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Eroshenko

© David Poulson

In my last article I told how Cai Yuanpei (T'sai Yuan-pei) brought to Peking University a young Russian Esperantist whose life and works are much better known and remembered in China and Japan than they are in the West. I think that it's time that he was better known to Esperantists in the West and I hope that these articles will help to introduce him to a new generation of Esperantists.

My own information, not surprisingly, has been obtained from articles written by a Japanese and two Chinese writers. I will provide full references to my sources later, but now I want to introduce the subject of the next two or three topic articles: VASILIJ EROSHENKO.

He was born on the 12th of January 1890 in a small town in south Russia, close to the Ukraine, and he died shortly before his 63rd birthday on the 23rd of December, 1952. When he was four years old, he fell sick with the measles and the illness was so severe that he lost the sight of both of his eyes. Despite his handicap, he lived a full, productive and even adventurous life and In his autobiographical sketch, Unu pagxeto en mia lerneja vivo he wrote:

I am blind and I have been blind since I was four years old. With tears and lamentations, I left behind the kingdom of bright sunshine. Whether it was a good thing or a bad thing for me, I still don't know. Night lasts for a long time, and for me it will last as long as I live."

"A good thing or a bad thing?" Those of us fortunate to be blessed with good eyesight can only be very surprised at those words. A few years ago, I suffered an attack of shingles in the eye which left me completely blind for several days and partially sighted for weeks after. (Fortunately, the permanent damage is negligible). It made me appreciate the gift of sight even more. But perhaps the thoughtful words of a Japanese journalist, can give us an insight into Eroshenko's mind. In 1921, Hasegawa Nyozekan wrote:

"(Eroshenko's) sightless eyes could not make him unhappy. That world which he had seen with the eyes of a young child was the only world which he was ever to see. For him, everybody in the world had the same coloured skin. And, likewise, his world map was also of one colour. In the world through which he wandered there was only one country. He easily made friends with people from many nations because, for him, they all had skin of the same colour and they all belonged to the same country. His eyes were unable to erect barriers of race, colour and nationality between other people and himself."

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