ABSTRACT

Talented, brilliant, gifted, well-educated, sympathetic-these are the epithets that come to my mind first when I remember Viktor Pavlovich (for me, simply Vitya) Shvartsman. I never worked with him, nor did we met very much, but to talk to him, to have a chat with him for a while always was a pleasant prospect for me. I enjoyed speaking or arguing with him-and people like this are rare in one's life. As, in fact, people of Vitya's calibre and type are. Here both these aspects seem important to me, calibre being in a sense a measure of a person's talent and gift and type rather referring to personality, character traits, behaviour. I met people of outstanding abilities but who were very reserved, non-communicative, and kind of closed to those around-not exactly persons to chat with, for all their intellectual depth. Vitya was a happy blend of depth and brilliancy, I would say. I saw him last at a conference on the large-scale structure of the Universe, at Lake Balaton in Hungary, in July 1987 I think it was-just weeks before the tragic end of his young life. My wife, Vitya and I went for a walk one day and I remember I asked him a lot about his life. I asked him, I don't know why, whether he had married and his answer was no, he had not, but he was not lonely either. His work, which he appreciated very much (or to which he devoted so much effort, rather), did not live up to his expectations-being tied to a telescope high in the mountains was not exactly his idea of what happy life was like. Still, he did not seem to be in a blue mood and did not complain. He did not ever complain, for that matter-not to me, at any rate. The reason I am writing this is that his untimely death gives an idea of how Vitya must have suffered sometimes. He was ill with depression, as far as I know-a condition which affects a large number, up to tens of percent, of people. When the disease is in its gentle form, one speaks of being in 'bad mood', down-hearted, etc. For some, this is not even a disease at all. In severe cases, however, depression causes what can safely be called agonies and often makes the patient commit or attempt suicide. From what I have heard, this disease is due to

certain substances being secreted into the blood, and is currently amenable to drug treatment. I am not a specialist and it would be out of place to delve deeper into the subject but I feel sorry for Vitya and for all those who are missing him. I feel like giving a warning that being in 'bad mood' for too long may be a symptom of a disorder, that this is by no means a trifle and, at a certain stage, consulting a doctor becomes a real necessitywhich does not at all mean being a hypochondriac and wasting your time. Vitya's relatives will forgive me if I am being irrelevant but I only know that he visited a doctor-but did he really undergo a treatment, I am not so sure. It is a known fact that more than occasionally the tragic end of depression or the agonies it inflicts (which is also tragedy) come about as a result of false shame, shyness, of the fear of betraying oneself-feelings which cause one to disguise oneself. However, skepticism about the power of medicine may be a factor or the lack of attention and understanding on the part of those around. We see a cheerful and seemingly happy manbut in actual fact there is a gnawing in his heart and, if he says he feels bad, people tend to answer in a come-on-stop-it manner: you are totally OK, there is nothing wrong with you, and such like. My point here is that people like Vitya Shvartsman need protection, that we should give them a helping hand whenever possible. Was it possible to help Vitya? I do not know but surely this is the question which all of us who knew him should try to answer-at least to draw a lesson for the future.