AUDIO: SITTING UPRIGHT, BEING PRODUCTIVE ...

Recorded by Andy Patterson @ The Boar's Nest 4.19.09

MORE FYLYPOVYCH ...

Pavlo Fylypovych

***

Moon's silver beak
There, in the distance, above.
A city - stone block,
Grief and dream - torches.

A quite usual thing-
And unnoticed by me -
Night wandering
To black, mute fields.

A quite usual everything -
Table and paper, books.
A wave (whose?) carries
Quiet my thoughts.

Disappeared ceiling, walls -
Like they weren't anywhere.
Somewhere walk shepherds,
The heart of roads - hard.

I hear your first shout,
Predecessor, a shout of land -
You, in caves of habit,
Listen to the instigations of evil.

To the darkeness of languages : mine! -
Wife, flock, arrow.
There your son rises,
Sees the sun and an eagle.

The first thought flies
To a boundless world,
The first song rings,
In the song - sunflower myth.

Everywhere flies an eagle,
The sun burns for everything,
From golden springs
Pours joy and laughter.

Maybe, not a son, but a grandson,
Maybe, not a grandson, but all, -
Ascend the kernels of science
In hymns to clear beauty.

A word grows, lives,
Small flower and oak.
Cock sings, and floats
Moon's silver beak.

A thought grows, as though
A tower raised by Babylon.
Passion, tenderness, love,
The dreamer's wise vision...


***

Look, look, boundless fallows
And somber clouds' threat in the distance.
Carried by the wind are great alarms -
Wild wind and bloody days.

Not the first year since vanished the gods,
Remaining are people and corpses as one.
They chew and weep: give us some help,
They oversleep calmly - give us- in coffins.

I hear misfortune. I am troubled by pity ,
And vain pain is overcome by consolation,
For the past, unimpassioned I've been.

For I shall never part with a dream of mine:
Stood a man on black tillage,
As the sky, proud, strong, as the earth.

- translated by Curtis Jensen



Павло Филипович

***

Місяця срібний дзюб
Там, в далині, вгорі.
Місто - каміний куб,
Сум і сон - ліхтарі.

Зовсім звичайне річ -
І не помітив я -
Помандрувала ніч
В чорні, німі поля.

Зовсім звичайне все -
Стіл і папір, книжки.
Хвиля (чия?) несе
Тихі мої думки.

Зникла стеля, стіни -
Мов не було ніде.
Десь ідуть чабани,
Серце шляхів - тверде.

Чую твій перший крик,
Пращуре, крик землі -
Ти у печерах звик
Слухать намови злі.

Темним мовив: моє! -
Жінка, табун, стріла.
Онде твій син встає,
Бачить сонце й орла.

Перша думка летить
У неозорий світ,
Перша пісня дзвенить,
В пісні - сонячшний міт.

Всюди літа орел,
Сонце горить для всіх,
Із золотих джерел
Ллється радість і сміх.

Може, й не син, а внук,
Може, не внук, а всі, -
Сходять зерна наук
В гимнах ясній красі.

Слово росте, живе
Квітка мала і дуб.
Півень співа, й пливе
Місяця срібний дзюб.

Думка росте, немов
Башту дме Вавилон.
Пристрасть, ніжність, любов,
Мрійника мудрий сон...


***

Дивись, дивись, безмежені перелоги
І хмар насуплених погроза вдалині.
Проносить вітер виклики тривоги -
Шалений вітер і криваві дні.

Не перший рік як розникали боги,
Остались люде та мерці одні.
Жують і плачуть: дайте-бо підмоги,
Заснуть спокійно дайте у труні.

Я чую жаль. Мене турбує звада,
Та марний біль перемогла відрада,
Бо у минулім не кохаюсь я,

Бо розстанусь з мрією моєю:
Став чоловік над чорною ріллею,
Як небо, гордий, сильний, як земля.



Fylypovych, Pavlo [Fylypovyč], b 1 September 1891 in the village of Kaitanivka, Kyiv gubernia, d 3 November 1937 in Sandarmoch, Karelia, RFSSR. (Photo: Pavlo Fylypovych.) Poet and literary scholar. Fylypovych studied at Galagan College and at Kyiv University (1910–5), where he later was a professor (1917–35). His first poems were published, under the pseudonym Pavel Zorev, in Russianjournals beginning in 1910. After the Revolution of 1917 Fylypovych switched to writing poetry in Ukrainian. He contributed to the Ukrainian symbolist almanac Muzahet (1919). In the 1920s he became a member of the Neoclassicists and published two collections of poetry—Zemlia i viter (Earth and Wind, 1922) and Prostir (Space, 1925). Fylypovych was an associate member of the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences and secretary of its Historical-Literary Society. His first major scholarly work was Zhizn’ i tvorchestvo E.A. Boratynskogo (The Life and Works of E.A. Boratynsky, 1917). Fylypovych is the author of over 100 scholarly articles and reviews. He made a major contribution to the comparative study of Ukrainian literature, particularly to the study of Taras Shevchenko and Ukrainian romanticism. He edited (and wrote introductions for) the collection of articles Shevchenko ta ioho doba (Shevchenko and His Period, 2 vols, 1925–6) and a collection on Ivan Franko (1927); he also edited, with long introductions, collections of works by Lesia Ukrainka, Olha Kobylianska, Oleksander Oles, Nikolai Gogol, Nikolai Leskov, and Aleksandr Pushkin. A collection of his literary studies, Z novitn’oho ukraïns’koho pys’menstva (From the New Ukrainian Literature), was published in 1929. Fylypovych was arrested in August 1935 during the Stalinist terror, presumably for his critical attitude to official Soviet cultural policies, and sentenced to 10 years in concentration camps. He was imprisoned in the Solovets Islands labor camp and murdered during the mass executions of political and other prisoners marking the twentieth anniversary of the October Revolution of 1917. His collected poems were published posthumously in Poeziï (Poems, Munich 1959), as were his major scholarly articles, collected in Pavlo Fylypovych, Literatura: Statti, rozvidky (Literature: Articles, Studies, Reviews, Melbourne 1971). In Ukraine, a book of Fylypovych’s poetry Poezii (Poems) appeared in Kyiv in 1989 and a collection of his literary studies was published in 1991.

Roman Senkus