Our Ukrainian pysanka: more than just a pretty thing (04/04/99)

Our Ukrainian pysanka: more than just a pretty thing

by Orysia Paszczak Tracz

I cradle the egg in my hands - at least it started out as an egg, a plain, white, raw, chicken egg. But it is a simple egg no longer. After a few hours of intense, diligent work I have turned it into a pysanka, a Ukrainian Easter egg. It is still raw, but no longer white, except for the fine straight and curliqued lines over and around its elliptical shell. It glows with geometric shapes in yellow, orange, red, maroon, black and touches of green. It is intricate, cheerful and exquisite, and under all that it is still an egg.

I have a personal relationship with my pysanky (plural of pysanka). They are more than beautiful objects. To me, they are a direct link to my heritage, to my ancient prehistoric ancestors who, in their simplicity, devised not only the symbols on the egg, but even the symbolism of the egg itself. Because of that connection, here I am at the end of the 20th century writing the most incongruous, often strange designs on, of all things, an egg.

As I bend over my pysanka, engrossed in the precise, meticulous procedure, surrounded by folk music and the sweet aroma of heated beeswax, I feel to my bones and soul that link to my ancestral past. I think about the symbolism behind the designs and colors, as well as about the person for whom I am writing this particular pysanka.

And I am "writing." The word pysanka stems from "pysaty," to write; it is something written. I write with a stylus (called a kystka) in melted beeswax upon the surface of the raw shell. You have to get used to the process because at first it may seem backwards; it is the batik, or wax-resist, process, but on an eggshell, not fabric. The process is familiar to most Ukrainians, of all generations. At the end of the process of melting the wax, that burst of beauty and color as I wipe off the wax never ceases to amaze me.

I try to make my designs as perfect as I can, with straight lines, solid fill-ins and intense colors. But even though I am creating a traditional pysanka, my purpose is not the same as that of my ancestors.

To them, the method itself was not as important as what was written on the egg. Both the designs and the egg combined into something most powerful. Together, they were my female ancestors' way of ensuring the return of spring. By writing solar and spring symbols on a symbol of spring and the sun, those women were securing the sun's return, the reawakening of Mother Earth, and nature's rebirth after winter.

The egg itself is a double symbol of spring and the sun's return. The birds return in the spring and lay eggs. The yolk within that spring symbol looks just like the sun and possesses great power - fertility. If more sun and fertility symbols are written upon the egg's surface, it becomes reinforced, that much more powerful a talisman.

The symbols on a pysanka are quite particular, and I am fascinated by their origin, and why certain ones always appear and others do not. For example, the star/rosette, usually an eight-point star, is one of the solar symbols. It is always called the star or rose, but never "the sun." But how did those people so long ago know that our sun is a star?

Particular animals and birds appear often on pysanky, especially on the Hutsul ones (from the Carpathian Mountain region): horses, mountain rams and stags, and various fowl. But sheep, cows, and bulls do not. It is especially interesting that the animals are not of the domesticated sort, indicating that the symbols have their origin in the pre-Neolithic.

Certain motifs have names, such as goose's neck, ram's horns, bear paws, wolves' teeth. These could be symbols of actual animal parts, but a theory recently posed by a scholar in Ukraine seems plausible: these names are actually regional folk names for medicinal plants, and often the motif looks more plant- than animal-like. According to M. M. Skoryk, the old healers who used the plants wrote their motifs on these pysanky as a code. There are no remnants of actual eggshells from that prehistoric time, since organic matter decays, but the Paleolithic and Neolithic motifs from pottery and other artifacts - and the beliefs of that time - have always been there, in the folk arts, customs and songs.

The designs on the pysanka are geometric, floral, animal or a blend of these. The designs can be quite abstract, with fascinating mathematical interplay of color and form. You can be fooled by presuming the simplicity of a pysanka by its design. Just because one is two-colored, for example, does not make it simpler to make than an intricate multi-colored Hutsul pysanka. In fact, you can camouflage mistakes in a very busy egg, while on a "simpler" black-and-red one there is no place to hide. And there is no way of correcting a mistake once that wax has hit the shell surface.

Pysanky were not meant to be there just as objects d'art, which is what we consider them now. One tradition very much alive wherever in the world Ukrainians find themselves is having pysanky in the basket of special Easter breakfast food, to be taken to church and blessed after the Resurrection service. They are there symbolically, because pysanky are never cooked or eaten. They were - and in many places still are - left on the graves of relatives, to share Easter with the "departed."

Young women encouraged match-makers by presenting their beaus with their best pysanka. A pysanka with a special motif was placed in the attic to ward off lightning. Another was left in the main beehive to encourage a good crop of honey and wax. A pysanka was buried in the first furrow in spring to ensure a bountiful harvest. An infertile woman was given a pysanka with a particular design to prompt nature along. A pysanka was placed in the coffin of a child any time in the year, and for adults who died during the Easter season.

In a Ukrainian home, an arrangement of pysanky individually or in a glass bowl has a place of honor and respect.

Here on the Canadian Prairies, where it seems everyone has a Ukrainian baba or at least a cousin or some in-law, pysanky are a normal part of Easter, even appearing in supermarket or department store sale fliers, as part of the seasonal illustration theme. Pysanka workshops for schoolchildren and adults attract thousands to various Ukrainian cultural institutions in the spring.

But it is no longer just a springtime hobby for Ukrainians - it is mainstream. Who isn't familiar with the Vegreville Pysanka, the aluminum computer-designed monster egg erected in the Alberta town to commemorate the centenary of the RCMP? Hey, makes sense to me, eh?

In the state of Parana, Brazil, where many Ukrainians settled around the same time our pioneers were arriving on the Prairies, the pysanka is an official gift to state visitors.

Some things have changed in pysanka-writing; others have remained constant since time immemorial. The dyes are now aniline, no longer naturally produced from roots, bark and leaves. An electric kystka may heat up the beeswax, eliminating the need for a candle. Varnish now shines up the completed pysanka instead of butter, lard or oil. Some of us now empty the egg upon completion, to avoid possible foul-smelling explosions of a pysanka a few months or years later. This is definitely sacrilegious if one believes in the traditional power of the pysanka. Tell that to someone scraping just-exploded sulphurous year-old egg off the ceiling. And don't even try sending a full pysanka through the mail. Some pysanka writers keep them full through the Easter holy days, and empty them afterwards. (This time of the year, you can recognize this writer and other pysanka writers by the dye stains on their hands.)

But the egg and the beeswax have remained, no matter what, as have the special symbolic designs. Along with the traditional meaning of rebirth, fertility and the power of the sun, this most impractical, fragile, beautiful object also represents something else. It is a tangible document of a people's identity, antiquity and heritage.

For us, half a world away and many generations removed, it symbolizes the power of nation and tradition, survivors of persecution, exile, emigration, genocide by famine, assimilation and attempts at cultural annihilation.

When someone gives you a pysanka this Easter, cradle it in your hands, and think about how far it has come.

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