MAZEPPA.
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NTRODUCTION TO _MAZEPPA_ _Mazeppa_, a legend of the Russian Ukraine, or frontier region, is basedon the passage in Voltaire's _Charles XII_. prefixed as the"Advertisement" to the poem. Voltaire seems to have known very littleabout the man or his history, and Byron, though he draws largely on hisimagination, was content to take his substratum of fact from Voltaire.The "true story of Mazeppa" is worth re-telling for its own sake, andlends a fresh interest and vitality to the legend. Ivan StepanovitchMazeppa (or Mazepa), born about the year 1645, was of Cossack origin,but appears to have belonged, by descent or creation, to the lessernobility of the semi-Polish Volhynia. He began life (1660) as a page ofhonour in the Court of King John Casimir V. of Poland, where he studiedLatin, and acquired the tongue and pen of eloquent statesmanship.Banished from the court on account of a quarrel, he withdrew to hismother's estate in Volhynia, and there, to beguile the time, made loveto the wife of a neighbouring magnate, the _pane_ or Lord Falbowski. Theintrigue was discovered, and to avenge his wrongs the outraged husbandcaused Mazeppa to be stripped to the skin, and bound to his own steed.The horse, lashed into madness, and terror-stricken by the discharge ofa pistol, started off at a gallop, and rushing "thorough bush, thoroughbriar," carried his torn and bleeding rider into the courtyard of hisown mansion! With regard to the sequel or issue of this episode, history is silent,but when the curtain rises again (A.D. 1674) Mazeppa is discovered inthe character of writer-general or foreign secretary to PeterDoroshénko, hetman or president of the Western Ukraine, on the hitherside of the Dniéper. From the service of Doroshénko, who came to anuntimely end, he passed by a series of accidents into the employ of hisrival, Samoïlovitch, hetman of the Eastern Ukraine, and, as hissecretary or envoy, continued to attract the notice and to conciliatethe good will of the (regent) Tzarina Sophia and her eminent _boyard_,Prince Basil Golitsyn. A time came (1687) when it served the interestsof Russia to degrade Samoïlovitch, and raise Mazeppa to the post ofhetman, and thenceforward, for twenty years and more, he held somethinglike a regal sway over the whole of the Ukraine (a fertile "no-man'sland," watered by the Dniéper and its tributaries), openly the loyal andzealous ally of his neighbour and suzerain, Peter the Great. How far this allegiance was genuine, or whether a secret preference forPoland, the land of his adoption, or a long-concealed impatience ofMuscovite suzerainty would in any case have urged him to revolt, mustremain doubtful, but it is certain that the immediate cause of a finalreversal of the allegiance and a break with the Tsar was a second andstill more fateful _affaire du coeur_. The hetman was upwards of sixtyyears of age, but, even so, he fell in love with his god-daughter,Matréna, who, in spite of difference of age and ecclesiastical kinship,not only returned his love, but, to escape the upbraidings andpersecution of her mother, took refuge under his roof. Mazeppa sent thegirl back to her home, but, as his love-letters testify, continued towoo her with the tenderest and most passionate solicitings; and,although she finally yielded to _force majeure_ and married anothersuitor, her parents nursed their revenge, and endeavoured to embroil thehetman with the Tsar. For a time their machinations failed, andMatréna's father, Kotchúbey, together with his friend Iskra, wereexecuted with the Tsar's assent and approbation. Before long, however,Mazeppa, who had been for some time past in secret correspondence withthe Swedes, signalized his defection from Peter by offering his servicesfirst to Stanislaus of Poland, and afterwards to Charles XII. of Sweden,who was meditating the invasion of Russia. "Pultowa's day," July 8, 1709, was the last of Mazeppa's power andinfluence, and in the following year (March 31, 1710), "he died of oldage, perhaps of a broken heart," at Várnitza, a village near Bender, onthe Dniester, whither he had accompanied the vanquished and fugitiveCharles. Such was Mazeppa, a man destined to pass through the crowded scenes ofhistory, and to take his stand among the greater heroes of romance. Hisdeeds of daring, his intrigues and his treachery, have been and stillare sung by the wandering minstrels of the Ukraine. His story has passedinto literature. His ride forms the subject of an _Orientale_ (1829) byVictor Hugo, who treats Byron's theme symbolically; and the romance ofhis old age, his love for his god-daughter Matréna, with its tragicalissue, the judicial murder of Kotchúbey and Iskra, are celebrated by the"Russian Byron" Pushkin, in his poem _Poltava_. He forms the subject ofa novel, _Iwan Wizigin_, by Bulgarin, 1830, and of tragedies by I.Slowacki, 1840, and Rudolph von Gottschall. From literature Mazeppa haspassed into art in the "symphonic poem" of Franz Lizt (1857); and, yetagain, _pour comble de gloire_, _Mazeppa, or The Wild Horse of Tartary_,is the title of a "romantic drama," first played at the RoyalAmphitheatre, Westminster Bridge, on Easter Monday, 1831; and revived atAstley's Theatre, when Adah Isaacs Menken appeared as "Mazeppa," October3, 1864. (_Peter the Great_, by Eugene Schuyler, 1884, ii. 115, _seq_.;_Le Fils de Pierre Le Grand, Mazeppa, etc_., by Viscount E. Melchior deVogüé, Paris, 1884; _Peter the Great_, by Oscar Browning, 1899, pp.219-229.) Of the composition of Mazeppa we know nothing, except that on September24, 1818, "it was still to finish" (_Letters_, 1900, iv. 264). It waspublished together with an _Ode_ (_Venice: An Ode_) and _A Fragment_(see _Letters_, 1899, iii. Appendix IV. pp. 446-453), June 28, 1819. Notices of _Mazeppa_ appeared in _Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine_, July,1819, vol. v. p. 429 (for _John Gilpin_ and _Mazeppa_, by WilliamMaginn, _vide ibid_., pp. 434-439); the _Monthly Review_, July, 1819,vol. 89, pp. 309-321; and the _Eclectic Review_, August, 1819, vol. xii.pp. 147-156.
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