• Українська
  • Русский
  • English
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

My Friend, Ihor

13 November, 2012 - 00:00

On July 4 my friend, Ihor Rymariuk, turned forty. Ihor is not only one of the best poets of his generation (see his interview in The Day, February 17) but also a gifted editor. As an author of several articles in Suchasnist (Contemporaneity), the flagship journal of the Ukrainian intelligentsia where he is deputy editor-in-chief, I know whereof I speak. But that is not the point.

I met Ihor nearly a decade ago, when he was on his first trip to America, and we became friends immediately. In 1990, during my first trip to Ukraine, he took me to the opera theater, brilliantly restored and acoustically faultless. But my best memory of our friendship is when I walked into the open-air summer bar at the Writers' Union and saw Ihor with a group of literati.

"Sit down, Jim. Do you drink?" he woozily offered.

"In principle, no," I replied.

Knowing from experience that I was no more averse to a shot than he, Ihor nearly fell out of his chair with laughter and poured me vodka, then introduced me to a charming young lady who soon thereafter became my wife. I owe you one, Ihor. As a writer, Ihor Rymariuk is often compared to the young Ivan Drach, who was the first poet to write contemporary Ukrainian poetry in Ukrainian. Others say Ihor is a genius, but I cannot really judge. As an editor, however, I can. What he and his editor-in-chief Ivan Dziuba have done with Suchasnist, despite its tiny press run of a little over 1000, is more in terms of the intellectual development of Ukrainian intellectuals than all the foundations, programs, and humanitarian aid poured into this country along with their clueless good intentions. Let's hope that Ihor's next forty years will be even more creative and productive than the first.

 

Rubric: