Ukrainian Free University hosts symposium on Goethe (07/11/99)

Ukrainian Free University hosts symposium on Goethe

MUNICH - Within the framework of the 250th jubilee celebrations of Johann Wolfgang Goethe's birth, a symposium was held on June 18 at the Ukrainian Free University (UFU) to pay tribute to the poet's genius and to analyze his impact on Ukrainian literature and scholarship.

The symposium, organized under the aegis of the Bavarian Ministry of Sciences, Research and the Arts, headed by Dr. Hans Zehetmair, offered presentations by invited scholars from the United States, Canada, Germany and Ukraine.

Prof. Leonid Rudnytzky, rector of the UFU, opened the morning session. He stated that Goethe's creative legacy had awakened interest in Ukraine already during the life of the great German poet. The first translation by Hulak Artemovsky in 1827 of one of Goethe's poems, "The Fisher," was just the beginning of a deep interest in the poet's oeuvre. Prof. Rudnytzky also conveyed the warm greetings to the symposium participants of Prof. E. Trunz, a 94-year-old scholar of Goethe's poetic legacy, whose 14-volume edition of Goethe's works was republished in 1998.

Prof. Ulrich Schweier of Ludwig Maximillian University, chaired the first session and presented the four speakers. All the presentations of the symposium were read in German, with the exception of one, which was read in English. The first speaker Dr. Wolodymyr Movchaniuk, National Academy of Sciences in Kyiv, spoke on "Shevchenko and Goethe." He pointed out that Shevchenko, during his first years in St. Petersburg, already was acquainted with Goethe's work, and later on in his life made specific entries into his diary that related to Goethe.

Prof. Rudnytzky's paper centered on the theme "Goethe and Franko." Dr. Albert Kipa, vice-president of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, and professor at Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania, spoke on "Goethe and Lesia Ukrainka," and Prof. Roland Pietsch of Ukrainian Free University elaborated on "Volodymyr Vernadsky and Goethe."

Prof. R.J. Brunner, Ulm University, chaired the afternoon session. Prof. Danylo Husar Struk [who died the next day], Toronto University and member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, presented his paper "Goethe's Reineke Fuchs and Lys Mykyta," stressing the different ideological approach of both poets, which resulted in Ivan Franko's softened rendition as opposed to the realistic and biting presentation in Goethe's work.

Oleksander Shokalo of the Union of Writers of Ukraine developed the topic "Motifs in Goethe's West-East Divan in the works of P. Kulish and A. Krymskyi," while Dr. Anna Halya Horbach of the UFU analyzed Goethe's impact in contemporary Ukrainian literature in a paper titled "Goethe in the Life and Work of Contemporary Poet Vasyl Stus."

Dr. Mykhailo Hnatiuk of Ivan Franko University, Lviv, provided an analysis "Goethe's Reception in Ukrainian Criticism in the First Half of the 20th Century." He also offered a long list of writers and poets who, more or less successfully, made Goethe's poetic legacy and his human values accessible to the Ukrainian literary world.

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