A DISTURBANCE IN THE PROTEIN
A slightly abridged translation of the article which appeared in Ukrainska literaturna hazeta, 1957, No. 9 (27). Yury Sherech is the pseudonym of Professor George Shevelov.
Nevelychka drama (here translated as A Little Touch of Drama) was the second and last novel written by Valerian Pidmohylny. It was first published in book form in Paris in 1957, twenty-seven years after it was serialized in the Kiev magazine Zhyttia i revoliutsia (Life and Revolution) in 1930. When he wrote the novel the author was 28 years old. He had become well known for his first novel Misto (The City) which appeared in Kiev in 1928. This was a solid, many-sided work, rather in the vein of Balzac and Maupassant. The reader was given life-stories of all the heroes, scenes of Kiev from the downtown to the suburbs, the parks, the boulevards, restau¬rants, coffee houses and cultural institutions, a panorama of the city, a cross-section of different segments of society—students, small shopkeepers, intellectuals, artists and bohemians. In com¬parison with The City, A Little Touch of Drama is a very different work. The action is also set in Kiev, but the city no longer interests the writer. We know that Marta Vysotska lives on Zhylanska street and Liova Rotter on Arsenalna street in Pechersk, but these are only names, signposts, not images. As in a play the action centers on one spot-a room. Most of the time it is Marta’s room; sometimes it is the room of her rival Irene Markevych. Only once does the author lead his heroes for a short time to St. Andrew’s church but even here he does not show us the church itself. “They went up the wide steel stairs to the tiled square around the church which stood on the slope of a hill. Through the narrow passage between the church and the balustrade they reached the north end of the square which overhung the ravine. The space at the back of the church was also tiled and their footsteps echoed loudly in this deserted corner.” We do not get a picture of the church here, but a picture of its solitariness. This is also but a framework for the action of the two main characters.
The City was a social novel. ...
- George Shevelov