How to love sincerely and cherish what is yours

In memory of Frantishek Bogushevich 

For a long time, he sought that true, authentic, most fitting language in which he could express all that had grown heavy on his soul, tormented and burned within him. He tried writing in Polish and Ukrainian but those remained no more than experiments. At last, he understood that the only truly native and intimate language for him was Belarusian — the one that was half-contemptuously called ‘the peasant speech’ — impressive and vivid, spoken by people to whose well-being Bogushevich had dedicated a large part of his life, by simple peasants who inhabited the land that, in the 19th century, still did not have its statehood. That injustice hurt the soul of the man who, born a nobleman, spent his life defending the poor and the weak, and who, far from seeking such glory, became one of the founders of Belarusian national literature, a true voice of national ideas, a defender of the basic right — to speak your native language in your native land, to be a united and authentic people, resilient, industrious and peace-loving. 

Frantishek Bogushevich, born in the Svirany estate (the manor belonged to the poet’s mother’s family), now situated in present-day Lithuania, was — for a man of the 19th century — quite a wanderer. His biography includes years spent in Ukraine, St Petersburg and Vilno [now Vilnius], yet life eventually drew him back to the place of his boyhood — the family estate at Kushlyany near Smorgon. Some well-to-do peasant with a farmer’s knack could live more comfortably than the family that could scarcely afford a stone house, and thus they settled in a wooden one.
His parents could not pay for his son’s gymnasium education, let alone university studies, and so they turned to the heads of educational institutions with pleas not to burden the boy, who was ardently drawn to learning, with the substantial fees due. He possessed a keen intellect, drawn equally to literature, linguistics and history, the exact sciences and the intricacies of jurisprudence, as well as a stubborn character, a noble soul and a fiery heart.
In 1865, Frantishek Bogushevich enrolled at the Nezhin Legal Lyceum in Chernigov Governorate, where he proved himself an outstanding student. Upon completing his studies, the table of ranks listed him as a clerk of the 12th class. The 12th class conferred a right to a respectable post — provincial secretary, but a fresh young man was unlikely to be granted such a rank straight away. So Bogushevich began his career as a clerk in the Chernigov provincial court. He performed well at work and soon earned a transfer to the Chernigov Chamber of Criminal and Civil Court as a candidate for the position of court investigator. Until 1884, he fulfilled the duties of court investigator in various places: fate drove him to Vologda, Konotop and other small district towns.
In Konotop, in 1874, Bogushevich married Gabriela Shklennik, a native of Minsk, and they lived there for another eight years. In those years, Bogushevich, in the post of court investigator, was awarded two orders: in 1876 — the Order of Saint Stanislaus, 3rd degree, and in 1883 — the Order of Saint Anna, 3rd degree. When a career is adorned with worthy honours and a record of successfully completed cases, one may hope for more; for many years, Bogushevich had persistently sought a place in the district court and, at last, obtained it in Vilno, where he took up the post of sworn advocate.
He had many clients, but the income from his work was rather modest. Peasants came to his door: the news quickly spread by word of mouth that a ‘peasant’s advocate’ lived on Konnaya Street, ready to receive an unfairly wronged villager even at 5–6a.m. and to defend their interests in court. 

Bogushevich helped those who sought him out, disregarding the fact that the work he performed would be poorly paid, if paid at all. Tackling the most vexing and difficult cases, he often worked without remuneration, quite literally for the sake of idea — the idea of the people’s welfare, for which he sacrificed his family comfort and the peace of a home hearth.

Bogushevich rejected prospects that promised so many blessings, a choice that wounded his wife. He refused, dedicating fourteen years to extensive yet poorly paid practice, to the cares of those whom ‘respectable society’ considered unworthy of attention. It happened that in the Vilno district court the peasants asked that their defender be none other than Frants Bogushevich, who ‘knows the Belarusian language and comes from their people’.
From unhappy peasant stories and observations of misfortunes that passed before his eyes, lines sprang to life. Thus, from a provincial advocate who in his spare time tried his hand at rhyming, there emerged not merely a singer of the peasants’ bitter fortune, as Nekrasov was to Russia, but a poet who was among the first to assert the right of Belarusians to a literary, written and artistic speech.
In 1891, in Kraków, Bogushevich’s first book of poems, Dudka Belaruskaya (The Belarusian Flute), appeared, published under the pseudonym Matsey Burachok — a proudly rustic, plainly peasant nickname.
In 1894, another volume of verse, Smyк Belaruski (The Belarusian Fiddlestick), saw the light in Poznań, this time signed as Symon Reuka z-pad Barysava. Again, he returned to the theme of peasant music in the title — both the flute and the rustic fiddle were folk instruments, heard at weddings and village gatherings, and in the poet’s mind they were inseparably linked with the life of the Belarusian countryside.
The poet’s books were promptly banned, and until the revolution they circulated in the Russian Empire as contraband, copied by hand; readers were often not only members of the intelligentsia but also peasants who could read — after all, poems portrayed their lives, so different from those of the rich and well-fed.
Bogushevich spent the end of his days in his native Kushlyany: having received a modest inheritance from a relative, he was able to leave service, arrange rural life and devote himself to literary work. He remained close to the people: visiting neighbouring Zhuprany, he conversed with peasants, told tales to shepherd boys, and gave them — sometimes a farthing, sometimes a kopeck.
Everyone in the village was fond of the landowner from Kushlyany, and the news of his decease, on April 28th, 1900, was met with deep sorrow. The funeral wreaths bore inscriptions such as: ‘To the poet and friend — from peasants and craftsmen’, ‘To Matsey Burachok — from Belarusian peasants’…

The national song, the people’s tongue is the one that lives on in the verse of Frantishek Bogushevich. It gave future pillars of literature — Yakub Kolas and Yanка Kupala — their roots, ground and example to follow, teaching how to love sincerely and cherish what is yours, and never waver from the chosen path.   

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MEMORY OF THE POET 

DO NOT ABANDON OUR LANGUAGE... 

On November 7th, 2020, the Ploshchad Frantishka Bogushevicha station was opened in the Minsk metro. The station is adorned with sculptures The Belarusian Book by Maksim Petrulya and The Weaving Loom by Viktor Kopach and Aleksei Sorokin. The pages of the book feature a call: ‘Do not abandon our Belarusian language lest we perish’. The brass threads on The Weaving Loom form another quotation from the Dudka Belaruskaya book of poems: ‘Perhaps, someone will ask: where is Belarus now? It is there, brothers, where our language lives: from Vilno to Mozyr, from Vitebsk almost to Chernigov, where Grodno, Mensk, Mogilev, Vilno, and many towns and villages lie…’

Aleksei Matyush

By Irina Ovsepyan