Andriy Hudyma: Philosophy of the Heart

The most obvious question about a gourmand, chef, and author of a book about spices is: What spice is he associated with? I nervously posed this question to the family and friends of Andriy Hudyma, who died at the front a few months before the publication of his first book, 69 Spices for the Heart. The same question was voiced by publisher Mariana Savka at the Lviv restaurant where he worked as a brand chef. The guests at the memorial evening for the writer and soldier who went by the call sign "Hudok" began to offer up their answers, until a categorical one came from a teenager with dark hair and grey-green eyes:

"He would have been a paprika! I know better."

I believed her. I opened Hudok’s book to the chapter on paprika and read: "It is immediately identifiable on every spice layout for its vibrance, oily granular texture, and sweet taste with a subtle hint of bitterness." I can easily imagine Andriy Hudyma in an orange bandana or Scottish kilt, with a bun on his shaved head, on the deck of a yacht, in the mountains, or surrounded by Sphynx cats near the fireplace. He was as vibrant as paprika, identifiable everywhere he went. The teenager who knew him best was Yulia Hudyma, his daughter.

"We thought alike," Yulia said when we first met in October after the book launch. "I am his copy. He lives on in me." Yulia spoke in sharp and precise sentences, seasoned with strong words, as if she were chopping an onion without taking her father’s advice to moisten the knife beforehand with cold water. Perhaps that’s why tears came to my eyes. I think that if she had seen them in the semi-dark Lviv cafe, Yulia would have despised me for them. She, like her father, was not into crying. She showed me a photo of a young Andriy in a leather jacket, a wreath, and torn jeans, with a distinct sideways adolescent gaze that stayed with him for decades: "See? It’s the same face." Indeed, it was.

Yulia is the "Heart" from 69 Spices for the Heart, a book where behind the piquant title and sensual descriptions of spices lies a gentle, candid, caring conversation between a father and daughter. Instructions for tasks like going to the market ("They’ll skin you alive and dry you on the spot if you’re not careful") alternate with poetic messages ("On the cliff above the sea, offer your face up to the melting sun, and on the train that, as always, takes you away from me, keep an onion, a knife, and salt in your pocket"). Despite the array of promises that will remain unfulfilled due to the Russian invasion ("Someday I will tell you about a French set of vegetables for soups"), the book sails into the future like a letter in a bottle. The author foresaw a separation that would indeed occur, although it turned out to be not because of the passage of time, but time being cut short.

According to his ex-wife Ulyana Surmai, Andriy had been thinking about writing a book for Yulia for five years. When the text came to editor Kateryna Isayenko for the first reading, it was already a "mature, well-established, high-quality census of spices," presented in a lively language. "It was one of my easiest and most enjoyable editing tasks—a very light and wholesome book," Kateryna said over tea. "It took longer to illustrate than edit. And I kept thinking to myself: What’s the catch?"

A few hours after Kateryna submitted the manuscript to the publisher, news surfaced that Andriy’s unit had come under fire. "Later it was revealed that he perished on the 2nd of the month. On the 1st, until late at night, we’d discussed every note, every edit that Andriy wanted to make," the editor recalled. "I’d just finished the final reading. Andriy said: ‘We have a night shift tomorrow, but I have an internet connection now, so I’m able to talk everything over. Let's agree on everything now."

While already serving in the army, Andriy was preparing the book for publication and supervising the work of illustrator Svitlana Fesenko. He was happy that 69 Spices for the Heart would be released in the fall, "the best time of the year, on my birthday." On his birthday, his family sent 20 kamikaze drones to the frontline in his honor.

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After the full-scale invasion, Andriy Hudyma often visited the military enlistment office. "He kept pushing them to take him to the military," said his father Oleksa Hudyma. "He was healthy, tall, sported an Oseledets haircut, and probably looked like some hooligan. They took him into the assault troops." It happened in May 2023. Andriy was not interested in serving at the headquarters or away from the front line. "And rightly so," Yulia said of this decision, "You go to the front, you’re face-to-face with death, it’s non-negotiable."

Yet Hudok’s war dispatches are filled with his trademark zest for life."We were saying, ‘Oh, well, it’s obvious what his next book will be about," Ulyana wrote. During combat missions, he would notice "the wind in his face and the cherry branches hitting his helmet from time to time"; he wrote about the comfort one can find anywhere, including "in a hut where you can hear thunder daily that isn’t actually thunder"; he was touched by the donations for Mavic drones and for "boxes, cartons, bags and sacks stuffed with volunteer food." Hudok watched his brothers-in-arms and took notes: "There are only healthy moose here, mad baboons and interesting personalities in the prime of their strength. Some quirks can be scratched just by accidentally looking at them." At the same time, "those who know how to look, see: [...] how a person curls up in his sleep with his palms resting under his cheek. Those palms, the size of bayonet-shovels, rest under his cheek resembling and looking like a small stone." His writing about spices and war are equally captivating, characteristic of someone truly open to the world.

After his death, Andriy’s Facebook page was filled with dozens of memories from those to whom he devoted his attention during his lifetime. It seemed that he left a special recipe as a legacy to each of his loved ones. He knew how to look at a friend and, saying, "I know what coffee you need, you’ll never forget it," lead her through the Lviv courtyards to that unforgettable cup. He would create a feast in his aromatic kitchen in just ten minutes while his other friend went out for an extra bottle of wine late in the evening in November. Upon hearing that another close friend was in despair, he would rush to another city to cook for her for several consecutive days while watching movies together. He knew how to give practical advice to a teenager eager on joining the military and helped another person accept a difficult diagnosis. And, of course, he built a separate universe for his daughter that everyone who knew him remembered.

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According to Oleksa Hudyma, his son Andriy, at the age of 44, was still searching for himself, having changed his profession six or seven times. Andriy’s father, on the other hand, changed his field of work only once, when he transitioned from the position of deputy chairman of Lvivoblenergo to become a member of the parliament in the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament. True to himself, Hudok effortlessly transformed into a brand chef, writer, sailor, certified lawyer, artist-restorer, graphic designer, and soldier. Who was Andriy Hudyma first and foremost, though?

"He was an artist," Yulia explained, "in everything he did."

There was something Skovoroda-like in his search for a purpose to his work: it seemed that Hudok could echo the 18th century philosopher Hryhoriy Skovoroda’s statement that "life depends on pleasure, and the joy of the heart is the life of a man." A man whose morning oatmeal consisted of ten ingredients and five spices, who loved seeing swallows perched on his balcony or sailing a yacht on a hot summer night, "meeting the sunrise on a cliff, with a cup of coffee in one hand and a warm palm in the other," a chapter of whose book will soon be published by Ukrainian Playboy–such a man was an expert at joy and pleasure. His life seemed to respond to the instruction from The Garden of Divine Songs: "Ah, cast away sorrows! Life is short-lived! Be sweet, life!" Like Skovoroda, who valued Dutch cheese and Parmesan, took part in a mission to harvest Tokaj wines, traveled European cities, and wrote heartfelt letters to his friends, Hudyma did not sit idle: he sailed on a yacht on the Black and Mediterranean seas, wandered through Turkish bazaars, and the hidden bars of old Lviv. And in this dance of life, as Ulyana wrote, he knew how to "make people laugh, move them, calm them, support them with wise advice he gave with such ease, with such humor, so typically Hudok-like."

The closing lines of Andriy Hudyma’s book are an appeal to his Heart: "No work is worth a second if it is not seasoned with the main spice described here. Love to cook. Love life." The main spice described by him is love, and as one Skovorodian aphorism reminds us, it's "strong as death." "Strength" is the word that comes to mind when you look at Yulia, Hudyma’s Heart. Today, the fifteen-year-old daughter of the artist, aesthete, life enthusiast, and fighter is contemplating a career in military intelligence. It seems that the field where Ukrainian philosophy of the heart comes to life is the battlefield.

Andriy Hudyma was born on 23 August 1979 in then-Czechoslovakia, but his family soon returned to Lviv. He graduated as an art-restorer at the Trush Lviv Professional College of Decorative and Applied Arts (1998) and as a graphic designer at the Lviv Academy of Arts (2004), and also graduated from the Department of Law at the Lviv Commercial Academy (2010). From 2002 to 2006, he worked as a photo editor at the newspaper Express, and from 2006 to 2016, he worked in government agencies. In 2008, his daughter Yulia was born after he and Ulyana Surmai married. In 2013, he started sailing on a yacht, which had always been his passion. In 2017, he started his culinary career. He worked as the brand chef of the Open restaurant group, and from 2021, he was also the brand chef of the Re:bro restaurant group; he later became the chef of the Academy of Taste. Andriy Hudyma joined the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the spring of 2023, fought in the 80th Separate Airborne Assault Brigade and was killed in the battles near Bakhmut on July 2, 2023. In October 2023, his book 69 Spices for the Heart was published by the Old Lion Publishing House. In December 2023, the Yuriy Shevelov Prize Committee posthumously awarded him for his taste for life and words, with deep gratitude to the Hero for his actions.