George Grabowicz delivers D.H. Struk Memorial Lecture (06/17/01)

George Grabowicz delivers D.H. Struk Memorial Lecture

by N. Spolsky Tomcio

TORONTO - The Danylo H. Struk Memorial Lecture, the second in this series of annual lectures, was delivered by George Grabowicz, the Dmytro Cyzevskyi Professor of Ukrainian Literature at Harvard University, at the University of Toronto on May 11. His theme was "Taras Shevchenko as a National Poet. A Comparison with Pushkin and Mickiewicz."

In a well-structured presentation Prof. Grabowicz expounded a theory that national poets are made, not born; they are made by themselves with the help of the national ethos, history and their social environment. The paths were similar for Ukraine's Shevchenko, Aleksandr Pushkin of Russia and Adam Mickiewicz of Poland, although history and social circumstances were different for each of these poets.

Initially, the poet identified himself with a national cause, became its bard in a Byronian romantic style, and then became its martyr and a national prophet. Ethos seemed to play a crucial role in the development of a national poet. In Russia, Poland and Ukraine the national ethos was always focused on freedom from oppression - freedom from autocracy in Russia and freedom from occupation in both Poland and Ukraine.

In France, on the other hand, there is no unique national poet despite that country's vibrant literary and poetic tradition. The French national ethos was captured by Napoleon, who for two centuries caught and held the imagination of the nation, Prof. Grabowicz noted.

Another dynamic country without a well-defined national bard or prophet is the United States. In this case, Prof. Grabowicz argued that national imagination was ignited and flamed by a visionary statesman by the name of Abraham Lincoln.

In England William Shakespeare triumphed on the tide of exhilarating change and discovery of the Elizabethan era and has been identified with that period.

Prof. Grabowicz maintained that Shevchenko, Pushkin and Mickiewicz painted themselves into national icons by the sheer force of their eloquence, commanding the reader to identify them with the national cause. The causes were similar for all three poets. Pushkin had criticized the tightening grip of Russian autocracy upon society and its ruthless territorial expansion. Mickiewicz bemoaned the foreign occupation that befell Poland as the Third Partition of Poland was decreed by the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Shevchenko, in the true spirit of a freedom fighter, called for open rebellion against the political and social oppression by Russia in Ukraine.

However, Prof. Grabowicz said he perceives either lip-service or duality of purpose in each of these poets. Pushkin's dissident views of the Russian bureaucracy did not propel him to join the Decembrist movement whose members were eventually publicly executed in 1825. Neither was Mickiewicz among the freedom fighters in Poland during the Russian occupation. Instead, he chose to remain in exile in Russia, where he nostalgically extolled Polish valor of times past.

In Shevchenko's case, Prof. Grabowicz finds a duality of roles assumed by the poet: the role of a prophet of the oppressed on one hand, and the role of a participant-member of the oppressor's society on the other.

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