Prominent Ukrainian writer Valery Shevchuk marked his 60th birthday

I received this letter from Valery Shevchuk, a writer, and I did not expect anything out of the ordinary to happen afterward, except perhaps the highly unlikely possibility of pre-term demobilization. At that period his works started being published again, after the long winter of the 1970s, among them not only his compilations and translations like «Apollo's Lute» and «Mars Field,» but also his own stories. Shortly before being drafted, I read «In the Humble Field» and liked it very much. Later, at a military hospital, I would enjoy reading the «House Atop the Mountain» between drips and smokes in the lavatory. Still later, I read «Moonlit Pain» and discovered that he was turning into a favorite Ukrainian author.

An important role was played by that letter. It related to one of my first prose works (in his letter Shevchuk called it «writing», because it was not a novel, story, short story, or even a prose poem, which I consider the most irresponsible literary genre). Without my knowing it, he read the stuff thanks to the ever watchful intermediary Mykola Riabchuk, but for me, a skin-shaved recruit, the news was a shock, especially when I read that «there is something in your writing which is genuinely sincere, something you took from your heart and committed to paper... this is evidence that you are ready to proceed with serious and complex creative work... you will not achieve quick and spectacular success, but you are quite capable of creative accomplishment.» And then, as a key instruction, «One must speak about the world via living human images.» Now I regard this concept as too classical, meaning that the idea is too general, embracing everything and telling nothing in particular. But when I read it first, amidst all the hustle and bustle of army life, endless drilling, yelling master sergeants, and what seemed round-the-clock washing of the latrine, it was something entirely new, a pathway opening before me which I would embark upon and never step down from.

That letter was precious to me the more so that I hated Soviet Ukrainian literature and Shevchuk did not belong there. His storytelling talent had nothing to do with that carefully planned and censored «engineering of human souls» (in the case of Ukraine I would rather use «agronomy»). The man was remarkably literary and knowledgeable (a paradox of the national system of values: being literary and erudite is rather often used with regard to a writer as an accusation rather than a compliment). He was charmingly natural (also used derogatorily) and his language sounded genuine, every emphasis made right, measured, and idiomatic. I read few if any Ukrainian authors, but I read every Shevchuk story I could get. I enjoyed him as much as I did Pokalchuk's translations of Julio Cortazar (both portray events belonging to approximately the same period). Shevchuk's prose was good; it was good literature, captivating stories with vivid characters. Each plot a real page- turner, with mysticism, hair- raising bends, good humor, brilliant biting irony, and a lot of love for the surrounding world with captivating landscapes, trees, living beings, especially people, witches, and demons in human form. The reader could not but accept that world as one's own — or at least as something very close to it. It was right there, within easy reach: same little towns, fenced orchards, footpaths crossing meadows overgrown with grass, narrow dusty streets, smells, rains, things that were at the baroque period, have not changed since, and will remain the same forever.

I use the past tense only because today far from everybody can understand what being free to create meant at that time, writing without officially approved falsehood, not yielding to the temptation of recognition and awards in return for lies, telling stories about life the way it is, cultivating humanness.

His presence in current Ukrainian literature is nonetheless meaningful. It can hardly be overestimated in a situation where no one recognizes any authority, where almost all those that could have such authority, young and old alike, have either gone corrupt or off their rocker. What is left is, in the words of Vasyl Stus, a pitiful handful of those remaining human and never stopping to marvel at things written by others. Not a word about the age, all those jubilees and achievements; let others deal with the subject, for there is nothing else they can do. We have too many old writers, especially among the young ones. As for Shevchuk, I can only picture him as a young man. Viktor Neboraka wrote jokingly, «Mr. Valery Shevchuk, surrounded by women, smokes his pipe filled with ashes of the empire and utters prophecies.» God bless the man!

I look forward to a multi- volume collection of his prose, works clearly and masterfully defining the author's reality and its boundary lines. I hope he never destroys these boundaries.