Once Upon a Time In Munich

The journal’s makeup design was done by Yakiv Hnizdovsky. Yury Sherekh (George Shevelov), Arka’s ideologist and de facto editor, was very proud of this. Every issue had a front cover picture of the Rafail Zaborovsky Gate, a famous relic of the Ukrainian baroque, which Mykola Bazhan described as voluptuous baroque in his 1929 triptych Budivli [Structures]. Since Arka appeared to be an organ of MUR (Ukrainian abbreviation for Mystetsky ukrayinsky rukh, the Art Movement of Ukraine), its trends reflected that organization’s ideology. Ad fontes! To the sources! Yakiv Hnizdovsky often used Trypillian ornaments and symbols in his makeup designs. Another significant fact was that Arka opened to its readers paths to nearby and far-off worlds by daring to open the gate of world culture.

Here it is seems worth recalling how MUR came to be as an association of literati formed in Bavaria in late 1945. Everything happened spontaneously, as it were. Leonid Lyman and Leonid Poltava learned that Plauen, a city in Saxony where the Ukrainian periodical Dozvillia [Leisure Time] was published, would be in the Soviet occupation zone. Both were determined to salvage the Ukrainian fonts, as there were none available in Bavaria. They planned and carried out the operation, but to keep the treasure thus obtained, they had to have something like a writers’ union that could take legal possession of it. Poltava undertook the task of locating men of letters willing to set up such an organization immediately. Before long he succeeded in putting together a team of enthusiasts, among them Yury Sheveliov (later George Shevelov in the USA), Ihor Kostetsky, Viktor Petrov, Ivan Bahriany, Yury Kosach, and Ivan Maistrenko... Ulas Samchuk was elected MUR Chairman and Yury Sheveliov became its ideologist.

In his memoirs, penned in old age, Shevelov wrote, “I lived with the idea of building a creative environment for the writers, picking talent from the bog of daily routine, building a Palace of the Spirit, a new and abridged version of Plato’s Republic inhabited by men of intellect and talent, laying the foundations for the eventual emergence of outstanding literary works.” In fact, Plato’s Republic was not mentioned coincidentally, as the MUR founders were inspired by an analogy with Mykola Khvyliovyi’s VAPLite (Free Academy of Proletarian Literature). That Palace of the Spirit was to rest on the foundation of the rozstriliane vidrodzhennia (Renaissance that was put to death), the literary flowering in Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s so ruthlessly destroyed in the thirties. The literary atmosphere of Munich, Nuremberg, and Ulm in the second half of the 1940s was filled with the liqueurs of literary Kharkiv and Kyiv from the 1920s. MUR’s ideology was nourished by Khvyliovyi’s slogans: romantic vitaism (life-ism), psychological Europe, and Asiatic Renaissance (to be led by Ukraine in its own search for a way up from colonialism — Ed.).

Arka’s small format narrowed the reader’s access to large prose works. The journal’s greatest attainment in that domain was the publication of Todos Osmachka’s story Psykhichna rozriadka [Psychological Relaxation] and excerpts from the novel by V. Domontovych (pseudonym of Viktor Petrov) Bez gruntu [Without Ground] and his “biographical novelette” about Van Gogh titled Samotniy mandrivnyk prostuye po samotniy dorozi [A Lone Traveler on a Deserted Road] — this publication was never finished as Arka ceased to exist; an excerpt from Yury Kosach’s novel Den’ hnivu [Day of Wrath], his stories Koly b sontse ranishe ziyshlo [If the Sun Set Earlier], and chapters from Ihor Kostetsky’s novel Troye hliadiat’ u dzerkalo [Three Looking into the Mirror]...

If and when the history of Ukrainian expressionism is written, it will have something to say about Todos Osmachka’s horror story with a twisted living space dominated by tragic absurdity, where “the power of the collective farm and its rusty, where concealed eyes are everywhere.” Psychological Relaxation reminds one of Khvyliovy’s Sanatoriyna zona [Resort Area]. Here, too, one finds a metaphor of total madness. Harasym Sokyra, a 25-year-old musician, dreams of “a great musical composition like Demon or Faust ” that would incorporate the boundless “modern Ukrainian grief” — but instead finds himself in Kyiv’s mental hospital locally known as Kyrylivka where he is subjected to treatment using the method of “psychological relaxation.” His cherished dream is shattered like a crystal wineglass carelessly swept off the table. This strange musician wearing a white shirt and white linen pants, a Skovoroda type transplanted to the epoch of the collective farm, is placed by Osmachka in sharp contrast with the Soviet “bard” Matsiura that “never made it beyond Oles’s strophic process and second-rate Russian poets.” The allusion to Volodymyr Sosiura is self-evident. The scene of Sokyra and Matsiura meeting face to face is permeated with Osmachka’s sarcasm. There is an abyss between the “proletarian poet,” to whom the cranky composer is the embodiment of the kulak spirit, and the musician overwhelmed by the sorrow of the Ukrainian countryside. The devastated Ukrainian rural world has room for the proletarian dictatorship but none for music; it is tragically asymmetrical, cold, and split... Todos Osmachka vents his despair, and his prose becomes increasingly journalistic. In the finale, he can only raise his eyes to the starlit sky to finish Harasym’s tragic story with a lyrical monologue sounding like a prayer addressed to the cosmos of “eternal truth,” the “divine life-giving force.” of the elm on the crossing of the Chorny and Kutsivsky roads he writes: “Every tree is a prototype of God and all living things,” but even in this desperate monologue Osmachka reproaches the Creator for allowing the ruination of this world, which has lost all harmony...

Alongside Todos Osmachka (who had to hide at the Kyrylivka mental asylum to survive the insane 1930s), one finds on Arka pages works by the sarcastic erudite Domontovych-Ber-Petrov. He was indeed multifaceted. Viktor Platonovych Petrov, “the sixth in the neoclassical league.” Arka’s first issue began with Ulas Samchuk’s foreword and Viktor Ber’s large article Suchasny obraz svitu. Kryza klasychnoyi fizyky [The Modern Image of the World: The Crisis of Classical Physics]. The feature Estetychna doktryna Shevchenka [Shevchenko’s Aesthetic Doctrine] was signed by Viktor Petrov. Prose writings were signed V. Domontovych. Interestingly, a fragment from the novel Without Ground easily merged into the context of debate then underway at the MUR. Todos Osmachka mentioned poet Kruchyna and ridiculed the Soviet bard Motsiura. V. Domontovych staged a carnival of illusions. Characters in the literary excerpts on Arka pages were easily identified as poet Mykola Filiansky (Arsen Petrovych Vytvytsky in the novel), historian Dmytro Yavornytsky (Danylo Ivanovych Krynytsky), Serhiy Yefremov (the repressed critic known for his attacks on the modernists), artist Nikolai Roerich (artist Stepan Lynnyk in the novel)... There was something Quixotic about Osmachka and Domontovych’s heroes. Harasym Sokyra and Arsen Petrovych bringing to a museum books and pieces of furniture salvaged in the madness of the civil war are figures standing out of the cruel times. But they lose their ground, turning into lost souls.

In general, Arka’s prosaists showed more interest in the past, as evidenced by Yu. Tys’s story Renaissance, Yury Klen’s Medallion, L. Kovalenko’s Fear, and Yury Kosach’s prose... L. Balei’s Last Days and Leonid Lyman Story about Kharkiv were more on the memoir side. There were also memoirs proper, without any belles-lettres ambitions, among them Dmytro Doroshenko’s stories about Borys Hrinchenko and Volodymyr Samiylenko, K. Hrynycheva’s Meeting with a Poet (about Ivan Franko), Yu. Korybut’s Meeting with Andre Gide, V. Chapelsky’s Family Chronicle, Ulas Samchuk’s Berlin, January 1945, V. Blavatsky’s My Debuts.

Poetry was represented in the Arka by Yevhen Malaniuk, Vasyl Barka, M. Orest, Volodymyr Svidzinsky (verse from the book Medobir, never published before), Mykola Zerov, Oleh Hordynsky, H. Cherin, A. Harasevych, P. Karpenko-Krynytsia, Yar Slavutych, Leonid Lyman, Leonid Poltava, V. Lesych, O. Veretenchenko, S. Ryndyk, M. Sytnyk, I. Rohovka, some poems by O. Zuyevsky, B. I. Antonych, O. Liaturynska, Todos Osmachka, B. Nyzhankivsky. Literary versatility seemed especially manifest in the journal’s poetic column. Much of what was published at the time has vanished with time, but quite a few publications remain that are worth being studied at length by those researching twentieth century Ukrainian poetry, including excellent translations by Stanislav Hordynsky (from Charles Baudelaire), Bohdan Kravtsiv (Rainer Maria Rilke), M. Orest (R. M. Rilke and S. George).

However, articles on the arts, literature, and history were the Arka’s pride. The journal was Yury Sherekh’s child, and that says a great deal. His main guideline of paving the way to nearby and distant worlds was being implemented especially effectively in the artistic realm. The journal willingly published essays on classics, while closely following pioneering trends in the fine arts, music, theater, architecture, cinematography. Dmytro Chyzhevsky, Yury Kosach, Ivan Vyhnanets wrote essays on baroque, existentialism, surrealism, and expressionism. And, of course, features and reports on events in some or other cultural spheres. But for the Arka, Yakiv Hnizdovsky’s essays Taking a Stroll on the Olympus, Apropos Peter Broigel, Sr.; El Greco; Ivan Mestrovic; Ukrainian Grotesque: About Don Sancho Panza and His Master the Knight of La Mancha, and The Art of the Subconscious would perhaps have never been written.. V. Lasovsky composed his Letters from Paris about Art specially for the journal, telling about the Autumn Salon of 1947. Critical reviews concerning Oleksa Novakivsky, Mykhailo Boichuk, Yury Narbut, Vyacheslav Sichynsky’s essay on Ukrainian wood- printing from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries were also basically meant for the journal.

Since the start of 1948, the journal’s collective management was replaced by personal leadership. While previously every issue was sent to bed after being signed by the editorial board — V. Domontovych, Yu. Kosach, B. Nyzhankivsky, Z. Tarnavsky, and Yu. Sherekh — now it was signed by Yury Sherekh (Yar Slavutych was Secretary of the Board). As Editor-in-Chief, Sherekh must have conceived the idea of organizing forthcoming issues each around a certain theme. Three such issues came off the presses and it was editorial creativity at its peak. Issue No. 2 of 1948 was dedicated to Yury Narbut (Ivan Vyhnanets’s feature Yury Narbut, Oleksandr Ohlobyn’s essay Narbut, Follower of Mazepa, and a dozen reproductions). No. 3-4 was a double issue of 1948 largely commemorated the 300th anniversary of Khmelnytsky oblast, and it proved a most spectacular success (e.g., historians Oleksandr Ohloblyn and Borys Krupnytsky’s articles Golden Calm and Bohdan Khmelnytsky in Light of Ukrainian Historiography, respectively; Dmytro Chyzhevsky’s essay, The Seventeenth Century in Ukrainian Spiritual History, a study in the Ukrainian baroque style; Vyacheslav Sichynsky’s Ukrainian Wood-printing in the Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries; a chapter from Yury Kosach’s Day of Wrath; articles about Taras Shevchenko by Yevhen Malaniuk and Viktor Petrov; Yaroslav Rudnytsky’s feature, Kulish, Editor of Shevchenko’s Kobzar; reports on Marc Chagal’s exhibit in Paris and Ukrainian art display in Regensburg...). No other Arka issue boasts such intellectually saturated, meticulously and skillfully planned completeness. Although the next issue, destined to be the last, proved well composed, dedicated to Catholic writers in France, focusing on Georges Bernanos and Paul Claudel (Yury Kosach dealt with other authors in his article, The Golden Cane).

The book review column more often than not hosted Yury Sherekh’s articles and reviews. Shevelov a critic, he wrote using three pen names, as did Viktor Petrov. He signed the editorials as Yury Sherekh. What he wrote for the journal’s conveyor belt he signed Hr. Shevchuk, and sideswiping articles appeared under the heading Camera Obscura. Few had any doubts about the author being the ironical Yury Volodymyrovych Sheveliov (Sherekh), although he tried to conceal his identity under various cryptic noms de plume ending with -ente, -en, -bn... He would have some of his program reports included in MUR’s printed collections, and the Arka carried several of his truly brilliant articles — e.g., In the Year of the Lord 1946: In Lieu of an Essay on Ukrainian Literature in 1946; Studies of Things Incomprehensible in Literature (re Vasyl Barka’s verse); Not for Children (V. Domontovych’s prose); Without Metal Words and Vain Sighs (Olena Telyha). All this is part of a precious Ukrainian literary heritage still to be explored by inquisitive and erudite minds. As is the Arka phenomenon. It remains to be thoroughly investigated by historians specializing in literature (in fact, a professional proposal to this effect was made by the staff of the Kyiv-Mohyla Library when they prepared a bibliographic index of the journal Arka).

Many years after the postwar DP camps had become history, Sherekh-Shevelov, while recalling his meetings with Hnizdovsky, would praise the Arka editors’ effort: “In terms of its cultural level the journal was ahead of the other Ukrainian periodicals, coming close to its best German counterparts.” This opinion seems no overstatement. Carrying literary works, following and analyzing the Ukrainian literary process in Europe, Arka helped organize ОmigrО literary life. The journal acted as a collector and interpreter of various data relating to cultural life in its diachronic and synchronic dimensions. Owing to Arka, MUR could develop a comprehensive scale of aesthetic values defining the vector of literary evolution. Thus was confirmed the thesis of accessing world culture. It was also true, however, that the journal had practically no contact with Soviet or Soviet-influenced literature. That fact that the Arka carried Volodymyr Svidzinsky’s verse (banned by Soviet censors) in the 1930s and Yury Yanovsky’s study Narechena [The FiancОe] is evidence of separate episodes in the journal’s short history. Yanovsky’s work could also testify that people in Munich knew about the author being hunted down by Kaganovich after Yanovsky’s novel Zhyva Voda [The Life-giving Water]. Yury Sherekh now and then published sarcastic reflections on the “cultural reality” in Soviet Ukraine in the Camera Obscura column. But those were reflection, nothing more, nothing less. Probably because it was the only way to go about it in 1947-48. The cold war was entering its drawn-out phase. After the liquidation of the DP camps, many of the Arka authors emigrated overseas. Yet eleven issues remained a cultural reality created by Ukrainian men of letters under exceptional conditions...