A little over 100 km from Kharkiv, in what is now the Sumy Oblast, lies the small village of Tarasivka.
There has long since been no trace left of the Church of St. Demetrius, built with funds from parishioners in 1869. Nor has any memory remained of the wonderful poet-priest who wrote poetry and remarkable children’s books. To my great regret, the name of Philip Melentyevich Pestryakov, the rector of the local church, is, alas, now completely and undeservedly forgotten. That is precisely why I would like to tell you a little about him today.
Philip Melentyevich was born on November 14, 1862, in the village of Novo-Osinova in the Kup’yans’k District, where his father served at the local church.
Among the clergy of the Kharkiv Governorate, Philip’s father was considered a well-educated man—despite his large family and modest income, he regularly subscribed to many magazines and books and amassed a library that was quite respectable by county standards.
After a serious illness around 1876–1877, Melentiy Pestryakov died. His young widow and five children were left without a means of support. The eldest child, Philip, was just graduating from the local theological school at that time, where all children of the clergy between the ages of 9 and 15 were required to study. Facing dire poverty, the Pestryakov family sold all their possessions of any value, and the library his father had collected was burned for firewood. After all, there were no buyers for books in the villages, and the stove needed to be heated somehow. Because of the short duration of Father Philip Melentyevich’s service, he was not entitled to a pension, and the orphaned family’s only income was an annual allowance of 30 rubles from the diocesan charity for impoverished clergy. Naturally, these funds were insufficient, and young Philip could not visit his relatives even during school breaks. However, in addition to room and board, attending the theological school provided the orphaned children of priests with another important benefit. Namely, free room and board and an education. Thus, upon graduating from the school, Philip Melentyevich continued his studies at the Kharkiv Theological Seminary, which at that time was renowned for its excellent faculty as well as its high standards for students. The seminary’s choir, orchestra, and literary and vocal evenings—which attracted high-society guests and large crowds of young people—also brought considerable liveliness to seminary life. However, according to the memoirs of his contemporaries—which have miraculously survived to this day—“…Philip Melentyevich, a lively, enthusiastic young man with a penchant for worldly pursuits, found no satisfaction for his spiritual needs at the seminary. He took little interest in his studies and studied half-heartedly, just to move from one grade to the next, devoting most of his time to reading secular writers.”
While studying at the seminary, Philip Melentyevich also dreamed of enrolling at Kharkiv Imperial University. However, these were only dreams. After all, his primary responsibility at that time was to do everything in his power to help his mother and brothers, who were living in extreme poverty. Unfortunately, Pestryakov never graduated from the seminary, leaving it due to illness a year and a half before graduation. But this time, fate smiled upon him, as the young and inexperienced seminarian soon became a tutor to the children of a famous sculptor who lived with his family on an estate in the Kursk Governorate. There, in addition to a decent salary, Philip Melent’evich had the opportunity to interact with highly educated people of his time and also had access to a rich library.
While living there, he met a beautiful young woman—the governess of the sculptor’s children—and married her some time later. He was fully aware, however, that his fiancée was terminally ill. Given that his wife’s treatment required significant expenses, the question of finding new employment became a pressing concern for Pestryakov. However, having left seminary before graduation of his own accord, he was unable to secure a position as a priest. Consequently, Philip Melentyevich had to settle for the modest position of deacon at the church in the village of Skrypaevo, where he was ordained on February 8, 1887, by Archbishop Ambrose of Kharkiv. Since Pestryakov was already a well-known ecclesiastical writer and preacher by that time, Archbishop Ambrose did everything in his power to support Pestryakov in his literary endeavors.
For example, the archbishop personally edited his poems, helped him transfer from Skrypaevo to Kharkiv to serve as a deacon at the 2nd Gymnasium, and in 1891 ordained him as a priest in the village of Yasenok. It goes without saying that such high-level patronage significantly improved Philip Melentyevich’s legal and financial standing. However, the happiness of the rector of the Yasenok village church was short-lived. Some time later, his dearly beloved wife died of an illness. Inconsolable and broken, Pestryakov changed parishes several times, but found neither peace of mind nor a sense of belonging anywhere. Besides, he was completely unsuited to the life of a simple rural priest. He did not kowtow to his superiors; on the contrary, he clashed with them. He also refused on principle to extort money from poor peasants in exchange for performing church services. And he didn’t know how to tend a garden to feed himself. Therefore, in 1900, Pestryakov resigned from diocesan service and moved to Kharkiv, where he earned a living by teaching religion in the city’s elementary schools, doing parish work on a freelance basis, and writing. Philip Melentyevich lived in our city for 10 years, and it is precisely this Kharkiv period that is considered the most fruitful in his literary career. In 1910, a sick and utterly destitute Pestryakov again asked the diocesan authorities for a position as a parish priest in a village and received it. As he was leaving the city, he said to his acquaintances in farewell: “I am going to the village to die.” This prophecy proved true. Having served less than a year in his new post, on September 22, 1911, at the age of 49, Philip Melentievich died in complete solitude in the Tarasov parish, a place he knew little about.
Pestryakov’s literary legacy is no less fascinating than his eventful life. His first poem was published in 1887 in a popular illustrated religious magazine, where he had been a regular contributor ever since:
The poems published in this journal were acquired by the Moscow Synodal Printing House in 1906 and subsequently published as a separate book titled *Religious and Moral Poems by Priest F. M. Pestryakov*.
Under the church roof
Beneath the roof of a rural church,
in the glow of flickering candles,
I saw, amid the swirling clouds of incense,
tiny peasant children.
With their little hands clasped in devotion,
And their eyes fixed on the icons,
They prayed earnestly there Before the start of their lessons.And this simple
image Has etched itself into my heart,
And, as tears fell unbidden,
I remembered my childhood days.I recalled the beginning of my studies,
the prayers of my childhood;
and so many things—things that happened long ago,
things that left a mark on my heart…
Pestryakov’s secular poems were published, for example, in the magazines *Zadushnoye Slovo*, *Zvezda*, *Nov*, *Literary Evenings*, *Mirny Trud*, “Svetoch,” etc.
There were so many of them that as early as 1913, researchers attempting to study the legacy of Filipp Melentyevich lamented the difficulty of compiling them into a single collection.
Pestryakov, who was widowed at an early age, also made a significant contribution to children’s literature.
If you have no compassion or love
in your heart, without these treasures, it’s better not to live in this world at all…
And in 1898, his wonderful book of poetry for children with “pop-up pictures”—*Stenka-Rastenka’s Magic Lantern*—was published in St. Petersburg.
Although most of Pestryakov’s works were written in the genre of religious and moral poetry and published as small books, they were popular among the common people of our region. So the life and work of Filipp Melentyevich do hold some significance—albeit not on a global scale—for Sloboda Ukraine after all.
And finally, as I mentioned above, our poet-priest, being the eldest in the family, helped his brothers. Thanks to this, at least two of them became priests. Documents from 1897 list Polikarp Melentyevich Pestryakov as the rector of the Ascension Church in the village of Osinova (Starobils’k District). And among the clergy of the city of Kyiv in 1914, Vasily Melentyevich Pestryakov was the rector of one of the churches.
