Which classical authors are topical now? Who should we address first of all?
“This year is the 200th anniversary of Markiian Shashkevych’s birth. Unfortunately, this date is almost ignored, though Shashkevych’s short, 32-year-long life was a true exploit. It’s known that he was Taras Shevchenko’s contemporary and part of the ‘Ruthenian Triad.’ However, few know that he saved our language from ‘Latin’ development. At the time this idea had a lot of supporters, who emphasized that by choosing a Roman alphabet we would supposedly be closer to Europe. Shashkevych opined that this was false, and that ‘God gave us’ the Cyrillic alphabet which means that it wasn’t brought from abroad, but created during the cultural formation of the Ukrainian nation. He also remarked that if Halychyna had chosen the Latin alphabet, it would have separated from ‘continental’ Ukrainian literature and culture.
“While they served in cathedrals in Polish or Latin, Shashkevych was the first to preach in Ukrainian at St. George Cathedral.
“His merits aren’t reduced to this. He was also the author of the first Ukrainian sonnet and the first Ukrainian reader.
“However, Shashkevych died almost unknown, having lost his sight and hearing and without leaving a portrait or a photo.
“Later Ivan Franko built upon Shahskevych’s work as a poet and translator, notably The Lay of Ihor’s Warfare, and called his creative work revolutionary, despite its modest volume. The fact that in Rome and Canada there are monuments to Shashkevych, and a gymnasium in Przemysl is named after him, is also indicative.
“Unfortunately, Shashkevych’s 200th anniversary is ignored. He won’t even have his complete works, though they are not numerous. It’s paradoxical that in the 1980s Shashkevych’s anniversary was celebrated in a more grandiose manner. His mansion in Pidlissia in Zolochiv raion was rebuilt, they erected a monument in Lviv and held literary soirees in Kyiv, Lviv, Berezhany, Moscow and Minsk.”
Why do you think he’s being disregarded now?
“Our society and public institutions are used to living according to instructions ‘from above.’ Everyone’s waiting for a command. Ladies and gentlemen, it has to be done by the intellectuals and priests!
“In the village of Nestanychi in Radekhiv raion, where Shashkevych lived and served as a priest, the people are building his museum on their own. However, the premises where he lived didn’t survive until now, but one of the churches that remembers him is preserved. By the way, in the village of Novosilky where he died, and all over Halychyna, people kept three portraits aside their icons — those of Shevchenko, Franko and Shashkevych. It wasn’t just a decorative cult, but gratitude to a person who defended us from aggressive foreign expansion. Nowadays Shashkevych has gained political capital and not just a declarative one. Just as in Shashkevych’s time, Ukrainian schools are being closed down. Just as in the 19th century we are told: ‘You don’t need this language.’ They declare a European orientation, but they don’t explain how this is to be realized. In the century before last they also appealed to this. However, Shashkevych was guided by Shevchenko and the national culture. Actually, Shashkevych, Bohdan-Ihor Antonych, and Sviatoslav Hordynsky are great examples of how one should maintain the spirit of a place and join the large space of the Ukrainian culture with one’s thoughts, actions, efforts and all the creative work.
“Probably, the present expansion is less threatening as we have our own state, but the danger exists. So, let’s protect Markiian Shashkevych and he will protect us!”
“THE FORGOTTEN NAMES ARE BEING RECALLED BUT THERE IS A LACK OF COORDINATION”
Isn’t this attack linked to the fact that such personalities as Shashkevych have not been returned to public discourse? Whose responsibility should this be, and why are they not doing anything?
“I can’t say that nobody is doing anything. A lot has been done during the last years. If we look at poetry, we’ll see that, for example, Bohdan Lepky, Oleh Olzhych and Yevhen Malaniuk have been returned to our literary circulation. We should do justice to the literary historian Volodymyr Panchenko — who did a great job with the people who share his ideas — when they started talking about Yevhen Malaniuk and Volodymyr Vynnychenko.
“This means that forgotten names are being recalled. The problem is a lack of coordination.
“The publishing house Svitlo i tin published a book called Sviatoslav Hordynsky’s Worlds. Hordynsky’s two daughters Lada and Larysa came to the presentation. One of them lives in France and the other one in the US. They brought their father’s archives to Ukraine. It’s the heritage of an amazing person, who was not only a poet, translator and artist (Sviatoslav Hordynsky painted 56 Ukrainian churches!), but also left hundreds of articles about artists, architects and sculptors of his time. For all that, Hordynsky’s 100th anniversary was celebrated formally, so to say. Whose fault is this? Partially, it’s the fault of the intellectuals, as we couldn’t excite enthusiasm about the writer within the government.
“So when we’re talking about Shashkevych’s 200th anniversary we should first of all find a way to coordinate our efforts. A public committee should probably be created. However, it will need the support of the government, the people, and the media, who typically ignore such events.
“If the government adopted a reasonable cultural policy, we would have made Ukraine famous in Europe on last year’s Bohdan-Ihor Antonych’s anniversary. By the way, we would have more possibilities if we managed to involve diplomats. Just look at how our Polish friends managed to turn Kremenets into the capital of Juliusz Slowacki’s poetic world. Unfortunately, we can’t commemorate Bohdan Lepky, Bohdan-Ihor Antonych and Uliana Kravchenko the same way, as the formal structures are not functioning properly.
“Meanwhile, Taras Shevchenko’s 200th anniversary is approaching. Is anyone ready to publish at least some guides to those places linked to Shevchenko’s life abroad? Who has recently visited the town of Novopetrovsk in Kazakhstan, now called Fort-Shevchenko, where the writer spent seven years in exile? Some time ago I suggested ‘cultivating’ this place, but my suggestion wasn’t registered.
“In short, the tradition of honoring of our native culture and those figures that created it has been lost.”
THE NATURAL SCENERY IS BEING RETURNED
We’ve just discussed the individuals, what if we try to asses the level of restoring the “Ukrainian world” in general?
“Certainly, there’s no end to the work, but I will start with the specifics.
“They are currently reconstructing the Holy Spirit Cathedral, which remembers Shashkevych, and other members of the ‘Ruthenian Triad,’ and which is linked to the activity of metropolitan Andrei Sheptytsky and the patriarch Yosyp the Blind. This church has a complicated history. First it was hit by a German bomb in 1939, and then Soviet rule finished it off in the 1950s. They opened a tennis court in its place…
“Certainly, it’s important to work on furnishing writers’ mansions. For example, Shashkevych’s mansion was reconstructed in an empty place. However, the children that pass it every day feel like it’s been there forever. The natural scenery and native atmosphere are being returned. At the same time Ivan Franko’s mansion in Nahuievychi, which has been burned several times, was restored with an eye to exhibits of the writer’s works, literary soirees, etc.
“I have a dream to restore palaces, mansions and castles. They are the heritage of a troubled and painful history, and not only of Ukraine, but of several nations.
“Small towns are a further facet to the restoration of the Ukrainian space. Kremenets is the Volynian Athens, Berezhany is the Athens of Podillia… These cultural and spiritual centers demand a lot of efforts — intellectual, organizational and physical, from their every inhabitant.
“The Ukrainian ‘restoration’ is a difficult yet rewarding process as a material restoration means a spiritual one.
“When I look today at the Lavra and the Golden Gates I recall my first impressions from the ruins I saw there when I came to Kyiv as a young writer at the beginning of 1960s. On the other hand, I suffer watching that in Kyiv, a city with a unique character, landscape and architectural legacy, its outlines and profiles, they build concrete corncobs of satanic dimensions…”
What would you say about Lviv? Some local inhabitants are quite skeptical and even caustic concerning the present cultural atmosphere of the city…
“Nowadays the inhabitants of Lviv are quite uncoordinated, passive and desperate; they’ve scattered, some have gone into their shells, and those who come to power are more preoccupied with their own interests. Today the conditions seem to be better than several decades ago. However, on the one hand, certain forces that are not interested in the Ukrainian renaissance consciously resist, on the other hand creative people are apathetic and the local authorities are indifferent. I am not directing this criticism at the Lviv authorities, but I’m concerned about the primitive vision of Europeanization of our city, which is supposedly to be reduced to bars, beer, marmalade and chocolate. I dispute the positioning of Lviv as the city of pickpockets, ruffians who have their own folklore and slang. They had their microcosm, but now somebody wants to spread this all over the city. However, when we watch The Threepenny Opera we don’t think that the image created by Brecht personalizes the whole of Berlin. Multicultural Lviv is about the harmony of its multinational components, among which the Ukrainian component is central…”
AD FONTES
Last year you opened Bohdan-Ihor Antonych’s Library in Greece. How does it feel now?
“It is quite symbolic. There are separate bookshelves; people take interest in them. In particular, at the beginning of March they opened an exhibition of the painter Yevhen Beznosok, dedicated to Shevchenko. This library always excites the interest of Ukrainians living in Greece.
“As for my personal impressions, Greece was a great discovery for me. Particularly the coexistence of modern people with ancient ruins. I had a feeling that those columns, capitals and stones radiated something unfinished. I want to combine all of this in my imagination, to see the ancient streets, ‘meet’ the people of the time. As a poet, I had several interests in Greece. Firstly, the ancient culture as it became a part of our culture. Secondly, the extremely intelligent Ukrainian audience living there. To be honest, I’ve never seen diasporas so interested in their native literature, classical and modern. Actually, due to those people and active Ukrainians, especially the art critic Khrystyna Berehovska, they opened the first Ukrainian library in Europe, named after Antonych.
“Impressed with my stay in Greece, I wrote a couple of poems, but I’m in no hurry to publish them. I think they will be part of a future cycle.”
As a poet did you feel a common culture, inherent to the Mediterranean space, which, actually, comprises Ukraine?
“Yes, I did. The concept of the ‘Mediterranean civilization’ can be interpreted as the image of the civilization that formed around the territory of the Mediterranean shores, but in reality it influenced the development of a much larger space. Ukraine is related to this civilization directly and indirectly at the same time. On the one hand, our culture developed in that context, but at the same time it isn’t limited by the literal adoptions of it. We’re free, but some antique names and the names of some works of literature excite Ukrainian associations. For example, when I hear about ancient Hellenic singers, I recall the name of Petro Nischynsky who, so to say, translated the ancient authors in a burlesque manner. At the same time I see the typical yet ultramodern Leopolitan intellectual Andrii Sodomora.
“In Greece one should only gather impressions, and not turn into a trivial tourist.”
And what do you mean by not being “a trivial tourist”?
“A trivial tourist is one who visits museums and cathedrals with a crowd, listens to guide, and races on, having forgotten everything previously heard. A tourist is not trivial if this person communicates with a historical time and aspires to see himself in that time. Though I live in the 21st century, I want to see myself in the ancient Roman streets. We should see something amazing and beautiful in the ancient ruins and create by restoring the antique amphorae with the help of imagination and good intensions. We should love the rainy late autumn in Greece, generous to thick olive and orange trees. By the way, when I saw orangeries in their natural surrounding, I immediately forgot all the Ukrainian cliches connected to the word ‘orange’ and I came back to the sources. This concept ad fontes, ‘to the sources,’ concerns not only cognition, but also a certain emotional state.
“Near a small Greek cathedral we saw a modest monument to Taras Shevchenko. It looked very natural in that nice garden. I even thought: if Taras Shevchenko had wanted, after the hard life he lived and all that wandering, the Greek muses would have immediately admitted him to Parnassus. He would have perfectly coexisted with them as for him and the whole Ukrainian high culture (comprising Shashkevych, Franko, Hordynsky…), the world of antique art and beauty would have been absolutely natural.”
