On 18–19 September, the Institute of the Belarusian Language and the Francis Skaryna Belarusian Library and Museum jointly held a linguistic symposium in honour of Fr Alexander Nadson, whose birth centenary falls in 2026. Supported by Das Akademisches Netzwerk Osteuropa – akno e.V., the Association of Belarusians in Great Britain and the European Union, the symposium took place at the Skaryna Library in London, with a number of speakers and guests joining online.
Dedicated primarily to the linguistic legacy of Fr Nadson, a prominent Belarusian scholar, liturgical translator and religious leader, the event also covered related topics, including the legacy of Francis Skaryna (a 16th-century polymath), Belarusian philosophy and traditional culture, the history of Belarusian churches of various denominations and Belarusian studies outside Belarus. The symposium brought together scholars and contemporaries of Fr Nadson from Belarus, Britain, Lithuania, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic and the United States.
A lively discussion took place in the section on Belarusian studies, focusing on the questions of agency and the continuity of tradition, cultural codes and their transmission, and approaches to working with the language and tradition. It also looked at the figure of Fr Nadson, as an example of a creator and bearer of tradition, and the role of the Belarusian diaspora in “stitching” and holding together the Belarusian cultural universe.
Much attention was devoted to the role of Fr Nadson as a “Belarusian polymath”, a modern-day European and Renaissance-style thinker. The breadth and diversity of Fr Nadson’s scholarly legacy provide a foundation for the establishment of a new interdisciplinary field – studies of Fr Nadson, which the symposium discussed. According to Uładzisłaŭ Harbacki, a scholar at the European Humanities University in Vilnius and the author of the forthcoming monograph devoted to Fr Alexander Nadson, the new scholarly field could encompass not only the study of Fr Nadson’s legacy, but also “the study of Belarusian linguistics, culture, religion and identity through his intellectual experience”.
The presentation of a new edition of Łarysa Hienijuš’s poetry collection Spiritus flat ubi vult, published this year by the London-based Skaryna Press, fitted well with the symposium’s topics. The ensuing discussion focused on Hienijuš’s manuscript preserved in the Skaryna Library as an example of cultural resistance and the decentralised nature of the Belarusian samizdat tradition, as well as on the distinctive character of Hienijuš’s language preserved in the facsimile edition.
During the symposium, a special exhibition dedicated to Fr Nadson was shown to the guests. It featured his early photographs, his academic records from the Gregorian University in Rome, issues of the Belarusian newspapers Svaboda and Naša Niva from the 1990s and 2000s with his interviews and reports on his visits to Belarus, as well as his scholarly and liturgical publications. Contemporaries of Fr Alexander also shared their memories of this extraordinary man, who, in the words of one of the participants, “always had time for all of us”.
In memory of Fr Nadson, his successor as the head of the Belarusian Church in London, Fr Siarhiej Stasievič, conducted a special prayer for the Belarusian people at the new Belarusian Church of St Cyril of Turaǔ.
The symposium concluded with the Dreva folk concert programme, during which songs from the Belarusian calendar cycle were interwoven with sounds from other musical traditions of the world. The concert was followed by a reception, and the participants were in no hurry to leave, with folk tunes from the time of the legendary Majstroŭnia group to Vir’s modern-day repertoire, resounding in North London until midnight.
Thematic areas of the symposium:
– the linguistic legacy of Fr Alexander Nadson in the context of the Belarusian linguistic tradition;
– Fr Alexander Nadson’s approaches to biblical translation;
– the state and development of the linguistic collections of the Skaryna Library;
– the creation of a corpus of Fr Alexander Nadson’s texts;
– publication of Fr Alexander Nadson’s unpublished legacy;
– rare editions preserved in the Library’s collections;
– studies of the language of the Belarusian diaspora;
– presentation of Uładzisłaǔ Harbacki’s book presenting an intellectual portrait of Fr Alexander Nadson.