Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    At a High Cost
    At a High Cost
    At a High Cost
    Ebook138 pages1 hour

    At a High Cost

    By Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    One of the best historical adventure books of Ukrainian classic literature.

    They just wanted to be free. But freedom is given at a high cost!

    Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky’s novella “At a High Cost” (1901) is set in 1830s Ukraine which belongs to the Russian Empire where serfdom is established. The main characters are young peasants Ostap and Solomia who flee from their cruel master. Ostap is threatened with death for disobedience, and his beloved Solomia married to one of the master’s men without her consent is ready to follow her sweetheart. They decide to cross the Danube to the Turkish side, to the Ottoman Empire, where a few years ago the Danubian Sich used to stand as a center of freedom for the Ukrainian Cossacks.

    But the empires tenaciously hold slaves in their claws. Forests, fields, wetlands, wide rivers, predatory animals, and predatory people who hunt for fugitives stand in the way of the lovers to freedom. Exhausted and almost alone in their pursuit of happiness, Ostap and Solomia pay a very high price so that at least one of them would break free.

    This is the only book on the historical subject by the classic Ukrainian writer Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky. His call for the liberation of people from social, national, and spiritual oppression sounded strong and passionate and produced a great impact on readers. Alfred Jensen, a Swedish Slavonic scholar, called “At a High Cost” a pearl of Ukrainian fiction and stressed that “the story reaches the soul of the Ukrainian people and is well aware of their way of life and character.”

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMykhailo Kotsiubynsky
    Release dateJun 6, 2018
    ISBN9780463598696
    At a High Cost
    Author

    Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky

    Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky (1864–1913) is one of the most popular Ukrainian classic writers. Being a humanist, a subtle lyricist, and an intellectual, he knew the depths of folk life and became the first Ukrainian impressionist. In the writer’s lifetime, his works were translated into German, Swedish, Polish, Czech, Romanian, and Russian. Kotsiubynsky died when he was only 48 years old, but he left several dozens of very talented stories and a few novels. The writer was born into a large family of a petty official in Vinnytsia. Earl having lost his father, Mykhailo had to give up on his dream to study at the university because he needed to make some money for his mother and sisters. Beginning with the presenting of peasant life in his early writings, Kotsiubynsky depicted the life and customs of the Crimean Tatars and Moldovans (“For the Good of All”, “In Shaitan’s Grip”, “On the Rocks”, and “For the Common Good”). These works are written in a realistic manner. Subsequently, the writer expanded the range of his artistic observations by turning to historical subjects (“At a Heavy Cost”), psychological themes (“Apple Blossoms”, “Intermezzo”), and the philosophical aspects (“From the Depths”, “The Dream”). In the short story “Apple Blossoms” Kotsiubynsky first portrayed the inner split of one person – the father’s immense grief from the loss of his small daughter and the writer’s relentless, cold memory that will save all his emotions as the stuff for creativity. The story “Intermezzo”, despite the simplicity of its plot, astonishes with the richness of impressionistic colors. Its autobiographical narrator, tired from his work, came to the village for some rest. He spends all the days in the June fields, admiring the song of the larks. “The sun is in the sky, I am in the fields,” the author writes. Nature is described through colors, smells, and sounds. It gave the narrator the new positive energy. Kotsiubynsky spent almost all his life in a quiet provincial town of Chernihiv where he worked for the zemstvo (an institution of local government). He was a happy father of four children. But suddenly he fell in love with a young secretary, Alexandra Aplaksina. This love and inner experiences were reflected on the pages of his romantic story “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors”. Its main characters, Ivan and Marichka, are called the Ukrainian Romeo and Juliet.

    Related to At a High Cost

    Related ebooks

    Classics For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Shipstead, Ryan, Walker, and More

      May 17, 2022

      Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from Maggie Shipstead, Eimer Ryan, Sarai Walker, and more—that are publishing this week. Want to learn more about upcoming titles? Then go read our most recent book preview. Want to help The Millio

      5 min read

    • Article

      She’s No Saint

      Jul 3, 2022

      She’s No Saint
      2 min read

    • Article

      California Dreaming

      Mar 31, 2020

      Rishi Reddi’s first novel, Passage West, is an audacious piece of work. On the one hand, the author situates her story in a California most of us won’t recognize: the Imperial Valley early in the previous century, when South Asians worked the irrigat

      2 min read

    • Article

      Octavia E. Butler on Mars

      Dec 15, 2021

      Octavia E. Butler on Mars
      5 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Mahmoud, Davidson, and More

      Oct 26, 2021

      Here’s a quick look at some notable books—new titles from Doma Mahmoud, Craig Davidson, and more—that are publishing this week. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Mahmoud, Davidson, and More appeared first on The Millions.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Writing Family History

      Dec 15, 2021

      Writing Family History
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Books Briefing: The Best Books to Get Lost in This Summer

      Jul 9, 2021

      Memoirs and novels that satisfy the urge for high drama: Your weekly guide to the best in books

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Sarah Thankam Mathews

      Dec 18, 2020

      By May I was clenching my teeth so hard when I slept that it eventually cracked a filling. The post A Year in Reading: Sarah Thankam Mathews appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Two Sides To A Story: Why Feminist Retellings Are Filling Our Bookshelves

      Mar 24, 2023

      From Circe to Medusa via Persephone, Electra and the women of Troy, it seems there are few characters from Greek mythology left who haven’t been the subject of a feminist retelling in recent years. This year, the world of such reimaginings is expandi

      4 min read

    • Article

      I Am the Tooth Fairy

      Nov 14, 2019

      I Am the Tooth Fairy
      7 min read

    • Article

      Commonplace Book

      Jun 1, 2022

      Try to praise the mutilated world. Remember June’s long days, and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine. The nettles that methodically overgrow the abandoned homesteads of exiles. —Adam Zagajewski, “Try to Praise the Mutilated World,” tr. by Clare C

      4 min read

    • Article

      Jan Morris

      Jun 15, 2018

      I have always rather envied the poet Ovid, who was banished from Rome by the emperor Augustus, you may remember, to a remote place called Tomis on the shores of the Black Sea. There he died, ten years later, and his exile has gone into legend and int

      17 min read

    • Article

      The Resister

      Feb 23, 2018

      The Resister
      6 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Jan 1, 2022

      The painting is of a door, its wood so warpedwith moisture it cannot close. It stays ajar leaving a sliver of light—enough to suggestsomething sweet and almost unreachable behind the door—and you sit in yourroom working on the bills or those comforti

      4 min read

    • Article

      Stop Hating on Adjectives!

      Jun 12, 2019

      A common admonition in creative writing pedagogy is, “Cut as many adjectives as possible.” I propose that this rule springs from mere prejudice. The post Stop Hating on Adjectives! appeared first on The Millions.

      7 min read

    • Article

      Hook, Line And Sinker

      Oct 18, 2018

      Hook, Line And Sinker
      4 min read

    • Article

      Too Much, Magic Bus

      Dec 9, 2019

      Too Much, Magic Bus
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Trouble Gene

      Jul 1, 2020

      One clear thing about trouble—it can set you back to zero, a personal cone of silence. And reading, writing, listening allow entry into that troubled solitude; you disappear into it regardless t of the time or place you really are in, be it bed, kitc

      12 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for At a High Cost

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      At a High Cost - Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky

      PROLOGUE

      THIS STORY takes place in the thirties of the last century.¹ The Ukrainian peasantry, defeated in the class struggle and with the yoke of serfdom on its neck, dragged its fate with a muffled clamor. This was not an ox under the yoke, a common domestic ox, that could be made happy by fodder and reprieve: the yoke was forced on the neck of a wild aurochs², weary, exhausted, but still driven by the steppe wind. It had not lost a taste of freedom and wide spaces. Having yielded to imposed authority he plodded beneath the yoke, although at times his eyes were red with anger, and he stamped his hooves and stabbed the ground with his horns...

      The free spirit of the people still smoldered in the ashes of slavery. The recent traditions of freedom, so recent that sometimes it was difficult to distinguish between today and yesterday, fueled the spark still glowing under the ashes. The older generation, witness to another life, still showed the calluses on their palms left by the saber that had been raised to defend national and human rights. The song of freedom, poetized, perhaps, in hard times, as a charming chord, echoed in the hearts of the young, called them to the places where there is no clang of chains yet, forged by and for the people. Toward the wide Bessarabian³ steppes, free from any master and corvée a hot imagination rushed, and it led on hundreds and thousands...

      At least over there, across the Danube – hey, over there, across the Danube!.. The survivors of the Sich ruins – the most courageous, the most zealous – built their nest in Turkey and went from there to Ukraine. As furtive and dangerous as smuggling was their passionate appeal to the kish⁴, to the Sich brotherhood, for freedom.

      Through the ravines, through the dried-up riverbeds, through the forest slums, under the cover of darkness, hiding as if from wild beasts, so fled from the master and the corvée all those that had not taken on the mold of serfdom, that had not lost a living soul. They fled to gain everything that their ancestors had unsheathed their sabers or went into battle with pikes and pitchforks for...

      Meanwhile the enemy did not sleep.

      Those who owned the souls – souls that had reverted to being like working cattle and were recorded in the landlord’s household equipment alongside oxen and horses – were most afraid of the restless, freedom-loving spirit of the people, for it could not be adapted to the lord’s interests and could not be reconciled that the immeasurable treasures of the Ukrainian land were cultivated by the serfs but given to the master. The age-old struggle between the two classes – the landlords and the peasants – was a constant struggle, which at times took an acute form and stormed over the unfortunate land – never ended, indeed it could not end, although the lord had won. Not long ago, the landlord bathed in his own blood at Uman⁵ and piled the haidamaka⁶ heads on stakes at Kodnya⁷. He relished the victory, vigilantly defending his rights to own live working equipment – the serf. The serf protested, the serf escaped to the free land, fleeing, as he could, from the corvée, leaving behind in the native land everything dear, everything sweet to his heart. But even there, far from his native land, his landlord’s hand caught him. On free lands raids for fugitives were organized. These were true manhunts, as though for a wolf or a bear. Throughout Bessarabia the raiding parties raced, searching everywhere: in the ditches, in the haystacks, in the reeds of swamp rivers they hunted these impoverished, tortured people. In the south of Bessarabia, from the west side of the fast river Prut, along the left bank of the Danube, and down to the sea itself, there were troops on guard. It overshadowed the freedom that was shining somewhere in a foreign land, across the wide Danube, behind the green riverside willows…

      The head of any fugitive had a price. For everyone caught the riverside Cossacks⁸ received a bounty. Hundreds, thousands of the unfortunate fell into the hands of the Cossacks – and those captured had to drink the bitter cup to its dregs. A terrible fate awaited the fugitive: he was given to the Cossack recruits, exiled to Siberia, tortured with lashes, branded like cattle, or, with a half-shaved head, beaten down and whipped, he was sent back in chains to his master, once again returned to captivity, to serfdom.

      But what could he expect at home from his master? Like melting ice under the warm breath of spring, the Ukrainian peasantry flowed like a river to that place where, although at a high cost, they could obtain their desired freedom, but if not – there they could lay down their lives and take eternal rest...

      CHAPTER ONE

      IS THAT you, Ostap?"

      Yes, it’s me, Solomia...

      What’s going to happen?

      What’s going to happen?.. Let it all go to hell... I’ll escape ... I’ll go beyond the Danube, maybe there the people haven’t yet turned into savages... You see – I am packed... Take care, Solomia...

      So you’re running… leaving me... And I will be here alone with that hateful man... No, run away, run away, Ostap... If you only knew what’s going on in the upper chambers: the landlord is running around the house like a madman. ‘Rebel,’ he screams, ‘Haidamaka! He is inciting my people!..’ He called his Captain and told him, ‘bring Ostap Mandryka to me...’

      So...

      ‘I’ll skin him alive, I’ll gut him thoroughly... I’ll make that Haidamaka remember Kodnya...’

      So...

      "‘I’ll have him recruited,’⁹ he says. And his lady was pale, so pale, shivering with fright, and she wrung her hands and cried: ‘Roman, let’s flee from here, otherwise those serfs will murder us, like they did to my grandpa in Uman...’ Run, Ostap, run, sweetheart... If those monsters catch you, they’ll torture you. They won’t let you live..."

      Damn him... I’m not so much afraid of that Polack as I am furious at our own people: the ox has stuck his neck in the yoke and, no matter what you do, he doesn’t care, he pulls anyway... Eh, I’ll go to where there’s freedom, where the people are different... Take care, Solomia...

      Climb over here, so we can at least say goodbye.

      Ostap threw his saddlebags over to where Solomia was standing and climbed the fence. Against the starlit night sky the silhouette of a well-built youth was projected for a moment and disappeared in the thick weeds on the other side of the fence.

      Ouch, there’s so much nettle here, and it’s stung me all over. Where are you, Solomia? I can’t see you in the dark.

      Here I am... and in front of Ostap appeared a large dark silhouette, like that of a tall man. Let’s go to the pond and sit under the willows.

      Stumbling through the high weeds, sprawling under the bushes, all tightly intertwined in this neglected section of the landlord’s grove, they finally reached the water. It was humid here. Total silence hung in the air. The thick grove had retained the warmth gathered during the day, and now the heat glowed there, as if from a stove. On the glassy surface of the pond, from whose depths

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1