly, then there was a shift in her tone: “Is he so ill that he wasn’t able to come? Tell me the truth. I’ll go to Zakopane!”
“Domanytskyi is ill, but not so ill that he can’t travel short distances, dear lady. The sanatorium has undoubtedly benefited him.”
“Buffoon,” Trebynska repeated feebly.
Lypynskyi helped her carry her two suitcases off the train. On the platform, they exchanged a few more words; Lypynskyi inquired after the health of the elder Trebynska and politely passed along his sincerest greeting to Kyiv. Suddenly he seemed to spot Domanytskyi’s stooped figure in the crowd, as if he had been watching them the entire time from a safe distance, but just as soon as Lypynskyi noticed the figure, it disappeared without a trace.
In Zakopane, he excitedly reported to his friend: “Just imagine, I was sure that I had seen you in the crowd on the platform! It was as if you were standing and watching me and Ms. Lesia.”
“You’re seeing things,” Domanytskyi assured him. “Why would I do that?” He listened to the remainder of the report without particular interest.
“I brought you a little gift from Kraków.” As he laid out a large soft parcel on the table, Lypynskyi almost beamed with pride. “This is my spare overcoat. Please take it because, by God, walking around in buttonless rags is unbecoming of you. I have no need at all for a spare coat. It’s just lying around uselessly and getting destroyed by moths.”
there’s one picture in which the two of them are against a backdrop of mountains and in very similar overcoats—either standing or sitting, it’s unclear. The overcoats have astrakhan collars and differ only in the cut of their lapels. On their heads, they’re wearing astrakhan kubanka hats that Lypynskyi had bought a few days after gifting the overcoat; they wore them on a hike to Morskie Oko, or the Eye of the Sea—the legendary mountain lake in Zakopane, where the photograph was taken.
The hike took place in early April as the snows were beginning to melt. A rather large group convened. Professor Lepkyi and his wife had come from Kraków, as did two colleagues from the Literary-Scientific Herald in Lviv, with greetings from its editor-in-chief, Professor Mykhailo Hrushevskyi. Domanytskyi also invited his longtime acquaintance, the socialist Dmytro Dontsov, who had arrived in Zakopane to have his nerves treated after an eight-month internment at the Lukianivska Prison in Kyiv. He made a positive impression on Lypynskyi.
They walked for three hours. Everyone was bespattered with mud up to their waists because the thaw had turned the roads into slush, but no one complained once they finally reached the shore, and the lake unfurled before them in all its beautiful glory. It really did resemble a perfect eye, as if its waters had been delicately poured into an eye-shaped mold resting in a gorge of the Tatra Mountains. The ice that had lingered for all those winter months had broken up, and now it looked like a gigantic ocular prosthesis that had started cracking from old age.
They stopped for a break. Professor Lepkyi’s wife handed out sandwiches. Meanwhile, Domanytskyi talked passionately about his new publishing project—a popular history of Ukraine that Mykola Arkas, the aging judge from Mykolaiv north of the Black Sea, had written with a lot of mistakes and that Domanytskyi had decided to edit (actually, rewrite) and fill with illustrations. He was enraptured by his work.
“This History of Ukraine is going to make a ruckus! It’s so simple and lively, almost like a fairy tale. This is exactly how we need to rouse the national consciousness of the general public—with accessible writing.”
Lypynskyi promised to write a review after the book’s publication. Dontsov, with his distinctive desire to be original, said that populism was a holdover from the last century and all efforts needed to be directed at the working class right now.
“I don’t agree with you here, sir,” Lypynskyi objected. “Our working class is decentralized and amorphous. It doesn’t have its own political slogans and is unlikely to acquire any soon. Ukrainians are a grain-producing people. It’s them, the grain farmers, that we need to be uniting and preparing for a future fight for the state. We can’t force them into parties of gentlemen and serfs, as our socialists like to do.”
“Are you speaking as a gentleman or as a serf right now?” Dontsov sniggered.
“My pedigree shouldn’t be of your concern. But when it comes to a fight for independence, it’s the people with wealth and proper education who will play the decisive role.”
“Money is a temporary concept, Mr. Lypynskyi. One minute it’s there, the next it isn’t. But something else is surprising me. Are you being serious about a ‘fight for independence’? In all honesty, I didn’t anticipate hearing such naïve ideas from you.”
Lypynskyi blanched. He had never been able to respond swiftly to direct insults.
“The Ukrainian state doesn’t need to concern us,” Dontsov continued. “According to Marx, social development will be the thing to make Ukraine.”
Domanytskyi intervened in the conversation, or rather in its absence: “Lypynskyi and I are going to run over to that little hill,” he said, and motioned at one of the mountains. “Do you still have some strength in your legs, Viacheslav? There’s a surprise waiting for us up there.”
Lypynskyi nodded and ambled off behind him.
“Dontsov has a reputation for being critical, don’t pay attention to him,” Domanytskyi said when the group was out of earshot. A steep path wound ahead of them.
“Those are exactly the types you need to pay attention to,” Lypynskyi countered with a wheeze. “Every bit of lenience makes them stronger, and over time they commandeer the minds of those who don’t know how to think independently. Once that happens, no one will be able to compete with them. But I’m rather weak with words. I don’t know how to debate satisfactorily, especially when I’m being accused of naïveté.”
“Let it go, my friend. Listen, instead, to how quiet it is.”
They had indeed become surrounded by an incredible silence. The path had led them out onto a mostly flat area, not visible from below and covered in stones of a strange red shade. In the middle of this flatness sprawled another lake, completely different from Morskie Oko—murky and sinister-looking.
“So, did I surprise you? This is Czarny Staw, the Black Pond. I heard about it from the locals. I wanted to see if there was indeed a mountain pond above a mountain lake. And look, they weren’t lying.”
The men sat on a large rock and gazed in silence. The still, black water appeared dead. Everything around it portended if not death, then something contrary to life.
“Everyone’s nursing their own black pond in their soul,” the pensive Domanytskyi remarked somewhat dramatically. “My black pond is my love. It’s just as unattainable. And just like this, I try my best to hide it from human eyes.”
“Why didn’t you want to meet Ms. Lesia? Why wouldn’t you admit to her that you love her?”
Domanytskyi pounded his fist against his chest. “What for? What can I offer her? I’m no romantic, as many make me out to be. I know how much time I have left—one year, two, no more than that. I’ll only ruin her life and force her to watch me die. I don’t want that!”
The black water overflowed its banks and seemed to fill the entire expanse of land, making it equally black and muggy.
“And your black pond, gente Polonus? What’s it like?”
Lypynskyi shrank into a slump. His unhappy marriage was no secret, but he himself never bemoaned it to anyone.
“With all due respect, Vasyl Mykolaiovych, I don’t nurture black ponds. If I have something to say, I say it; if not, I keep silent. If there’s a reason to, I’m happy, and when misfortune arises, I’m pained. I don’t hide. God hasn’t bestowed domestic happiness unto me and my wife. In the coming year, I’ll probably get divorced so as not to torment either her or myself. It isn’t a black pond in my soul, but a black abyss. I’ll have to continue living with it somehow.”
in may, after an almost six-month stay, Lypynskyi finally made it out of Zakopane. As Dr. Vilchynskyi had promised, the pleurisy was fully cured, and the patient was eager to resume his crusade, this time in Kyiv. In addition to his lectures for the peasantry that made up the overwhelming majority of the Ukrainian population, Lypynskyi came up with the idea of publishing a Polish-language journal as a tool for converting rich local Poles to Ukrainian nationalism. He first headed to Kraków to begin packing his things and was startled to find his wife, surrounded by her packed belongings, waiting in the entryway of the Shumiński’s apartment.
“I’m going to Kyiv with you,” she announced resolutely, and for a long time, Lypynskyi wouldn’t be able to believe his good fortune.
Domanytskyi also left Zakopane and spent the following summer in the village of Kryvorivnia with some friends. “I’m living a natural life,” he wrote to Lypynskyi from the Ukrainian Carpathian Mountains. “I bathe in a stream, sleep on hay, drink milk from a cow, and spend my days lying in grass. It’s beautiful.”
“Take good care,” Lypynskyi replied from Kyiv, “when you’re on the riverbank. I’m not going to say don’t drown, but be careful not to gulp down too much water.” Then he added, “Fate has come to pity me a little. I feel the strength to work on our joint project. I’ll tell you in confidence: My wife is expecting a child. She’s unwell often, but we’re very happy. We’ll go to Kraków for the birth because my wife doesn’t trust Kyiv doctors.”
the history of ukraine that Domanytskyi was so proud of proved more successful than the author had hoped. Only one person didn’t relish this success—Professor Mykhailo Hrushevskyi, the master of Ukrainian historiography, its tsar and god. He published a devastating critique in the Literary-Scientific Herald, and then, to make certain that Domanytskyi would read it, he brought a copy to a meeting with the author in Lviv and “forgot” it on the table. A series of public accusations and scandals commenced that only exacerbated Domanytskyi’s physical condition. The prompt news of his death in 1910 in the French resort town of Arcachon wouldn’t surprise anyone.
Again the Ukrainian community in Kyiv would raise funds, a total of nine hundred rubles, in order to have the body delivered from abroad. The police, fearing anti-government demonstrations, would forbid burying the celebrated exile in the city. The funeral would instead take place in late autumn in Domanytskyi’s native village in the Zvenyhorod region. A modest delegation would arrive from Kyiv—seven individuals, bringing twenty funeral wreaths with them. One would be from Lypynskyi, who would be unable to attend because he was bedridden with illness.
A mix of snow and rain would be falling that day. The publisher of Rada, Yevhen Chykalenko, would give a heartfelt speech before a crowd of villagers, describing Domanytskyi as a pure and holy person (it’s no wonder that he died at the same age as Christ) and his loss as exorbitant for the nation, “which has so many million bodies but so few actual people . . .”
“Tuberculosis and Russian autocracy are our greatest foes, and they feed off each other as they’re able to,” Chykalenko would note in conclusion.
At the time, Chykalenko would already be pondering the idea of acquiring a small villa on the southern shore of Crimea so that feeble Ukrainian writers, instead of dying in various foreign countries, could restore their health there. This would require mortgaging one of his own properties once again and yielding good harvests to be able to pay off the debts.
Lesia Trebynska wouldn’t attend the funeral either. She will have just married and will be honeymooning with her young husband in southern Italy. As was Domanytskyi’s wish, she wouldn’t witness his death. His black pond would remain untouched and unseen by anyone—save for a cheerful little poem that could be found in the Literary-Scientific Herald of 1900, in the third issue, on page 232. The poem, full of optimism and a defiant faith in human progress, was dedicated to “Lesia T., a person of the twentieth century” and ended with the lines:
And that moonlit world
That still in our childish years
Blinded our eyes through the window—
We’ll give it to the poets,
While we ourselves fashion
Electric lanterns for the night.
And the signature: V. Dom.