Prominent people of Smorgon land: Artur Tsyazhki
Artur Tsyazhki was born on the 23rd of July on an isolated farmstead near the village of Lyloiti in Smorgon district. He finished Svir secondary school and for some time worked as a tractor driver in the collective farm but literature attracted him all that time. Unexpectedly he became a reporter in the local newspaper “Svetly shlyah”. Later A.Tsyazhki served in the army and in 1966 came back to Smorgon so as to work in “Svetly shlyah”. After that he worked in the newspaper “Chyrvonaya zmena”, Brest local newspaper “Zarya”, as a hardwood floor layer in the building area, in newspapers “Ostrovetskaya pravda”, “Voice of the Motherland”, “Znamya yunosti”.
In 1974 A.Tsyazhki finished the Department of Journalism in the BSU by correspondence. Since 1982 he was a member of the Writers' Society of Belarus. In April of 1981 Artur Tsyazhki married a nice girl called Liliya and they moved to live in Grodno. There he worked as a supervisor in the Folk Art Centre.
Artur Tsyazhki died of a heart attack on the 7th of April in 1984 in his own flat in Grodno. He was buried next to his father Yuzaf near the catholic church in Nistanishki.
A.Tsyazhki published his first poem in the local newspaper in 1957.
Since 1966 he began to publish short novels and as a result books “Meeting after spring”(1980) and “Time of blue rains”(1982) were published. After his death the collection of stories “Where is my home?..”(1986) appeared and in 1990 the book “Perturbation” was published in Russian translation.
Artur Tsyazhki loved his motherland. They were nice to his heart images of the Motherland that he devoted his works to. Whatever he wrote about – about his home village or his mother, about friends or home folks, about nature or city life – the image of the Motherland was always in his works. We can find the deepest reflection of this image in the story” Sadness”.
This story is considered to be a real fortune of the author. There A.Tsyazhki identifies his world outlook, love to the Motherland with the hero’s outlook. The story is full of sincerity and sadness. The main character who got some days of a leave comes to his home village and staying there he relives all his life again. In home paces where every path is familiar to him he recollects his childhood. The events which he once experienced bother him again.: “A foggy, quiet and warm morning reminds me of the time when at sunrise mother either tenderly or angrily tried to wake me up so as to tend cows. How hard it was to wake up, how long I was gloomy as if it was autumn morning. And only the sun with its bright streams which were drying wet dew could eventually woke me up.”
The cottage where I was born and grew, painfully familiar things, a forest not far from the cottage and even the road through the farmstead – all of them influenced the hero’s feelings to the fullest extent.
After the hero’s mother death he understands that he didn’t only lose the dearest person but also the most valuable thing in the whole world – his small motherland. His brothers also feel devotion to their home but, unlike the hero, their feelings are a little benumbed. Our character realizes very well that after mother’s death nothing will be the same: “Our earth is big. When it’s summer somewhere, it can be autumn in another place. The sun rises in one place whereas it’s afternoon in another. And everywhere people live. There are different people, there are different places. And among this huge diversity there is my small motherland where today I feel lonely and without which I can’t live.” The hero understands that living in town in his own flat with a wife and children he will never experience the same feelings that he has had in his home since his birth. Staying alone in an empty cottage the hero thinks a lot trying to wrap mind around his life. And the image of the Motherland accompanies him through all these memories, thoughts: “In a moment of loneliness, in a moment of a bitter loss when it seems that nothing can comfort you recollect there is a dear to your heart nook somewhere… And immediately you feel a relief.”
Nature plays a very important role in A.Tsyazhki’s works: “The Viliya was wonderful. It only just came into its banks. Dark with patches of white foam water was flowing slower than in summer when the Viliya becomes shallow in this place. Tight, thick streams were moving through an unsteady body of the river.” The word “Motherland” isn’t just a native home or a forest over by the hill for the hero – this is also people, neighbours, relatives, acquaintances and friends: “Fellows, my neighbours, you could do anything: throw back a shot, make jokes, work hard, show your dexterity, meet misfortune courageously and help a lame dog over a stile”.
The local colour in the short novel “Where is my home?..” makes a great impression on the readers. From the very first lines we can see that the writer makes paths through Smorgon land.
“In the second half of the night a thunderstorm erupted. A dark cloud seemed to be moving over Voystom forest and then stopped, spread its wings and intercepted the starry sky above this quiet old in lilac blossom town”. The familiar places are the Viliya and Voystom, whereas “an old town” can mean our Smorgon where the author and his main hero Maxim Gennadevich remember everything down to the last detail… It isn’t difficult to find out that a short lane where a small wooden house, reveted with bricks, with a garden in the yard - is a description of a former editorial office of the newspaper “Svetly shlyah”, a place of A. Tyazhki’s first journalistic work. “What Maxim disliked most of all here was a bus station. The town stands on a lively road with a lot of routes but there is just a “hen house” with two windows - ticket offices. And whenever you come it’s always crowded and stuffy. It’s a real problem to force your way in order to buy a ticket”. Indeed, a small bus station was situated in the centre of the town then and caused a lot of discomfort to passengers and residents of surrounding houses. Today this building is the shop “Zhuravinka” and the new bus station is located not far from the railway station.
The writer’s attitude to people strikes us in the short stories “Sadness” and “Where is my home?..”. Such as a person is even with only negative features, they don’t give the author disgust, indignation or condemnation. In such an unusual manner Artur Tsyazhki managed to get these images over to us. He drew on the fact that we were written in the stars to be different and unpredictable. That is why a person is allowed to be true to themselves. We are intelligent and unknown, the kindest and unlimitedly cruel, because we are people. Artur Tsyazhki definitively loved people such as they were.
The writer brings up the problem of generation gap, human relations. Heart-rending, high pitched lines about loyalty to native home make readers better, kinder involve them in timeless values of spirituality and humanity.
Artur Tsyazhki understood that he would make mark on the world. And he wasn’t mistaken. Sympathetic descendants read his works, learn to love their motherland, appreciate everything they inherited from his books. In remembrance of the writer, one street of our town is named after Artur Tsyazhki.
Tatsyana Buynovskaya