UNIQUE INSTITUTION

Shevchenko Museum shows

exhibits donated by USSR

A UNIQUE institution on the
American continent, a people’s
museum, has been built by the
progressive Ukrainian Canadians
beside the monument to the
great Ukrainian poet, artist and
“democratic revolutionary, Taras
Shevchenko, at Palermo, half-
way between Toronto and Hamil-
ton.

Last year the Shevchenko Mu-
seum opened with an exhibition
devoted to Shevchenko and also
exhibits from the life and work
of Ukrainians in Canada and
‘samples of Ukrainian costumes,
handicrafts, and art.

Now 40 cases have come from
Kiev, in the Soviet Ukraine, con-
taining 500 paintings and other
exhibits from the life of Taras
Shevchenko. Here are exact
copies of Shevchenko’s own
paintings, of paintings by Rus-
sian, Ukrainian and other artists
about Shevchenko.

This coming Sunday, May 17,
when the doors of the complete-
ly remodelled museum are open-
ed to the public, the Soviet ex-
hibits will be on display.

As visitors enter the museum
they will be guided to the first
room in which they will see ex-
hibits depicting the early life
of the poet—how his master had
him whipped as a boy for daring
to draw, how he was befriended
by the democratic artists and
painters of St. Petersburg who
bought him out of serfdom (an
exact copy of the painting by
Bryullov, which was raffled off
to get the money to buy Taras
from his master is also on view),
how Shevchenko became a grad-
uate of the Academy of Arts and
many more.

In a second room are exhibits
depicting the young manhood of
Shevchenko, his meetings with
the great Russian democratic
cultural leaders, Chernyshevsky,
Belinsky and other. Visitors will
see the development of Shev-
chenko as the spokesmen for his
people, the fighter against serf-
dom and Tsarism, the protagon-
ist of Slav unity.

Then there are the paintings
and exhibits from Shevchenko’s
life in prison and 10 years of
exile beyond the Ural Mountains.
Visitors will see an exact re-
plica of -the notebooks in which
he wrote his flaming poems in
secret from his jailers. And in
a third room are exhibits show-
ing the return , of Shevchenko
from exile, his death and how
the people carried his coffin from
St. Petersburg, through Moscow
and Tula down to Kiev—the peo-
ple coming out from each town
to take the coffin and carry it
with their own hands. . . . And
how, braving gendarmes and pro-
hibitions, the people of Russia
and Ukraine paid homage to the
man who had given his life for
their liberation.

A fourth room contain pictures
of the tribute paid to Shevchenko
in the Soviet Union and his death
mask, as well as exhibits of the
life of Ukrainians in Canada.

This exhibition is one of the
greatest cultural events not only
for the Slavic people in Canada ’
but for all progressive Cana-
dians—a contribution to under-
standing the traditions of the
Ukrainian Canadians which have
been woven into the fabric of
Canada’s democratic cultural
heritage. :

GUIDE TO GOOD READING

Lindsay's Betrayed Spring »

held best postwar novel ~

_ HOW REFRESHING it is to
find a novel which portrays the
common people and their strug-
gles instead of concentrating on
the lusts and the soul-searchings
6f the rich.

Many of thé famous British
working class struggles of the
‘postwar period — the squatters’
“movement, the Covent Garden
‘and Savoy strikes—are featured
.in Jack Lindsay’s new novel Be-
trayed Spring (obtainable in Van-—
*‘couver at Peopfe’s Cooperative
Bookstore, 337 West Pender
Street, price $3.75).

The novel covers the period

from September 1946 to March
1947, and has for its theme the
struggle of groups of people in
London, Lancashire, Yorkshire
and Tyneside in the immediate
portwar period.
- A Lancashire miner, a student
at the London School of Econ-
omics and a Yorkshire mill-
owner’s son, have been together
in Burma and come back full of
hope to the brave new world
that they believe the Labor gov-
ernment is introducing.

The sister of one of their mates
who was killed is. married to a
‘rising official of the Amalgamat-
ed Engineering Union on Tyne-
side, and the hopes and fears
of the mass of the people are
_seen through their eyes.

’ The wage freeze of 1947 begins
their disillusionment. The trade
-union official and the millown-
er’s son, with Fabian leanings,
decide to look after themselves.
The others decide to carry for-
ward the struggle in new ways.

All the color and variety of the
workers’ struggle is here.

The working class characters
on the whole are well drawn.
The London dockers, as seen
through the eyes of a waitress
in a dockland cafe, makes mov-
ing reading.

The author seeks to get in-
side his characters, revealing
their weakness and their
strength. The district trade un-
ion official exposed to the temp-
tations of the employers, pulled
one way by the workers and an-
other by the executive, making
his various moves in the light
of the next union election, is

drawn to life.

The whole period covered is
little more than six months. To
build a long novel around the
lives of four groups of people in
this, short period, to maintain
the reader’s interest and to avoid
padding is no_ inconsiderable .
feat. ;

: The novel ends not in frustra-

tion and cynicism but in a cour-
ageous determination of most of
the workers to wage the good
fight.

_ This is the best novel of work-
ing class life produced in Britain
since the war. Not that it is
flawless, particularly Jack Lind-
say’s women Communists who
seem to be somewhat wooden as
compared with the non-Commun-
ist workers, their casual remarks
sounding more like quotations
from a party leaflet.

—J. R. CAMPBELL

‘

From Shevchenko exhibits

Among the Soviet paintings donated to the Shevchenko Museum at Palermo,
(top) a reproduction ‘of one of Taras Shevchenko’s best known works, “A Peasant Family,
ed in 1843 by the great Ukrainian people’s poet and artist, and (bottom) “Taras
Among the Kazakhs,” an oi! painting by N. P. Volkova and Z. V. Volkovinska.

WHAT'S ON THE SCREEN

Hollywood does Hans Anderse"

‘

“ paint
Shevch

over in chocolate box colors

THE RIOT of noise, whimsy,
spectacle and sickly color which
Hollywood has been letting loose
recently is such as almost to
overwhelm the critical faculties.

After seeing some of the more
recent Hollywood offerings I
have the greatest difficulty in re-
membering which loud noise,
which piece of energetic caper-
ing and which splash of violent-
ly clashing colors belong to
which film.

In Hans Christian _ Andersen
‘the accent is on whimsy and
chocolate-box colors. Samuel
Goldwyn, who spent $4 million
on this film and should know,
Says it is not the story of Ander-

sen’s life, but “a fairy tale about
this great spinner of fairy tales.”

What Goldwyn has done, in
fact, is to make Andersen the
hero of one of these wishy-washy
pantomimes that aim to be
thought a cut above the vulgar
kind.

The real-life Andersen was a
moody, introspective snob. Dick-
ens’ daughter, who played host
to him in England, found him “a
bony old bore.” He became a
great writer of children’s stories
after having failed as playwright
and serious novelist.

A’ much-subdued Danny Kaye
makes him a whimsical cobbler
in a storybook Denmark who

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — MAY 15, 1953 —

ane
fall in love with a alle EY juc®
This is an xu wn :
Roland Petit an et.
maire in a 15-minute ball

0
The film is mostly ar ses?)
colored mess. The pallets and
the charms of Jeanma yi “
the importance attache
uninspired routine.

Nevertheless,
ments of charm, 4
vided by Danny Kay®. 1 a
what can be done wi
suitable part. ey

a
There is, too, 4 plot 1096 i
ing of kindliness 9" tne

inet
people which makes py oth?
commendable above
offerings.—T.S. P AGE 8

re