English translation

of Ukrainian poet

2N Ivan Franko, Poems and
Stories, published to celebr-

ate the 100th anniversary of*

a great Ukrainian writer and
poet, John Weir, translater and
editor, has given Canadians a
representative selection fr'iom
the rich storehouse of Ivan
Franko’s literary works. This
book is also a fitting tribute to
the great Ivan Franko Festival
being staged by the Associa-
tion of United Ukrainian-Ca-
nadians at Winnipeg this July,

in which the centennial of a

beloved poet and writer is in-
separably bound up with the
65th anniversary of Ukrainian
iminigration to Canada,

In his translations of Ivan
Franko’s poems and_ stories,
to Canadians of all origins the
John Weir has made available
magnificent beauty and
strength of the culture these
Ukrainian immigrants have
bequeathed to their adopted
land. Now, whatever our na-
tive origin, Ivan Franko be-
longs to all of us, because in
his poems, and stories we see
there as in a mirror the hist-
ory of our own struggles and
hopes.

It is now much easier to un-
derstand how an immigrant
people, subjected to the hard
toil, petty tyrannies and nar-
row chauvinism which marked
the early days of this young
nation, could overcome all dif-
ficulties. A people rich in the
scultural. heritage of their na-
tive land, bestowed upon them
by this son of a peasant-black-
smith, himself only one in a
great company of literary gi-
ants, could not do other than
enrich the cultural heritage
of their adopted land, in which
all can share.

“Through the centuries
you’ll march,

My spirit’s stamp upon you.”
x * x

In reading this book one
cannot help but feel the uni-
versal affinity between men
such as Ivan Franko, Robbie
Burns, Charles Dickens, all
those literary giants whose
genius was of and from the
common people. Amid the tyr-
anny of Tsarist absolutism and
Cossack knouts, Ivan Franko
envisioned the Brotherhood of
Man as the national Bard of
Scotland had seen it nearly 200
years earlier. Ivan Franko

“... thought of the new. hu-

man brotherhood’s_ birth,
And wondered; how soon
. will it come to the earth?”

In his own beloved Ukraine
his sons and his people lived
to see it bloom, and now can
say with their patriot poet:

“Yes, that is indeed the U-
kraine, new and free!

I gazed, and the ache in my
heart ebbed away.”

Often in the charming and
beautiful folk stories of Ivan
Franko, due to oppression and
terror, the message of unity
and revolt had to be carried
in a folk-tale genre, but the
strong moral is always there.

The story of Onoprey, the
poor serf who had to appease
his everlasting hunger with
a piece of cattle-cake taken
from his master’s barn, is one
of those epics in human strug-
gle and suffering, enough to
set the “stones weeping”, for
even the landlord tyrant wept.

The story dedicated “To The
Light” is another. It is the
saga of a foul and brutal pris-
on system, of illiteracy, and
the struggle of a Jewish boy,
Yiosko, in his determination to
learn to read—a determination
rewarded by a police bullet in
the breast, the youth pressing
the first book he has managed
to read against his wound to
stop the fast ebbing lifeblood.

There are many poignant
stories in Ivan Franko, Poems
and Stories which grip the
reader as in a vise from start
to finish; stories woven from
the dark fabric of mass Op-
pression and suffering, but al-
ways containing that bright
beacon light which heralds a
new day to come. That beacon
light is the Ukrainian people’s
writer, patriot and rebel, Ivan
Franko.

* * *

John Weir has done a great
service to the common people,
not only of Ukrainian origin,
but for all Canadians inter-
ested in the cultural enrich-
ment of their country. Few
will read this book without
being deep!y moved, and none
will set it aside without some
dawning realization that the
Ukrainian steppe and the
broad lands of Canada are
united by Ivan Franko in a
common bond, as witness these
words:

Deathless spirit of revolt —

Love of freedom, light of
learning,

Forward pressing,
turning—

Can’t be chained as was of
old.

Now the avalanche is rolling

Where’s the force on Earth
so potent

That can stop this sweeping
torrent

And put out, as though a
flame,

The awakening of the day?

no re-

Ivan Franko, Poems and
Stories is obtainable in Van-
couver at the People’s Co-
operative Bookstore 337 West
Pender Street, price $3.50.

TOM McEWEN

Mine # |S

otographs and paintings hang in the ent
nipeg, opening of which on July 7 will be

cance to the new Ivan Franko Museum in Win-
as memorable an event to Ukr@inian Canadians
as unveiling of the Taras Shevchenko monument at Palermo, Ontario, five years ago. In the
centre is a statue of the great Ukrainian poet done by O. O. Supruna and U. A. Bielostockoho.

‘Let diverse schools of thought
contend’ Chinese stand on arts

N science, art and literature
| the Chinese Communist
party has declared its policy to
be freedom for independent
thinking and freedom of de-
bate.

This policy, summed up in
the phrase “let diverse schools
of thought contend.’ was put
recently to a meeting of Chi-
na’s leading scientists, writers
and artists in Peking by Lu
Ting-yi, head of the propagan-

da department of the Chinese

Communist party.
He said the Chinese Com-

munist party “advocates free-
dom of independent thinking
in the work of literature and
art and in the work of scienti-
of de-
bate, freedom of creative work

fic research, freedom

and fredom to criticise.”

It also believes in “freedom
to express one’s opinion, free-
dom to maintain one’s opinion
and to reserve one’s opinion.”

“The history of our country
has proved that if here were
inde-
pendent thinking and if there
were no free discussion, then
academic development would

no encouragement for

stagnate,” he said.

“The Communist party of

China stands for the blossom-

ing of all flowers in literature
and art and for all diverse
schools of thought in scientific

work vying with each other.”
x * *

Lu pointed out that a strict
distinction must be made be-
tween ideological struggle and

the struggle against counter-
revolutionaries.

He said there must, for ex-
ample, be freedom for both

those who propagated materi-

alism and those who propa-
Both were at

gated idealism.
liberty to debate.

Attempting to solve ideo-
logical problems by means of
could

administrative orders

not produce any effect. “Only
through open debates can mat-

erialist thinking gradually
overcome idealist thinking,”
he said.

Because the enemy within
the country had been greatly
weakened and the _ people’s
unity strengthened, the Chi-
nese Communist party was
now emphatically putting for-
ward the policy of “Let flow-
ers of all seasons blossom to-
gether and let diverse schools
of thought contend.”

This policy, he said, was aim-
ed at mobilising all active ele-
ments to give their best to en-
rich China’s literature and art
and to enable China’s scientific
work to catch,wp with advanc-
ed world levels.

* * *

In the past the Chinese
Communist party had waged
several struggles against sect-
arianism, and he summarised
the experience of these strug-
gles as:

“Natural sciences, including
medicine, have no class char-
acter. They have their own
laws of development.

“Their relation with social
systems is only that under bad
social systems these sciences
develop slowly and under bet-
ter social systems they can de-
velop quickly.

“Therefore it is erroneous to
put on class labels such as
‘feudal,’ ‘capitalist,’ socialist,’
‘proletarian’ or ‘bourgeois’ to
certain medical theories, or
theories of biology or other ~
natural sciences.”

It was wrong, he said, to say
that“Chinese traditional medi-
cine is feudal, Western medi-
cine is capitalist, Pavlov’s the-
ory is socialist, Michurin’s the-
ory is socialist, or the theory
of heredity of Mendel-Morgan
is capitalist.”

In philosophy and the social
sciences the danger of sectari- ©
anism was also great.

“Some party members do
not listen to critical opinions
and always regard themselves
as teachers.”

Warning against doctrinaire .
attitudes, he said they ran
couner to the realistic attitude
of Marxism-Leninism and had
“nearly lost our revolution
during the period of the demo-
cratic revolution in China.”

The only demand the Com-
munist party made in the field
of literature and art was that
it should serve the people.

Socialist realism was the best
method of creation “but it is
by no means the only one.”

445 Dunsmuir

CANADA DAY GREETINGS

from

THE ART BOOKBINDER

M. I. SOCHASKY

PAcific 4416

June 29, 1956 —

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 13