Ivan DRACH, “I haven’t forgotten how to write verse”
On October 17 Ivan Drach turned 65. He has gone down in the history of Ukrainian literature as a poet of the rebellious sixties, but it would be unfair to compress his talent into this framework only, for the author is still full of creative spirit. This writer’s heritage is not confined to poetry alone: it also includes prose, literary criticism, and screenplays, such as I Go to You, A Stone Cross, and The Lost Credentials. Still, Drach owes his fame and acclaim in and out of Ukraine precisely to poetry, wonderful in its expressive concentration of the past experience, inseparable unity of spiritual predecessors and contemporaries, and an inimitable vision of the world. The poet subtly feels the vibrations of today, revealing the complex inner world of man, his relations with his kith and kin, the surrounding world and himself.
Ivan Drach was born in Kyiv oblast, studied at Kyiv Taras Shevchenko University and the Higher Screenplay Courses in Moscow, is the honorary doctor of Lviv Ivan Franko State University. He was a schoolteacher, a journalist with Literaturna Ukrayina, a screenwriter at the Oleksandr Dovzhenko Film Studios. He was secretary and board member of the Ukrainian Writers’ Union, and first secretary of its Kyiv branch. In the tempestuous late eighties the poet again took an active civil stand: Drach was one of the founders and first chairman (1989-1992) of the Popular Movement of Ukraine (Rukh) the role of which in the restoration of Ukrainian statehood is still to be adequately assessed. The writers did not confine his public and political activities to this alone: Ivan Drach, chair of the Ukraine and the World Association, headed for a long time the Ukrainian World Coordinating Council, the Congress of the Ukrainian Intelligentsia, and was also chairman of the State Committee on Information Policies, Television, and Radio Broadcasting.
Greeting the birthday boy, we offer you a brief interview the writer granted to The Day on the eve of the date.
“Mr. Drach, what would you like to congratulate yourself on?”
“I want to congratulate myself on the actors’ soiree at Cinema House.”
“What pleases and displeases you?”
“What pleases me is that I can still write verse, and what displeases me is that I am quitting as a governmental official.”
“What is the poet’s role in contemporary society?”
“The visiting card for my recital soiree has the following lines, ‘Nobody needs verses/ Precisely because they are the main thing/ You put your soul into each comma and period/ God writes eternity with them.’ This says is all.”
“Are you afraid that poetry is going to degenerate in the immediate future, transforming into something else?”
“You don’t have to worry about that: poetry is sure to outlive us all. And thank God that this is so.”
