The collection of books from the private library of Stanisław Vincenz, the “Homer of Hutsulshchyna” – an outstanding Polish thinker, humanist and writer, the author of the monumental Hutsul epic “On the High Uplands”, is now available to researchers and students in Ukraine.
The collection consists of almost 1,000 rare books. Among them are unique editions of Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Plato. As well as copies with autographs and dedications of the writer’s contemporaries and friends – Jerzy Gedroyc, Czeslaw Milosz, Józef Chapski, Gustav Herling-Grudzinski, numerous French, German, and American intellectuals.
The books, which were brought from Germany with the assistance of People’s Deputy Mykola Kniazhytskyi, were presented to the public in February in the Lviv Historical Museum in the form of an art exhibition by artist Volodymyr Kostyrk. These days, the exhibition ended – and on February 23, the book collection was transferred to the information and cultural center named after Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytskyi of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv.
The initiator and benefactor of the acquisition and transportation of the Stanisław Vincenz library to Ukraine is Mykola Kniazhytskyi, a People’s Deputy of Ukraine.
“Vincenz’s library is now available to students and researchers from all over the world – open for inspection, for work, for study at the best Ukrainian higher educational institution – the Ukrainian Catholic University”,
– says Mykola Kniazhytskyi.
Project organizer: Non-governmental organization “All-Ukrainian Democratic Forum”.
The organizers express their gratitude to Mrs. Joanna de Vincenz, the wife of Andrzej Vincenz (the writer’s son), the official heir to the creative heritage of Stanisław Vincenz, for her participation in the implementation of the initiative, comprehensive support and assistance in the process of transferring the book collection.
