January 15 was the 130th anniversary of Ahatanhel Krymsky’s birth
World renowned encyclopedist, scholar, Orientalist, Slavicist, historian, philologist, talented poet, prose writer (his first publications in the Lviv journal Zoria received favorable comments from Ivan Franko who called the novice “a highly original phenomenon in our literature”), friend of Lesia Ukrayinka (who wrote him the sincere words, “The whole ocean of world poetry is open to you”), an outstanding organizer of scientific research, one of the founders of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, its first secretary (1918-1928), and simultaneously chairman of the Academy’s History and Philology Section (until 1929): all these are the many facets of the outstanding talent of Academician Ahatanhel Yukhymovych Krymsky (1871— 1941). On January 15 we celebrated the 130th anniversary of the birth of this brilliant scholar and unique figure in Ukrainian culture.
Krymsky’s uniqueness has been confirmed unreservedly by those who had the pleasure to know him (for example, Omeljan Prytsak, founder of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute and foreign member of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences, was his graduate student). Let us start with the most obvious (leaving aside the researcher’s purely scholastic pursuits): Krymsky knew 16 living and dead languages of both West and East. Among them were French, English, German, and Polish, which he learned in childhood under the influence of his father, a teacher of history and geography, a Tatar by birth. When Krymsky graduated in 1889 the prominent Halahan College in Kyiv, he had mastered Ancient Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Italian, then he learned Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu. He also understood several languages of the Far East.
One wonders how this could be possible, when present-day Orientalists know at best two or three languages of the countries they study; and for many decades to come the example of Ahatanhel Krymsky will remain a measure of the human mind’s immortal quest for knowledge and, at the same time, an open reproach.
The point is not only in knowledge of languages. Academician Krymsky was an eminent expert in the history, philosophy, and religions of the Orient (Turkish scholars claim that Taras Shevchenko’s Kobzar he translated into the language of Nazim Hikmet acquired some vivid oriental features!). Lesia Ukrayinka sought Krymsky’s advice when she was creating classical works on the history of very diverse countries from Yakutia to Spain. She held his consultations in very high esteem.
Krymsky is also called, without the least exaggeration, an outstanding Ukrainianist. Consider but one example: it is under his guidance that The Principal Rules of Ukrainian Orthography, Ukraine’s first official spelling standard, was published in 1921.
In broader terms, we can state that the scholar’s historical merit was that he strove to lay kind of a historical and philosophical bridge between the nomadic East and Ukraine (for he remembered the tremendous influence the Great Steppe peoples had on the life of the old Eastern Slavs). And he did it on the worldwide level: there is work to do for many generations of experts to come. What the Krymsky Institute of Eastern Studies (founded by Omeljan Prytsak —Ed.) deals with, as was noted by participants in The Day’s round table discussion (see p. 5 of the previous issue), is simply processing the oriental researcher’s vast heritage.
People like Ahatanhel Krymsky should be the object of not only the thought-provoking studies but also novels, for there are very few figures of his caliber in our scholarship and culture. The scholar’s life ended tragically: after the war began, in July 1941, the 70-year-old academician was arrested by the NKVD and later deported to Kazakhstan, where he died in the Kustanai prison infirmary.
Ahatanhel Krymsky’s scholarly and literary heritage is a vivid manifestation of the contribution the Ukrainian intelligentsia has made to twentieth century culture. There is also an instructive element in the image of this booster of Ukrainian culture. Those of our contemporaries who call themselves the elite have a chance to reflect on whether they really express the people’s spirit. Ahatanhel Krymsky’s case at least shows that Ukrainian history is not devoid of the inspiring examples of thinking.
