The history of U. p. can be divided into three major periods, made all the more distinct by sharp discontinuities between them. Underlying and producing these discontinuities are profound shifts in U. society; not only do basic political and social structures disappear, to be replaced by entirely new ones, but, at least until the modern period, U. literary and historical consciousness does not succeed in bridging these changes.
The first period, from the beginnings in the 10th-11th c. to roughly the 14th c., coincides largely with the lit. of Kievan Rus’, which by general consensus is taken as the common patrimony of the East Slavs—the Ukrainians, Byelorussians, and Russians. The second, middle period, from the late 16th to the late 18th cs., reflects primarily the poetics of the baroque and witnesses a flowering of U. lit. and culture, even though later the bookish and church-dominated character of this lit. came to be seen as a fatal flaw, given 19th-c. U. sociopolitical development, and the entire period underestimated or even dismissed from the canon. The third period, from the beginning of the 19th c. to the present, coincides with the birth of the modern U. nation and the emergence of contemp. literary U. based on the vernacular. Because of the strong populist current underlying this political and cultural revival, the idea and content of “U. lit.” was often identified, throughout the 19th and even into the 20th c., with this third period alone.
In the course of the early modern (17th-18th cs.) and modern periods poetry has consistently played a dominant role. However, the privileged place of poetry in the system of genres of U. lit. must be seen as reflecting the concrete circumstances and limitations within which it existed; through much of the 18th and 19th cs., for example, U. lit. survived practically without institutions (publishing houses, a press, the theater) and without a social consensus as to its validity, to its “right to life” alongside the Imperial Rus. lit., and indeed for some decades in the face of official proscription. While such strictures were highly deleterious for prose and drama, however, poetry not only survived but grew, establishing trads. and a certain hegemony.
The question of the role of poetry in old U. (Kievan) lit. is made particularly complex by the characteristic diffuseness and interpenetration of genres in that lit. In general, from this period there are no extant works that point to distinct poetic genres, let alone to theories of poetics, histories of or commentaries on poetry, and so on. This absence is striking in view of the fact that Byzantine lit., which served as a primary if not always immediate model for the old Kievan lit., had a rich gamut of poetic genres. We can, however, speak of poetry in Old U. lit. in terms of (1) the oral trad., (2) translated and “borrowed” lit., and (3) verse elements in the original lit. The first of these, with which histories of U. and Rus. lit. traditionally begin, is complex and surrounded by much confusion. The major misconception is that Old U. oral lit. is to be identified with folklore, with the creativity of the folk; in fact, as in various other analogous situations, this lit., while oral, was most probably a product of a court or “high” trad, which only over the centuries “sank” into the repertoire of folklore. The actual evidence for this oral poetry, moreover, is only indirect. Whether as the epic cycle of byliny (U. staryny ) which depict the Kievan context and setting, but which were preserved only in the northern Rus. territories, or as the broad gamut of ritual poetry related to the agricultural cycle and various pagan rites, the actual texts date only from the 18th-19th cs., so that conclusions about the range and function of oral lit. in this earliest period must remain speculative.
Verse as such is found in the various translations and adaptations of Byzantine liturgical lit., particularly hymnography These hymns influenced contemp. Kievan texts and even had an impact on the bookish versification of the 16th-18th cs. By general consensus the major poetic work of this period is the Igor Tale (Slovo o polku Igoreve ) describing a relatively minor and unsuccessful military campaign of 1185. Pu-tatively written sometime in the early 13th c., it was discovered and published at the turn of the 19th c. Although some doubts remain, its authenticity has been argued on both linguistic and historical grounds. Its syncretic form, mixing military and cautionary tale, lyrical moments with dynastic programme (which some, ahistorically, prefer to read as “patriotic” fervor) is also taken as proof of its authenticity. Its sonorous, vivid lang. and imagery, its deft many-stranded narrative of rhythmic prose, have made of the Slovo for all the modern East Slavic lits. the quintessential poetic correlative of Kievan Rus’.
The period of the 14th to the late 16th c is remarkable and still puzzling for its dearth of cultural and literary texts; the ravages of the Mongol invasion, the Tartar raids, the peculiar cultural stasis during the Lithuanian domination of the U. lands, and the movement of Orthodox churchmen and sees north of Muscovy only partially explain this lacuna. A major exception to this bleak picture is the emergence sometime in the 16th c of a new form of oral poetry, the duma (pl. dumy ), which supplanted the older staryny and was to have a strong impact on much of subsequent U. p. Though oral (the dumy were sung by wandering, often blind singers), this was not a narrowly folk-loric genre—its perspective encompassed all of U. society. The dumy, reflecting elements of heroic epic, ballad, and elegy, are above all “sacred songs” conveying profound social and historical experiences. The latter are highlighted in cycles of dumy dealing with wars with the Türks and Tartars, and then later with the 17th-c. wars of liberation from Poland. Apart from introducing a vibrant new form, the dumy also establish the pattern of a popular poetry that can lay claim to being more “authentic”, closer to the national experience, than any bookish form.
At the end of the 16th c., U. society and culture undergo a remarkable revitalization, which culminates in the mid 17th c with an autonomous Cossack state that, with changing fortunes, was to last more than a century. Under the impact first of Ren. ideas, but soon thereafter of the still more pervasive baroque, U. p. proceeds to expand its repertoire of genres, and with the establishment of ever more centers of learning, esp. the Mohyla Academy in Kiev (founded in 1632), it finds a self-confidence that allows it to compete with the highly developed and sophisticated Polish poetry of the time. Nevertheless, a characteristic feature of Middle U. lit. is its bilingualism: throughout the 17th and early 18th cs., it is written in U. or in Polish, depending on theme or genre or projected audience. By the mid 18th c this bilingualism— again reflecting a concrete social and political reality—becomes U.-Rus. In both cases the choice of the other lang. reflects not a hedging of the writer’s U. identity but rather the conventions of the literary system.
The earliest poetry of this period, beginning from the 1580s and ‘90s, is syllabic in meter, in genre emblematic and heraldic. Throughout the first part of the 17th c., U. p. is represented mainly by panegyric, historical, and didactic verse. The poetry of praise in particular reflects the emergence of new cultural centers and leaders, such as Jelisej Pletenec’kyj, archimandrite of the Caves Monastery in Kiev (e.g. The Image of Virtue, 1618), or the metropolitan Petro Mohyla (e.g. the Eucharisterion, 1632, or the Euphonia, 1633), who establishes an Academy that is not only the mainstay of the cultural efflorescence of 17th-c. U. but the major center of learning in the Slavic Orthodox world. The genre system at this time is still not crystallized, with historic narrative often merged with lament or polemic (e.g. The Lament of Ostrog, 1636), or the didactic with the lyrical (e.g. Kyryl Trankvilion Stavrovec’kyj’s The Much-Valued Pearl, 1646). The panegyric mode itself may be infused with dramatic elements, as in Kasjan Sakovyc’s eulogy of Hetman Sahajdacnyj (1622).
By the second half of the 17th c. U. p. shows a relatively broad range of forms and a differentiation into “high” genres (reflecting baroque poetics) and popular genres. In the former, such important poets as Lazar Baranovyc and esp. loan Velyckovs’kyj, while writing in both bookish U. and Polish, and while still predominantly reflecting religious themes, give a new depth to national self-expression. The popular genres in turn—fables, satires, and Christmas and Easter verse—are mostly anonymous and close to the vernacular. At times, as in the poetry of the wandering monk Klymentij Zinovijev, with its encyclopedic overview of U. life and customs (incl. a large collection of proverbs), they are an invaluable mirror to a whole epoch.
The early 18th c. witnesses the maturation of U. school drama—in the works of Feofan Proko-povyc, Lavrentij Horka, Manujil Kozac?yns’kyj, and Mytrofan Dovholevs’kyj. Prokopovyc’s tragicomedy Vladymir (1705), the best known of these, exemplifies the didactic poetics of this genre, as the historical theme—the Christianization of Kievan Rus’—becomes a vehicle for political satire and for the apotheosis of the U. hetman, Mazepa. After the defeat of Mazepa in 1709, Prokopovyc became the prime ideologue of the new Rus. state founded by Peter I; his departure for St. Petersburg epitomizes the massive movement of U. scholars, clergyman, and writers to Russia at the beginning of the 18th c. In broad historical terms the growth and centralization of the Rus. empire signal in the course of the 18th c the ever-greater provincialization of Ukraine. In poetry two significant developments accompany this. On the one hand, there is an ever more conservative and hidebound reliance in books of poetics on the norms and conventions of the baroque (which in Russia is quickly abandoned—beginning with Prokopovyc himself—for neoclassicism). On the other hand, as a function of the new laws promulgated by Peter I prohibiting the publication of books in U., U. lit. was forced to go underground, to exist only in ms. form. Various genres did, however, survive: lyric poetry, puppet plays, burlesque verses, dialogues and verse satires. Paradoxically, at the end of the 18th c there appears the most significant talent of premodern U. lit.—the peripatetic mystic philosopher and poet Hryhorij Sko-voroda (1722–94). His book of devotional poetry, The Garden of Divine Songs, synthesizing Cl. and biblical, mystical and folk elements, remains the highpoint of 18th-c. U. p.
Modern U. p. is traditionally dated with the appearance of Ivan Kotljarevs’kyj’s Enejida of 1798, a travesty of Virgil’s Aeneid . Finding its analogue to the fall of Troy in the destruction of the last Cossack stronghold (the Zaporozhian Sitch), marking the end of U. autonomy in the 18th c., the Enejida focuses on the wanderings of a band of Cossacks, and in the course of its six cantos provides an encyclopedic and loving account of U. provincial life and customs. Mixing an energetic optimism, satire, nostalgia for the past, and above all broad humor, the poem became a rallying point for a new U. lit. in the vernacular. Although he abandoned the old syllabic versification in favor of the iambic tetrameter that was then ascendant in Rus. poetry, Kotljarevs’kyj did draw ona broad range of comic and burlesque devices characteristic of 18th-c. U. p. In fact, his example was almost too successful, in that for over three decades U. p. came to be dominated by the burlesque mode.
In this period even talented poets like Petro Hulak-Artemovs’kyj (1790–1865) paid their dues to this trad, (popularly called “Kotljarevscyna”)— in his case by writing travesties of Horace’s Odes. Beginning with the 1820s, however, U. romantic (or more precisely, preromantic) poets, like Lev Borovykovs’kyj, Amvrozij Metlyns’kyj, and Mykola Kostomarov (1817–85—who later became a major U. and Rus. historian and spokesman for the U. cause), introduced an entirely new poetics: in conjunction with the ethnographic historical and antiquarian work of such scholars as I. Sreznevskij, M. Bodjans’kyj, and M. Maksymovyc, the focus of this poetry fell on the turbulent Cossack past and on the wealth of U. folklore.
A similar literary and cultural revival was initiated in the mid 1830s in western Ukraine, then under Austria-Hungary. Led by such young clergymen-poets as Markian Ssasskevyc (1811–43), Ivan Vahylevyc? (1811–66), and Jakiv Holovac’kyj (1814–88), the so-called Ruthenian Trinity, it sought to legitimize the vernacular lang., to rediscover historical and ethnic roots, and to advance cultural and national autonomy.
A sea change in the range and depth—and status—of U. p. was effected by the first true romantic, Taras Shevchenko (1814–61). Born a serf and freed only at the age of 24, Shevchenko virtually at once came to be lionized by both U. and Rus. society as a uniquely powerful and inspired poet. Arrested in 1847 in connection with the secret Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius and exiled for ten years, he returned in ill health but with poetic powers unimpaired. Seen as a martyr and bard even in his lifetime, Shevchenko became upon his death the animating spirit of the U. national movement, and indeed the object of a popular cult to this day. Shevchenko’s poetry, traditionally called the Kobzar (the Minstrel) after his first slim collection of 1840, divides along the lines of intimate lyric poetry (with a range of folkloric stylizations); political poetry, with powerful excoriations of social and national oppression, particularly by Tsarist authority; and narrative poems, incl. historical poems and ballads. All of these modes are unified and guided by structures of mythical thought which basically project a movement from the present state of victimization—personal as well as collective—to a redeemed and purified humanity, where “on the renewed earth / there will be no enemy, no tempter, / but there will be a son and a mother, / and there will be people on this earth.”
Pantelejmon Kuliss (1819–97), friend and critic, exegete and rival of Shevchenko, also significantly broadened the range of U. p.—by new historical themes, expanded formal concerns, and, not least, translations of Shakespeare and the Bible, of Byron and other Western poets. Many of Shevchenko’s successors tended to be overshadowed however, and their voice distorted by his Muse. This was particularly true of the fine western U. poet Jurij Fed’kovyc (1834–88). Of those who resisted the pull of Shevchenko’s model the most important were two poets on the borderline of romanticism and realism, Stepan Rudans’kyj (1834–73) and Jakiv Sc?oholiv (1823–98).
Generally, poetry in the latter half of the 19th c was strained by the weight of perceived realist obligations and, more concretely, by official Rus. edicts of 1863 and 1876 banning the publication and importation of U. books. A poet who exemplifies both the call of national, civic duty and the thrust of an authentic, personal poetry is the western U. Ivan Franko (1856–1916). A man of indefatigable energy, prose writer and dramatist, critic, translator and scholar as well as poet, Franko too became the conscience of his people. His poetry covers a broad gamut—exhortatory, historical, satiric, lyrical, and confessional, this last is by far the most successful.
The period of modernism, generally from the 1890s to World War I, witnessed the differentiation of the U. literary marketplace and the emergence of poetry for a more select public. One of the first to turn to European and universal historical and philosophical themes was Larysa Kosac-Kvitka (pen name, Lesja Ukrajinka; 1872–1913); her drama (much more than her lyric poetry) serves to establish these concerns in U. p. Her masterpiece, The Forest Song, draws its inspiration from folklore and psychological introspection.
On the eve of World War I there appeared the symbolist poetry of Oleksandr Oles’ (1878–1944), Mykola Voronyj (1871–1942), and Mykola Filjan-s’kyj (1873–1938), an anticipation of the outstanding poet of the 20th c—Pavlo Tychyna (1891–1967). At first a symbolist and spirited supporter of the U. national revolution, and at the end of his life an orthodox spokesman for the Soviet system, Tychyna underwent a complex evolution, but in his early and mature poetry, at least, remains the most innovative and influential poetic voice of his time.
In the 1920s, with the establishment of Soviet rule in Ukraine and esp. the official policy of “Ukrainization”, U. lit. for the first time since the 17th c enjoyed the support of a state; its growth and energy were spectacular, as manifested in the proliferation of separate movements, particularly the neoclassicists, with such outstanding poets as Maxym Ryl’s’kyj (1895–1969), Mykola Zerov (1890–1930?); and the futurists, with Myxajl Semenko (1892–1930?), the theorist and impresario of the movement, and Mykola Bažan (1904–83), who began as a futurist but quickly outgrew it to become, by virtue of his intellectualism and historicism, the second most important U. Soviet poet of the century. Adding to the variety, ferment, and sheer breadth of expression of U. p. in the 1920s and early ‘30s were the constructivists (e.g. Valerjan Polishchuk), neoro-mantics (e.g. Oleksa Vlyz’ko), and others who belonged to no formal organization or movement—such as Jevhen Pluzhnyk or esp. Volo-dymyr Svidzins’kyj (1885–1941), master of lyrical, almost mystical introspection.
But by the 1930s the Stalinist terror had crushed the national and cultural revival, and hundreds of writers perished in camps and purges. With Soviet U. p. reduced to silence or the empty rhet. of paeans to Stalin and the Party (most poignant when written by such as Tychyna, or indeed Ryl’s’ky and Bažan), the poetic scene shifted to western Ukraine, then under Poland, or to Poland itself, and Czechoslovakia, where various poets and writers had emigrated, fleeing the Bolsheviks. Though in the inter-war period the literary climate there was often obscured by nationalist fervor, such poets as Jevhen Malanjuk, Oleksa Ste-fanovyc, Oksana Ljaturyns’ka, and others did make distinct contributions, the greatest being that of Bohdan Ihor Antonych (1909–37). Beginning with formal experimentation and a fascination with the rich imagination of his native Carpathian (Lemko) region, he attains in his mature poetry an expressive power and metaphysical and symbolic complexity that put him in the forefront of 20th-c. European poetry.
Immediately after World War II, U. p. had a short period of intense activity in the emigration, beginning with the Displaced Person camps in Germany, where long-repressed energies came to fruition in a multitude of publications. Outstanding among a range of poets of the middle generation were Oleh Zujewskyj and Vasyl Barka. Each, in rejecting the rhet. of the earlier emigré generation, tended toward a hermetic difficulty, Zujewskyj by searching for a pure poetry without emotional and even semantic signposts, and Barka by a baroque lang. and religiosity. The highpoint of U. emigré poetry, however, was the informal “New York Group” that arose in the late 1950s and lasted to the early 1970s. Emma Andijevs’ka, Jurij Tarnawsky, Bohdan Boychuk, and Bohdan Rub-chak, all of them born between the wars, but very much attuned to the West, gave to U. p. a new and valuable avant-garde cast.
Even though decimated in the 1930s and then long repressed, Soviet U. p. remained in the mainstream. A major revival occurred in the early and mid 1960s with the appearance of such significant young poets as Vasyl’ Symonenko, Lina Kostenko, Mykola Vinhranovs’kyj, Dmytro Pavlychko, and the most talented of them, Ivan Drach. Their common concern for authenticity and lyric intensity was amplified by historical and ethical concerns. In contrast to the rather traditional poetics of his contemporaries, the poetry of Vasyl Holo-borod’ko moved toward the surreal and fantastic; for this very reason it was largely not published and had only a limited impact. This is all the more true of such dissident poets as Vasyl’ Stus and Ihor Kalynets. Most significantly, however, the liberalization of Soviet society then political collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1980s had a profound and positive effect on the general climate of U. p.—in its rehabilitation of victims of repression and of historical memory as such, in its galvanization of various established poets, in its reassertion of the social and historical role of U. p., and above all in its facilitation of the emergence of a new generation of poets in the U. republic.
User Comments Add a comment…