Aeneas, the cultural father and spiritin Virgil, Dante and Kotliarev’sky

Ode to the Pagan Joy

The Ukrainian Virgil and Dante, all in one, Kotliarevs'ky also sings, but not to arms. He sings to the delights of the ordinary Being in the world, the gastronomic and erotic, aesthetic and intellectual. He glorifies survival at the expense of those who fight. His Ukrainian Aeneas is the fortunate man, who escapes death and battle, a vagabond, the eternal migrant, the Trojan, who is destined to transplant but not to save Troy. The Ukrainian Aeneas is the burlesque of the Virgilian and Homeric proto-AENEAS. His poetic ancestors are Phoenicians and Trojans, Romans and Greeks, Scythians and Iranians, Turks and Genoese, Venetians and Cumans, Samnites and numerous other conquered and absorbed tribes, destined to be prior, to die, plant new seeds and regrow again anew. Sleep and rest, gastro and porno delight replace Homeric or Virgilian battles. The long ancient swords vanish to be replaced by the Ukrainian pirogy, borsch, cooked lamb and roasted pork. Kotliarevs'ky mocks the universal colonizing efforts, the blind reliance on force, stressing that the real survival is not in the military might but in physical fitness of the healthy, properly fed body. The wake ceremony in the honor of Aeneas' father Anchises, conducted in the typical Ukrainian peasant manner, is both a metaphor for the possible Trojan distant origins of these Southern Slavs and the ode to the Ukrainian vitality and survival. Instead of the sanitized ancestry lines proposed by the delusionary separatists, the Ukrainian national poet provokes a sophisticated discourse on the essential migration-mingling model as the universal mechanism for cultural production. Nor does he mourn the death of his unknown ancestors, offering instead a joyous celebration of the generations of the new Ukrainians, the reincarnated remnants of Troy, Carthage, Tyre, Rome, Etruria, Genoa and Venice. Through his Aeneas: “I wish to remember the old. Do you know, the Trojans, the Christians, that my father was Anchises, burned by drink who vanished like a winter fly [19, p. 38].

The Ukrainian Virgil-Dante celebrates with the Rebelaisian gusto the birth of the new strong, powerful and vital cultural species: “They put the fire outside, filling pots with meat. Dishes cooking, baking, five cauldrons with broth awaiting. Four with dumplings, six with borshch, countless sheep, chickens, ducks, geese grilled enough to feed the Empire [19, p. 38].

His paradise is in abundance of free food and drink, rivers of vodka and bathtubs of beer. His is the feast of the endlessly happy and lucky survivors, who no longer have any ties with the wisdom, toil and beauty of their obscure ancestors, who do not remember even their names, but Babylonia and Latium, Persia and Troy, Piraeus and Athens and even distant India are in them, in the attire of Aeneas' friends, Ukrainian kozacks, fated to die like many others in the past. The Ukrainian Virgil does not mourn any death of the old tribes and cultures. Old customs, old feuds, old castles and tunes, old tales and heroes all are fated to transform into the Other again. It is the Slavic replica of Virgil and Vico, the idea of a cycle, anticipating the defeat of the Ukrainian, older segment of the Slavic civilization in favor of the more inclusive and outward looking Russian 18th century culture [7, p. 121-27]. Neither Poltava, Kyiv, Kharkiv, nor Crimea are seen as the future New Naples or Genoa. The predicted cycle is turning towards the new Russian Empire and Kotliarevs'ky's commemoration of the old tribes is a prelude to the victory of the Russian Court and its new foreign and domestic politics. The poetphilosopher is a former loyal tsarist officer, who would eventually help to form battalions to fight the French in the war of 1812. He indirectly sings to the courage of the Russian soldiers, who had saved Ukrainians from the Swedes near his native Poltava (1709) and about to save again in the future battles against Napoleon. His message is that some tribes are destined to battle and conquer while others are fortunate to enjoy peace and celebrate daily life. Life within the Russian Empire, rather than in an independent state, is Kotliares'ky's message, which would eventually make him unpopular among the Ukrainian 19th century romantics and 20th century radical nationalists, destined to be overshadowed by the radical poet of independence, the alleged founder of the Ukrainian language and literature, Taras Shevchenko, despite the fact that the latter would never rise to the heights of the Ukrainian Virgil [6].

Kotliarevs'ky's existential philosophy and practicality would be taken even further by Nikolai Gogol, who would transport the Ukrainian culture beyond the borders of Poltava and Kyiv to St Petersburg and outside the frontiers of the Russian Empire, having translated it into Russianthe language of the New Rome. Following Kotliarevs'ky's poetic prophecy, Gogol would preserve the Ukrainian cultural essence in his Taras Bul'ba, Dead Souls, Inspector or Sorochinsky Fair [17, p. 15-16]. Gogol, included into the pantheon of the World Literature as a Russian, but not an Ukrainian, would be the living proof of Kotliarevs'ky's insightful historical vision. Locked within the Ukrainian pastoral borders, Kotliarevs'ky would remain largely unknown in the rest of the European cultural world, despite his Aeneid, while Gogol who dared to part with the older Slavic tongue was given a chance of the second cultural birth. Gogol would become the reincarnated Ukrainian bard, the traveling Aeneas who would reach the New Rome St. Petersburg via the map, drawn up by the “Ukrainian Virgil.”

Having skipped the Renaissance, the Slavic cultures have received their dosage of pagan enjoyment indirectly, via the intertextual relationships, re-readings and appropriations of the ancient literature, such as the Russian Aeneid by N. Osipov and Ukrainian one by Ivan Kotliarevs'ky. It is only through the comic re-readings, laughter and irony one may arrive at truth. “The truth is in the field of the comic,” P Volyns'ky quotes Nikolai Chemyshevs'ky who maintained that only comedy allows to dispense with the illusory identity and cognize one's true self [16, p. 152]. On the eve of the romantic infatuations with “roots,” radically shaping the national, ethnic and religious identities and ultimate plunge into the regressive separatism, Kotliarevs'ky mocks the futile genealogical search, the anxiety of origins in his re-written Ukrainian Aeneid. Several centuries after Dante and Machiavelli, he mercilessly debunks the Judeo-Christian edifice, the Church and her tyrannical rule, depriving people from the enjoyment of Here and Now. Echoing the European thinkers of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, Kotliarevs'ky questions the very concept of the religious, all European religions, their cultural and social usefulness. Drawing on the pre-Judeo-Christian GraecoLatin wisdom of the Romans, this Ukrainian poet establishes the cultural kinship of the Ukrainians with the rest of the Europeans and their indebtedness to the ancient pastthe Phoenicia and Etruria, Troy and Greece, Babylonia and Persia, Egypt and Carthage, the true self is in admission of the Other in oneself. If Virgil and Dante poetically reconstructed the cultural and racial history of Europe, Kotliarevs'ky expanded the European family by adding to it the Ukrainians, the historically marginal Eastern Europeans into the imagined history of the continent.

Perfecting Man

Having poetically denounced the Church, the Ukrainian sage suggests to turn for moral and ethical guidance to the ancient European poets and philosophers. Having placed in hell the priests, government servants, bandits and crooks, Kotliarevs'ky preaches moderation, meditation and peace. A Masonic lodge member, the poet rethinks the usefulness of the Judeo-Christian religion and its place in society. He reminds his readers that it is possible to be honest, generous, moral and good without Christ and Christian dogmatism. His thinking is much akin to that of the Romans of the pre-Constantine era, whom Kotliarevs'ky praises for their wisdom and creativity: “Latin, the old was not a thug, and fighting was not his passion” [19, p. 146].

In fact, because the Romans were inclined to reach a solution by negotiation and compromise, they probably failed in the brutal reality of the first century AD when peace meant defeat. The “Ukrainian Virgil” mourns the defeat and death of the Roman Empire, the old noble lineage of the European civilization. Their failure, though a historic compromise in the strategy of avoiding the conflict is imagined by Kotliarev'ky as a plausible conscious act of submission to the new authoritarian monotheistic Christian Church, the offshoot of the Hebraic culture. The desire for peace among the impoverished and uneducated, and the intention to preserve stability for the geographically, ethnically and racially tom multilingual Empire, was the plausible explanation for Constantine's decision to legitimize Christianity. The Ukrainian rhyme carries the imagined account of this episode and the alleged Latin thinking: “Not at least am I to shed the blood [of Romans]. What is the origin of war? How could the thought possess you? When did my people enjoy the war?” [19, p. 146].

If the wise Roman law failed to unite the citizens and bring peace, then the Christian myth was tried to save the Latins. This profound poetic guess is behind Kotliarevs'ky's seemingly humorous picture of the ancient Ukrainian ancestor: “Oh, Muse of Parnassus, come to me at least for an hour, may your caress teach me” [19, p. 148].

When religion and Church fail to teach, civilize and perfect man, then the last resort is the poetic wisdom of Homer and Virgil, the offspring of the “wisest children of humanity”. Kotliarevs'ky's profound assessment of the cultural and religious history of Europeans has the ultimate goal of including the marginal Europeans, formerly Byzantine, into the cultural family. He calls for respect of the ancients and their illustrious legacy. A very wise and serious message is behind his seemingly flippant travesty, the Ukrainian “vertep” comedy on the poetic debris of Homer and Virgil. His laughter is didactic in the true spirit of the Enlightenment. His educates his Ukrainian readers of the Aeneid about their complicated past, their mixed European blood and cultural belonging, carrying the profoundly appropriate and utterly modern message for the 20th century delusionary age.

It is most regrettable and nearsighted that the future independent state of Ukraine would not grant Kotliarevs'ky the status of her national bard. Shevchenko's isolationist, separatist spirit would be much more compatible with the post-communist delusions and confusion. To embrace Kotliarevs'ky would have meant to acknowledge one's cultural youthfulness, wisdom and indebtedness to the European antiquity, which the myopic 20th century would fail to do. Kotliarevs'ky laughingly destroys them with his 18th century poetic judgement. His ideal perfect man is not a marginal ethnic, locked forever into his own myth, folklore, dance, and gastronomy. His is the man with a sense of history', memory, wisdom and humor , who may laugh easily at one's own cultural youthfulness, cowardice and naivete, who has the humility to learn and thus to become the cultural relative of the Western Europeans. It is neither a Christian, nor a Jew, neither a rich landowner, a businessman, nor a drunk beggar, but a curious voyager through life and times. Much like the Italian poet Pietro Metastacio (1698-1782), whom Kotliarevs'ky might have been inspired by, his image of life is the sea: “O, life, a stormy sea! Who survived you whole?” [19, p. 244].

He might have read Metastacio's Didona Abandonata (1724), so much akin to the entire project and message of the Ukrainian Aeneid.

Conclusions

In fact, the appropriation of the Greaco-Roman cultural legacy happens to be the uniform cultural route of all Europeans who at some point or another tend to return to the Greek Olympus and Roman Parnassus for inspiration by the glorious Other. For instance, Shakespeare's poetic universe is much Italian based, firmly rooted in the Roman history and life. Parma and Padua, Verona and Venice, Mantua and Florence, Ferrara and Florence are his numerous Italian points of historical reference. Shakespeare is the English challenge to Dante, Italy and the Graeco-Roman past. Aeschylus and Euripides, Aristophanes and Ovid, Solon and Terpander, Alcaeus and Sappho, Anacreon and Pindar, Plautus and Terence all would be revived in Chaucer and Marlowe, Pope and Blake, Swift and Swinburne, Wordsworth and Byron. The “Russian Shakespeare” Pushkin would regard Virgil as his mentor, as much as Anacreon or Hesiod, Ennius or Vigny, Chateaubriand or Byron. The inscription on the monument to William Shakespeare in Stratford-upon -Avon compares him to Socrates and Virgil, revealing the collective national anxiety and the imperial aspirations of the inhabitants of the British Isles. In awe of the Graeco-Roman antiquity, Alexander Pushkin composed a poem “The Monument” with the epigraph from Horatius' “Exegi monumentum,” having predicted his own role in the Russian cultural history. No European nation could call itself complete without the communion with her cultural forefathers Greece and Rome, or Italy as their cultural offspring. Pietro Pomponazzi (1462-1525) anticipates Spinosa and Kant; Giambattista Vico, who would apply Virgil to his philosophy of history, comes to the fore as the direct precursor of Kant, Hegel and Marx [15, p. 64]. D. H. Lawrence would abandon the muddy unconscious and stop pondering over the Freudian “id”, turning his love towards the Etruscan tombs. The author of Women in Love, Sons and Lovers and the Lady Chatterlay's Lover, inspired by Florence and Genoa, Rome and Pisa, would fall in love with the Etruscans, seeing them as the cultural progenitors of the modem Italians: “Rome fell, and the Roman phenomenon with it. Italy today is far more Etruscan in its pulse, than Roman: it will always be so. The Etruscan element is like the grass of the field and the sprouting of com, in Italy: it will always be so” [3, p. 36].

Emulating the pathway of the Greeks and Trojans, Latins and Romans, and acknowledging one's kinship with them is the uniform cultural pattern of all Europeans, including the Ukrainians. The noble “aristocratic” cultural lineage happens to be the common source of the tribal anxiety and envy, raison-d-etre and impetus for life, inspiration and compass in the happy and successful voyage through life.

The European Union in the 21st century would legitimize this quest, eliminating the genealogical cultural anxiety and traumatic memory. The endorsement of the shared cultural history and development, sameness of the sources of cultural nurturing, and recognition of Europeanness as a continental form of consciousness and identity would ultimately prevail over the modernist, separatist tantrums. Facing the challenge of the new barbarians, Europe would try to rebuild its Rome and reinvent its Mantua amidst the silence of the Muse and above the dormant post-modem Parnassus, out of the debris of the destroyed European civilization. Our voyage from Virgil, and Dante to Kotliarevs'ky is a humble opportunity of reminding the Universal, “what will always be so” the eternal cycles of rebirth and renewal, the rebellions against the cultural forefathers and the desire to rebuild culture anew would always stumble upon the legacy of the past.

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