Senior boyar. Plan to the courtyard

The series “Non-Canonical Canon” is an attempt to speak about all those writers we barely knew, whose works we read without fully understanding the realities of their time. The series gathers a wide range of Ukrainian authors and texts, each accompanied by contextual essays from literary scholars.

Todos Osmachka was a poet and writer, a contemporary of Bahrianyi, Zerov and Pidmohylnyi — another “enemy of the people” forced first to feign insanity and later emigrate because of Soviet persecution.

Osmachka’s key work Senior boyar tells the story of seminarian Hordii Lundyk’s love for Varka, who has agreed to marry another man. Their story unfolds against the backdrop of an idyllic rural Ukraine slowly being destroyed by “landlordism with a Moscow orientation.”

The autobiographical novella Plan to the courtyard recounts the abuses committed by Soviet authorities against prosperous peasants: families were expelled from their homes while their property was confiscated. The impunity, cruelty and absolute power of the Bolsheviks make the text resemble a terrifying fairy tale.