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LIS OVA PISNIA The Forest Song in Drama and Film by HELENE TURKEWICZ-SANKO The Forest Song as a literary work appeared in Ukraine in 1911, the work of Laryssa Kosach, better known among Ukrainians under the pseudonym of Lesia Ukrainka. Seventy years later, The Forest Song was produced in Ukraine as a movie, released in 1981 by the Dovzhenko Studios in Kyiv under the direction of con temporary filmmaker Yuri Ilyenko. In both film and lit erature, the main character is the Forest Nymph, the Mavka, and the producer has chosen to add her name to the title of his production — The Forest Song/Mavka. Laryssa Kosach was bom in 1871 into a family of well-read poets, writers, university professors and successful civil servants who worked for the Russian tsarist government of the nineteenth century. She re ceived an extensive formal education under the supervi sion of her mother, a published writer, and her uncle, a famous professor of Hellenic civilization. Her father was also extremely well educated. Ukraine at that time was part of the Russian Empire and he, like many oth ers, was educated in both Ukraine and Russia. Com pleting his studies in St. Petersburg, he returned to Ukraine to work as a civil servant. At the age of ten, Laryssa Kosach performed in classical Latin and Greek plays; she spoke English, French, German, Italian, Polish and Russian fluently. However, her mother insisted that her daughter mingle with the village children and learn from them how to speak perfect Ukrainian and learn as well their songs, dances and folk stories. She became very familiar with the folklore of the area known as Volynia, located in the northwestern part of Ukraine near the Polish border. It was also at the age of ten that little Laryssa succumbed to her first grave illness, an illness which was to bring her excruciating pain for the rest of her life. She con tracted tuberculosis of the leg bones and tuberculosis eventually affected her lungs and was the cause of her death in 1913 at the age of forty-two. Laryssa's close association with the Ukrainian people of Volynia enabled her not only to understand their language, but to witness their hard life and espe cially their helplessness to change that life through edu cation, guidance and leadership. From childhood, she remembered people being arrested and exiled to Siberia because they were activists. Ordinary people were vic tims of oppression and sent away. When Laryssa was only five years old, her aunt became one of these vic tims. It is therefore significant, but not surprising, that Laryssa Kosach chose to sign her literary works as Lesia Ukrainka, Lesia the Ukrainian, a reflection of her will to be the voice of people who were denied a voice. In The Forest Song, she portrays the lives of these people with references to their native mythology as well as to their social and political situation during the last years of the tsarist regime. The film The Forest Song/Mavka follows the literary work fairly closely. The background music is also the work of Lesia Ukrainka, recorded by her in Volynia. The drama was published with a special ap pendix to the text with the scores of the music to be played on the local flute. The movie begins with the haunting sound of a woman wailing. A character drawn from the local my thology, the lisovyk or forest master, appears. He is covered with animal pelts. From the interior of a tree trunk he watches the village people who are walking in procession as though to celebrate the rite of spring. The banners and the costumes all indicate that we are some where in Ukraine. But soon the procession breaks up and we see people fighting; the priest, still carrying his banner, escapes the crowd. The stage is set for the po litical and social upheaval. We see a man literally thrown out of the village. It is Leo, a wood cutter, who is soon joined by his sister and her son Lukash. The trio leaves the village for the forest and as they enter the woods, Leo and the others pay homage to the deities which they believe inhabit the trees, the marshes, and the rocks. In the film, the woodcutter cuts a lock of hair from each person, sets the lock of hair on fire, and blows the smoke and the ashes through the forest. Later in the film, we see him depositing an offering on the branch of an old oak tree. Metaphors are drawn from Ukrainian folklore where spirits inhabit trees, mountains and wa ter. In the literary drama by Lesia Ukrainka, four characters appear; only two of these appear in Ilyenko's film version. The first to appear in the drama is "the one who breaks the dams". He personifies the forces of na ture in the spring time. He does not appear in the movie. The second character to appear in the drama is the "vodianyk" or Water Master, who interacts with the 18 "НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ", ГРУДЕНЬ 1998 Видання C оюзу Українок A мерики - перевидано в електронному форматі в 2012 році . A рхів C У A - Ню Йорк , Н . Й . C Ш A.
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