Viazynka: azure and gold of the day

Do you remember last spring, friends? That time of anxiety growing day by day, terrible news, closed borders, the world that virtually stopped? If you do, you will certainly understand me. After a few hard weeks, I needed a mental reload, a chance to mellow out, bring thoughts in order and feel that harmony and peace are still possible. I needed a very special place – and I found it.

Actually, it was not a great discovery – many people here in Belarus know about this magic place of power just 40 kilometers north-westwards from Minsk.

They come here for different reasons. Families and companies of few people enjoy meditative rest with a picnic out in the country, lonely artists and photographers wander about searching for picturesque views – and always find them, be it bright and sunny spring morning, sultry summer midday, viscous like honey, or monochrome misty afternoon of late autumn. Noisy crowds of schoolchildren and groups of curious tourists come here for an excursion: probably, every pupil in Belarus knows that Viazynka is the very place where our great national poet Yanka Kupala was born in 1882.

The well-restored small house once rented by the future poet’s parents is still there serving as a museum nowadays. And still, the wooden building looks rather as an organic part of the landscape. Nature plays the main part here. It glorifies life with azure of heaven reflected in the river and impressionistic dots of forget-me-nots. It generously paints lush shining grass with free strokes of wide hard brushes. It sculpts sophisticated figures out of trees bending over the mirror of river. It reminds us of remote ages inviting us to touch trunks of centuries-old oak trees or huge hoary boulders.

The surrounding sounds in splashing water, trembling trills of birds and whisper of wind. And, observing and hearing it, you catch yourself thinking that once, more than a century ago, a cry of a newborn baby, like a thin golden thread, twined into this powerful choir of nature. And that pristine sound of life grew into one of the most powerful voices in the history of my country.

I'm bound to earth and sky by a thread wondrous strong,

Eternal gossamer that none can break or sever,

The earth caresses me, like her true son ever,

The bright sun holds my soul in its caresses long.

Even in my cradle I learned to know from song

Of all things close to me, of my home's narrow tether:

That I am but a millionth part from my field severed,

That the stars strike the sparks that bright in my heart throng.

These are the lines by Yanka Kupala who was just one year old when his family left Viazynka and never came back. But still, numerous people agree with the same idea: it is the very place where an outstanding poet should be born. They believe in the magic of this captivating place that gave him a sparkle of rare and precious talent: to feel united with everything in the world – the earth and the heaven, millions of people and separate persons.

Not by chance, Yanka Kupala, born on the very time of summer solstice, took his pseudonym from the ancient pre-Christian festivity marking this moment of the year. This is the time when people celebrate together feeling a part of eternal cosmic turnover, taking a charge of energy from the land and the sky, believing that the impossible can happen if one believes in it. They sing and feel the magic power of their songs.

It seems that the voice that once sounded in Viazynka will be certainly heard. And not by chance, year by year, people come here to mark special moments of the year that have been celebrated in Belarus from time immemorial: the day of winter and summer solstices, calling for spring, autumn harvest festivals… They leave behind their dynamic urban routine and come here, tune their voices to the mode of eternal natural harmonies and start singing – glorifying life-giving power of land, thanking the revered ancestors and asking them for blessing, asking the sun and cosmic forces for support to everything good and fair. They hope to be heard just like Yanka Kupala did writing this sonnet:

I take my flute, so long in slumber lying,

And try once more to make its voices heard;

Will they suffice, those shining thoughts and words,

Will its benevolent song soar, smoothly flying?

And I begin to play, with some fear lying

On me, though the song as of old is stirred

Chimes like breeze through the heather, and like bird

Its trills with the sweet nightingale are vying.

And still I wonder, how my song will seem, though,

To kinsmen-neighbours? Will they bless it, say?

Or in the bog to drown cast it away?

Yet, as my path I wander, sadly dreaming,

I shall play loud 'midst nightmare's secret looming,

For native land, my mother, I shall play.

And now I know: in the moments of anxiety, desperation and doubts, you can come to Viazynka. Talk to yourself or speak aloud – and you’ll feel you’re not alone anymore.

Sincerely yours,

Volha Blazhevich

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