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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

A Big Heart

2 February, 1999 - 00:00

By Yuri POKALCHUK
My last visit to London was brief, yet I made a special point to visit
two old friends despite the tight schedule.

One of them is a poetess and artist, Halyna Mazurenko, marking her 98th
birthday this year. This gray-haired woman with bottomless clear eyes shining
with age-old wisdom and kindness, could well be the hero of a novel. At
16 she was a volunteer nurse with Petliura's troops and a year later received
the most prestigious wartime decoration from the Supreme Otaman. Later,
she emigrated to Prague. Then came the Nazi occupation, and she moved further
West before the Soviet troops entered Czechoslovakia. She was separated
from her daughter during the war and would find her only more than sixty
years later in Kyiv. Now she lives with her ailing son.

Once she was visited by a neighbor, a British woman grief-stricken so
much she was ready to commit a suicide. Halyna Mazurenko said, "Why don't
you sit down and paint a picture?" The woman had never done any drawing,
let alone painting in her life, yet she obliged. Eventually she would have
her personal amateur art exhibits. Also eventually Halyna set up a kind
of creative therapy studio. She had a young fellow from Mexico and women
from Switzerland and France. She did not teach them to paint but to live.
I was fortunate enough to attend one such session. I was experiencing a
very difficult period, and Halia gave me some paints and a paintbrush,
saying, "Son, I want you to try to relax and paint something, just do it
as best you can, you'll feel better, you'll see." I wondered who would
have thought of calling me son, but I did as told, and it did help.

Now it is difficult for her to walk, let alone paint. Her friends and
pupils, also well on in their years, help her. I found her with that same
English woman, Kay, her first patient-pupil. Halia introduced her, saying
"She is an wonderful person, and she has a big heart."

Later Kay and I agreed that Halia Mazurenko, whose heart was always
in the right place, open and good to people, remembering with love her
native land, whither she continues donate her works.

My other friend in London is younger, Mykhailo Dobriansky, author of
numerous articles, including ones on Ukrainian-Russian, Ukrainian-European,
and Ukrainian-Polish relationships, along with several books dealing with
Ukrainian history. He studied in Berlin and Vienna before World War II
and during it was second-in-command under Kubyjovych in Lviv's Ukrainian
Central Committee. Later, he spent seventeen years with Radio Liberty's
Ukrainian Bureau. A reputed scholar and principled politician, he has never
deviated from his stand for the benefit of that or other political party.

The late Pierre Teilhard de Chardin is one of his philosophical idols.
He has dedicated a lot of articles to the Frenchman, particularly for Ukrainian
newspapers and periodicals. Another is Vyacheslav Lypynsky with his concept
of agriculturalist Ukrainian classocracy. Even now Mykhailo Dobriansky
has an excellent memory, he is an avid reader, and on that particular occasion
he showed me an article in The Times about 300 Ukrainian mercenaries
fighting in a civil war somewhere in Sierra Leone, and that they specially
paint their faces so no one can tell them from the aborigines.

His commentary was: if these mercenaries were from America or France
no one would pay any special attention, for anyone was supposed to be free
to fight for anyone in return for hard cash; it was business, as good as
any, and it was one's way to exercise one's human rights and freedoms.
Now the article mentioned their Ukrainian origin in the first place. A
novelty, for here in the West, particularly in Britain, Ukrainians are
not often distinguished among other inhabitants of the former USSR. In
a sense, identifying these people was a positive sign. They identified
us, thus acknowledging our existence.

A veteran master of paradox, Dobriansky stands for translating erotic
literature into Ukrainian, something like the classic Fanny Hill.
If we fail to publish such books in Ukrainian our young people will read
them in Russian anyway, he says. We often belittle ourselves, claiming
some special chastity. Time to grow up, we are a full-fledged nation and
must have everything the rest of the civilized world has. And then we will
choose what we find to our liking.

London

 

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