TO IRINA ANDREYEVNA

by Natalya Krasavtseva

In the summer of l997 in the Medvezhegorsk region of Karelia, there was a folklore festival with the title "Her Homeland is Zaonezhye." It was dedicated to the l70th birthday of the folk poet, storyteller and professional mourner Irina Andreyevna Fedosova. The creative legacy of this incredibly gifted peasant woman has been and is being studied by folklorists, literary scholars, writers and artists. For example, Kirill Vasilievich Chistov, a St. Petersburg professorand corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who came to the festival with his wife, Bella Yefimova, also a scholar. They both once lived and worked in Petrozavodsk. The famous Karelian artist Georgi Stronk chose as subject for one of his last paintings the meeting of Irina Andreyevna with the writer Maxim Gorky -- a cultural event of the Soviet period. On the invitation card sent to festival participants, Irina Andreyevna was portrayed as she was in life, with kindly eyes and a characteristic peasant scarf on her head. Karelia is folklore country -- so many collected tales, epics, laments and ancient myths, which served as the basis for creating the unique epic work "Kalevala." We also have an intriguing linguistic heritage which is still alive and being studied. Irina Andreyevna is a particularly bright page in all this, her name being sacred to all who love our history and cultural traditions.... Festival day, July l2, was sunny and warm, and Kuzaranda sparkled with all the colors of the Karelian forest. It looked like just the right place for her to be born, on the banks of Lake Onego. All sorts of people came that day -- village people, scholars, journalists, government officials from the town of Medvezhegorsk, and even the Karelian Minister of Culture, Tatiana Kalashnik. A priest said a prayer and then miraculously, we heard a lament for Irina. It was Praskovya Ivanovna from another village, and her voice was deeply sorrowing and convincing. There was complete silence, we all stood stunned by the power of this ancient recital. We city folk in the group tried to hold back our emotions, but some let go and everything around us flowed into one whole -- the lament, the shimmering lake, the tranquillity, the extraordinary beauty of this region. Then people spoke and read poetry. At the end there was a moment of silence and at that very moment a small cloud, who knows from where, covered the sun. A sign from Irina Andreyevna? Maybe she grieved together with us over the desolation that has come to her once rich homeland of Zaonezh'e. The festival concluded with a scholar's conference, but before it started women from various villages sang on the lake shore, and their songs preserving the old traditions were interesting not only to us, whose youth is long since passed. Their granddaughters in festive costume sang and danced alongside. The boys, who also know some of the songs, were too shy to take part. We remember the words of the local poet, Sophie Anishchenko (a four-line rhythming poem, the sense of which is as follows): It is sad, Irina the Light Andreyevna, that you are no longer with us. only the sound of a single string comes through to us in the winds of time.