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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

French Balzac and German Boll

22 December, 1998 - 00:00

Meet in Literary Encyclopedia of Vinnychyna 

By Viktor MELNYK, especially for The Day
Five years ago the Vinnytsia Oblast Department of Culture decided to publish
an original cultural encyclopedia of Podillia in seven volumes; each volume
was to be dedicated to a certain genre. They had invited in experts, formed
editorial board for each volume, and even found some money.

However, this money was soon devaluated by inflation, the work was suspended,
and the compilers' enthusiasm faded. Only philologist Anatoly Podolynny,
who was responsible for the literary encyclopedia, did not give up. Alone,
he pestered sponsors and worked over the piles of material. And it turned
out that his dogged labors did not go in vain but gave birth to a book,
From Over the River of God: A Literary Dictionary of the Vinnytsia Region.
It is a real literature encyclopedia of Vinnytsia oblast, containing 651
entries giving the biographies of that same number of writers, in this
way or another associated with Podillia. (Podolynny wrote 405 entries himself.)
The names of Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad, who spent his childhood
in Pohrebyshche district, German prose writer Heinrich BЪll, who was in
Vinnytsia with occupation army, Danish folklorist Thor Lange, who died
in his own estate near Lypovets, France's Honore De Balzac, who spent his
honeymoon in Nemyriv, Russian classical poet Nikolai Nekrasov, who had
been born in Nemyriv, along with a whole kaleidoscope of Ukrainian, Russian,
and Jewish writers.

Actually, enumeration is a thankless task. Even someone well versed
in literary local studies will find it hard to tear himself away from a
book so full of unexpected windfalls. Unfortunately, the joy of such discovery
the new will not be available to many due to its paltry print run of 1000.

Meanwhile, Anatoly Podolynny has already planned out his next work:
the encyclopedia's volume on folklore and ethnography. As for the other
volumes, work remains at a standstill.

 

 

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