KYIV–KANIV–KYIV — A memorial plaque dedicated to the noted translator Yevhen POPOVYCH was unveiled in Kaniv. What do most Ukrainians know about him? Very little, if anything at all. This is not surprising considering that we often come across fictitious heroes on television screens and newspaper pages. Popovych was among the founders of the Ukrainian school of literary translation. Formed in the 1960s and 1970s, it turned into a kind of resistance movement against the totalitarian system.
He took part in a rally of protest against the arrests of Ukrainian intellectuals during the premiere of Sergei Paradzhanov’s film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors at Kyiv’s movie theater Ukraina. His creative heritage includes Ukrainian translations from Hermann Hesse, Erich Maria Remarque, Max Frisch, Franz Kafka, and Olha Kobylianska’s German diaries. He was awarded the Maksym Rylsky and Mykola Lukash Prizes, was friends with cultural figures that formed the cultural visage of entire generations (Ivan Svitlychny, Vasyl Symonenko, Mykola Lukash, and Lina Kostenko). He had one of Kyiv’s largest home libraries and donated part of it to Kyiv Mohyla Academy. The Day was happy to use an opportunity to talk to Popovych’s relatives and friends, and see a copy of Liudmyla Taran’s book Kyivski rypidy (Kyiv Flabella, Feniks Publ., 2007) kindly provided by the translator’s relatives. Among other things, this book contains an extensive interview with Popovych.
Taran asked him whether he was affected by the “social schizophrenia” of our socialist past. He said he was not and added: “For several reasons, I think. First of all, because I am a natural skeptic, so that even if I develop a fancy for something — which is often the case — I quickly start carefully analyzing my fancy and then I can figure it out, more or less. Second, I hate injustice, it makes me sick. There was enough injustice in our [recent] past, some of it was horrible, to make one immune to that social schizophrenia. Third, I am a bookworm and think that loving and knowing Shevchenko was enough to develop immunity to this disease. Anyway, he [Shevchenko] put some ideas into my head that didn’t agree with the realities of the time.”
“Good and bad things happened. I succeeded in accomplishing something, was blacklisted for a while, but mostly I was able to do what I could and loved to do. If I were to start my life anew, I’d choose the same path.”
Olha SENIUK, Popovych’s wife, translator:
“When Yevhen Popovych was to receive a diploma, the [local] Komsomol [committee] gave him a testimonial that said that he had avoided public activities. This was as good as saying that all doors would be closed for him after graduation. Yet the lecturers adored him. The secretary of the dean’s office told the group’s curator [party member in charge of a group of students] about the testimonial and he simply rewrote it, stressing that Popovych had a talent for literary translation.
“Yevhen treated every task and, above all, literary translation with utmost responsibility. At times he would spend two days trying to find just one right [Ukrainian] equivalent. In 1982, we received a letter from the well-known Ukrainian literary critic George Yurii Shevelov. He wrote that he enjoyed reading Yevhen’s translation of Hesse’s Das Glasperlenspiel (The Glass Bead Game) and then noted: ‘I’m not indicating who I am lest you have problems.’
“My husband had a strong sense of justice and was a very kind man.”
We know that Yevhen Popovych helped his colleague Mykola Lukash, in particular with money.
“After Dziuba was arrested, Mykola Lukash went to the Central Committee [of the Communist Party of Ukraine] and asked to be arrested instead of Dziuba because he was very ill, Lukash told them. After that he was expelled from the Writers’ Union, of course, and lost his job.
“Lukash also helped us. He read our translations and liked them. He asked the WU leadership to grant us membership. My husband and I were too modest to even discuss the possibility. I even have his written request.
“We weren’t the only ones to help Lukash. When he was given a one-room apartment, he asked the stove to be removed from the kitchen because he needed the room for his books. Later we bought him an electric kettle so he could at least have tea. Well, there were such peculiar individuals at the time. Intrepid, uncompromising, sincere, and bereft of envy.”
Lina KOSTENKO, poet:
“On the way to Kaniv I suddenly closed my eyes, and it seemed to me that we were riding together with Yevhen to visit his native Mezhyrich.
“By the way, I recently read Den’s article ‘Malkovych’s Argument.’ It had it that Ivan Malkovych published the best translations from Gogol by Maksym Rylsky and Mykola Zerov. He edited them himself and then asked Yevhen Popovych to lend him a hand. Reading this, I felt as though Yevhen were still alive, because Ivan and he have been editing translations together.
“Yevhen Popovych is my best lifelong friend. Our paths also crossed professionally. I added to his translation my version of Joseph Knecht’s poems. It was a great honor for me because he was a brilliant translator. Starting with professional contacts, our friendship endured all trials of life — and there were many hard trials!
“I am from Naddniprianshchyna. Our people love water and hardly know what a real forest is all about. Yevhen and Olha discovered it for me and taught me how to pick mushrooms. Scandinavian sagas say that the gnomes collect the honey of poetry in the forest. Once, when we were in the Carpathians, we climbed to a mountain peak and I spotted huge mushrooms. Inadvertently I kicked one with my foot, and it went tumbling down. You should have heard Yevhen scolding me for destroying a cep! It was thus I began collecting bits and pieces of information about mushrooms.
“One day later he saw the way I was cleaning them of dirt: ‘Well, you can be trusted with the task.’ Once we went to the forest (it was on November 17, I remember). No one found anything except me. I found a cep. Olha looked at it and said enviously, ‘Oh, you!’ What she meant I’d done better than my teacher. Jokes aside, the Popovyches taught me and my husband to ‘read’ the forest. We often visited Mezhyrich.”
Did you often visit Taras Mountain in Kaniv?
“We used to but not recently, somehow. My ancestors on my mother’s side come from Kaniv.
“All kinds of things happen and nothing passes without a trace. The same is true of Yevhen. I remember the way he looked at me. He knew it was our last meeting. I didn’t. I couldn’t allow myself to realize the truth. Yevhen kept looking back at me at the elevator. I could see reproach in his eyes, as though he were asking, ‘Don’t you understand that we’re seeing each other for the last time?’
“What I mean is when Yevhen was sailing off to the afterworld in that coffin ship, I had a feeling that an entire continent of Ukrainian culture was drifting away. Yevhen had made such a tremendous effort to master the language and history so well. Now all of this was moving away in a coffin. Let me tell you how well Yevhen knew the language. When I’d write a poem and there was a word I wasn’t sure about, I’d call him. Other times he would ask me, ‘How do you know this word?’ I’d reply, ‘And you think you’re the only know-it-all?
“Another brushstroke to Yevhen’s portrait. I don’t know German, anyway not enough to translate, so Yevhen did a word-for-word translation. I read it and understood Hesse. True, they told me at the publishing company that my translation wasn’t like Sergei Averintsev’s. Well, I didn’t translate from Averintsev but from Hesse, using Popovych’s word-for-word translation. At first, I couldn’t feel Hesse, but then I fell in love with him.”
Your father built a school in Mezhyrich, didn’t he?
“You see, my father worked with the district department for people’s education. I mean he didn’t build but planned schools. Well, Yevhen said so, then it must have been so.”
