Mykola Bajan, Tranquilles araignées de l'âme clandestine

  useless french, indeed

En parlant de Juifs oukraïniens, des Juifs et des Oukraïniens, de antisémitisme traditionnel des Oukraïnines et tout ça. Va paraître dans les jours qui viennent "Quiet Spiders of the Hidden Soul".

Youry Yanovsky et Mykola Bajan
deux survivants de la Renaissance fusillée

On peut parler d’un miracle : Bajan, Sossioura, Rylsky, Zerov, le génial Tytchyna... peu de littératures européennes peuvent se vanter d’avoir fait surgir une telle pléiade de grands poètes en un laps de temps aussi bref.

Piotr Rawicz, 1981

“Quiet Spiders of the Hidden Soul”

Mykola (Nik) Bazhan’s Early Experimental Poetry

This bilingual Ukrainian-English collection brings together the most interesting experimental works by Mykola (Nik) Bazhan, one of the major Ukrainian poets of the twentieth century. 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

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface
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

Edited by Oksana Rosenblum, Lev Fridman, and Anzhelika Khyzhnya

Series: Ukrainian Studies

ISBN: 9781644693940 (hardcover), 9781644693957 (paperback)

Pages: approx. 280 pp.; 8 illus.

Publication Date: September 2020

 

Mykola Bajan, 1904-1983

Mykola Bazhan (1904–1983), one of the most important representatives of Ukrainian literary renaissance of the 1920s, was born into an educated family of Polish-Lithuanian roots in Kamyanets’-Podil’s’kyi in Ukraine. Bazhan emerged as a futurist; however, in the 1920s and early 1930s he embraced romantic Expressionism, with frequent references to the turbulence of Ukrainian history. During his extensive career spanning some six decades, Bazhan was prolific as a poet, literary critic, translator, editor, art collector, and a political and cultural figure. Despite the fact that Bazhan not only survived the purges but eventually became an influential political figure, his early works continued to be repressed until the early 1990s.

* * *

En français l’œuvre de Mykola Bajan est accessible grâce à deux traductions de ses poésies. "Le Forum romain", parfaitement soviétique, "marrane", traduite par Léon Martirossian [trd. 1963, 'dégel khrouchtchevien']. Parue à Moscou dans "Oeuvres et Opinions", une revue de propagande. Bon. Et une autre, apparemment fait exprès pour l'Anthologie de la littérature ujkrainienne du XIe au XXe siècle (Anthologie sable 2004, 1002 p.), Le pré est béni par la neige, par Marie Venhrénivska :

Le pré est béni par la neige -
Dont les flocons dansent dans l'air, -
Et je me tais, comme je lis un livre
De secrets grands, doux et câlins,
Dans le soir enivrant et lent
Le sortilège du coeur. Oh ma tendresse douce !
Des oiseaux pourprés en feu d'artifice
Percent l'argenté firmament.
Je marche et me tais, et rêve de mes songes,
Et je fonds sur les paumes du silence, -
Cristal créé des mains saintes
Pour mon bonheur et mon chagrin.
Rêveur et somnolent je vais rôder sans but,
J'entrerai dans mon songe et je n'en sortirai plus,
Et tout silencieux je viendrai jusqu'au bout
Par le silence blanc, bon et éternel.


[trd. 2004, glorieuse Révolution orange]