A number of people have been generous with their assistance on the translation project, and I want to take the opportunity to express my gratitude to several of them. I am grateful to William Schmalstieg for taking the time to share his expertise on Old Church Slavic with me to clear up a number of my questions. Adrian Wanner was kind enough to check a number of Latin passages for me. Mykola Riabchuk elucidated a number of my questions on translation from Ukrainian, particularly in the introduction to the volume. My gratitude to Richard Gustafson for introducing me to Skovoroda’s thought in graduate school at Columbia University in his fine seminar on Russian and Slavic thought, and to Ukrainian poet Vasyl Barka who, in living the life of a neo-Skovorodian philosopher-poet himself, so effectively conveyed the essence of Skovoroda to me at an early stage in my career. Extra special thanks to Olha Tytarenko for her meticulous editorial comments on the final version of the manuscript, which greatly improved the translations. My gratitude, too, to my daughter Lila Naydan for her quite useful comments on the final versions of the English of my poetry translations. I, of course, am responsible for any errors or omissions. Ukrainian writer and philosophy scholar Oksana Zabuzhko is most responsible for using her powers of persuasion to convince me to tackle this project. I am also grateful to Svitlana Kobets, Steve Scherer and John Fizer for moral support, and to my mother Anna Naydan for having constantly given me gentle urgings over time to complete the project. Special thanks to Philip Winsor of The Pennsylvania State University Press for his early support of the project.
I also owe a great debt of gratitude to the following individuals and organizations, who so kindly supported both a conference celebrating the 200-year anniversary of Skovoroda’s death at The Pennsylvania State University in 1994, whose proceedings have been published in 1998 as a special issue of Journal of Ukrainian Studies, as well as this publication project with their contributions: the Woskob Family Endowment in Ukrainian Studies and the Myroslawa and Iwan Iwanciw Fund for Ukrainian Studies, both at The Pennsylvania State University, the Self-Reliance Federal Credit Union (New York), Self-Reliance Federal Credit Union (Newark, N.J.), Self-Reliance Federal Credit Union (Hartford, Conn.), Ukrainian Fraternal Association, Providence Association of Ukrainian Catholics in America, Ukrainian Future Credit Union (Warren, Mich.), Rochester Ukrainian Federal Credit Union, and Ukrainian Credit Union (Minneapolis); and Mr. Peter and Mrs. Katerine Caruk, Ms. Mary Chimow, Mr. Longen and Mrs. Marian Chuchman, Dr. Bohdan Chudio, Mr. Adrian Dolinsky, Mr. Paul and Mrs. Irene Dzul, Ms. Olga Fedirko, Mr. Joseph Gellner, Mr. Michael Hlady, Mr. Michael and Mrs. Mary Hojsan, Ms. Maria Iskiw, Ms. Daria Kozak, Mr. Wasyl and Mrs. Anna Makuch, Mr. John Orichosky, Mr. Jaroslav and Mrs. Jaroslava Panchuk, Dr. Julian and Mrs. Myroslawa Pawlyszyn, Mr. Michael Tansky, Mr. Dmytro and Mrs. Helen Tataryn, Ms. Lana Tonkoschkur, Mr. Peter Twerdochlib, Mr. George and Mrs. Nina Woskob, Mr. Roman Zaharchuk, Mr. Carl Zapotny, and other anonymous donors.