The Grace of Passing: Constantine H Andrusyshen-the Odyssey of a Slavist

Myroslav Shkandrij is head of the Department of German and Slavic
Studies at the University of Manitoba and the editor of The Cultural
Renaissance in Ukraine: Polemical Pamphlets, 1925–1926.

Constantine Andrusyshen (1907–83), a Winnipeg-born literary scholar,
headed Canada’s first Slavic Department (founded at the University of
Saskatchewan in 1945) for 30 years. He is best known for his
collaboration with Watson Kirkconnell on two important collections of
translated poetry—The Ukrainian Poets, 1189–1962 (1963) and The
Poetical Works of Taras Shevchenko: The Kobzar (1964)—and for the
popular Ukrainian-English Dictionary (originally published in 1955).
This biography by June Dutka, a librarian at the University of Manitoba
and Andrusyshen’s niece, draws on speeches, letters, and public
records to trace the scholar’s education, life, and achievements. It
includes 11 pages of illustrations and a comprehensive bibliography that
lists not only published works, translations, and reviews but also
unpublished papers and addresses, manuscripts, and literature about the
scholar.

Readers familiar with Andrusyshen’s work may be surprised to learn
that, under the pseudonym C.H. Andrus, he also authored a philosophical
novel titled An Olympian Adventure: A Serio-Comic Fantasy (1981). Dutka
provides information on the reception of his works among writers,
critics, and academics, and Andrusyshen’s work in the Ukrainian
community. The picture that emerges is of a dedicated, industrious, and
widely respected scholar. However, the impact of his pioneering
translations and still-indispensable dictionary could have been given
more prominence. The poetry collections were for many a first
introduction to Ukrainian letters, and they remain influential texts in
the study of the language and literature.

Oleh W. Gerus of the University of Manitoba provides a preface in which
he describes the postwar situation and the academic politics that led up
to the establishment of programs in Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian.
Dutka’s meticulously researched and carefully edited book goes beyond
its survey of Andrusyshen’s accomplishments to throw light on the
emergence of an academic discipline in Canada.