Dzisna: an island in the flow of time

It was a hard day. I got up early in the morning and drove from Minsk to Polack to visit my relatives. And then, after a dinner and an hour of rest, we decided to visit the biggest artificial waterfall of Belarus 100 kilometers west – near the town of Miory. At the beginning, it seemed that we would find it easily. However, the trip resulted in hours-long wandering on narrow curved roads through farms and remote silent villages and finally several kilometers on foot across the field. Anyway, we found the waterfall that is a part of a former watermill’s dam. In that picturesque place we had rest in the shadow of old trees enjoying the noise of falling water, greenery and freshness.

On our way back we caught sight of a road sign pointing to Dzisna. I thought: I should once visit that place I heard about many times, but maybe not now when it’s evening and everybody is tired. However, on the next crossroads, I found out one more sign pointing to Dzisna. And after seeing the third sign like this, we decided it was something more than just road signs – and branched off.

Very soon, we arrived to the smallest town of Belarus with just 1500 residents. What else did I know about Dzisna then? They said, it was a very picturesque place. Not far from here, one of the most original and mysterious Belarusian artists Yazep Drazdovich was born, and he learnt at the local school. Famous Belarusian and Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz hid from political persecution at the local gentry estate and dedicated a poem to the daughter of its owners Ludwika Kostrowicka (she was, by the way, grand-grand-mother of world-famous French poet Guillaume Apollinaire). I knew that the life of Dzisna has been depending on water ways throughout its history, since it stands on the confluence of two rivers – Dzisna and Western Dzvina.

So finally I saw this small and cozy town firsthand – warmed up with summer sun, smelling blossoming lime-trees, illuminated with evening rays – golden and mellow like honey.

We stopped by the recently restored Baroque Roman-Catholic church and walked to the river bank. The Western Dzvina flows westwards, to the Baltic Sea. I grew up in Polack that stands on the banks of this river, too, I know it from my childhood. I saw that in Vicebsk, it has become narrow and shallow, in Polack, it is calm and moderate. I had to come to Dzisna to see the new hypostasis of this river. Here it is full-flowing and powerful, impressing with its force, depth and potential danger. The views of the river were breathtaking. But we got even more impressed with a strange object on the bend of the flow. It looked like a flat-topped artificial hill or a huge breakwater. Actually, it was the place where the town emerged! The Western Dzvina was an important navigable water way. There was a big island in the middle of the river. And certainly, they used this obvious strategic advantage. In the 11^th century, the first fortress emerged surrounded with waters of the river. It controlled cargo transportation and potential invaders moving eastwards to Polack – the capital of a powerful principality.

Thus, the river gave birth to the city. And another river gave it its name – Dzisna. However the strategic location of the city entailed not only advantages but numerous menaces as well. Not once, the rivers threatened it with ruinous floods. Each war resulted in fires, bloodshed and destruction. The flows of water washed away people’s possessions. The flows of time washed away human hopes, expectations and lives. The town rose from ashes, changed but survived.

But once, Dzisna obtained the image that seems to remain unchanged till nowadays. In the late 19 – early 20^th century it started looking like a typical Jewish township. Actually, at that time, Jews accounted for about 50% of the local residents that was a common situation for many Belarusian towns of that time. They organized trade and production, founded schools, hospitals, cinemas and hotels. The town grew, its population increased reaching its historical maximum before WWII. And then… As statistics proves, in 1944, after the town was liberated from Nazis, 1200 people lived there. The rest – 4000, predominantly Jews – were killed in the local concentration camp. After that, Dzisna never regained its administrative and economic importance as well as its pre-war population. But the aura of the old good county-town survived here even in small details scattered around.

Many material evidences of the past saved here by miracle. Walking along the river, you find a part of the old cobbled two-lane road – for two-way traffic of horse-driven carts. The bridge across the Dzisna river is the oldest automobile bridge in Belarus with asphalt laid over wooden decking. The old fire station never changed its predestination. The public building where spectacles of the first Belarusian professional theater were staged looks as if the new comedy was rehearsed there right now. The small buildings of the shopping street host shops up to now. Some century-old Jewish houses are still inhabited. The synagogue, hotels and two schools of the 19^th century are used in a new way today but are easily recognizable, and it seems that the progress touched them slightly – just to make a little bit more comfortable and modern but still authentic and atmospheric…

The things I tell now may seem absolutely ordinary to some of you. But the one who knows well the history of Belarus with its many times ruined and rebuilt cities, its destroyed temples and ancient squares deliberately overscored by straight modern thoroughfares, will surely understand what I mean. And, as it turned out, I am not the only person who feels in Dzisna as in a studio stage prepared for shooting a historical films. Filmmakers came here to work for many times, indeed.

Walking along narrow quiet streets, looking in dusty windows of old houses or staring into the distance from the old bridge, listening to splashing water and creaking gate, smelling flowers and hot asphalt I caught myself thinking that this town is similar to the island in the middle of the river. It lost its powerful fortress, it doesn’t stop merchant’s barks anymore and it will probably never protect the neighboring cities from enemies arriving by water again. But it is still impressive and recognizable, it bears the obvious evidences of its glorious history and fast moving waters of the river almost don’t change it now. Similarly, the town once turned to be proof against the flow of time. And this sudden impression of one warm sunny evening comes to my mind again and again as a precious bead in the jewel-box of memories and as the riddle that is still unguessed.

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