Today is Vasil Bykau’s Birthday

He could have turned 84. The People’s writer died 5 years ago. Many secrets died with him with him, and one of them is the truth about “The Alpine Ballad”.

This short novel was written by Bykau in 1963. In 15 years in an essay “Once in the end of the war” the writer told about an incidental meeting at the front, which became a stimulus to create the short novel, “KP in Belarus” writes.

It happened in the Austrian Alps when lieutenant Bykau saw a thin girl with dark hair in a jacket with stripes. She was looking for “Ivan”. When asked for details, she sobbed a little, and twisting German and Russian words, with addition of many Italian words, she told her story.

“Her name was Julia, she was an Italian from Naples,” Bykau wrote. “A year ago, in summer 1941, during air bombing by Alleys planes of a military plant situated in Austria, she escaped to the Alps. After wondering in the mountains she met a Russian prisoner of war who also escaped from a concentration camp, and they continued their way together…”

Shortly before his death, when he was in Prague, he unexpectedly confessed to a journalist and political writer Vital Taras, this character had no prototype… Julia was a completely fictitious character…

“We were having a walk in Prague with Vasil Bykau. He watched high hills over the Vltava, and suddenly started to speak about his Alpine Ballade,” Vital Taras recalls. “It was some kind of association, perhaps. He mentioned an interview to an Italian journalist many years ago. In the interview Bykau “confessed” that there had been a “prototype” of Julia in real life. “But you know, there was no prototype. It was a completely fictitious character,” Bykau told me. He said that with a sad and a little embarrassed smile.

Bykau’s Script wasn’t sold to Italians

A well-known Italian film director Guiseppe De Santis wanted to film the Alpine Ballad very much. In 1965 he addressed the leadership of the USSR cinema industry and asked to sell Vasil Bykau’s screenplay and performing right. But the screenplay wasn’t sold.

And a few years ago the film “The Alpine Ballad” was taken to Cannes film market. European buyers wanted to purchase it, but it turned out that there wasn’t a single copy of the film at Belarusfilm studio. The film was produced for the USSR State Committee for Cinematography (Goskino), and author’s rights haven’t been assigned to Belarusfilm.

P.S. Family and friends of Vasil Bykau invite to celebrate the writer’s birthday both in Minsk where he is buried and in his in the village of Bychki, where his House-Museum is situated.