Introduction by the editor for CHORS 2
CHORS 2
Introduction
by the editor
The first CHORS almanach was published at New Year 1946 / 47, though dated “October”, but really at Christmas: The introducing picture drawn by Halyna Mazeppa [sic] shows the shepherds worshipping before the manger. At that time, but a very small group of Ukrainian writers met under the name of “CHORS” – who is the sun-god of the ancient Slavs. The Apollon in the Hellas of the Steppe: Yuriy Sherech and W. Ber (Professor V. Petrov) took part in editorship. “CHORS”, planned to become a Quarterly of fine literature and arts, has no more appeared since then – on account of the special financial circumstances in the emigrants situation. For five years “CHORS“ has existed invisibly.
Yuriy Soloviy and his colleagues in art entered and completed the small rows. The Chorsites’ family increased by a Dinkelsbuehl artist group – “the anachcorets” [?]: the poetess Elisabeth Kottmeier and some other german colleagues in paintry, music and artistic dance [here added: thus it] was completed as to the kinds of art, and its extension, which in the beginning included but one notion, was enlarged. Thereby the small Franconian town of Dinkelsbuehl became the temporary center of the CHORS activity. Here, 1950, CHORS got the base to cooperate with the painters Hermann Anselment, Ernst Vogel, Gerhard Knieschon, Barbara Augspach; later on with the dancer Eugen Poranski and the pianist Maria Poranski – but, first of all, with Elisabeth Kottmeier, enthusiastic friend of modern Ukrainian poetry, an anthology of which she has prepared in her translations.
The two languages edition “CHORS 2” shall be a document of the first Dinkelsbuehl period of CHORS activity: 1950/1951.
In spite of its origin in the modern tendencies of art, CHORS never has fixed itself at one of them. The reader will find here even works of writers and artists who are not official members of the CHORS Family. CHORS rather selects according to this principle: firstly to choose among all those representatives of art it can sympathize with, then, if a special representative is basing on it. Their principle allows CHORS to appreciate in this representative every peculiarity of style and tendency: this is the principle uniting the different representatives to the only principle of independence in art, which is the sovereignty of art. It is the principle, to create from the artists inner substance, from his unrepeatable world, from his individual vision of spirit and intention, which he projects into the reality surrounding him. This principle – the primate of the creating form – does not depend on how form is to be understood: may form be considered as an action continually realizing itself and becoming a mediator when one substance is as a phenomenon untouched within itself. getting [sic] its valour just by its perfection which is independent from any movement.
And still one, something which is important: The Ukrainian Chorsites appreciate the German Chorsites as the immediate heirs of the bright tradition of the “Blauer Reiter”, Munich, the forces of whose – German and not German – artists endeavoured in the dawn of our new-European epoch, to climb up via the arc of one nation – the German expressionism – to the steep tops of the universal human art.
E.K.
***
The Ukrainian DP-journal CHORS was initially planned to be a quarterly. However, the first CHORS edition in 1946 was also the last. These documents provide an insight into the reasons for the non-publishing of further editions but also deliver indicators for the material situation of the Ukrainian diaspora in the American occupation zone of Germany in general.
A second and third edition of CHORS were seemingly planned shortly after publishing the first edition. Indicator for this thesis is the handwritten list of planned content for these two editions. On the back of this very document it is visible that it was initially an old document of the German Air-Force from World War Two. These forms were handed out to the DPs immediately after the war as notepaper and allow the assumption that these notes were made not later than in the earlier second half of the 1940s.
Not only did the editors plan for the second and third edition already. They also collected reviews on the first edition. While many readers praised the content of the journal in the highest notes, the quality of the materials that the magazine was created from is criticized more than once. Some readers complain about the journal being already damaged when it was delivered, others claim that the quality of the paper is outstandingly bad.
The editors knew about this material situation, as Kostec’kyj himself had to contact ten potential publishers until he found one in the city of Regensburg willing to publish the first CHORS edition.
Aware of this struggle, he wrote in the planned introduction for CHORS 2, planned to be published under the name “German-Ukrainian-Almanac” in late 1951, that “‘CHORS’, planned to become a Quarterly of fine literature and arts, has no more appeared […]– on account of the special financial circumstances in the emigrant’s situation”.
Though a possible solution existed, it was hard to make use of it: An official American regulation for the occupied German territories from 1947 banned the publication of print-media not permissioned by an official authority. This regulation, though never really enforced, allowed licensed media to receive free rations of paper and the editors were allowed to travel for free through the three western occupation zones, which made it much easier to organize conferences and connect with culturally active people elsewhere.
Such permission was helpful for editors struggling with the material situation. It seemed that CHORS also tried to apply for such permission. Though the document about publishing a “Ukrainian literary-artistic almanac” is unfortunately not addressed to any receiver and could therefore also have been directed to a potential publisher, it does not seem less likely that this letter was used to receive a permission from the authority.
In the end, the letter also provides another information: The second edition was ready for publishing but still never materialized. The thriving factor for this was most likely the material situation of the CHORS editors and the Ukrainian diaspora in general.