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HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES - See also - Harvard University

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544 Reviewsing," "cruelly mocking," and "knifing to death" his work. Symonenko concludedthe September 3 entry on an ironic note, saying that, in the name of progress, everyoneat the time was experiencing the squeeze of censorship.By the end of 1964, underground channels had brought Symonenko's diary andcensored poetry to the West. Publication of the diary in the January 1965 issue ofSucasnist' elicited angry and self-righteous responses in the Ukraine, but no denialof its authenticity. In short, there has been no open discussion in the Ukraine ofSymonenko's accusations against his censors. The only hint that his oeuvre hadbeen tampered with appeared in a review of the posthumous Soviet collection Zemnetjazinnja (1964), where Zanna Bilycenko criticized the book's organization andchided the compilers for breaking apart the cycle "Ukrajina" and thus obfuscatingthe identity of the poem's addressee.'Ivan Koselivec', editor of the emigre edition of Symonenko's works, Berehcekan' (1965), recognized the role censorship played in the author's short life. Hegrouped together those poems that had not appeared in Soviet Ukrainian editions or,as samvydav texts attested, had been doctored by Soviet editor-censors. Berehcekan' <strong>also</strong> contained a representative sample of Symonenko's verse from the onlycollection that appeared during the poet's lifetime, Tysa i hrim (1962), as well asfrom Zemne tjazinnja.The third Soviet edition of Symonenko's poetry, Poeziji (1966), was an indirectreply to Bereh cekan'. In it the editors of the Komsomol publishing house Molod'offered a selection of his better works. The edition contained a warm and unpretentiousintroduction by the poet Borys Olijnyk, who gave a very balanced assessmentof Symonenko's talent. Despite Olijnyk's epigraph for the edition—Non multa, sedmultum—Poeziji included samples of Symonenko's politically "correct" albeitmuch weaker works. Still, Poeziji made a fresh and important contribution. It containeda hitherto unpublished cycle of twenty poems titled "Lysty z dorohy." Lyricaland introspective, it is in effect a final inventory of the philosophical conflictsand the civic and poetic credos of Symonenko. The cycle is an emotional farewellto the elusive muse of poetry and the author's patria; its intensely self-critical toneand sincerity (Symonenko's forte and, occasionally, his weakness) make it one ofhis best extended texts.Publishing this cycle was an acknowledgement that the poems "Ja," "Samotnist',"and "Je tysjaci dorih, mil'jon vuz'kyx stezynok" belong to the canon ofSymonenko's works. Previously the three poems were known either via undergroundchannels or through Bereh cekan', although the third had been published in aSoviet periodical Zmina (August 1964), where the poem's third, autobiographicallyrevealing strophe had been cut. Interestingly enough, the editors of Poeziji, thoughimpotent to restore the missing strophe, indicated by a dotted line that part of the originaltext was missing. They used the same technique to indicate that "Zadyvljajus'u tvoji zinyci. . .," which had appeared two years earlier in the collection Zemnetjazinnja, had been cut and remained censored in two places. What is more, in the1<strong>See</strong> her review "Na semy vitrax" in Zovteri (Lviv), 1965, no. 2, pp. 138-40.

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