Evasive Shadow of Life

Description

Volodymyr Svidzinsky (1885-1941) was one of the most prominent Ukrainian poets of his time and a virtuoso master of lyrical poetic miniatures. For a number of reasons, his poetic oeuvre was published in its entirety only quite recently and for many this publication proved to be an unexpected, even sensational discovery of a masterful, as if hitherto unknown, lyrical poet. Svidzinsky’s poetry represents a unique synthesis of classical poetic tradition, Ukrainian modernism, folkloric elements, and mythopoetic way of thinking. Seen by Soviet censors as completely incompatible with the obligatory Soviet “artistic method” of socialist realism, his poetry was, for decades, banned in the USSR and, thus, absent in the intellectual and cultural discourse in Ukraine. The poet himself was brutally murdered by the Soviet secret police. A key role in the preservation and propagandizing of his poetry was played by Ukrainian émigré writers and intellectuals. What is also significant is that the Soviet government’s attempts to erase Svidzinsky’s poetry from the collective memory of his compatriots in Ukraine were strongly resisted by the Ukrainian dissident intellectuals in the 1960s and 1970s. Today Svidzinsky’s legacy has finally assumed its rightful place in the Ukrainian literary canon. For the English reader, this bilingual edition of Svidzinsky’s selected poems represents the first opportunity to get acquainted with a broader selection of poetic works of this masterful lyrical poet.