As long as we love
Concerts in commemoration of Nadia Svitlychna held in Kyiv
The well known and respected bards, Olha Bohomolets and Ihor Zhuk, performed two concerts at the Ukrainian House. These musical soirees, held on the eve of Remembrance Day to commemorate the victims of the Holodomor and political repressions, were dedicated to the memory of Nadia Svitlychna, the famous human rights activist. At a press conference Bohomolets recollected that her distinguished family was also the target of repressions in 1937.
In 1974 Nadia Svitlychna was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment in the camps for championing human rights. She served her term in Mordovia. After emigrating from the Soviet Union, she became an active member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group’s External Representation and a layout editor of its US-based publication Visnyk Represii v Ukraini (Herald of Repression in Ukraine). In 1983-1994 she worked in the Ukrainian Service of Radio Liberty in New York. She died on Aug. 8, 2006.
“Nadiika was a very close friend of mine,” says Bohomolets. “We first met at the Oberih amateur song festival in 1991. It was there that she presented me with a special award from Radio Liberty (Washington/Munich). A year later, Yevhen Sverstiuk awarded the Vasyl Stus Prize to both of us and the artist, Panas Zalyvakha. Later I stayed with her during my concert tour in the US. Afterwards she became my godmother. Our relations were warm and tender. This year Nadia Svitlychna died after a long illness. In the last few weeks I talked with her on the phone and sang to her across the ocean...The world seems empty without Nadiika. But she will live with us as long as we love and remember her.”
The concert program consisted of songs from the performers’ new album There Are Two of Us, which was in the making since they first met 15 years ago. “It’s like correspondence, letters that we lost long ago,” say the performers. “It’s only recently that Leo Tolstoy’s letters, for example, have become available for reading. For us, creativity was our correspondence. That is how the dialogues emerged, which were later transformed into songs.”
Most of the songs are well known and much loved compositions based on lyrics written by Lina Kostenko, Iryna Zhylenko, and Mykola Vinhranovsky: “An Autumn Day,” “In the Desert,” “What We Had,” “Dissolute Widow,” “Amore,” “The Lullaby,” and also the Biblical cycle by Ihor Zhuk, one song from which was first sung by Bohomolets.
The musical soiree on Nov. 24 was attended by Ukraine’s president and his family. The concerts were performed in the form of dialogues, not deliberately but naturally. These were dialogues between our distant and not so distant past and present; between history and contemporary times. They were also dialogues between the late Nadia Svitlychna and the singers, between the two bards, between them and the audience that responded with understanding silence or a storm of applause accompanied by encores.
There was a feeling that everything had been said and understood, and most importantly — pain was expressed, the pain of loss. “To my mind this type of intellectual art is much needed to heal the souls of contemporary people,” commented Viacheslav Briukhovetsky, the president of Kyiv— Mohyla Academy.
Artistic director Serhii Arkhypchuk added: “I was very affected by the audience. It consisted of a unique elite group of Kyivites — Ukrainians, Jews, and Russians. Their most emotional evaluations touched the most vulnerable and critical points of the Ukrainian soul, which are connected to an undistorted view of Ukrainian history, and the values and archetypes of the Ukrainian people that have been formed over the centuries. The bards’ profound intelligence, unspoiled by vain compliments, fawning, or unnatural affectation, also impressed me greatly. How often we are fed artificial substitutes instead of sincere talk! These singers revealed their “secret chamber” that is nurtured throughout life. They revealed it openly, sincerely, with outstanding talent and wit, with great soul.”
P.S. The money raised at the concerts will be spent on erecting a monument to Nadia Svitlychna at Baikove Cemetery in Kyiv.
