Yevhen Malaniuk’s unknown notebooks

Tempora, the progressive Kyiv publishing house that specializes in memoiristic — archival and historical literature, has published a unique book entitled Yevhen Malaniuk: Notebooks (1936-1938). “The book contains the notes and diary entries from the work copybooks and notebooks of the prominent Ukrainian poet, historian and culturologist Yevhen Malaniuk,” the book’s editor Iryna Davydko told The Day. “They contain his thoughts on the historic destiny of Ukraine, the causes of its failures and misfortunes, his evaluations of the creative activities of many writers and the Ukrainian literary process as a whole. Malaniuk reflects on the interdependence of the various creative generations, recalls his childhood, and predicts the future...The photographs included in the book come from the poet’s archive, which has been preserved by the family of his son Bohdan in Prague, Malaniuk’s archives at the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences in the USA, and the archives collected by the book’s compiler, the late Leonid Kutsenko. In a nutshell, the materials are extremely interesting and known only to a small circle of people.”

According to Davydko, it took over a year to prepare the book for publication. Unfortunately, it had to be completed without Kutsenko, a literary critic and a professor at the Department of Ukrainian Literature of V. Vynnychenko Kirovohrad Pedagogical University, who died in tragic circumstances. This book was supposed to be the major work of his life.

Volodymyr Panchenko, a professor at National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, whose comments on the work of Lina Kostenko are published in The Day’s special issue (no. 50), refers to Malaniuk’s Notebooks , which contain the poet’s notes on Kostenko’s poetry.

Tempora Publishers have several new projects in the works, including Andrii Chutny’s monograph on the scholarly activities of the literary critic, historian, and professor of Kyiv University Mykola Dashkevych (1852-1908), and a study entitled A Ukrainian Patriot in the Habsburg Dynasty by Yuri Tereshchenko and Tetiana Ostashko.