Verse The Peasant (Мужык)
On 15 May, 1905, Yanka Kupala publishes his eminent verse The Peasant (Мужык) (PDF) in the newspaper Severo-Zapadnyi Krai and signs it with a penname “Y. Kupala”. It was his first appearance in press. The newspaper issued in Russian, but Kupala’s verse was published in the Belarusian language. It was written one year after My Destiny (Мая доля) but the difference between these two works is striking. In The Peasant Yanka Kupala drops his folklore and mythological thinking and speaking about the real state of a Belarusian he turns to more concrete and individualized methods of artistic typification. This is a new concept of Kupala’s character who, for the first time, challenges his destiny:
That I’m a peasant, all must know,
Both far and near – the world’s like that –
I’m scoffed at everywhere I go –
Since I’m a peasant, a simple chap.
The verse presents a generalized image of an unhappy, neglected man who, however, has self-respect and strives for self-assertion. This image appears through an objectified monologue whose core idea is the statement of moral and spiritual values of a common peasant and, first of all, his human dignity:
I never, brother, shall forget,
That though a peasant, I'm a man!
That was a deed. People could hear the voice of a common Belarusian peasant whose labor provided the world with the goods while he stayed persecuted and oppressed. Kupala’s contemporaries saw in this work a pointed and artistically convincing criticism of the eternal pessimism that covered the destiny and existence of the Belarusian people. Yanka Kupala states the respect of a common people, the right to fight for human dignity. In such a way the poet returned to the Belarusians the meaning of life that had been practically lost to them.
