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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

Simple Tribute to an Outstanding Figure

22 December, 1998 - 00:00

For a long time militant nationalists regarded Yuri Shevelov as a "rootless
cosmopolitan" and "rotten aesthete,"  while the Communists branded
him as a "nationalistic turncoat" and "fascist lackey."

Strangely, the man is not held in much esteem in independent Ukraine,
either (suffice it to recall how his name was kept off the Shevchenko Prize
lists). Narrow-minded ideologues, regardless of political affiliation,
cannot forgive him his aristocratic courteous bearing, intellect, and ability
to speak in terms of scientifically proven facts rather than ideological
slogans. Last but not least, there is his undeniable philological authority
and fame reaching over and above the limits of the epoch.

Ninety-year-old Yuri Shevelov publishes articles and is writing his
memoirs. Two collections of articles, The Third Guard (1993) and
Beyond and With Books (1998), finally appeared in print in Ukraine.
Now is the turn of a three-volume collection, long since promise by Kharkiv's
Folio Publishers, and a reprint of the brilliant monograph The Ukrainian
Language in the First Half of the Twentieth Century (1900-1941): Its
Condition and Status.

Incidentally, the jubilee soiree dedicated to one of the modern intellectual
giants, Yuri Sheveliov-Sherekh (the latter being his long-standing literary
nom de plume), took place last Thursday, but not at the Writers'
Union or Academy of Sciences, and of course not at the Ukraine Palace,
but in a small exhibition hall of Ukraine's Literary Museum. Such is the
local tradition: the greater the talent the smaller the celebration's scale.

 

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