Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky. Part I

“Does reality not disappear without a trace, just like a dream? Is life not a swiftly passing dream—and a dream, life?” This question from Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky’s novella The Dream sounds like a Zen koan. It instantly transports us into a realm where the boundary between what is perceived and what is real becomes almost transparent.

An aesthetic sense of the world’s transience and a profound awareness of the present moment connect this Ukrainian master of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—rightfully regarded as the father of Ukrainian Impressionism—with the philosophical traditions of the East. Taoism offers the famous parable of Zhuangzi, who dreamed that he was a butterfly. Upon awakening, he could not understand whether he was a man who had dreamed of being a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming that he was a man. Kotsiubynsky sensed the same illusory nature of existence: for his characters, inner experiences, visions, and dreams often proved more real than everyday life.

Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky possessed a rare gift for seeing touching beauty in the simplest things. His ability to perceive the subtlest nuances of emotion was remarkable. Yet, as the years passed, domestic idyll gave way to routine, while emotional exhaustion created a need for new inspiration. In The Dream, the author expressed this inner longing through his protagonist: “He wanted to experience something powerful and beautiful, like a storm at sea, the breath of spring, a new fairy tale of life; to sing the unfinished song that lay within his heart, folding its wings.”

In the summer of 1910, searching for new impressions, the writer travelled to the Carpathians and the village of Kryvorivnia. There he discovered Hutsulshchyna—a distinctive ethnographic region whose inhabitants had preserved their unique way of life and worldview for centuries. In these lands, pagan beliefs and legends of molfars and mountain spirits were closely intertwined with Christian rituals.

Kotsiubynsky studied this world of folklore deeply, spoke with Hutsuls, and collected folk legends. This work resulted in the novella Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, the story of the fateful love between Ivan and Marichka—a love that transcends the boundary between life and death. In 1964, director Serhii Paradzhanov adapted the work into a film of the same title, which went on to become a classic of world cinema.

The writer died in 1913 at the age of 48, shortly after the novella was published. His literary legacy is modest in volume but extraordinary in its power. It remains an exquisite canvas that teaches us to pause and experience profound beauty.