Thread by @komarnyckyj

1/152 Intermezzo by Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky as a twitter thread #Ukraine #Literature

2/152 I dedicate this to the fields at Kononivka

3/152 Dramatis Personae My fatigue, The pastures in June, The sun, Three white sheepdogs, The cuckoo, The larks, The city’s iron hand, Human woe.

4/152 All I had left to do was to pack ... that was one of those countless “necessities” that so wearied me and would not let me sleep. It mattered not whether it had great or little significance, each of these “necessities” demanded my attention. I did not control them, they

5/152 controlled me. In this situation you become the slave of that multi-headed monster. Although for a time you are free of it, to forget, to rest. I was weary.

6/152 For life was continually, persistently driving at me like a wave heading for a river bank; and not only my life but that of strangers. And did I even know where my own life ended and that of other people began? I felt as if some alien entity had entered me, like the wind

7/152 breezes through a window and streams enter a river. I could not avoid people. I cannot manage to be alone.

8/152 I admit that I envy the planets, for they have their own orbits and nothing blocks their road. But I am on the road always and always encountering people . So, you, for example, meet me on my way and believe that you have some right to my attention. You are everywhere. It

9/152 is you who dressed the earth in stone and iron, you who peer out of the windows of buildings, those thousands of black mouths, you eternally breathing this stench. You who violated the sacred quietness of the earth with the grinding of factories and thunder of wheels. You

10/152 who sullied the air with dust and smoke, you who roared with pain, delight and malice like an animal. I meet your gaze everywhere. Your eyes, curious and avaricious, crawl into me and you, in your various colours and forms, slide into my pupil ... I cannot avoid people. I

11/152 cannot manage to be alone. You do not only walk alongside me, you crawl into my very centre. You throw into my heart as into your own personal hiding place, your suffering and your pain, your shattered hopes and your despair; your savagery and your bestial instincts, all

12/152 your fear ,all the filth of your existence. For what reason do you torture me? You want to be the lord over me, you want to take me ... my hands, my wisdom, and my heart ... you want to extract all of me, all of my blood, like a vampire. And you will do that. I do not live

13/152 as I want, but as you tell me with your countless “necessities” and your endless “you musts”.

14/152 I am tired.

15/152 People have wearied me. Being a stopover where these creatures eternally trample and cry and bustle and litter, troubles me. Open the window! Let some air into the house. Throw the garbage out along with the people who make it. Let purity and tranquillity enter the

16/152 dwelling.

17/152 Who will grant me the pleasure of being alone? Death? Sleep? How I pass time waiting for them. And when that marvellous brother death came and took me to himself, people troubled me even then. They wove their existence with mine in some strange mesh, they tried to pour

18/152 into my ears all that which they were full of themselves. Hey, listen, listen! You bring your suffering to me here? Your filth? My heart can accommodate no more. It is utterly full. Leave me in peace.

19/152 That’s how it is at nights.

20/152 And during the daytime I shudder when I sensed the shadow of a person behind me. I listen with disgust to the roaring streams of human life that hurtle to meet me like wild horses from all the city streets.

21/152 ***

22/152 The train hurtled full of the hubbub of humanity. It seemed that the city was extending its iron hand into the fields with me and would not relinquish its grasp. I was irritated by the uncertainty that trembled within. Would the city unclench its iron fingers and release

23/152 me? Could I break free of this all encompassing scream and enter those unpopulated green spaces? They were locked from me for now but would it be in vain that the iron hand cracked its bones shut? Would there be silence around me?

24/152 And when it came, so simply and unnoticeable, I did not hear the silence. It was deafened by strange voices, small unnecessary words like splinters and straws bobbing on streams in spring.

25/152 … a lady someone knew had suffered with a weakening heart for fifteen years … trakh tarakh takh ... trakh tarakh;takh our division then ... trakh tarakh takh ... where are you travelling to? Tickets please ... trakh tarakh takh ...trakh tarakh takh ...

26/152 Some green chaos swirled around me and grabbed the carriage by all its wheels. There was so much sky here that the eyes drowned within it as in a sea, searching for something on which to grasp. And they were helpless. At last we arrived home. The white walls of the

27/152 building returned me to consciousness. Just after the carriage rolled into a wide, green yard a cuckoo cooed. Then I suddenly heard a huge silence. It filled all that yard, concealed itself in the trees and lay within the deep blue spaces. It was so quiet that I was

28/152 embarrassed by the throbbing of my own heart.

29/152 ***

30/152 Ten black rooms brimming with darkness besieged my room. I closed my door as if afraid that the lamplight would flee through the gap. So I was alone without a soul around. It was silent and deserted, although I heard something on the other side of the wall. It bothered me.

31/152 What was there?

32/152 I sensed the firmness and the forms of the furniture immersed in darkness around me and heard the floorboards creak beneath their weight. So what, you just stand in one place in the room and rest calmly. I don’t want to think about you. I will be better off laying down. I

33/152 will switch off the lamp and immerse myself in darkness. Perhaps then I will become a soulless object that feels nothing, become “nothing”. It would be so good to become “nothing”, an insensate, immovable tranquillity. Although, behind my wall, there is something. I know

34/152 that when I strike a match in these dark rooms everything will leap into its place, the chairs, the couch, the windows and even the curtain rails. Who knows, maybe the eye will manage to catch the image of people, pale and expressionless as in tapestries, all of those who

35/152 left their faces within the mirrors, their voices within nooks and crannies, their forms within the soft hair-stuffed upholstery and mattresses, their shadows on the walls. Who knows what happens there when we aren’t looking ...

36/152 What! How stupid. You wanted silence and solitude and now you have it. You shake your head. Don’t you believe anywhere is utterly deserted. And what do I even know? Do I even know ... may I even be certain that the doors don’t swing open ... just a little with a barely

37/152 perceptible creak and people begin to emerge from that endless, deep invisible darkness ... all of they who lay in my heart as within their own hiding place, their hopes, anger or suffering, or their bloodthirsty animal savagery. All those that I could not pass by, that

38/152 fatigued me. What is strange about them coming again? So I see them. Oh! There are so many of you. You whose blood flowed from so small a wound left by a soldiers bullet and you ... dry preparations; they crammed you into white sacks, swung you in the air on ropes, laid

39/152 you in poorly covered ditches, that the dogs dug you up from. You look at me reproachfully and you are right. You know I read once how they hung all twelve of you ... all twelve ... and I yawned. On the second occasion I received news about a row of those white sacks I

40/152 just ate some ripe plums. I just took a wonderful, juicy plum in my fingers thus and luxuriated in the pleasant sweetness filling my mouth ... you see, I didn’t even blush, my face was as pale as yours because horror had sucked all the blood out of me. I do not have even a

41/152 drop of warm blood left for these living corpses among which you tread, a blood soaked apparition. So come! I am tired.

42/152 And so people come, first one, then a second and a third and so on, without end. Friends and enemies, those close to and those remote from me and they all cry of their life or death into my ear, leaving the tread of their heels in my heart. I will cover my ears, lock my

43/152 heart and cry it is not free to enter here! I open my eyes and immediately see depths of sky and birch tree branches through the windows. A cuckoo calls, a little hammer striking a huge crystalline bell, cuckoo, cuckoo and sows silence upon the grasses, a silence that

44/152 already holds sway over my room. I leap out of bed and bellow through the window at the cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo... Hello!

45/152 Oh what an abundance there is of everything, the sky, the sun, the delighted greenery. I run into the yard. Dogs bark angrily clattering their chains. Huge white sheepdogs, like white bears rearing on their white legs, their long shaggy pelts flapping. I draw closer. Well,

46/152 what are you dog; what are you called? Well, okay, then, your name is Overko. The dog neither hears nor sees; its red eyes and wide forehead, its white hairy legs leap. That well-fanged rage lunges but can’t quite dart out of its deep maw and just manages to throw that

47/152 tuft of white hair at me over and over. Well, what are you up to, Overko? Why do your red eyes burn, droning in flames of fear and hatred? I am not your foe nor am I afraid of you. The most you might do is tear a slice from my body or draw blood from my calf muscle. Oh

48/152 what a triviality this is. What a triviality when you know. Shush, dog, shush. Really, I understand, it's the chain. Maybe you are more angry at it than you are at me. Because of it your front paws must grab at the air, it chokes you by the throat and reins in your fiery

49/152 rage. Wait a little. You’ll be released soon. Then what will you do to me. Ha, ha! What a daft dog.

50/152 It closed its eyes, turned its head aside, put its paws together and flew off blindly and obliviously. Tore up the grass with its claws and cast it aside and flew headlong with the fur on its backside flapping. And as for me, what? Has it forgotten me?

51/152 Now it circles... and circles again... so. Oh, noble hound, freedom is more dear to you than satisfying your anger.

52/152 Now Pava, a respectable matron and her younger son are introduced to me. The younger son is none other than the terrifying Trepov. While Overko is simply and purely sanguine and throws himself blindly at everything, as if a crimson mist hung before his eyes Trepov is solid

53/152 and reflective. Yes, he is so solid and thoughtful, quite capable of biting your throat in two. He has powerful legs that would stand on your breast, and a lot of regard for himself. Even when he lays calmly and grooms the fleas from his pink body, those clipped ears are

54/152 listening, thoughts churn under that broad brow and that wet tongue dangles so heavily from that fanged maw.

55/152 ***

56/152 My days fly among the Steppe, among valleys brimming with green wheat. The endless paths, furtive and hidden as if only intended for those close to them lead me into the pastures. The pastures roll, in the roll of green waves, breaking to the horizon. Now I have a separate

57/152 world akin to an oyster shell, the two halves pressed together. One half is green the other aqua, and the sun is locked therein like a pearl. And I walk there and seek tranquillity. I walk. A cloud of midges keeps pace with me. I could see myself as a planet with them as

58/152 satellites orbiting me as I orbit. I see how the sky draws out the two respiring wings of a crow. And the crows wings are thereby yet more black and the sky is yet more blue.

59/152 The sun is in the sky and I am among the pastures, There is no one else. I walk. My hand smooths the hairs of barley, the silken wave of ears of grain. The wind hammers fragmented sounds into my ears, in a chaotic roar. The wind, so hot and unendurable that the

60/152 silver-haired oat stalks simmer beneath it. Blue rivers of flax flow quietly, so quietly and peacefully between green banks that you want to sit on a boat and sail with them. And there the barley swings and sways and weaves ... weaves a green haze from the green moustaches

61/152 of grain. I walk further. Everything interweaves. The haze rises in waves. The paths snakes deep into the rye, beyond where the eye can see them, my foot catches. Cornflowers look into the sky. They want to be like the sky and have become its semblance. Now the wheat

62/152 comes. The hard hairless ears beats on my hands and stalks slip under my feet. I walk further; wheat and yet more wheat. When will I reach the end of it? It runs with the wind like a pack of foxes, the crests of its waves glittering in the sun. And I walk past it all alone

63/152 on the earth like the sun in the sky and I like the fact that there is no one else casting their shadow between us. The surge of the grain sea flows past me and into oblivion.

64/152 I come to a halt at last. A white froth of buckwheat has caught my attention, as fragrant and light as if it had just been wafted by bees’ wings. It lays right beneath my feet, a harp singing all its strings resonant. I stand and listen. My ears are full of the strange

65/152 murmur of the field, that silken whisper as continuous as the flow of waters and the endless swaying of the grain. My eyes are full of the glitter of the sun, for each stalk catches the light and casts it back.

66/152 Everything is extinguished suddenly. I shiver. What is this? From where? A shadow? Someone else? No, it is only a cloud; a moment dark and disconsolate. And in a second everything to the right and then to the left smiles again. The gold field wafts its pinions to the

67/152 horizons, to the blue sky. As if it yearns to take flight. Only then does it rear before me in its endless, warm, vital, indomitable strength. The oats, the wheat, the barley, all flows into a single powerful wave overwhelming everything and taking it captive. A youthful

68/152 power shivers into the air, emerging from every vein of every stalk. Hope and huge anticipation see these within that force so that we call it fecundity. I saw the village then a depressing cluster of straw thatched roofs barely noticeable amidst the fields. It was

69/152 embraced and choked off by those green hands that reached right up to the houses. Enmeshed in the fields like a fly in a cobweb. What significance did these houses have for that power? None. The green waves would wash over and engulf them. What did a single person signify

70/152 for that power? Nothing. They enter the field, a small pale speck, and are drowned within it. What if they yell? Sing? Flap around? The deaf inertness of space swallows everything. And again there is nothing. Even the tracks left by a person are expunged and covered. The

71/152 field conceals paths and roads. It just rolls and rolls in green waves splashing to the very edge of the blue sky. A rhythmic and restrained roar rules over everything, calm and assured of itself like a vein of eternity. Like the sail of those windmills darkening over the

72/152 field. They circle in the wind indifferently and unceasingly, as if saying ... so it will be for eternity ... іn saecula saeculorum ... іn saecula saeculorum …

73/152 ***

74/152 It was late when I returned home. With me came the aroma of the fields, breezy and fresh as a wildflower. I bore that fragrance in my clothes like the Old Testament prophet Isaiah. I sat, solitary and calm, on the verandah of my empty home, watching the night draw in. How

75/152 it raised vague columns of dark, wove a net of shadows, scooped and reared aloft uncertain and trembling walls. How, when all this vagueness solidified and darkened, it covered everything with a starry dome.

76/152 Now I can sleep calmly for your sturdy walls stand between me and the entire world. Goodnight to you, fields, and you cuckoo. I know that tomorrow, with the first sunlight your feminine contralto, “cuckoo, cuckoo” will fly to me inside the house. And your greeting will

77/152 make me happy, my closest friend.

78/152 ***

79/152 Trepov! Overko! Pava! Four fingers in the mouth and the wild Steppe whistle. They run like three white bears. Perhaps they will rend me apart, or perhaps they will respond to the invitation to venture into the fields. Ho, ho! That Overko can’t manage without a piece. He

80/152 jumps around like an idiotic calf casting his red eye askance. Trepov fluffs up his hair proudly and plants his legs like white columns. They crop the hair on his clipped ears. Pava treads respectfully, lowers her rear in a melancholic fashion, and sets off. I follow the

81/152 dogs, seeing only the easy undulations of their three hairy backbones, soft, fluffy and imbued with bestial strength. It seems that things are not entirely to their liking, the sun is too hot today, transforming them into dazzlingly bright specks. But I am full of

82/152 amiability towards the sun and head straight for it, my face to its face. For to turn your back on it would, God forbid, be so ungrateful. I am happy to meet with him here in open space where no one covers his face and say to him, Oh Sun! I am grateful to you. You sow gold

83/152 seed in my spirit and who knows what will arise from that sowing? Fire?

84/152 You are dear to me. I drink you in sun, your warm, restorative beverage, I drink you as a child sucks milk from a maternal breast, warm also, and beloved. Even when you burn I want to decant you like some burning liquor and become drunk.

85/152 I love you. Because, listen:

86/152 I appeared on the earth from darkness “unseen” and my first respiration and my first movement took place in the darkness of my mother’s womb. And that darkness has reigned over me for long enough, throughout all those nights that have occupy half of my life, standing

87/152 between me and you. His servants, the clouds, the mountains, the prisons, hide you from me. All three of us know that … that, unavoidably, … that time is coming when I will dissolve in that obscurity like salt in water, for eternity. You are only a guest in my life, a

88/152 desired guest. When you depart, I clutch at you. I catch the last rays in the clouds, I sustain your radiance in flames, in lamps, in fireworks. I gather its semblance from flowers, the laughter of children, the eyes of my beloved, When you are extinguished and flee from

89/152 me I create your semblance, designating it an ideal, and concealing it within my heart. But it shines forth upon me.

90/152 Look upon me yet, oh sun, and bronze my soul as you bronze my body so it will be impermeable to the mosquito’s sting. (I note that I am addressing the sun like a living entity. Does that mean that I am already missing human companionship?)

91/152 We walk among the fields. Three white sheepdogs and I. A quiet murmur flows over us the respiration of young ears of grain gathered into azure vapour. From somewhere to the side a quail pipes up, the silver string of a cricket’s chirrup splashes among the grain. The air

92/152 trembles with the heat and distant poplars dance in a silver and spectral light. The landscape is broad, beautiful and tranquil. The dogs are finding the heat oppressive. They lay at the edge of the field like three haystacks, but made of wool. Their tongues hang from

93/152 their mouths and pant, wheezing as their ribs rise and fall. I sit by them. We all just breathe. Silence.

94/152 Has time halted or is it still in motion? Perhaps the time has come?

95/152 We all get up lazily, shift from foot to foot lazily and carefully bear that tranquillity home. We pass by a fallow field of black soil. Heat breathed into the flocculent face of the black earth, full of tranquillity and hope. I greet you. Rest quietly bellow the sun, for

96/152 you are as weary as I am, Soil. I too have let my spirit sink beneath a black and fallow surface.

97/152 ***

98/152 I never felt the connection to the soil so vividly as I do here. In cities the soil is clothed in stone and iron, and inaccessible. Here I draw close to the earth. For the first time I rouse the still sluggish waters of the well in the fresh morning air. When the empty

99/152 bucket slaps its base on the breast of the water it splashes loudly on the drowsiness in the depths of the well. The water lazily fills the pail and trembles blueish in the sunlight. I drink it, fresh, cold, still brimming with dreams, and splash my face.

100/152 After that I had some milk. White and fragrant it froths in the glass. Raising it to my lips I knew that it would pour into me as soft as a child’s curled hair, the vetch whereon only yesterday violet butterfly shaped flowers swarmed. I am drinking the quintessence of the