In Memory of Oles Honchar
For all the complexities and difficulties in human life that demand courage, I have always considered myself a person lucky with my biography. This is not so much because my family life is sufficiently harmonious and inspired (never considering everyday life as primary), as because I have been meeting me unique people who a part of them in my heart. Even tragic, disastrous occurrences have always been made up for by the Gift of Individuality, leaving me obligated to be constantly prepared to encounter both evil and good (so little).
It was that way after the Chornobyl disaster and evacuation from Prypyat, when I met, almost daily with people whose creativeness I had always admired; Borys Oliynyk who took care of my accommodation after Chornobyl, Pavlo Zahrebelny, Ivan Drach, Lina Kostenko, Yevhen Hutsalo, Yuri Mushketyk, Dmytro Pavlychko, and others.
I met Oles Honchar by sheer chance at the Peace Committee where I was brought by Natalia Preobrazhenska. He stood up, walked round the desk, stretching out both hands, taking mine, saying “I’m Oles Honchar.” At first, I heard just Oles and missed the last name, and it was some time before I realized who was standing in front of me. Because the first name seemed so unexpected, even mythical, compared to the elegant European gentleman facing me, with somewhat chiseled features and calm, a little tired eyes. Oles! He pronounced it with a drawn-out accentuated o-oh, ending with a short precise les.
Of course, we discussed Chornobyl. He had recently returned to Kyiv after a meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev but did not mention it at the time. Several years later, gravely ill, after reading my book Chernobyl DSP, he would write me and recall the meeting at the Communist Party Central Committee in Moscow. I was not so much surprised to receive his letter, written by a Citizen of the World (which he actually was according to his essence and the scope of his personality, raising the nation’s dignity to the universal human level) as by the fact that he had read my book, so oppressively tragic and hard to digest (truth is always bitter!), and at such an inappropriate time [considering his physical condition]. It is a fact shedding light on Oles Honchar’s inner world (all that knew him personally knew only what they could see). He had predicted the most important event that would occur in Ukraine and the rest of the world, an event that would remain unexplored despite thousands of publications, worst still, an event that would remain not understood. Perhaps the pain he felt about Chornobyl helped him hold his bodily sufferings in check, universal human emotions overpowering any personal tragedy. Or maybe it was a trait found only in extraordinary individuals: living and perceiving things until one’s heart beats its last, and even remembering about someone else’s vulnerability and hurrying to protect that person, using the short time left.
We were never friends, we met only a couple of times, in different places, yet those meetings were always on an equal footing. Despite his elevated status, Oles Honchar remained his old slightly bashful self, something one finds in individuals with true dignity. He would always speak Russian to me at first, although I understand Ukrainian perfectly well, but would always end speaking Ukrainian. And the letter was no exception. It always remain a mystery to me why he hurried to protect me several weeks before his death, yet this fact alone entitles me to write these few lines about this Person. And I feel fortunate to have this right.
