Publications in Other Languages

482 LIVRES EN FRAN<;AIS preface "Ia langue fran~aise dans son ensemble, telle qu'on la parle et telle qu'on la comprend au Canada fran~ais." n a adopte comme fond Ie resume fait par Amedee Beaujean du dictionnaire de Littre en y ajoutant les mots nes depuis et surtout les canadianismes qu'il a recueiJlis personnellement ou qu'il a puises chez les lexicographes canadiens -fran~ais. Le dictionnaire ne fait que constater I'usage sans I'apprecier . Sa publication pose Ie probleme d'une langue fran~aise qui, utilisee au Canada, s'eloignerait sans discernement du fran~ais international. Le Catalogue de 10 chanson tolklorique franr;aise (Presses Universitaires Laval, pp. xxxii, 397, $10.00) a ete prepan! dans les Publications des Archives de Folklore de l'Universite Laval par Conrad Laforte. Tire a 125 exemplaires seulement et dactylographie sur stencils, c'est un ouvrage unique au monde. Luc Lacourciere, directeur des Archives de Folldore, en dit I'importance dans la preface. "Le present catalogue," ecrit-il, "meme inacheve, apparait done deja comme un instrument indispensable pour I'identification et I'etude comparee de la chanson folklorique fran~aise. D'ailleurs, des avant sa publication, i1 s'est impose a I'attention des chercheurs non seulement du Canada, mais de la Louisiane et meme d'Europe qui en ont pris connaissance. n demeurera comme une introduction monumentale au futur corpus de 1a chanson populaire." La bibliographie de Gerard Tougas, Liste de reterence d'imprimes relatifs a la liuerature canadienne-franfaise (University of British Columbia Library, pp. 93, $2.50) sera fort utile. Signalons qu'elle offre I'originalite de referer aux bio-bibliographies de I'Eeoie des Bibliothecaires de I'Universite de Montreal qui, pour la plupart, n'ont pas etc irnprim6es et ont ete microfilmees par la Bibliotheque de I'Universite de la Colombie Britannique. PUBLICATIONS IN OTHER LANGUAGES Watson Kirkconnell The chief volume of poetry in this year's roster is Canada Thistle, by the veteran Icelandic-Canadian poet Guttormur J. Guttormsson. Born in the interlake colony in Manitoba in 1878, Mr. Guttormsson was publicly honoured in Winnipeg last autumn on the occasion of his eightieth birthday. It is fitting that yet another volume of significant LETTERS IN CANADA: 1958 483 poetry from his hand should indicate that the old volcano is still in eruption. Non-Icelandic readers need, perhaps, to be reminded that alone among the Germanic nations the Icelanders have preserved the strict alliterative prosody of their remote ancestors. Every verse-form of Western Europe has been borrowed by them, but upon all of these they have superimposed a rigid pattern of consonance. The opening lines of Guttormur's poetic preface, translated into his prosodic form, will demonstrate the point: D'ye ken the Canada thistle That covers the land with its harm And chokes out the choicest harvest To challenge the pioneer's farm? Worst of all weeds is that thistle To the wit of a farmer at bay, In spite of the Russian species That spatters his fields today.... Or a stanza from his "Husky" illustrates the same point: Husky and hiemal wolf Are haters in any weather; Lawless and lean, when they meet, They leap like a flame together. Some of his life-long interests appear again in this volume. Thus the poem "Bat Denials" (pp. 69-77) involves a sociological attack on the administration of criminal law in North America. The same sort of satirical comment is found in the thirty strophes of "Hence and Beyond." The humour is broader in "On a Borrowed Horse" and "Undertakers' Business." His power over intricate patterns of verse is particularly noteworthy in the twelve-line stanzas of "Atomic Skill" (pp 14-16) and in the clanging consonantal masses of "The Craggy Mountain" (pp. 20-2). In "The Daughter of Aiah," he gives an original twist to the story of Rizpah, best known in one of Tennyson's grimmest and least characteristic poems. There are several personal and occasional poems but nonIcelanders would find more interest in the brief one-stanza epigrams of the "Stutt og Stakt" section. One whimsical example might, without attempting the alliteration, be rendered thus: 484 PUBLICATIONS IN OTHER LANGUAGES I'm fond of song and wine and wife; And if God grants another life, I hope to love a dame whose plan Of worship is not Lutheran. Another active veteran is the Ukrainian poet A. A. Granovsky, who was noted in this survey last year. Still another collection of his lyric poetry, Songs to the Sun, appeared in 1958. It is a harvest of 133 lyrics, averaging about one page apiece. It is fluent verse, which, thanks to the abundant inflections of the language, is richly adorned with feminine rhymes. It lacks, however, the sense of laboriously built and intricate craftsmanship that one finds in Guttormsson. Nature is constantly present . For example, in the space of ten pages (pp. 16--25), we find "On Lake Itasca," "The Power of the Sun," "In the Embrace of Summer," "At Dawn," "Summer Lassitude," "The Life of the Butterfly," "Rain," and "After Rain." Generally speaking, one might say that Granovsky is descriptive and reflective while the more intellectual Guttormsson is metaphorical and symbolic. Both poets are experienced craftsmen; but while Granovsky paints in oils, Guttormsson, with profound care, chisels his work out of granite. Poetry at another level is provided by another octogenarian, J. Dziobko, of Virden, Manitoba, in My Songs, the English translation of an anthology of 86 Ukrainian folksongs (Chyie to polechko ne zorane?) that he published in 1956. Mr. Dziobko was born in 1877 at Berest, in the Lemko district of the "Western Ukraine" and has had a long and distinguished career as a folklorist. About half of the present collection comes from the Lemko area, one poem is from the United States, and one is Canadian, while the rest are miscellaneous. The literal, line-byline English renderings are by Professor Honore Ewach, of St. Andrew's College, Winnipeg, who is himself a Ukrainian poet. He is doubtless right to let these artless songs speak for themselves without any warping of the sense through the exigencies of metre and rhyme. The subject-matter comes out of the simplicities of peasant life. We see the dutiful wife taking off her drunken husband's shoes and putting him to bed. We see the poverty-stricken young peasant and his bride starting life from economic zero and making shingles for the lumber dealer. We see the gay young man called to the army and leaving tears behind among the girls. The one folksong that is Canadian in provenance runs as follows: LETTERS IN CANADA: 1958 Tell no one, please, dear lady, Of my casual visit to your home. You know, it's easy to get lost in Canada, To get lost and find a hospitable friend. That's how I lost my way and found your house Where you have treated me so very well. Ah, what a treat it is to be here, in your home, Resting and chatting with you. After this rest, I'll keep going on; But some day I may again drop in here for a chat. If you will kindly take me in again, rn repay you, dear lady, with gratitude. 485 Two texts that have been prepared by Dr. J. B. Rudnyc'kyj and published by the University of Manitoba Press present comparable material on a much more extensive scale. Readings in Ukrainian Folklore is primarily a text for university classes in Ukrainian. The collection consists of anecdotes, short stories, historical tales, Cossack lays, funeral laments, wedding songs, carols, riddles, and proverbs. Some of these were transcribed from records of the Phonetic Institute at the University of Berlin and represent the performances of authentic speakers and singers from the Ukraine. They are here presented in literary spelling and provided with accents so as to facilitate correct pronunciation. Much more massive in character is Readings in Canadian Slavic Folklore, I: Texts in Ukrainian. This represents part of a very large collection of orally preserved traditions, both prose and verse, gathered on taperecorder by Dr. Rudnyc'kyj in 1953 in the homes of several Slavic settlements in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario. The field work was done on a grant-in-aid from the Humanities Research Council of Canada and laboratory transcriptions of the texts by the help of a subsidy from the Research Fund of the University of Manitoba. There are 244 Ukrainian items in the present book; and further volumes of Polish, Russian, Czech, and Croatian material are in preparation. Probably the most interesting sections in the present anthology are Part m, "Canadian Jests," and Part VI, "Songs about Canada." Professor Stepan Kylymnyk has published yet another volume of his Calendar Year in Ukrainian Folklore. This is the Summer Cycle, recording the folldore and folk poetry associated with the festivals and saints' days of the summer season. There is a scholarly introduction by 486 PUBLICATIONS IN OTHER LANGUAGES Professor George Mulyk-Lutsyk of St. Andrew's College, Winnipeg, dated "on the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Georg Brandes." The Ukrainian peasants are traced through the rich ritualism of their high days and holy days: "Green Saturday" (the Eve of Trinity Sunday), "Green Festival" (Pentecost), "Nymphs' Week" (Pentecost Week), "Nymphs' Easter" (the Thursday of Pentecost Week), and, the greatest and most primitive festival of them all, "Kupalo" (St. John the Baptist's Day, June 24). The metropolitan mass-man loses a wealth of intimate experience when he turns his back on all this and melts into the "lonely crowd." The botanist and agronomist Fedir Onufrijchuk approaches folklore from an unusual angle in his Spirit and Flowers in Ancient Beliefs. To the lore of several Ukrainian and German authorities he adds, in this brief volume, his own sensitivity to the interrelations between plant and human life. He has also published three small volumes on various phases of botany. Still another relevant work is Folklore in Mediaeval Prayerbooks by Dr. Josef Swverfiy of the University of Ottawa. This essay by a refugee Hungarian scholar was written in German and published in Copenhagen. It is typical of its closely woven erudition that 27 pages of text are followed by almost two hundred bibliographical references to Magyar, German, Danish, Finnish, Latin, French, English, and Erse authorities. His tentative conclusion, pending much more extensive research, is that "if one seeks to gather the basic attitude of mediaeval men from these texts, one sees in them a superficiality of faith, along with inner insecurity and fear. Fear of diseases, enemies and demonic influences marks not only the contents of these Danish prayerbooks but also the general attitude of the later Middle Ages. ..." The House of Faith had a cellar full of horror. The only drama that has emerged from 1958 is a set of four little Christmas Plays for Children, written in Ukrainian by Lidia Horbachewa, T. Kurpita, Yura Shcrumeliak, and K. Malitska. There are little twists of originality. In "Tidings of Joy" by Yura Shcrumeliak, four shepherds begin with the glad news of a Son born in Bethlehem to "the Mother of God." An angel presently enters to bring them tidings of love but is followed by Herod with a sword. The wicked king threatens them but their prayers to God disarm him. The shepherd Petrus cries out: "An end to Herod, to evil and to perfidyl" They all close with a hearty "Slava Bohul" Scholarly analysis of drama, rather than drama itself, marks The LETTERS IN CANADA: 1958 487 Theatre of Kormart and Schoch, a doctoral thesis published by Abram Friesen, of GrUnthal, Manitoba, in partial fulfilment of Ph.D. requirements at the Johannes-Gutenberg-Universitiit at Mainz. The objects of his learned research are scarcely remembered today. Christopher Kormart produced German stage versions of two of Pierre Comeille's tragedies, Polyeuct (1669) and Die Verwechselte Prinzen (1675), as well as a stage translation, from the Dutch, of Joost van den Vonders Maria Stuart (1673). Johann Georg Schoch wrote an only moderately inspired Comoedia vom Studentenleben (1657). These plays all added considerable interest in their day to the stage in Leipzig, as the German states began their slow climb out of the devastation and depopulation of the Thirty Years' War. Dr. Friesen is particularly interested in the decor of the time, the actors, the properties, and the Jine-by-Jine stage directions . Perhaps it is the indifferent quality of the dramas as literature that leads him to give most of his attention to their dramatic production. Schoch is, of course, the more original writer of the two, although even in his work one sees stock characters of Plautus and Terence transposed into such seventeenth-century German equivalents as the fathers Petralto and Gerson, the sons Floretto and Amandus, and the cheerful rascal Pickelhering. There are crude scenes of student drinking, cudgelling, and fighting, but also such purely academic settings as Deposition, Immatriculation , Vorlesung, Concilium, and Promotion. Perhaps the saltiest dialogue is where the girls, Kiithe and Brose, discuss the relative merits of shepherds and students as husbands. The year's ouly books of fiction appear to be Ukrainian translations from German and English, desigued for juvenile audiences. Some of the rollicking tales of Wilhelm Hauff (1802-27) and Little Lord Fauntleroy, by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1849-1924), were thus published in Winnipeg. On the political front, the League for the Liberation of the Ukraine has published two small books by Petro Mirchnk-a life of Eugen Konovalets, leader of the Ukrainian Liberation Movement, issued on the twentieth anniversary of his assassination, and The First of November, a story of the first Ukrainian "National Council," set up at Lviv on that date in 1918. The League has also published O. Merchansky's Ukrainian translation of the Marquis de Costine's letters, captioned The Truth about Russia and giving the French philosopher's famous analysis of Russian character a century ago. Akin to Mirchuk's work on Konovalets is Dr. M. I. Mandryka's pamphlet on Simon Petlura. In the same 488 PUBLICATIONS IN OTHER LANGUAGES tradition is Eugen Yavorivsky's Leader of the Army of 100,000, the story of Lieutenant-General Myron Tarnavsky, Commander in Chief of the Ukrainian Army of the Western Ukraine in 1918-19. General Tarnavsky died at Lviv in 1938 and this memorial volume is brought out on the twentieth anniversary of his death. Omitted from this survey for 1956 was a massive volume of memoirs by Alexander S. Bryk, of Winnipeg. Born in 1898 at Kolodiyivku, a little village in the Western Ukraine, near Tarnopol and Skalata, he passed through the experiences of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution. Leaving the U.S.S.R. in 1926, he sailed from Riga to Halifax and settled in Manitoba. He has woven a thousand details of Ukrainian history in with his own life story and his pages are filled with photographs of most of the men of note in the Ukrainian-Canadian community . It is thus in part a history of his ethnic group in Canada. Side by side with it should be read Dr. M. I. Mandryka's Historical Sketch of the 'Prosvita' Reading Association for the Years 1905-1955. This is a detailed and official jubilee history of a most useful organization. Mention should also be made of Dr. Mandryka's delicate little pamphlet of tribute to his late wife. A Polish Research Institute which was set up in Toronto in 1956 has now issued a bibliographical report, Polonica Canadiana, 1848-1957, prepared by the Director, Dr. Victor Turek. The 798 items on his roster include both Polish translations of Canadian books and Canadian translations of Polish books. It is apparent that young Poles know of Canada almost entirely through 14 translations from "Grey Owl," 19 from Mazo de la Roche, 33 from L. M. Montgomery, and 43 from Ernest Thompson Seton. No other Canadians appear to be read in Poland. Of the listed works that have been published by Poles in Canada, a large proportion are organizational pamphlets and yearbooks issued by clubs, societies, veterans' groups, and Roman Catholic parishes. There are no PolishCanadian novelists and, apart from a few chapbooks, no poets to speak of. Scholarship by Poles is associated sparsely with men such as T. Domaradzki, K. Rayski-Kietlicz, and P. Wyczynski. Henryk Mehlberg throws in a half-slice of philosophy. The really striking feature of the record is an array of 179 research papers by 41 Polish scientists who have escaped to Canada since World War II and are now on the staffs of our universities and of the National Research Council. Almost every known science is represented and the combined contribution to Canadian researcb has been noteworthy. One might mention, for example, the LETTERS IN CANADA: 1958 489 discoveries made in aeronautics by Juliusz Lukasiewicz, Janusz Jerzy Samolewicz, and Boleslaw Szczeniowski, the mining reports of lozef Obalski, the work of Jerzy Olszewski in neurology, or the medical researches of Konstanty P. Kowalewski. Ukrainian scholarship has been associated with the Ukrainian Free Academy of Sciences in Winnipeg. Thus Dr. Jaroslav Rudnyc'kyj and his associates continue to issue their annual bibliographies Slavica Canadiana and Ukrainica Canadiana. Dr. Rudnyc'kyj's Studies in Onomastics collects ten papers in English, German, Polish, and Ukrainian that he had read on toponymic problems at conferences in Uppsala, Salamanca, Paris, Prague, Belgrade, Lviv, and New York. In his Problems of Contemporary Shevchenkology, he sets forth certain scholarly projects that are desirable for consummation in time for the centenary, in 1960, of the publication of Shevchenko's Kobzar, and for the centenary, in 1961, of the death of this greatest of Ukrainian poets. Also in the Free Academy 's series is W. Zyla's Ideological Background of Shevchenko's 'Hamalia', which explains the poem as a Ukrainian defense of Cossack traditions and ideals as against the denigratory versions by which Russian literary critics tried to belittle the Cossack past. Also in the Academy's series, but financed by the Slovak Institute, is Dr. J. M. Kirschbaum's address on L'udovit Stur and His Place in the Slavic World. Stur (181556 ) was one of the outstanding Slovak poets of the nineteenth century and Dr. Kirschbaum seeks to redeem his reputation from the unfavourable judgment of earlier critics. Of related interest is Dr. Rudnyc'kyj's volume of reminiscences of a trip to Scandinavia in 1957, his essay in Spanish on toponymy in Don Juan, published in Salamanca, and the bibliography of Rudnyc'kyj's publications, prepared by Sever Pop and published in Louvain. In Toronto, the Ukrainian Teachers' Association of Canada has launched a series of research volumes under the general editorship of Wasyl Luciw. The first book to be issued was one by Dr. Luciw himself, on Pedagogical Activities of Dr. Ivan Franko. The second is by Mykhaylo Lomackyj, on Ukrainian Teachers of Hutsulia, and deals with the history of educational work among the Highlanders (Hutsuls) of the Eastern Carpathians. Among ecclesiastical publications, the most imposing of the year is the Jubilee Book of the Rev. Metropolitan llarion. This prelate, professor , and savant has had a most formidable record as an author. The present work, prepared in honour of his seventy-fifth birthday, gives a 490 PUBLICATIONS IN OTHER LANGUAGES list (pp. 250-2) of some 42 works, running to some 60 volumes. His poetical works, given as one title only, total 8 volumes. In addition to book publication and church administration, he has been an indefatigable religious journalist. His only book for 1958 is a life of Prince Constantine Ostrozkyj (1527-1608) and a study of his cnltural activities. Ivan Semenya has issued a devotional volume, Saved by the Lord, and Yura Hominiuk a new Ukrainian translation of the Gospel according to Saint John. The Ukrainian Orthodox Brotherhood of St. Vladimir Cathedral, Toronto, has printed a third volume of its militant In Defence of Faith. The chief enemies denounced are Indifference and Communism. A whole series of usefnJ manuals in many languages has been prepared by the Federal Department of Citizenship and Immigration. These provide new citizens from abroad with a useful mass of information on Canada, on working and living conditions, and even on the operation of our unemployment insurance system. CHECK·LIST OF TITLES BRYK (ALEXANDER 5.), Moyi Zhyttevi Studiyi (Uler. "My life experiences," Winnipeg , Trident Press, 1956, pp. 528.) . DEPARTMENT OF CmzENSInP AND IMMIGRATION. Handleiding voor nieuwe inwoners van Canada (Du. "Handbook for New Residents of Canada," also in German, Hungarian, and Italian, Queen's Printer, Ottawa, pp. 119); Werken. Wonen en Leven in Canada (Du. "Work, Residence and Life in Canada," also in German, Hungarian, and Swedish, Queen's Printer, Ottawa, pp. 70); Manual dos Trabalhadores sobre Seguro de Desemprego (Port. "Worker's Handbook on Unemployment Insurance," also in Finnish, Ger~ man, Danish, and Dutch, Queen's Printer, Ottawa, pp. 20. DZIOBKO (I.), My Songs: A Selection of Ukrainian Folksongs in English Translation (Winnipeg and Virden, Ukrainian-Canadian Pioneers' Library, P.O. Box 3591, Sta. B, Winnipeg 4. Man., pp. 103). FRIESEN (ABRAM), Das Theater Kormarts und Schochs: Ein Beitrag zur Theatergeschichte des 17. lahrhunderts (Ger. ''''The Theatre of Kormart and Schoch: A Contribution to the Dramatic History of the 17th Century," a Ph.D. thesis at the Iohannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, pp. 253). GRANOVSKY (A. A.), Hymny sontsyu (Ukr. "Hymns to the Sun," Chicago, UkrainianAmerican Printing and Publishing Co., 2315 West Chicago Ave., pp. 144). GurrORMssoN (GUTTORMUR), Kanadathistill (Icel. "Canada Thistle," HeIgafeU, Iceland, pp. 120). HOMINIUK (YA), Svitlo zhyttya (Ukr. "·lbe Light of Life," Saskatoon, Gospel Press, pp. 81) ; Sv. Evanheliya vid Apostola Ivana (Ukr. '''The Gospel according to St. John," Saskatoon, Gospel Press, pp. 132) . HORBACHEVA (L.), KURPITA (T.), SHKRUMELYAK (Y.), Rnd MALYTSKA (K.), Rizdvyani p'esy dlya dytyachoho teatru Ukr. "Christmas Plays for the Children's Theatre," Win~ nipeg, Trident Press, pp. 28) . ILARION (M.), Knyaz' Kostyantyn Ostroz'kyj i joho kul'tuma pratsya (Ukr. "Prince Constantine Ostrozkyj and his Cultural Activities." Winnipeg, Christian Press, pp. 216). IwANYS (W.), V Oboroni Viry, III Chastyna (Ukr. "In Defence of the Faith," ill, Toronto, Ukrainian ...