Recommendations from the Kyiv Independent: “Lesia” by KRUTЬ & “Contra spem spero” by Lesia Ukrainka (Patreon)

Hello everyone,

This is Natalia Yermak, a reporter at the Kyiv Independent, writing to you from Kyiv amid the morning murmur in our office.

I'm about to share with you one song that shaped my life in the past 3.5 months. The lyrics are from an equally beautiful Ukrainian poem, though I struggled to hear it without tears since the summer because it is associated with the personal stories of several women linked through time and art.

The song comes from the album of just seven tracks by Ukrainian artist Maryna Krut, known as the performer KRUTЬ, produced before the Russian full-scale invasion in 2022. KRUTЬ sings and plays the bandura – a traditional Ukrainian instrument similar to kobza, a lute used through the centuries by the blind Ukrainian nomadic performers named "kobzari."

They were as important to Ukraine's culture as ancient wandering poets like Homer to Greece, and therefore they were persecuted and killed by the Soviet authorities.

KRUTЬ's voice sounds pure and angelic in the second song of the album, "Lesia." Its rhythm beats like a heart full of hope, and the words are verses by one of the most beloved Ukrainian poets –  Lesia Ukrainka, an advocate of Ukraine's freedom and identity in the 19th century.

Severely sick from childhood and eventually succumbing to spine tuberculosis at age 42, Lesia Ukrainka wrote the ever-inspiring Ukrainian poem called Contra spem spero (Latin for "I hope against hope"), which KRUTЬ used as lyrics for "Lesia":

“No, I want to smile through tears and weeping,Sing my songs where evil holds its sway,Hopeless, a steadfast hope forever keeping,I want to live! You thoughts of grief, away”(a part of full translation by Vera Rich)

KRUTЬ recorded "Lesia" for the album in a beautiful valley in Ternopil Oblast near the Ukrainian Carpathians, in a summer house called Liteplo, which lent its name to the album.

I remember hearing it live on the nightmarish afternoon of June 2, on Kyiv's Independence Square, when hundreds of Ukrainians came to bid farewell to the volunteer military medic Iryna Tsybukh, who was killed on May 29, 2024, on her way to pick up the injured from the frontline in Kharkiv Oblast.

A prominent activist who worked to humanize how Ukrainians pay tribute to fallen soldiers, 25-year-old Iryna was a moral compass for many people who never met her but attended the funeral, including me.

Besides that, she was KRUTЬ's best friend. A video shows the two singing "Lesia" together near the eastern front line, with a yellow wheat field and a blue sky stretching behind them - nature's version of a Ukrainian flag.

Iryna left a posthumous letter that got over 100,000 likes on her brother's Instagram page and has been often quoted since (here is a link to an English translation).

Months before she was killed, she designed her own funeral, envisioning Maryna Krut singing Ukrainian songs there to the tune of bandura for everyone to join. She left a list of 10 meaningful Ukrainian songs that she wanted to be sung at the ceremony - indeed, they would have been awesome to sing in any other situation. I tried my best at Iryna's funeral, but the words got choked in my throat as Maryna Krut bravely played the first few notes of "Lesia."

In her last interviews, Iryna said that she has found exciting new meaning in her life – advocating to memorialize Ukraine's fallen soldiers in a way that would last for generations. Only this, Iryna said, would ensure that future Ukrainians know for sure who Russians are and what they are capable of. Ukrainians should never allow themselves to be fooled by Russia again – so they will never be left defenseless against genocide, as so many times in the past.

She also wanted to keep living for herself. "I want children, I want a house. I want to grow tomatoes," she said in an interview eight days before she was killed, a shy smile on her face.

"But the most important thing is to end the war," she said then.

Photo credit: Arsen Dzodzaiev/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images

For the first time since Iryna was killed, I managed to sing "Lesia" without tears as I sat by her grave in Lviv on a hot Saturday afternoon on Sept. 7.

Her grave is topped with a tiny garden of fresh flowers at the field of honorary burials in the Lviv city center, where hundreds of flags are flapping in the wind. Young men and women lay side by side, with at least 50 new graves stretching beyond Iryna's resting place. They were not here 3.5 months ago.

I went there first thing after a 6-hour train ride from Kyiv for a public event on war documentation.

I came to say that I had never known where I wanted to go with my journalistic work until I heard Iryna speak in her interviews about how important the memory of those who have been killed in the war is to Ukraine's present and future.

And now, thanks to her, I have started writing a cycle of memorialization stories for the Kyiv Independent, which has made me feel alive like never before.

I didn't see something that Maryna Krut posted on her Instagram story when visiting the grave a few days later – a small garden pot with a fragile-looking plant by Iryna's grave, and two tiny red vegetables growing bigger day by day in the middle of the cemetery.

Tomatoes are growing.

“On poor sad fallow land unused to tillingI'll sow blossoms, brilliant in hue,I'll sow blossoms where the frost lies, chilling,I'll pour bitter tears on them as due.

And those burning tears shall melt, dissolvingAll that mighty crust of ice away.Maybe blossoms will come up, unfoldingSinging springtime too for me, some day.”

Best,

Natalia

Here are some links:

My story in the New York Times about Iryna and her posthumous letter in English.

The album "Liteplo" on KRUTЬ's official YouTube.

"Lesia" sung live before Iryna's death, sung in by KRUTЬ and Iryna Tsubukh in the fields of Donbas, and sung live at Iryna's farewell ceremony in Lviv.

A recent interview in English with KRUTЬ about her art.

Another translation of Lesia Ukrainka's poem "Contra spem spero!" that brings out the sincere simplicity of language of the Ukrainian original.

If you want to stand by Iryna Tsybukh and her cause, consider donating to the volunteer medical battalion Hospitaliers where she served. Learn more about Hospitaliers here.