Sophia's Fairyland

My sister and her husband came to visit. The first weekend we visited Odessa. The highway from Kyiv to Odessa is fantastic: gentle rolling hills draped in gold of wheat fields offset by blue sky. Some green sunflower fields (sunflower still have not open) distract gold-blue monotony.
We had Ukrainian GPS to help us getting around. In the city GPS is a trusted friend. But in wide open it got us lost among ocean of wheat fields. Later in the office I learned that GPS is not complete – it will have the smallest street in any of the big five Ukrainian cities but regional roads remain "work in progress". I do not complain about being lost in the sea of gold….
To make up for Odessa let down we went to Belgorod Dniestrovsky which has a famous Turkish fortress. But more than a fortress Ana and Kristijan enjoyed swimming in the Black Sea on a wonderful white sand beach of Zatoka.

For me the highlight of the trip was Sofievsky Park in the city of Uman. Uman is half-way between Odessa and Kyiv. A guidebook mentions a lovely park build by a Polish Count for his wife. While this was intriguing enough for me to visit it, I was totally unprepared for a fairyland I found in the park.
Uman is city of Khrushchev-Brezhnev building style mix: gloomy, gray and decayed. GPS could not help us there but nice, friendly young people got us to the park. The park has an uninspiring Soviet name “'Sofievsky' Uman State Dendrological Park”. But in fact the park is an ultimate romantic neo-classical monument belonging to the times of absolute grandeur. What make the park so special are not its size (150 hectares) or trees and flowers, spectacular cascades of natural lakes and waterfalls, antique sculptures and fountains etc. What makes it special is the park's purpose: it is designed as a memorial to one woman’s beauty and given to her as a birthday present!
The lucky woman is Sophia, the “Beautiful Greek” - one outstanding adventures of 18th century. Her life story is amazing. As she was Poteminkn’s mistress there is a reference to her in S.S. Montefiore Potemkin biography:
Sophia Glyavone was born in 1760 in a poor family of Anatolian Greek¬Roumeliyts in the town of Bursa, Turkey. She also had the Turkish name Dudu (in Turkish parakeet). Over years the family took up its residence in Constantinople, in the Fener residential area. Her father went bankrupt and died. Dudu’s mother traded vegetables and one day she sold her daughter (at the age 12) to the Polish Ambassador in Turkey Karol Boskamp¬Lyasopolskiy who procured girls to King Stanislas-Augustus. Dudu’s equally fine sister was sold to a senior Ottoman Pasha. (That’s important for later.)
From then on, every time Sophia was bought, another man fell in love with her and outbid the first. On her way with the ambassadorial baggage, Sophia was spotted by Major de Witte, son of the Governor of the Polish fortress Kamenets-Podolsk, who bought her for 1000 ducats and married her in 1775 age 15. Major Witte sent her off to Paris to learn manners – and French.
La Belle Phanariot or Beautiful Greek bewitched Paris. She is described having blond curls, a noble Grecian face and violet eyes. In Versailles she had a reception with the Queen Maria Antoinette and the King Louis XVI. Soon she conquered almost the whole royal Europe. She was received at the court of the Prussian king Friedrich II, who went down in history as “The Great”. Allegedly the Austrian emperor Joseph II was in love with her too. Joseph II patronized not only Sophia, but also Mozart.
Back in Poland when Potemkin’s War began, Mme Witte husband, now governor of Kamenets was the linchpin of the Prince Potemkin’s espionage network in southern Poland. Major Witte smuggled spies into Khotin (Turkey) hidden with the butter. But most likely it was Major’s wife – Sophia who provided the information as her sister was married to the Pasha of Khotin. Sophia first became the mistress of the besigiging general Nykolai Saltykov. But then she was introduced to Potemkin in Ochakov. Potemkin appointed the complaisant husband to be the governor of Kherson. Allegedly she was not only Potemkin’s mistress but also his secret agent among the Poles and Turks. As a public acknowledgment of her service to Russia, the Empress gave Sophia a pair of diamond earrings. After Potemkin died in Jassy, Mme Witte hooked up with the Polish magnate Earl Felix Pototskiy one of richest dukes in the Russian Empire. Mme Witte dumped her husband and two children and moved with Earl to St. Petersburg. Sometime later when Earl’s wife died they got married in 1798.
In St. Petersburg Pototsky was a member of Catherine the Great inner circle. In short Sophia rose from a teenage courtesan in Constantinople to one of richest countesses in Poland. For forty years she astonished and scandalized Europe with her “beauty, vice and crimes”.
Sophia, with close connection to royal courts saw many royal gardens and had a dream of creating her own paradisiacal corner.
Sophia's dream was ancient Greece and she chose “Odyssey” by Homer as the source of inspiration for creating her "dream garden".
Her task oriented husband started to build the park in Uman in 1792. In five years, thanks to the efforts of thousands of serfs (her husband owned 130,000 serfs), a fantastically beautiful and unique park was laid out on the uninhabited bank of the river. Every day for five years about 800 serfs worked on fantastic grottoes, waterfalls, lakes, antique statues and picturesque cliffs - all in effort to create a romantic gift of love. The park has its own Isle of Lesbos, a terrace of the Muses, red poppy Elysian Fields, a Cretan labyrinth, and an underground stream called Styx. A lot of trees were brought from exotic countries. They say when the park is viewed from a plane a foliage makes a name “Sophia”. The unfinished park was presented to Sophia on her birthday in May 1802.
Shortly after presenting her with the park the Count uncovered an affair between his son from his first marriage and Sophia. Brokenhearted, husband grew seriously ill and died in 1805. Four years after her husband died Sophia threw out the son and built up a fortune for herself. She died in 1822.
There is a novel about Sophia’s life by Eva Stachniak. The novel appears under two titles “Garden of Venus” or “Dancing with Kings”.
The fact that a freak earthquake pushed Sophia's graveyard out of the Uman churchyard has the locals convinced that she was a witch. In any case she was an amazing survivor.
For photos of a park see http://picasaweb.google.nl/gordie26/Sofiika