Kyiv = Kyiw: Journal. Parts 1–6.Philadelphia, January–December 1958

“And to be an honest person is so easy…”

Kyiv = Kyiw: a journal of literature, science, art, criticism, and public life / publisher and editor Bohdan Romanyanchuk. Vol. IX, issues 1–6 (45–50): January–December 1958.

Philadelphia: Kyiv Publishing House, 1958. Printed by America Printing Company. — 5 issues: issue 1 (January–February), issue 2 (March–April), issue 3 (May–June), issue 4 (July–August), issues 5–6 (September–December).

Each issue is in a yellow paper publisher’s cover with a double ornamental border, the title “Kyiv / Kyiw,” and an oval vignette featuring a rider; the front cover’s reverse side contains the table of contents and publication details; issues are saddle-stitched. Issue 2: moisture stains on the front cover and its reverse, rust spots from staples on the cover and first sheet, worn edges. Issue 4: cover edges worn and slightly frayed, small spots near the spine. Issues 1, 3, and 5–6: light wear on the edges and spines, occasional spots. Paper with natural yellowing. The subscription coupon on the back cover of issues 5–6 is uncut and unfilled. Pencil numbers on the front covers of issues 1 and 3; the issue number on issues 5–6 is filled in with ink; “1055” is written in pencil on the back cover of issues 5–6. Condition: good.

Complete 1958 volume in original covers. Of historical and cultural value as a source for the literary life of the Ukrainian emigration.

INFORMATION

In issues 5–6, “Kyiv” published an excerpt from Boris Pasternak’s novel and an article about his Nobel Prize—in that very year of 1958, when the prize resulted in the writer being persecuted in the USSR. The volume deliberately places Ukrainian literature alongside European literature: Jean Anouilh’s “Medea,” continued in three issues; translations from Ezra Pound, Antonio Machado, Josue Carducci, and Japanese poetry; essays on Nobel laureates Carducci, Camus, Kipling, and Selma Lagerlöf. Alongside these are the poetry of Svyatoslav Hordynskyi, Oksana Liaturynska, Mykhailo Ostroverkhii, and Bohdan Boichuk; anthological selections by Mykola Voronyi, Vasyl Pachovskyi, and Mykola Cherniavskyi; A. Knyazhynskyi’s series on Lesya Ukrainka’s creative path; reviews of Polish émigré prose by Czesław Miłosz and Marek Hłasko. Issue 4 opens with the response of Ukrainian writers in America to an appeal by writers from Soviet Ukraine.

“Kyiv” was published in Philadelphia every two months from 1950 to 1964. The Encyclopedia of Ukrainian Studies describes it as an important platform for contemporary Ukrainian prose, poetry, and translations of world literature, known above all for its literary criticism and reviews. Contributors included Svyatoslav Hordynskyi, Volodymyr Doroshenko, Panteleimon Kovaliv, Hryhorii Luzhnytskyi, Ostap Tarnavskyi, Vasyl Chaplenko, and Ihor Shankovskyi. Bohdan Romanyanchuk (1906–1989; according to other sources, born in 1908) was a literary scholar and educator from the Kolomyia region and a full member of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. Before the war, he taught at the Academic Gymnasium in Lviv; in 1944, he emigrated to Austria, where he co-founded the journal “Litavry,” and in Philadelphia became the publisher and editor of “Kyiv.” He later compiled the literary encyclopedia “Azbukovnyk” and a bibliography of émigré literature from 1945 to 1970.

Each issue cost 60 cents, and the annual subscription was $3.60; the journal was supported by subscriptions and donations to its press fund, the names of donors were printed in every issue. On the back cover of the final issue, the publishing house humorously calls on debtor “pay-as-you-go” subscribers to become honest subscribers for 1959, when “Kyiv” began its tenth year of publication.