Unknown story of Mazepa Presented in Ukraine

The second annual conference on International Intercultural Communication: Language, Culture, and Personality was held at the Ostroh Academy National University, Ostroh, Ukraine, May 15-16, 2008. At that conference, two Canadians from the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Education, Dr. Denis Hlynka and Dr. Orest Cap presented their research on The Mazeppa Legend. Dr. Hlynka was unable to be present due to scheduling conflicts. Dr. Cap presented (in English) on behalf of the team.

Dr. Hlynka is a professor of educational technology at the University of Manitoba. His research agenda focuses on pedagogic dimensions of technology, with a particular emphasis on the cross mediation of content issues between multiple media. The story of Mazeppa fits this criteria especially well, having begun as a historical personage, then moved through poetry, art, drama, symphonic music, opera, cinema, and musical comedy, as well as showing up “artifactually” as a name for horses, locomotives, towns … and the list expands exponentially.

A full house gave rapt attention to Dr. Orest Cap as he presented a unique twist to the otherwise  familiar Mazeppa story.  “Everyone in the audience knew the story of the historic Hetman Mazepa,” said Dr. Cap, “but they thought that the story ended at the Battle of Poltava in 1709, and Mazepa’s death, in exile a few months later.”

“What Dr. Hlynka’s research has uncovered” explained Cap, “is that this was only the beginning.”

There is a second Mazeppa story, a legend. The story is that a young twenty-year-old Ivan Mazeppa was living as a page in the Polish court. But one day he was caught in an “indiscretion” with the daughter (some say the wife) of a Polish count. In revenge, Mazeppa was stripped naked, bound backwards onto a wild horse. The legend tells how Mazeppa suffered for three days as the horse galloped wildly through the desert-like never-ending steppe, attacked by wolves and vultures. Finally, exhausted, the horse fell down dead. But Mazeppa was rescued by a band of Ukrainian cossacks.  Mazeppa first made himself useful in the camp, he slowly rose in the Zaporozian Cossack ranks, and eventually became Hetman of all Ukraine.

It was this story, say Drs. Hlynka and Cap, that captured the imagination of America. After being filtered through the likes of Voltaire, Byron and Hugo, the Mazeppa legend spread like wildfire. In the late 1850s a play called “Mazeppa or the Wild Horse of Tartary played New York’s Broadway to packed houses. In 1861, a cross-gendering occurred when Adah Menkin began playing the role of Mazeppa, a role which made her the first great female American celebrity. From that time until the end of the nineteenth century, Mazeppa became the most performed stage play in America. In the mid-twentieth century, Mazeppa resurfaced and was mentioned in passing in films like High Noon (1952) and Heller in Pink Tights (1960) with Sophia Loren playing Mazeppa. On Broadway, a Miss Mazeppa resurfaced as a character in the long running musical Gypsy! (1959)

Most recently, in 2006, the University of Manitoba’s Centre for Ukrainian Canadian Studies revived Michael Balfe’s 1865 cantata The Page from Mazeppa with an English libretto by Jessica Rankin. (The complete audio performance with accompanying text libretto is available online at http://www.umanitoba.ca/centres/ukrainian_canadian/concerts/part2_concert.html)

It was reported that Dr. Cap’s presentation took the audience completely by surprise.  Dr. Svitlana Novoseletska, the Dean of Romance and Slavic Languages at Ostroh Academy National University commented that “They never told us how Mazepa has conquered the stage, the media, the literary world, and the art world. This is all new to us.”

A conference participant from the City of Kazan in the Republic of Tatarstan was ecstatic over the power point photo of a locomotive with the name “MAZEPPA” clearly labelled on the side. “I couldn’t believe it!” he said.

Yet another surprise to the audience was the photos of Mazeppa Bay, South Africa.

A somewhat different version of the research was presented a few days later in Chernihiv, Ukraine at the Fourth International Scientific Conference  Ukraine in the World: Ukraine is There Where Ukrainians Live. This presentation took place on May 25, 2008 at Chernihiv State Pedagogical University. It was presented in Ukrainian by Dr. Cap.

The complete paper will be included in the conference proceedings to be published in the near future. The paper includes a detailed bibliography, including dissertations, films, media, resources, etc.

A third academic presentation is scheduled for the University of Alberta at an international multi-disciplinary conference entitled Continuities and Innovations - Popular Print Cultures: Past and Present, Local and Global, August 27-30, 2008.

Note: The Ukrainian transliteration typically uses one “p” for Mazepa; the Western European tradition, started by Voltaire, Byron and Hugo uses a double “p” and spells the name Mazeppa.

Submitted by the University of Manitoba, Centre for Ukrainian Canadian Studies. For further information, contact Dr. Denis Hlynka at dhlynka@cc.umanitoba.ca or Dr. Stanislav Ponomarevsky at 2diaspora2@ukr.net