HURI also present at Lincoln Center (05/28/00)

HURI also present at Lincoln Center

by Robert DeLossa

NEW YORK - In the 1960s the Ukrainian American community came together with Harvard academics and fund-raisers at the Ukrainian Studies Fund to establish a university-based publications program devoted to Ukraine. Perhaps at that time they dreamed of such a moment as happened on May 15 at Lincoln Center. I was in kindergarten when the first volumes of the Harvard Series in Ukrainian Studies started rolling off the presses, so I do not know for sure. But I cannot help being struck by the perspicacity with which these men and women planted a seed that has yielded so much.

The presence of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute at the PEN America gala seemed an anomaly - a little David among the Goliaths of publishing such as Knopf, Viking, and Farrar, Strauss & Giroux. People could be heard asking, "Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute - what's that? Why are they here?" But by the time that Dr. James Brasfield and Oleh Lysheha had made their speeches, these doubters knew a bit more about Ukraine. And they also knew that there is a special place at Harvard that publishes first-rate books about Ukraine.

Each of HURI's publications is both an ambassador and a visiting professor, whether to an individual home, a community library or a university classroom. When he became director of the institute, Dr. Roman Szporluk especially emphasized the need for translation of cultural materials, and Dr. George Grabowicz brought the Lysheha translation to HURI through his personal relationship with Messrs. Lysheha and Brasfield.

In line with HURI's basic commitment to bringing Ukrainian culture to the American public, Mr. Lysheha's poems have presented Ukraine to the imagination of new audiences, while providing enduring proof of the vitality of Ukrainian thought and literary skill to those who long have been mindful of Ukraine.

At the same time, the institute's publications continue to go out into the world at the highest standard, as witnessed this year by the presentation of the American Association for Ukrainian Studies' book prize to the Rev. Dr. Borys Gudziak's "Crisis and Reform" and the Milewski Prize, awarded in Warsaw, to Murray Rosman for his HURI book "The Lords' Jews."

So, to those wise men and women who planted so fertile a seed many years ago, and to those who continue to donate to our institute in order to make sure it remains healthy and vibrant: thank you. We will try to make sure that it continues to produce the finest fruit possible.

Robert DeLossa is director of publications at the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University.

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