In May, 2008, two Canadians from the University of Manitoba presented
their research on The Mazeppa Legend to rapt audiences in the Ukraine.
(The name is spelt Mazeppa in Western Europe, otherwise it's Mazepa
when transliterated from Cyrillic.)  A short summary of their
presentation, entitled "Unknown story of Mazepa Presented in Ukraine",
appears at http://www.infoukes.com/newpathway/32-2008_Page-6-1.html 

"Everyone in the audience knew the story of the historic Hetman
Mazepa," said Dr. Orest Cap, "but they thought that the story ended
at the Battle of Poltava in 1709, and Mazepa's death, in exile a few
months later."  But that was only the beginning.

Dr. Cap's associate, Dr. Denis Hlynka, focused his research on
"pedagogic dimensions of technology, with a particular emphasis on the
cross mediation of content issues between multiple media."  The story
of Mazeppa fits this criteria especially well, having begun as a
historical personage, then moved through poetry, art, drama, symphonic
music, opera, cinema, and musical comedy, as well as showing up
"artifactually" as a name for horses, locomotives, towns -- and the
list expands exponentially.

The second story is most familiar to fans of music and literature and
art in Western Europe, and centers on the legend of the young man who
survives a wild ride while tied to a wild horse.  It was this story,
say Drs. Hlynka and Cap, that captured the imagination of America.
After being filtered through the likes of Voltaire, Lord Byron and
Victor Hugo, the Mazeppa legend spread like wildfire.

The legend is derived from an anecdote in Voltaire's 1731 book,
"History of Charles XII, King of Sweden".  Lord Byran's poem,
"Mazeppa", of 1818, immediately inspired several romantic paintings
by mostly French artists.  "The Punishment of Mazeppa", a painting
by Louis Boulanger in 1827, inspired Victor Hugo's dramatically
morbid poem, "Mazeppa", of 1828, which in turn inspired Franz Liszt
to compose his Transcendental Etude No. 4 in D minor of 1840 & 1851.
Several other composers (including Wollenhaupt) were similarly
inspired by the poems or the paintings.

An acrobatic equestrian show premiered at the Cirque olympique in 1825,
a non-acrobatic version in English translation called "Mazeppa or the
Wild Horse of Tartary" played New York's Broadway to packed houses in
the 1850s, and yet another translation appeared in England.

In all three versions, Mazeppa is identified with the wild horse, both
in the title of the play and in numerous explicit comparisons made by
various characters.  By casting the Cossack Mazeppa as a Tartar, these
plays hopelessly muddled Central European history.

More about the Mazeppa legend in the arts can be found in the recent
book by Patricia Mainardi, "Husbands, Wives, and Lovers: Marriage
and Its Discontents in Nineteenth-Century France", New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2003; 256 pages.

Robbie Rhodes
Etiwanda, Calif.