The poetic and tranquil land of Zhytomyr region seems to hide from the rest of the world behind its forests and lakes. Such peacefulness promotes writing and thinking, and perhaps this is why it has inspired so many writers who gave rise to works of world significance. Two such writers are Honoré de Balzac and Joseph Conrad
Balzac’s Northern Star
On the facade of St. Barbara’s Church in Berdychiv (in today’s Zhytomyr region) there is a remarkable tablet. It states that 160 years ago, on 2 March 1850, this very church affirmed the marriage of Honoré de Balzac to Ewelina Hańska. A legend has it that when a local tailor saw Balzac’s wedding suit, he asked the writer where it was made. Balzac’s answer was “In Paris”. The tailor exclaimed shocked: “So far from Berdychiv, and so well-made!” The marriage, however, shocked literary bohemia even more.In 1832 Balzac, the author of La Comédie humaine and other admirable works, received a letter signed by someone calling herself L’Étrangère (“The Foreigner”). The note said, “When I read your books, my heart beats most rapidly: you depict the true dignity of women.” Could there be a man who would not be flattered by such an appraisal of his work?This led to the beginning of a letter-writing affair between the French genius and a Polish noblewoman from Volhynia – Ewelina Hańska. They met for the first time a year later, in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and the meeting exceeded all of Balzac’s expectations: his correspondent was young, beautiful and rich. Henceforth the writer began living a double life: one for the public and the other totally devoted to Ewelina. In December 1840 Balzac originally saw the Hański family estate in the village of Verkhivnia, near Zhytomyr, in a painting given to him by Ewelina. “You did not tell me you own the entire Louvre”, he wrote in his reply. Though impressed, Balzac first visited this Ukrainian Louvre seven years later. On his way he stayed at the Wiśniowiecki family palace in the town of Vyshnivets (Ternopil region) and dubbed it the “Polish Versailles”. In Verkhivnia, Ewelina gave Balzac his very own office – the first in his life – and here he penned the plays La Marâtre, The Member for Arcis, Mademoiselle du Vissard and The Petty Bourgeois. And Balzac’s novel The Peasants is based on his impressions of a Ukrainian rebellion.Since 1921, the Hanski’s Imperial-style palace in Verkhivnia has hosted the village’s Agricultural Secondary Technical School. The burial vault chapel where the daughter of Honoré and Ewelina who died at birth, once rested, stands nearby. In 1959, the local authorities founded the Literary-memorial Museum of Honoré de Balzac here to commemorate the 160th anniversary of the birth of the French novelist.The museum includes a table with candlesticks where Balzac wrote Lettre sur Kiev and the short novel The Seamy Side of History. A harpsichord on display is the one Ewelina would play for him. As to an intriguing device made by local craftsmen for the writer when his health weakened, it is actually a cane that could unfold into a chair so Balzac could sit for a rest when walking through the park.In different corners of the once magnificent park many memorable spots remain: the Alley of Love and the Alley of Separation, Balzac’s Bench and Ewelina’s Arbor. There is also an impressive Tree of Love in the park: two trunks intertwined forever which cannot be separated.
Old Sea Wolf from Berdychiv
Berdychiv also gave the world another literary genius: in 1857, the novelist Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski) grew up in an impoverished Polish family of the nobility. Biographers remain unsure where exactly Conrad was born, however: whether in Terekhove, a village near Berdychiv (where he definitely grew up), or in Berdychiv itself. Despite this, the first Ukrainian Museum of Joseph Conrad opened in 1987 in Terekhove, and in December 2008, another museum dedicated to the famous writer was established in the lower chapel of Berdychiv’s Discalced Carmelites Monastery (where he was christened).From Berdychiv Conrad moved first to Chernihiv, then to Krakow and Lviv. In 1874, the young man left for England, changed his name to Joseph Conrad, and became a sailor. Conrad’s contemporaries used to say that he spoke French, wrote in English and dreamt in Polish. He travelled around the world, became a navigator and then a captain, his life always full of adventure. Conrad wrote his first novel relatively late, at the age of 37, and the number of books he wrote eventually exceeded the number of ships he piloted (32 versus 19).Today his biographers see Typhoon, Nostromo, Lord Jim, Youth, Heart of Darkness and The Duel as harsh treatises devoted to the sea, solitude and freedom. The influence of his works on the writing of Hemingway, Faulkner, Graham Greene and John Galsworthy is undeniable. The novelist never returned to Ukraine, but he wrote to his uncle Tadeusz Borowski from England: “Take care of our Motherland. There is no such land, like ours anywhere else”.
GETTING THERE
UIA offers direct daily flights to Kyiv from most large Western European capitals and the Gulf. Use your Panorama Club Card to earn miles on all UIA flights and the flights of our partner airlines: Air France (excluding the Kyiv-Paris route), Austrian Airlines, KLM, Swiss International Air Lines and TAP Portugal.
Buy tickets on line at www.flyUIA.com.For more information, call us in Kyiv at 0-44 581 5050.
KyivStar, MTC, life:) and Beeline cellular service subscribers can dial 566. The call costs UAH 1,00 per minute for KyivStar and life:) subscribers, UAH 0,95 per minute for Beeline subscribers, and is billed as a call to a city line for MTC subscribersGetting there from Kyiv:To get to Berdychiv, take one of the frequent trains or buses from Kyiv. Regular buses then run from the Central Bus Station in Zhytomyr to Berdychiv and Verkhivnia (towards Ruzhyn and Yahnyatyn).
USEFUL INFORMATION
The Literary-memorial Museum of Honoré de Balzac is based at the Agricultural Secondary Technical School in Verkhivnia, Ruzhyn district, Zhytomyr region (a department of the Zhytomyr State Literary Museum).Tel.: 04138 95 646.The Joseph Conrad Museum is set in the lower chapel of the Church of the Immaculate Conception in the Discalced Carmelites Monastery (25 Soborna Square), Berdychiv, Zhytomyr region.
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