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vital energy that defenseless women display in the most crucial circumstances that he tries to capture in his N otebooks for a possible movie about “The Ukrainain Woman and The War.” Dovzhenko jots down details for scenes depicting the Mother who remains alone in her village house. She knows that her son may never come back, and thus she expresses her sorrow for the young life wasted. We hear her say, "Where are your young years?” She also antici pates a very lonely death for herself: “Who will close my eyes?” But there is more than words can say. She does not lament on her life, but laments the break in the con tinuity of communal life. Not only will she die alone, but there will be no wedding and no child-bearing wife for her son, nor will there be the presence of grandchildren. Indeed, this woman will die a very lonely death, yet her sorrow is much greater than life. She feels the loss of an invisible link between her, her community and the land where she waas born. In her desperation, the thought of other women sharing the same pain and sorrow gives her the inner strenght to go on with life: a sort of mystic sisterhood unites her to other mothers. And it is this hidden energy that Dovzhenko tries to capture in his notes. It is as if mothers were sending secret unre corded messages to one another saying, “Take care of my son as I will take care of yours.” Dovzhenko wants to portray this sublime moment with scenes where a woman claims that the soldiers she welcomed into her cottage are her own sons. He brings the scene to an ultimate peak with a dialogue during which someone in the village denounces her and testi fies that her sons are at the front, or dead! Two wounded soldiers soaked in blood, crawled through meadows and gardens to an old woman’s house to find cover and get a drink of water. There they stayed. The old woman fed them, bathed their wounds, and bandaged them from the shirt she was saving for her death bed. Neighbors would come...[...] — "Who are these men?” — "My sons.” — “You’re lying!” — “How can I be lying? Aren’t these the two I sent off to the Red Army? Don’t touch them! They’re my children.” — “Is she your mother?” — “Yes, it’s true. She’s our own mother.” — "You’re lying, commisar!” ... The woman stood in front of the two soldiers, pro tecting them. — “I won’t let you, you cutthroats! Neighbors, these are my children, my sons! Why are you silent? Tell them!...I beg you!" — “She is lying. Her sons are at the front.” Note books (1942) Dovzhenko immediately adds another line as an echo to this script: “She is lying. Her sons died in 1919.” This brings back to mind casualties of World War I; his tory repeats itself. Twenty years earlier, another genera tion of young men died and the woman is probably a survivor of World War I, living alone, perhaps, and yet she feels the same bond with younger mothers whose sons were fighting World War II. The noble gesture freezes: it becomes timeless! Later, the same year, Dovzhenko relates another story which brings the motherly compassion to a universal level: the men do not even speak her native tongue!:” ...the wounded men were not her sons because they couldn’t speak Ukrain ian! N otebooks (1942) To Dovzhenko, the poet and artist, such behavior represents the sublime “Mother’s love” and the genius of “Ukrainian motherhood.” He also sketches another frame for a movie which will exult mother love: she brings food to the prisoners of war in a barbed-wire camp at the risk of being shot. These prisoners are complete strangers to her, but the invisible bond between mothers energizes her again. As giver of life, she values life to the end. In her gesture, she displays confidence that somewhere, some other woman, a mother like she, is bringing food to her own sons. Dovzhenko remembers such a woman in Aunty Ulyana and Levko’s wife. What do they speak about beside the barbed wire? About Levko’s wife. Her corpse lies a little way off with a pot of potatoes and a bit of bread and saltpork that the poor woman was taking to the hungry prisoners on "that land of ours that is not ours.” Notebooks (1942) Suddenly the vision of mothers vanishes into the picture of a Mother of all the sons who went to war. And whenever she sees a young soldier in uniform, she sees her own son and he mystically becomes her own flesh and blood simply because he is fighting. She will go to extremes to help and protect. She becomes the Mother who embodies the mythical image of the Motherland. She remains the keeper of the fire of her home which is symbolic of her nurturing of the ties of the present generations to the past and the future generations. Whenever Dovzhenko thinks of a dead Mother, he por trays her in her cottage where everything is destroyed except the chimney. An old woman lay next to a shattered stove. God knows whether shot or mortally confused. She was as neat in death as she was in life. She died beside the stove where she had labored for half a century. Even in the last moments of her life she was probably cooking for the soldiers. She had small hands with long delicate fingers. She had pressed her fists to the dirty floor, making it "НАШЕ Ж ИТТЯ”, ТРАВЕНЬ 1996 15
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