We continue the news series about the events of the joint project "On the Wave of Time, Throughout the Life" where we talk about valuable publications and documents, interesting meetings, activities of the project researchers.
Little time remains to the anniversary of another member of the “Maladnyak” literary association, outstanding writer Jan Skrygan (1905–1992). We will celebrate his 115th anniversary on November 16 by the opening of a new virtual section as part of the project “On the Wave of Time, Throughout the Life”, and also conducting literary evening “Circles of Life of Jan Skrygan”, which will take place on November 12 at in the National Library of Belarus.
Working on the sections, we faced a problem we could not solve without the heir of the writer. According to the copyright law, full texts of the writer's books can't be placed in the public domain for 50 years without the author's or his descendants' consent, so we began to seek a way out. Thanks to the historical and regional museum "Batskawshchyna" in Kamen settlement of the Kopyl district, where the exhibition dedicated to the writer is located, we got in touch with Ms Galina Skrygan. This summer, we signed an author's contract with her, which provided an opportunity to place the books of Jan Skrygan, as well as the author's articles of Ms Skrygan herself as part of the project. Ms Skrygan, who has compiled the writer's books, memoirs about him ("Jan Skrygan in Memories" (2010), "Bitter Distances of the Heart" (2013), "I'm Glad I Knew Them" (2014) for his 115th anniversary, has been also actively working on the release of "Photo Records from Domestic Archives of Jan Skrygan" (2020), which she will present at the Library at the event. Thanks to this visual material, we began our work on the photo gallery of the writer and the subsection of the project dedicated to honouring the memory of the author.
On the eve of the event, a meeting was held with Ms Galina Skrygan, who was preparing to widely celebrate her father's anniversary not only at the National Library, but also in the Mayakovsky Library in Minsk. It is interesting to visit places that breathe memories of the writer. There are several corners in the apartment of the writer's daughter with photos of the author, his personal belongings and items created by his hands. Famous canes of Jan Skrygan, which he cut himself, were a must to watch.
Jan Skrygan's corner in the apartment of Ms Galina Skrygan.
Photos on the wall in the apartment of Ms Skrygan.
Anecdotes about the writer told by Ms Skrygan make his close and relatable. For example, it turned out that Skrygan's back was always straight and didn't need any cane. But he cut them out, finishing with special leather strings so that it would be easy to walk. This was the tribute to fashion he used to follow together with Piatrus Browka. And it was ridiculous, when someone would give up the seat to him holding a cane in the public transport.
Famous canes of Jan Skrygan, which are kept in the museum “Batskawshchyna”.
Ms Skrygan talked much about her father, about preparations for the anniversaries, which she celebrates every 5 year. They took place in different places: House of Writers, Kamen settlement, Literary Museum of M. Bagdanovich. And those are large-scale events, which gather friends, writers, museum employees and librarians, who keep memory of Jan Skrygan. And each time increasingly more people come, remembering the sincere and very open soul of his daughter, who is always ready to share recollections about her well-known father.
The writer was outgoing and open to people, so the daughter took after her father:
“On the whole, I was lucky to meet many good people. There were bad ones, but I forgot them quickly. It may be the quality of human memory that we don't stick to the bad for long”.
Jan Skrygan
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Photos by Ms Tatiana Lawryk.
Information and Analytic Activity Department.
