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OUR LIFE Monthly, published by Ukrainian National Women’s League of America Vol. M FEBRUARY 1995 Editor: TAMARA STADNYCHENKO ENGLISH LANGUAGE SHEVCHENKIANA TRANSLATIONS AND RESEARCH by ROKSOLIANA ZORIVCHAK The great truth of Samuel Johnson’s words “The greatest fame of each nation is created by its authors” can be readily applied to captive nations who have been suffering for ages under foreign yoke and bondage, and where, as the Ukrainian writer Oles’ Honchar aptly wrote, “...art is possibly the last refuge of freedom”. (O. Hon char. The Cathedral, trans. Y. Tkach and L. Rudnytzky. Washington, Philadelphia, Toronto: St. Sophia Associa tion of Ukrainian Catholics. Translation series No 21, 1989. p. 23.) The history of Ukraine has been so tragic that the Ukrainian language and Ukrainian literature, the mighti est force for shaping each nation, never had the right conditions for development at home. Even harder was their lot outside their native land, even steeper were the paths they had to follow to obtain a proper place for themselves in the world context. And it so happened that the downtrodden Ukrainian people, who for centur ies were deprived of their national independence and sovereignty, presented the world with a brilliant poet who became the symbol and spokesman of all oppressed and humiliated people. Shevchenko is not only the cen tral figure in modern Ukrainian literature, but a true poet of genius, worthy of a place among the great artist of the world. He communicates universal truths through a model which he constructs out of the building blocks of culture-specific elements, including his own biography. “Kobzar” represents a fundamental democratization of literature, a longing for presenting the whole range of human suffering, for finding full solidarity with all those oppressed. Few of the world’s most prominent poets had to fight for their nations under the conditions Shevchenko found himself in. Neither Shakespeare nor Byron were obliged to prove the very existence of their language, nation, culture. Other writers had no need to do this either — neither Cervantes nor Calderon, nor Schiller nor Goethe who wrote in a Germany which was split up into more than 300 mini-states, nor Slowacki nor Mick- iewicz who wrote in a Poland which was torn to pieces. But Shevchenko was obliged to do so, to fight tirelessly for the very recognition of his nation, for its raison’etre. It was owing to his creative writings that the very name of Ukraine was finally acknowledged in place of “Little Russia”. English language Shevchenkiana was initiated 126 years ago, on March 1, 1868, when Ukrainian journalist and translator Agapius Honcharenko (Andriy Humnyts- kiy) published his own translation of some excerpts from Shevchenko’s “The Caucaus”. The translation, entitled “Curious Ideas of the Poet Taras Shevchenko”, appeared in the seni-monthly Russian-English news paper The Alaska herald. In 1876, the first English lan guage article on Shevchenko was published in the October issue of the New York monthly The Galaxy. The article, “Chevtchenko — the National Poet of Little Russia”, was written by American journalist J.A. Stev ens, and was an abridged English version of E. Durand’s essay published in 1876 in Revue des Deux Mondes. Since that time, more than 130 translators have tried to bring Shevchenko to English speaking readers. Among them were amateurs like A.J. Hunter, F.H.R. Livesay, and P. Cundy; experienced tranlators like P. Selver, E. Ewach, C.K.Giffey, J. Weir, A.M. Bilenko, and M. Skrypnyk; university professors like A.P. Coleman and C.A. Manning; prominent literary figures like E.L. Voynich and V. Rich. Most poetical works by the Ukrain ian poet, except for his epic poem "The Blind Woman”, have been translated into English, some having a number of English language versions. Collections of translations of the poet’s works have been published in book form in Winnipeg (1922), Jersey City (1945, 1961), London and Munich (1961), Moscow (1964, 1979) and Kyyiv (1977, 1988, 1989). In 1964, the poetical works of T. Shevchenko trans lated by W. Kirkconnell and C. H. Andrusyshen were
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