Włodzimierz Wysocki

Nineteenth-century photographs have left us as a legacy their names on highly artistic photographs that have not “aged” even after a hundred years. Photographs were pasted onto thick cardboard or mounts, on the front and back of which there were inscriptions in French, Polish, or German containing the source data—the name of the photo studio, the owner’s name, and the address. By the number of medals depicted, one can determine how many times a particular photographer won medals (and which ones) at exhibitions. Such mounts were excellent advertising, the art of which, unfortunately, is now lost. The holdings of the Volyn Local History Museum contain photographs by top-class 19th-century photography masters. These are Taborovskyi from Dubno, Korytskyi from Zhytomyr, Opitz from Kremenets, Otsup from Petersburg, Dosik and Shiffer from Lutsk, Epshtein from Kovel, and Vysotskyi from Kyiv. The last two photographers are also known for the fact that one in Kovel and the other in Kyiv photographed members of the Kosach family. And also, Vysotskyi was a poet. Confirmation of these connections is found in Ivan Franko’s correspondence: in a letter to Eliza Orzeszko (Lviv, April 13, 1886), he writes: “I sincerely thank you for sending V. Vysotsky’s poem; I know and value some of his verses. While in Kyiv, I will certainly visit him.” The letter refers to the poem “Lyashka,” published in Kyiv in 1883. The photograph of Ivan Franko with his wife was taken in 1886, so Ivan Yakovych fulfilled his promise—or rather his own wish—and met Vysotsky that year in Kyiv. Photography was once a kind of ritual, an event: people had their photographs taken less often than now, mostly on the occasion of important dates or changes in life. In 1884, the poem “Lily of the Valley” was published for the first time in the Lviv “Zoria” under the signature “Lesya Ukrainka.” That was probably the occasion for the photograph: her mother, Olena Pchilka, brought thirteen-year-old Lesya to a fellow countryman, a photographer and poet, who immortalized the young poetess in Ukrainian attire (Ukrainka!). The very first poetic work by the Kyiv photographer V. Vysotsky, “All for One,” was published in 1882. In the article “Contemporary Polish Poets,” Ivan Franko gave a detailed characterization of the first and subsequent works of the singer of Ukrainian nature and history: In 1882 appeared the first poetic work of the young Kyiv photographer Volodymyr Vysotsky, in which a small but fresh and energetic talent could be seen. The young poet began with the satire "All for One," in which he mocked the spinelessness and extravagance of the Polish nobility. Vysotsky is interesting if only from the standpoint that in his entire poetic activity (he died in 1894) he limited himself to epic. On his lyre there were only two strings—satire, which sometimes turned into caricature and became tasteless (e.g., the poem about Bismarck, portrayed as a devil's son), and a sentimental-patriotic note, most fully distinguished in the poem "Liashka" (the third edition came out in 1894). However much this poem pleased the Ukrainian-Polish public, in my opinion its poetic value is very small... I consider Vysotsky's best work the poem "Oksana"... Vysotsky is neither a great artist nor a master of poetic form; his verses are very often wooden, wordy, sluggish, his poetic technique very primitive, his taste undeveloped, even his language not entirely pure. And yet in his poetry one can hear a certain breath of freshness and strength, a certain manly energy, and therein lies its chief charm. Ivan Franko once again mentioned Włodzimierz Wysocki in his work “New Contributions to the History of Polish Society in Ukraine in the 19th Century” “as a Polish patriot who writes in Ukrainian or in his Polish writings strives to offer a synthesis of Polishness and Ukrainophilism.” In the historical poem "Oksana," V. Vysotsky reproduced the events in Right-Bank Ukraine during the Polish uprising of 1863–64, and in "Liashka" — the joint struggle of Ukrainians and Poles against the Crimean Khanate. In addition to the works already mentioned, Vysotsky’s collection “New Grandfathers” appeared in 1884, “The Forest” in 1890, and “Satires and Fables” and “Storks” in 1894. Unfortunately, the collections of the Volyn Museum of Local Lore contain neither Włodzimierz Wysocki’s works (poetic) nor a photograph of him. However, several photographs produced in V. Wysocki’s salon in Kyiv in the last decades of the 19th century are preserved in the collections of the Volyn Museum of Local Lore, the Kovel Historical Museum, and the Kolodiazhne Literary-Memorial Museum of Lesya Ukrainka. Nataliia Pushkar