Ivan Dziuba’s territory

Den’s Summer School of Journalism is special and important namely because it offers young people an opportunity to visit extraordinary events. The students of Ukrainian higher educational establishments, who take part in the school this year, had luck to visit the very core of the Ukrainian intellectual milieu, the celebration of Ivan Dziuba’s anniversary. A mere half page has been allotted for him in school textbooks. Therefore, it is no surprise that school education is hardly helpful in perceiving the great personalities, so there is a colossal need for self-education, because this is the only way to fill in the existing blanks. Namely owing to Den we have been able to perceive Dziuba’s phenomenon, not only through his texts.

An official reason for celebration of Dziuba’s 80th anniversary was the launch of the book Horizons of Personality. A Book to Honor Ivan Dziuba, which took place last Thursday at the historical museum center of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, the Holy Spirit Church. On the eve of his anniversary Dziuba stated that he did not want any grand ceremonies to be held at the Academy of Sciences, Union of Writers, or Institute of Literature.

“Being a great personality envisages a great deal of modesty. Knowing Dziuba, we assumed that he would not want any grand celebrations, where people utter compulsory speeches written for them by someone else. We wanted to surprise him by taking a different approach; therefore, we decided to organize the celebration in an unusual place, the Holy Spirit Church. It is not large, yet it possesses some special charm and a chamber, humane, atmosphere,” Viacheslav BRIUKHOVETSKY, the honored president of the NaUKMA and one of the event initiators, told The Day. They called the event an anti-anniversary in order to avoid any ostentation. “Dziuba is a holy person in the sense that he is free of ambition or fame. This is a man of principle, who is, at the same time, immensely hard-working and eager to strengthen his intellect,” Volodymyr PANCHENKO, Professor at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, shared with The Day.

However, the initiators of the event did not manage to avoid some corrections from Dziuba himself. As soon as he learned about Mohylianka’s plans, he wrote a kind of “temnyk,” i.e., recommendations on what one can say during the event, and what is undesirable. By the way, the book Horizons of Personality… carries the “temnyk” in full. This book is a special one, too. This is a thorough academic research on history and culture studies. It has no direct connection to Dziuba. In Medieval Europe it was popular to publish works timed to the anniversaries of outstanding personalities. They were called festschrifts. In Ukraine, such books acquired a special form and were called yevkharystion, which means gratefulness. The book’s compiler Olha Hnatiuk told that the book published to mark Dziuba’s anniversary was created following specifically this Ukrainian tradition. So, the Horizons… is not a collection of his scientific works or publications about him, the book fits into the sphere of his interests, and what is most important, it brings the readers closer to Dziuba’s phenomenon. Being no identical to him, it is interesting in its own peculiar manner.

However, the celebration went far beyond the framework of a presentation, and had nothing in common with the Soviet-time anniversaries. The anti-anniversary did not feature any academic reports, there was no unnecessary pomposity, either. Rather, the atmosphere was sincere and warm. From the very beginning, the proper mood was formed by the screening of the fragments of Leonid Cherevaty’s documentary No Grain of Lie Behind. The family scenes, as well as the archive photos on the walls of the hall made the guests feel in full the spirit of a living, not bronzed Dziuba. Could the story of Dziuba’s acquaintance with his beloved wife told by Marta Dziuba have a different effect on the audience? (Naturally, his family, including his wife, daughter, and granddaughter, has also attended the event.) Or the story on how she received a telegram from Kyiv two weeks after their first meeting, which said: “I miss you. May I come?” “We wanted the youth to see Dziuba as an extraordinary person, not an idol,” Briukhovetsky said, “Because real Dziuba turns the minds of young people upside down.” The showing of the film came as a surprise for Dziuba as well. “I thought it had been lost long ago,” he said after the screening was over.

One more special treat of the soiree were the “non-academic” congratulation speeches delivered by professors Volodymyr Panchenko, Volodymyr Morenets, Yevhen Sverstiuk, and film director Stanislav Chernilevsky. Sharp-tongued pamphlets dedicated to the moral decay of the world and Ukrainian politicians, distressing state of affairs in our state and society, similar in spirit with Dziuba’s creative work, showed the power of apt satire. It was moving to see Dziuba’s reaction: his sincere smile was the best form of gratefulness to the much-searched film and the concert of harpsichord music. Dziuba admitted that he had wanted to hear a nice music concert as a birthday present: “I’m ready to wait long, till my 90th anniversary, to see Handel’s opera Julius Caesar.”

But in spite of all efforts made by the organizers to bring Dziuba closer to the young generation, there were few young people at the event. “Unfortunately, Kyiv-Mohyla Academy is on vacations,” Briukhovetsky said. Sure, vacations. But it is not an occasion, when students should be driven to an event under the lash or with the help of stimuli, when vacations are an excuse. “You should feel an inner need, and then Dziuba’s gentle, light humanitarianism will turn the minds of willing persons upside down,” Stanislav CHERNILEVSKY aptly admitted. So far young people read Dziuba’s texts only in narrow circles. Why? First, there are only few personalities of Dziuba’s scope in the country’s public life. “In our time, we immensely lack people of Dziuba’s level: newspapers and television are featuring corrupt and incompetent politicians, priests of the neighboring patriarchate with expensive watches and minds of medieval fanatics, variety of stars, who, with few exceptions, have fantastically poor and narrow spiritual horizons,” Maksym STRIKHA, Dziuba’s student, said, “And while Den allots whole pages to Ivan Dziuba, some other periodicals accuse him of political amorality. This is an indication of the level of our society, tolerating such kind of journalists and newspapers. The society should make use of the fact that people like Dziuba are living here, in order to hear, understand them, and improve ourselves after all.”

But hearing other people is not enough to improve oneself; you should make a lot of inner efforts. And here, along with the lack of proper education, lies another, extremely important, reason of why the young generation remains generally superficial, denationalized, and passive. It is much easier to be a marginal “patriot,” carrying Liubko Deresh’s book (which is by no means reproaching of the latter’s creative work), than plunge into systemic, thorough works by Ivan Dziuba. “In the time, when people listened to Dziuba’s brave and fearless word, sought its meaning and underlying message, it was heard,” Yevhen SVERSTIUK, Dziuba’s partisan in the question of Ukraine-building, said. “Currently, under conditions of freedom a social paradox arose, his words have been devaluated. In the time of post-modernism the taste for the word has been lost, and the number of thoughtful readers is gradually decreasing,” Sverstiuk diagnosed the problem.

It is a task for the young generation to become part of the area of human decency, to be brave and have no fear of the rotten political systems. “We were taught this by Sergey Parajanov, Lina Kostenko, and Ivan Dziuba. They have never mentored us, but their behavior seemed to speak: don’t be afraid, this is the only guaranty that life can be changed. If you cower and bow before every bullet, you will always be hiding somewhere in a trench,” film director and cinema expert Serhii TRYMBACH says. And only the inner regeneration can help us to accomplish this task. And when we see young people reading Dziuba’s books in a subway, this will indicate that the social tissue of the Ukrainian society has been regenerated.