OBITUARY: Ivan Koshelivets, literary critic and scholar, 91 (03/14/99)

OBITUARY: Ivan Koshelivets, literary critic and scholar, 91

by Andrij Kudla Wynnyckyj
Toronto Press Bureau

TORONTO - Ivan Koshelivets, among the most respected émigré literary critics and scholars in the post-war period and founding editor of the journal Suchasnist, died of pneumonia at the City Polyclinic in Munich, Germany, on February 5. He was 91.

Koshelivets was a pseudonym of Ivan Yareshko, born on November 10, 1907, in the village of Koshelivka in the Nizhen district near Chernihiv. He graduated from the Nizhen Institute of People's Education in 1930, then worked as a teacher in secondary schools in Nizhen and as a lecturer at a post-secondary institution in Kremenchuk. In 1940-1941, he was a graduate student at the Institute of Literature of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, but the Nazi invasion interrupted his studies.

Mr. Koshelivets fled westward in the mid-1940s, settling in Munich in 1947. Four years later he joined the Munich-based Suchasna Ukraina publishing house, co-editing (with the late Yuriy Lavrinenko) the literary section of its eponymous semi-monthly newspaper. In 1954 he published a critical reader's primer on poetry, the first in a projected series titled "Narysy z Teoriyi Literatury" (Essays on Literary Theory).

In July 1955, together with Mr. Lavrinenko, he established the Ukrainska Literaturna Hazeta (ULH) which, as the unofficial organ of the Slovo Association of Ukrainian Writers in Exile, provided a politically neutral forum in which the literary and artistic processes in the emigration and Soviet Ukraine could be reflected.

Through his engagement with émigré poets he met Emma Andievska, whom he married in January 1959.

In January 1961, the ULH and Suchasna Ukraina were merged to form the journal Suchasnist and Mr. Koshelivets assumed the post of editor-in-chief. He served in this capacity until 1966, then in 1976-1977 and 1983-1984, in addition to serving on the editorial board more or less continuously.

As such, Mr. Koshelivets was one of the central figures responsible for the publication of material, literary and otherwise, that was unavailable or banned in the USSR, and significantly aided its circulation in the samvydav (underground self-published) network.

Dr. Arkadii Joukovsky, a friend and colleague, wrote in an obituary published in the Toronto-based weekly The New Pathway on February 27: "Ivan Koshelivets diligently followed processes in Ukrainian Soviet literature, and was one of the best experts on the nationality question in Ukraine. In the 1960s, he favored meeting visitors from Ukraine, which frequently drew criticism from 'hurrah-patriots,' who could see only agents emerging from that country."

In the late 1940s Mr. Koshelivets began a long association with the 10-volume Entsyklopedia Ukrainoznavstva (EU) project. In 1957, he was named its literary editor, vetting all entries in the field as well as contributing many on dissident figures. Until 1985 Mr. Koshelivets also served as senior advisor to the late EU Editor-in-Chief Volodymyr Kubijovyc and, together with the late Atanas Figol, acted as chief manuscript editor.

Mr. Koshelivets served as literary subject editor (together with G.S.N. Luckyj and Danylo Struk) for the five-volume English-language Encyclopedia of Ukraine (1984-1993), also contributing entries on individuals, publications and currents in the Ukrainian literary and dissident movements.

Mr. Koshelivets lectured at the Ukrainian Free University in Munich from the 1960s onward and received a habilitation Ph.D. in 1987.

Drawing on his work at Suchasnist and the encyclopedias, Mr. Koshelivets compiled and edited the anthology "Panorama Nainovishoyi Literatury v URSR" (Panorama of Recent Literature in the Ukrainian SSR, 1963; revised edition, 1974); and wrote the monograph "Suchasna Literatura v URSR" (Contemporary Literature in the Ukrainian SSR, 1964).

He edited and wrote introductions to the works of Vasyl Symonenko (1965), Mykola Skrypnyk (1974), Ivan Svitlychny (1977) and Yevhen Sverstiuk (1979).

Mr. Koshelivets also produced biographies of Soviet Ukrainian statesman Mykola Skrypnyk (1972) and the filmmaker Oleksander Dovzhenko (1980).

His memoirs, "Rozmovy v Dorozi do Sebe" (Conversations on the Way to Myself) appeared in 1985.

His last work, an act of homage to French culture and literature, was a monograph on Jeanne d'Arc. The first such work on the subject in Ukrainian, it was published in Kyiv in 1997.

Mr. Koshelivets was an accomplished translator, and his wide-ranging interest in world literature was reflected in his Ukrainian translations of works from French, German, Polish, Czech, Belarusian and Russian. Perhaps the most artful and deft of Mr. Koshelivets's renderings was his version of Denis Diderot's "Jacques Fataliste et Son Maître," published by Suchasnist in 1970. An anthology of translations of Franz Kafka's stories appeared in 1989.

He also edited a collection of Soviet Ukrainian dissident documents, translated into Polish by Józef Lobodowski, "Ukraina 1956-1968" (1969).

After Ukraine secured its independence, Mr. Koshelivets travelled frequently to the country, often on invitation of the Ukrainian Writers' Union, of which he became a member in 1991. Mr. Koshelivets was also a full member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society (since 1948) and the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S. (since 1949).

An ecumenical funeral service and the interment took place at the Waldfriedhof Cemetery in Munich on February 11.

Mr. Koshelivets is survived by his wife, Ms. Andievska, and relatives in Ukraine.

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