"Quiet Spiders of the Hidden Soul": Mykola (Nik) Bazhan's Early Experimental Poetry
324"Quiet Spiders of the Hidden Soul": Mykola (Nik) Bazhan's Early Experimental Poetry
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Overview
As he moved from futurism to neoclassicism, symbolism to socialist realism, Bazhan consistently displayed a creative approach to theme, versification, and vocabulary. Many poems from his three remarkable early collections (1926, 1927, and 1929) remain unknown to readers, both in Ukraine and the West. Because Bazhan was later forced into the straitjacket of officially sanctioned socialist realism, his early poetry has been neglected. This collection makes these outstanding works available for the first time.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9781644693957 |
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Publisher: | Academic Studies Press |
Publication date: | 11/03/2020 |
Series: | Ukrainian Studies |
Pages: | 324 |
Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d) |
About the Author
Oksana Rosenblum is an art historian and translator residing in New York City. Her projects have included visual research for the newly created museums of Jewish History in Warsaw and Moscow. Oksana’s poetry translations from Ukrainian and book reviews appeared in Kalyna Review, National Translation Month, and Versopolis.
Lev Fridman is a Speech-Language Pathologist based in New York City. He has facilitated translation projects and publications, and his own writings and translations have appeared in Ugly Duckling Press, Odessa Review, and The Café Review. His most recent research has focused on the literary legacy of Mykola Bazhan.
Anzhelika Khyzhnya is a scholar and journalist. She holds an MA in Slavic Languages and Literature, and is a PhD candidate at the University of California, Berkeley. Her research interests include linguistic aspects of early 19th century Russian and Ukrainian prose, Ukrainian poetry of the 1920s, and the relationship between literature and the visual arts.
Table of Contents
AcknowledgmentsPreface
Oksana Rosenblum
Introduction: “The Ukrainian Avant-Garde and Its Roots: The Poetics of Mykola (Nik) Bazhan”
Galyna Babak
COLLECTIONS
Сімнадцятий патруль/The Seventeenth Patrol (1926)
Translator’s Essay: “Jumping the Corral Fence”
Svetlana Lavochkina
Пісня бійця / Trooper’s Song
Імобе з Галаму / Imobe of Galam
Різьблена тінь/The Sculpted Shadow (1927)
Translator’s Essay: “Mykola Bazhan’s The Sculpted Shadow: Echoes of Acmeism”
Dr. Amelia Glaser
Осіння путь / An Autumn Road
Підкови коней / Horseshoes
Нічний момент / A Moment in the Night
Неясний звук / Indistinct Sound
Папороть / Fern
Кров полонянок / The Blood of the Captive Women
Любисток / Lovage
Розмай-зілля / Love Potion
Дорога несходима / The Infinite Road
Будівлі/Edifices (1929)
Дорога / The Road
Нічний рейс / A Night Cruise
Моєму другові / To My Friend
Фокстрот / Foxtrot
Елегія атракціонів / Elegy for Circus Attractions
Будівлі / Edifices: Собор / Cathedral, Брама / Archway, Будинок / Building
Розмова сердець / Conversation of Hearts
Short Poems (1923-1927)
Translators’ Essays
Ostap Kin, Ainsley Morse, Mykyta Tyshchenko
Seán Monagle
Сурма юрм / Trumpet of Swarm
Рура-Марш / Ruhr-March
Аеро-марш / Aero-March
Мене зелених ніг / Hops of Green Legs
Цирк / Circus
Long Poems (1929-1930)
Гофманова ніч / Night of Hoffmann
Гетто в Умані / Ghetto in Uman’
Translator’s Essay
Prof. George G. Grabowicz
Сліпці / Blind Bards
Prose (1927)
Translator’s Essay
Dr. Roman Ivashkiv
Зустріч на перехресній станції: розмова трьох / Meeting at the Crossroad Station: A Conversation Among the Three (1927)
Afterward: “From the Whirlpool of Creativity to Living on the Edge of a Psychological Abyss: Mykola Bazhan in the 1920s and 1930s”
Dr. Eleonora Solovey
Information about the editors, translators, and contributing writers
Illustrations
Index
What People are Saying About This
“Mykola Bazhan, having gone through different phases of creative developmentfrom futuristic experiments in his youth to profound philosophical poetry at his life’s endremains a virtuoso of the word despite the era and country in which he lived and worked. It sometimes seems that each of Bazhan’s poems resembles a musical symphony with a complex structure of tones and semitones, with an orchestration of poetic meanings and with an incomprehensible yet attractive rhythm. He split words into nuclei and molecules as to recreate a unique plasticity of language from those elementswhich we call poetry.”
Vasyl Makhno, poet, author of Thread and Winter Letters
“The editors have not only assembled a marvelous group of translators who capture the nuances of Bazhan’s complex poetry in genuinely poetic English, but they have also supplemented the texts with extensive analyses that place Bazhan in the context of his time and explain the translating strategies that make Bazhan’s language come to life. A superb achievement deserving of all-round kudos!”
Alexander Motyl, author of Vanishing Points“Kudos to the editors for embarking on this challenging and overdue task, for developing a format fitting for the undertaking, and for assembling a team capable of bringing it to fruition. The legendary complexity of Mykola Bazhan’s poetryhis Avant-Garde experiments and his equally jarring Baroque Expressionism, his mastery of both short and long formsand his sometimes controversial yet undeniably vital place in literature of the twentieth century, are all carefully approached and presented in this volume. The book’s scholarly texts help to position Bazhan within the literary and political currents of that century while its translators’ essays offer the reader fascinating and elucidating peeks into the various strategies engaged in transporting these literary works into English. By providing a sampling of the writer’s best texts, including several that were rarely published in the original Ukrainian, Quiet Spiders of the Hidden Soul compellingly unleashes Bazhan’s word-ghosts unto the twenty-first century world.”
Mark Andryczyk, Associate Research Scholar, Ukrainian Studies Program, Harriman Institute, Columbia University
“Mykola Bazhan is a great twentieth-century poet who still remains largely unfamiliar to the English-language reader. This masterfully edited collection for the first time presents translations of his early poetry, the most innovative and powerful. By providing the original Ukrainian text alongside the translations, the editors allow readers of Ukrainian to access the poems, some of which were never allowed publication in the Soviet Union or were quickly removed from the accepted canon after their initial appearance.
Bazhan by his own admission favoured ‘organic, robust culture’ and avoided the conventional, saccharine and insipid. His work is muscular and crafted, and he chose controversial themes: violence, colonialism, wrenching change, and the burden of memory. He had an intense interest in futurism, the transformation of tradition, and the culture of Ukraine’s Jews. Having grown up in Kamianets-Podilsk and Uman, and having witnessed the political passions and revolutionary upheavals of the century’s second and third decades, he felt compelled to produce work that integrated clashing perspectives, introduced new rhythms and unexpected diction. Above all, his poetry is a meditation on Ukrainian culture and identity, Eastern and Western, from the baroque to the modern.
This volume is a labor of love by a team of translators, several of whom provide short essays describing their experience working on the translation. It also includes analytical pieces by leading scholars of poet’s life and work. Altogether, the book constitutes a remarkable achievement by a group that has long admired Bazhan’s work and recognized the importance of introducing him to a broader public.”
Myroslav Shkandrij, Professor Emeritus, University of Manitoba