THE INTIMATE DOSSIER OF VOLODYMYR VYNNYCHENKO

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THE INTIMATE DOSSIER OF VOLODYMYR VYNNYCHENKO

Volodymyr Vynnychenko / vogue.ua

Volodymyr Vynnychenko (July 28, 1880 – March 6, 1951) was a politician, revolutionary, writer, artist, and playwright. During his lifetime, he wrote more than one hundred short stories, twenty plays, fourteen novels, dozens of diaries, and invented forty pseudonyms, the most popular of which was V. Dede. He had an explosive temperament, an addiction to veronal (a sleeping pill) and to women, and he also practiced nudism, vegetarianism, and raw foodism. In his notebooks, he confessed that he carried within his chest a two-faced soul, on hinges. He endlessly struggled with nicotine addiction, and in exile he deeply longed for Ukraine: «If it took walking there for an entire year in order to spend just one week “being” in Ukraine, I would gladly agree…»

THE UNWANTED «SWINEHERD»

is father had been a farmhand. In his youth, he went looking for work and moved to the city, but instead of finding even a modest job, he found himself a wife. The widow was raising three children on her own, and she bore a son to her new husband as well. In time, the family pooled their money to pay for the youngest boy’s education, yet Volodya considered himself an unwanted child until the end of his life. In light of this, the protagonists of his books also tended to dislike children. The boy’s character was difficult. He was restless, choleric, contradictory, and emotional. At school, he often fought with his peers, who mocked him as a swineherd, reproaching him for his poverty and his Ukrainian speech. The lad stood up for himself and studied like one possessed.

He learned Latin, Greek, German, and French, as well as Polish and Italian, but he was expelled from the gymnasium after writing a revolutionary poem and had to continue his education on his own. He came to his exam wearing an embroidered shirt, a gray fur hat, and carrying a stick. He answered exclusively in Ukrainian and later repeatedly emphasized that to be Ukrainian meant constantly having to prove one’s right to exist. Later, he endured much: numerous arrests, escapes, and emigration. He lived in Austria, France, Switzerland, and Italy. He used other people’s surnames, drifted from journal to journal, and drafted universals for the Central Rada.

He collaborated with Skoropadskyi, had conflicts with Symon Petliura and the creator of the Ukrainian army, Mykola Mikhnovskyi. Ultimately, after many ordeals, he left the country, writing firmly: «Let the Ukrainian philistine say and think whatever he pleases; I am going abroad, shaking off all the dust of politics, surrounding myself with books, and immersing myself in my true and only calling — literature…» Later he noted: «Never have I longed for any beloved woman as I have for silence, pen, and paper. I grow cold at the mere thought that I am writing».

FROM «THE WHITE PANTHER» TO «A COMEDY WITH KOST»

Be that as it may, he was a brilliant writer — eloquent and richly imaginative. Suffice it to recall his metaphors: «the sea like a bowl of aspic», «the wind sizzling in the trees as if a giant fried egg were being cooked», «two mountain cones resembling the breasts of a young Black woman». In his works, a sour, useless sun rises, or it is «wildly bright, excessively dazzling, as in a tubercular flush»; pine trees stand with white, creamy tops; an old woman selling apples and nuts resembles a large nut wrapped in a headscarf. In the novel Notes of a Snub-Nosed Mephistopheles, one can trace a shocking, remarkably cynical view of family relationships; in the play The White Panther and the Black Bear, painting becomes more important than a sick child; in Memento, an unwanted baby is left out in the frost; in A Comedy with Kost, an orphan dies with a cigarette butt in hand.

HOW TO LOVE THREE AT ONCE…

As for women, in relationships he knew no limits, no «morals», no boundaries. With his companion Rozalia Livshyts, whom he called Kokha (beloved), he agreed «from the outset» that they would not weary one another with notions of marital fidelity, for «one can be in love with two, three, five at once — as many as the strength of the body and the fire within allow; but one can love only one at a time». Rozalia accepted all these conditions without hesitation. Although a student at the University of Paris, she learned Ukrainian, called herself Ukrainian, treated her husband’s mistresses with understanding, and herself occasionally strayed; thus Volodymyr once observed: «When I begin an affair, my attitude toward her does not change. But when she becomes infatuated, she grows indifferent to me…»

And so they lived. Women swooned over Vynnychenko and lost their good sense. One gave birth to a child whom the father did everything to deny; another nearly took her own life. Young ladies wrote the writer letters, confessed their erotic fantasies, begged for meetings, while he smiled indulgently and stroked his luxurious beard. He described his mistresses with a firm hand, not masking their flaws but, on the contrary, emphasizing them. Of Rozalia, he highlighted her large eyes, broad nose with traces of redness, and juicy «immoral» lips. Slightly plump, with the golden gleam of a dental filling in her teeth, and breasts like those of a fourteen-year-old girl.

NADIA, KOKHA, A COMEDY

His diary abounds with beauties: the somewhat oversized Maia, «she ought to wear a longer dress», and some neat little Finn, «as if freshly and thoroughly washed, preferring to study Russian, referring to herself only in the masculine gender and parasitizing the word “a little”». Dor walks like someone who has become extraordinarily irritated and is running to beat someone. Lolia is excessively sweet. Juliette has problems with her hairstyle: «it seems that on her head she has not hair but padding made of the material used to stuff armchairs». As for Zhad, there is a suspicion that her sexual organs are underdeveloped; Lenocha appears in dreams inappropriately often; Tamara provokes himself. The women stretched out in an endless procession.

Take, for example, Alla: she would come in the morning, smelling of scorched wood and the fog from an open window. The woman sewed pillowcases, and they laughed a great deal. She restrained her sensuality better than Roza. Roza could not tolerate scholarly books and periodically displeased her chosen one, for she was overly soft and pliant, like butter. He took Nadia once, and she fell so deeply in love that for three years she was intimate with no one. Soon she «broke her fast» and paid him a visit to boast of her intimacy with other men. With one old but wealthy man she did not feel a drop of «exaltation»; with another they scarcely spoke, merely «tickled» somewhere in the garden. In the end, Kokha was jealous of Nadia. Nadia was jealous of Kokha. A comedy indeed.

UNINVITED CHILDREN, OR THE WOMAN-AS-BAG

Young ladies stirred him unspeakably. Even on a train, he could feel a powerful sexual attraction toward an unfamiliar woman dozing on a berth. In such moments, he had no desire for Roza at all. On the contrary, thoughts pressed in about how to break with her, yet fear of causing pain stood in the way. Children did not fit into this erotic picture; they remained inappropriate and superfluous. Thus his characters, too, suffered from a phobia of unwanted pregnancy. He repeatedly cited someone’s wearisome love story as an example: «At first they lived well, loved each other. She had a child every year. In the third year he began to wonder, in the fourth — to grow cold, in the fifth — to resent it. He started courting other women, for what kind of woman is that — some sort of bag stuffed with children?»

So he had mistresses in abundance, yet did not disdain brothels either. He was passionate about painting and painted landscapes and still lifes with white roses and a boiled egg quite well. He was among the first to saturate his works with sexuality and was not ashamed of such delicate matters. He did not doubt his own genius and considered himself head and shoulders above his colleagues. He dressed stylishly, watched his weight and his tan. In 1932, he met a young French writer, the author of two novels. At first, he described at length her protruding mouth and teeth, her somewhat oversized hooked nose, her decent piano playing and her sharp, strained soprano. Then he noted: «She feels nothing in the sexual act. Married for two years and has never once had an orgasm…»

SPANISH FLIES AND THE OLD «STALLION»

He was greatly concerned with his masculine strength and took pride in the fact that at fifty-one his potency was just as strong. With irony, he recalled Mykola Hlushchenko, twenty years his junior, and his Marusya. While he himself had never in his life been ill, complained of nothing, never napped after lunch, showed no fatigue, and worked all day long, his friend had significant problems with erections, constantly inquiring about Spanish flies (an arousing elixir with a chocolate flavor) and asking how many drops to take. On another occasion, he turned over in his memory a conversation with some village old man from the village:

— Do you still trample your woman?

— I do, but weakly.

— And how old are you?

— Sixty-five…

— Oh-ho!

For the last twenty-five years of his life, he lived in the commune of Mougins, where he grew grapes, lavender, and jasmine. He dreamed of the Nobel Prize for his novel The Solar Machine. In his own way, he believed in God, played chess, and collected coins. He professed his own philosophy of happiness and considered abstaining from meat, fish, and anything cooked to be the key to health. Until the very end, he vividly portrayed women: now a toad-like lady, now a cook with a sun-scorched face, now one suffering from inflamed tonsils. He emphasized: «I have passed through all the secret corners of love. Hundreds of women’s hands embraced me… Fame? I was at the very peak…»

(Based on the diaries of Volodymyr Vynnychenko)