Kharkiv-Paris-Kharkiv: Yurii Lawrynenko's Anthology Rozstriliane Vidrodzhennia Mark Andryczyk han k you for invi t ing me to t he sym pos i um documents and anthologies of a past time in the “Yurii Lawrynenko: Path and Legacy” and present day. allowing me to say a few words about Mr. TLawrynenko in conjunction with the addition Kofh arkiv I his personal papers to the Bakhmeteff Archive. I The year 1926. Soviet Ukrainian Literature will begin by sharing with you something I have is beginning to enter its most purple patch. Yurii observed while teaching Ukrainian literature in Lawrynenko is a twenty-one year old student North America and in Ukraine in the last few studying literature at the Kharkiv Institute years. During classes in contemporary Ukrainian of People's Education. Later, he works at the literature that I have taught (and am presently Kharkiv Shevchenko Scientific Research Institute teaching here at Columbia), I discuss with my and produces his first works of literary criticism, students the 1971 contraband, samvydav (samizdat) choosing to focus on the poetry of Vasyl' Elan- almanac Skrynia (The Chest) ; it was produced by Blakytnyi, Vasyl' Chumak and Pavlo Tychyna. the 1970s Lviv underground intellectual scene, Thus, at the beginning of the 1930s, we have a which included such influential Ukrainian cultural young man living in Kharkiv, surrounded by figures such as Hryts'ko Chubai, Mykola Riabchuk the energy of rebirth and a vision of progress in and Oleh Lysheha, among others. When I pass Ukrainian culture—a culture being created by around a republished version of the journal in intellectuals who are a few years older than he. We class, my students have difficulty grasping the fact have this young man beginning his professional life that appearing in, being associated with and even as an analyst of the cultural achievements of this reading this literary journal (which was mostly exciting period. In 1934, during Stalin's assault on apolitical, emphasizing, aesthetic freedom above this culture, Lawrynenko is imprisoned and, from all else) had led to harassment by the state and 1935 to 1939, he is incarcerated in a concentration persecution in the Soviet Union—and that such camp established above the Artic circle, in Siberia. a sit ua t io n e x is t ed in Uk raine on ly a few de ca d es Upon his release, he travels on a path that leads him ago. The idea of a few poems, a short story and a continually farther West—Kyiv, Lviv, Austria—and translation having such a potential society-altering finally, in 1950, Yurii Lavrynenko emigrates to the force and, therefore, posing a threat to government United States. authority, is difficult for students to imagine, today, Memoirs written by two of Lawrynenko's in twenty-first-century Toronto, New York and contemporaries, fellow emigres Hryhorii Kostiuk Lviv. and Iurii Shevelov (aka Iurii Sherekh), describe My talk today is entitled “Kharkiv—Paris— Ukrainian intellectual life in Ukraine, in displaced Kharkiv: Yurii Lawrynenko's Anthology Rozstriliane persons camps and in the United States. In their Vidrodzhennia” and I want to focus on the path that memoirs, both writers recall Lawrynenko's this publication, and its contents, have traveled in characteristic and enduring Romantic notion of a the last 90 years or so—beginning with the genesis, bright future for the Ukrainian nation and the grand of the l iterary works that the compilation contains (in plans that he would dream up in order to achieve 1920s Kharkiv [and Kyiv]), through the anthology's this goal.1 publication in Paris in 1959, and finally, to its return to Ukraine—now a post-Soviet one. And because we have assembled here this afternoon on the occasion 1. See Hryhorii Kostiuk, Zustrichi i proshchannia: spohady of the archiving of a series of personal papers and (knyha druha) (Edmonton and Toronto: CIUS Press, 1987), documents, I would like to steer my talk towards 228 and Iurii Sherekh, “Z povisty pro dvokh Iurkiv,” in Po- reflecting upon the meaning—the resonance—of rohy i zaporizhzhia vol. 2 (Kharkiv: Folio, 1998), 345-356. The Harriman Review 3 Paris that the phrase “Rozstriliane Vidrodzhennia” (The Living in New York City, Lawrynenko expends Executed Renaissance) had already been coined almost two years of dedicated work compiling the by him in 1944; he conveys great frustration at anthology Rozstriliane Vidrodzhennia: Antolohiia 1917 the world's ignorance of this period in Ukrainian 1933 (The Executed Renaissance: An Anthology cultural history and then expresses his relief that 1917-1933)2. Published in 1959, in France, by this ignorance was finally being addressed in a Poles, and printed in Germany, the anthology publication. At the outset, and throughout the places Ukrainian literature of the 1920s within the anthology, Lawrynenko blames Moscow's imperial European cultural space, a development that had ambitions for orchestrating the violent silencing brutally been denied it by the Stalinist regime of the of Ukraine's leading creative talents. In essence, recent past. Rozstriliane Vidrodzhennia is a collection of literary The anthology features twenty-six poets, seven works (many copies of which had been previously prose writers, two dramatists and eight essayists, unpublished and, therefore, self-typed) that had and excludes any literary work that had been been provided by a circle of Ukrainian intellectuals published in a censored form in the Soviet Union; now living in the West and culled from their personal it also omits any literature written by Ukrainian collections—the very same literary works that, emigres in the West. Thus, the 1959 anthology practically and symbolically, had led to the exile of offered nota representation of Ukrainian literature these women and men from their homeland. as it existed at the middle of the twentieth century Each writer featured in the anthology is given but, instead, provided a sampler of literature that a brief introduction by Lawrynenko, providing had been written over a quarter century earlier. In biographical facts, bibliographic information the volume's introduction, Yurii L awrynenko reveals and a timeline paralleling the first appearance of the featured literary works with events leading 2. Iurii Lavrinenko, Rozstriliane vidrodzhennia: Antoholohiia up to the eventual, complete take-over of Soviet 1917-1933. Poeziia-proza-drama-esei (Paris: Instytut Liter- literature by the State. These introductions also acki, 1959). _ \ _ 1 lOPlfi JIABPIHEHKO P03CTP1J1HHE BIlPOUIfEIIIIfi Iurii Lawrynenko, Rozstriliane vidrodzhennia: Antolohiia 1917- 1933, Poeziia-proza-drama-essei (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1959). This small pocketbook edition was designed for unofficial, free INSTYTUT LITERACKI distribution in Ukraine. It was smuggled into the country and dis- seminated at no cost by private individuals. The goal was to restore 19 S9 Ukraine's lost legacy. 4 The Harriman Review offer brief critiques by Lawrynenko of the featured vitaismu" (Literature of Vitalism). In it, he writer's work. For example, in his introduction to discusses a particular, Ukrainian form of evil, prose writer Valerian Pidmohyl'nyi, Lawrynenko which is characterized by jealousy, egocentrism, points out that the writer's style had first changed apathy and a Little-Russian mindedness, and from ethnographic naturalism and impressionism compares it to its Russian variety; he then looks at to expressionism in his early works and then the relationship between the two nations through eventually to realism in his later, longer prose this prism. Lawrynenko does not blame the works.3 Lawrynenko lauds the sober scepticism of Russian people for aggression towards Ukraine but, Pidmohyl'nyi's prose but criticizes his first novel, instead, the Russian imperial ambitions propagated Misto (The City), for providing what Lawrynenko and enforced by their leaders. He then proceeds believes may be a censored ending to the novel. to break down the fifteen years of the period he Lawrynenko expresses his belief that a city brings designates as the Executed Renaissance into four out the worst in a Ukrainian villager and he faults phases and then proclaims that a consequential, fifth Pidmohyl'nyi for presenting the novel's hero, at period in Ukrainian literature, from 1934 to 1959, its conclusion, as having ‘conquered' the city and produced no literary works of merit. He concludes having made it his own. But this very theme, I the anthology by implying that this Renaissance believe, is an essential element in Pidmohyl'nyi's was never really executed, and that it lives on. His long prose—his works reflect the conflict that ensued anthology, no doubt, was an effort to help realize as Ukrainianization (and Ukrainians) began to that assertion. establish itself in the urban centers of 1920s Ukraine. In a 1999 essay, George Grabowicz wrote that Lawrynenko offers a more favourable review of the term ‘Executed Renaissance' cannot be used to Pidmohy'lnyi's subsequent novel Nevelychka Drama refer to all of the writers included in the anthology (A Little Touch of Drama), praising the work for as they all eventually suffered different fates.5 harshly depicting the emotionless, new Soviet man According to Grabowicz, the term cannot function of the future being constructed by the State at that as a register of who was politically repressed at time. This theme is certainly present in Nevelychka that time. In the end, however, Grabowicz states Drama, but I believe that it is the clash between his understanding that the ‘death' implied in the idealism and reality and the exploration of the role title ‘Executed Renaissance,' refers to the execution of art in buffering that collision that are central to of a movement in literature, and not necessarily to that novel. And in Nevelychka Drama, the presence individuals. And this, I believe, provides a key to of Ukrainianization in the city, the possibility of it understanding the anthology's value and purpose being fashionable and desirable for a young city- today.