Selections from FM GALICIA

07.12

Today I was scolded: so-and-so or so-and-so, who raised you, would never have conducted themselves in such a way. In other words, what happened to all the guidance you received, your upbringing? At first, I was shocked—I truly did not want it to be this way. I would like to be the person I was brought up to be. But after a few hours, it hit me—my God!—well I’ve been raised by so many different, extraordinary people. I loved all of them, I was enamored with all of them, and I’ve absorbed something from, and remembered something about, each one of them. But these people themselves were so dissimilar they often had difficulty agreeing on anything. I didn’t recognize this as a child, because I didn’t comprehend it. I now realize that certain individuals who raised me, each of whom had the same amount of influence on me, were all equally exceptional. That’s why coming to a conclusion based on one, as crimi­nologists say, episode, is incorrect, illogical, and impossible.

And, in addition to living relatives, two irrefutable factors that have had a direct influence on me have to be taken into account—the dictate of blood, that eccentric twisting of heredities, and, of course, myths—stories about those whom I never met in my life but without whom I cannot imagine my worldview.

Take this story about my great grandmother, for example. When it became too dangerous for my great grandfather to remain here in Galicia, Sheptytsky [1] was able to get him to America. After a period of time, my great grandmother joined him there. She settled in a small town, and, being the wife of a priest, had to participate in the social life there. But my great grandmother had one important need—she was a heavy smoker. And in America at that time, a woman who smoked was looked upon with disdain. Smoking in public was simply forbidden. My great grandmother couldn’t last more than half an hour without a cigarette. She truly loved her husband, but she just could not suffer such torture. She stayed in America for a bit longer and then took her child, who had been born there, and returned to her homeland. Forever. She kept smoking and later died of lung cancer. This was foreseeable but, ultimately, not obligatory. What was obligatory was not succumbing to the decrees and dictates of social mandates. And what can be said about this? How can her conduct be logically justified, and moreover, how can all this be applied to an interpretation of my behavior? And to the fact that, in one particular episode, I did not act like so-and-so, or so-and-so, who had raised me.

Notes

[1] Andrei Sheptyts′kyi (1865-1944) was the Metropolitan Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and one of the most important and powerful figures in 20th century Ukraine. Treated as an enemy by the Soviet Union, he was a hero of the Ukrainian national political and cultural movement.

Translated by Mark Andryczyk