In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

490 THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY In concluding this survey we should like to express our appreciation of the excellent work done by the publishing houses of the province, especially that of Bernard Valiquette, of Montreal. VI. NEW-CANADIAN LETTERS WATSON KIRKCONNELL The active part that the New-Canadian communities have played in Canada's war effort during 1941 has been reflected in vigorous and patriotic journalism in their foreign-language press. In these periodicals, reaching a million and a half readers weekly, there is no hint of the vitriolic partisanship seen in many AngloCanadian journals nor of the anti-British sentiment of some sections of the French-Canadian press. The only malcontents were to be found among the Leftist papers, and since the U.S.S.R. was forced into the War, in June, 1941, these journals (nearly all printed under one roof in Toronto) have become vehemently pro-war. In the field of belles-lettres, however, the activities of war have . led to a marked curtailment of book publication. While there is an actual increase in the amount of fugitive verse and fiction carried by the newspapers, the communities seem too busy to write or publish longer works. Only in Ukrainian have any books appeared, viz., Miy Sad («My Garden") by Mykyta Ivanovich Mandryka, and an Anthology of Ukrainian Literature in Canada, issued by the Canadian-Ukrainian Educational Association, Winnipeg. Dr. Mandryk.a is an emigre, a graduate of Kiev, Sofia, and Prague universities, and has lived in Canada since 1928. Miy Sad is a collection· of some seventy-five brief poems, chiefly lyrical, with dates of composition ranging all the way from 1905 to ·1936. Among the earliest specimens is one on the death of Parnell, in which the poet expresses sympathy for Far Ireland, that land of pain, Sad sister to my own Ukraine. A poignant sense of past happiness broods over some of his pictures of the Dnieper and the Dnieper Hills; but his most moving lyrics come from the period of the struggte for Ukrainian nationhood in 1918-19: . 0 living Lord, our Mother lives: Death can no longer hide her. Behold her sons like eagles come To take their stand beside her. LETTERS IN CANADA: 1941 491 Only two brief lyrics) both dated 1936) have been composed since he became a Canadian. His gloomy "Finale" may be rendered: The sun is ashes to the last dull spark. Torn from the book of life, it joins the darkInfinite blackness, symbol of non-being, Like a dead ocean, silent and unseeing. Earth passes, wich its murmuring woods and plains; Of the sea's surgmg music naught remains; And the heart's symphony of friend and friend Dies as the curtain falls. This is the end. The Anthology of Ukrainian Literature in Canada was long overdue, for there has hitherto been no volume giving, in the original Ukrainian,. representative specimens from the work of the more important writers. This was admirably done for the IcelandicCanadians in Vestan um Haj (1930), a large demy octavo volume of 736 pages or more than ten times the contents of the present little sixteenmo Ukrainian collection, which represents some eighteen poets by 68 brief poems and three prose-writers by 11 scant pages o( quotation. Inadequate though the anthology is, we should be grateful for what it gives us, especially as relatively full biographical and bibliographical notes are supplied for each author and in most cases a photograph is also provided. The poets in the collection are Theodore Fedyk, Simeon Kowbel, Honore Ewach, Dmytro Hunkievich, Michael Kumka, Ivan Pavchuk, Ivan Novosad, Anna Pruska, Maria Adamovska, Katrya Novosad, Stepan M. Doroshchuk, Michael Krepiakevich, Vasyl Tulewitrow, Mykyta I Mandryka, Andriy Gospodyn, Taras Volokhatiuk, Tetyana Kroitor, and Myroslava Lazeczko. In such a roster, there are serious omissions, e.g. ''Myroslav Ichnyansky" (Ivan Kmeta), whose Lira Emigranta (Winnipeg, 1936) won favourable opinions in European journals. Other names that come to mind are those of Vasyl Babiyenko, Peter B. Chaykovsky, Paul Crath) Ivan J. Danylchuk, Taras Dmytrenko, Vasyl Holovatsky , Elias Kiriak, Vasyl Kudryk, Viktor and Volodymyr Kupchenko, Dmytro Raragovsky, Joseph Sayek, S. W. Sawchuk, and Joseph Yasenchuk. As for prose fiction, extracts by Dmytro Sollanych...

pdf

Share