Shevchenko Scientific Society hosts "Literary Bazaar" featuring diverse authors (02/09/03)

Shevchenko Scientific Society hosts "Literary Bazaar" featuring diverse authors

by Dr. Orest Popovych

NEW YORK - After featuring a number of speakers from far-flung places, including Kyiv, Lviv, Warsaw and Moscow, the Shevchenko Scientific Society (NTSh) concluded its 2002 lecture series with a program devoted to the works of Ukrainian writers and poets who have been creating here in the U. S., noted Dr. Anna Procyk, a vice-president of the society in introducing the "Literary Bazaar" (Literaturnyi Yarmarok) on December 21, 2002.

First on the program was a short story by Ulana Starosolska, which was read in her presence by actress Larissa Kukrytska. Mrs. Starosolska, whose pen name is Ulana Lubovych, is best known for her autobiographical book about life as a slave laborer in Kazakstan, where she was exiled by the Soviets. The selected story also was set in Kazakstan, at a New Year's party for the exiles who worked as slave laborers. It offers a graphic and sensitive depiction of the interactions within the multiethnic gathering as well as between the laborers and their camp commandant.

Next, selected poems by Leonid Lyman, a highly acclaimed poet whose works date back to the 1940s, were recited by Lidia Bychko, a soloist of the Kyiv opera, while the author listened in the audience. Described by some as poetry of the heart, Mr. Lyman's verses belong to the lyrical, historical and patriotic genre. According to experts, he is assured of a permanent place of honor in Ukrainian literature.

Olha Kuzmowycz, a member of the NTSh's governing board and an editor at Svoboda, who is known for her weekly column with insightful commentary on true-life situations, read her short story "Lesia's Christmas Eve," a nostalgic piece that resonated with the spirit of the season.

Lesia is a grandmother who is preparing a traditional Ukrainian Christmas Eve dinner for her two American-born daughters, grandchildren, a son-in-law and a non-Ukrainian boyfriend of one of the daughters, coming for a brief, hurried visit. What Lesia had hoped would be a festive occasion is marred by several minor, but annoying, intergenerational and intercultural clashes, gradually sapping Lesia's Christmas spirit. The author scores a bull's-eye with every detail and nuance in her masterful rendition of the interpersonal conflicts that develop. This is reality, not poetry, explained Mrs. Kuzmowycz

Prof. Maria Revakovych also stepped up to the podium to recite a number of her own love poems. Her latest, written just three days prior, was titled "Suchasna Medea" ("A Contemporary Medea").

Prof. Revakovych has been teaching Ukrainian literature at Rutgers University and is currently a Shklar Fellow at Harvard University. She has published several collections of her poetry, as well as a number of scholarly articles on Ukrainian literature.

The "bazaar" was crowned with the reading of poetry by Vasyl Makhno, a recent immigrant from Ukraine, whose name is familiar to those who follow Ukrainian literary journals. Prof. Makhno, who is not only a poet, but also an essayist, translator and literary scholar, used to teach at the University of Ternopil in Ukraine and the Jagiellonian University in Poland. Presently he is working as a librarian at NTSh in New York.

Prof. Makhno recited from his new collection of poems, titled "Plavnyk Ryby" ("The Fish Fin"). It is noteworthy that in a number of his recent works Prof. Makhno has ventured beyond Ukrainian themes, reflecting his keen observation and perception of life in New York, his new home. Such poems as "A Brooklyn Elegy," "Having Coffee at Starbucks" and "On Hamlet" could easily enjoy universal appeal if translated into English.

"The word requires no words," summed up Dr. Procyk. She expressed her conviction that all present would remember this evening as a very special event.

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