First we need to cure the unhealthy foundations of our epoch.
Bohdan-Ihor Antonych
To serve a people is to serve God.
Ivan Ohiienko
These two statements capture the quintessence of the activities of two great Ukrainians who reached the peak of their glory in the 1930s on the territory of pre-war Poland.
In the 1930s Ivan Ohiienko, an ex-Minister of the Ukrainian National Republic and an emigrant at the time, published his journals Ridna Mova (1933–39) and Nasha Kultura (1935–37) in Warsaw, while Bohdan-Ihor Antonych published in Lviv the collections of his poems: Pryvitannia zhuttia (Welcoming Life, 1931), Try persteni (Three Rings, 1934), and Knyha Leva (The Book of the Lion, 1936). Two more collections—Zelena Yevanheliia (The Green Gospel) and Rotatsii (Rotations) were published posthumously in 1937.
Antonych’s first book of poems Welcoming Life attracted the attention of Lvivites, while the second one, Three Rings, is described by scholars as a landmark event that put the author among the top Western Ukrainian writers. It exhibited, according to Dmytro Pavlychko’s apt observation, such defining features of his talent as “the poetry-as-painting approach, philosophical ramifications, and brilliant linguistic victories.”
The Society of Writers and Journalists gave Antonych an award for this collection. On Jan. 31, 1935, he said at the awards ceremony: “In my poems I emphasize my national and even racial identity both in the content and, most importantly, in the form.”
This national thrust of Antonych’s poetry appealed to Ohiienko.
Ohiienko wrote a review of the collection Try lita (Three Summers) in Nasha kultura. This was a respectable journal in the Ukrainian environment outside the Soviet Union. It was designed to be free, scholarly, and independent in order to “freely sow the seeds of national scholarship in the wide circles of our intelligentsia.” From its inception the journal strove to be an elite-grade periodical and create top-level nationally oriented culture. “Only spiritual culture creates a true national elite that is spiritually strong, ethically healthy, perseverant in life, and nationally responsible,” wrote Ohiienko, the journal’s editor and publisher.
He gave the journal a clearly state-oriented and nation-building character, which was understandable and justified for the Ukrainian diaspora in the interwar years. Soviet Ukraine was viewed as a dependent country subjected by the Bolshevik empire. In this light the following statement by Ohiienko takes on special significance: “For a people without a state spiritual culture plays a tremendous role because it enables the people to surpass the nation that has subdued it politically. We have plenty of examples in history when a physically more powerful people subjected a people that had greater spiritual culture, but was unable to keep hold of it for very long. Spiritual culture always overcomes.”
Ohiienko’s programmatic statements came through in his assessment of Antonych’s Three Rings. His review of this volume was a continuation of his reviews published back in 1935 (“The Language of Bohdan-Ihor Antonych,” in: Ridna mova, Part 6, pp. 255–262). Ohiienko praised Antonych’s language as being completely standard and based on the central Ukrainian dialects. This feature appealed to Ohiienko’s ideological views and his promotion of a united Ukraine and a conscious Ukrainian nation.
Rejoicing over Antonych’s talent, Ohiienko says: “From now on Ukraine becomes one Nation through its cultured, i.e., its main, language.” For Ohiienko Antonych’s language is graphic proof of his motto: one people, one standard language.
Antonych indeed deserved praise from Ohiienko, who had deep knowledge of the Ukrainian language. Iryna Vilde remembered that at the Lviv University young Antonych had problems establishing closer contacts with radically-minded Ukrainian students because of his Lemko dialect: girls would “shun him, thinking he was a Pole who put on a nice face for us, Ukrainian girls.”
Antonych diligently studied standard Ukrainian, as well as Ukrainian and world literature, Slavic languages, English, German, and Spanish. He copied the words he did not know, synonyms, and metaphors, took notes of works on the history of literature, philosophy, art, did translations, and wrote poems. Hundreds of his cards have survived—on these cards Antonych wrote down interesting phrases taken from the works of Ukrainian writers and placed accents on individual words.
Antonych was also a member of a Ukrainian student circle at the scholarly section of the Education Supporters Society.
All these efforts gave Antonych an advantage over his Galician friends in the knowledge of standard Ukrainian. After reading his poems, many guessed him as a native of the Dnieper regions of Ukraine and then would exclaim in disbelief: “What? Are you really a Lemko?”
Antonych’s fianc e, Olha Oliinyk, remembers that Antonych held Ohiienko’s journal Ridna mova in high regard. He diligently and consistently studied each issue. He would often point to this journal and say: “This is a memory of my first years.”
In the abovementioned review in Ridna mova Ohiienko analyzed Antonych’s language from a scholarly point of view and highly praised it. He pointed to its rich imagery, transparency of similes, the beauty of epithets, the ease of rhymes, etc. Ohiienko emphasized the poet’s consistent use of the stress patterns that were typical for standard Ukrainian. These features prompted Ohiienko to call Antonych a poet by God’s grace, the creator of common values for Ukraine, and a poet of entire Ukraine. Ohiienko also observed Antonych’s pantheism: “The poet was united with nature in one indivisible whole and adopted a special worldview, saying ‘I am a pagan,’ which yielded purely poetic language.”
As a literary critic, Ohiienko focused on the promotion f united Ukraine as a special merit of Antonych’s collected poems and dwelled on his definition as a “remarkable writer that needs to be heeded in Ukrainian literature.” Ohiienko paid his greatest attention to singling out the components that defined Antonych’s talent as a lyrical poet. There include, above all, the sincerity of feeling (“no tenseness, no conjured up topics”) and animation of nature.
The key word that expresses the poet’s originality, according to Ohiienko, is soniashnyi (sunny). The critic wrote: “As a Lemko and a native of Verkhovyna, our poet grew up under the mountainous sun and it became his guidebook on existence—he saw the entire world in the sun. ‘As a hot tulip, the sun was shining in young dreams,’ and it was this sun that was the source of Antonych’s poetry, the true poetry that brings sunrays into your heart, as during the Easter time when you were a child, and your shack begins to overflow with bright light, as if God himself came on a visit.” Contemporary scholars argue that Antonych’s poetry has Biblical esthetics and a double — pagan and Christian —foundation. His poems speak about coming to know the Almighty, striving for harmony with the cosmos, bringing good news and salvation, and foreboding the apocalypse, which points to the Biblical roots of his works.
Under the circumstances of the time (discouragement after the failed national liberation struggle), of special relevance was praise heaped on Antonych as an optimistic poet with a bright outlook. According to Ohiienko, his lyrical poems are “pure, fresh, and lively,” “intoxicating and brilliant,” and “irrepressible”; “with his soul the poet senses the great value of God’s greatest gift—youth—and is filled to the brim with this happy feeling”; the poet uses youth, the only “unblemished and nice thing” to paint everything in “bright, joyful, and cheerful colors.”
Ohiienko’s review reveals his deep religious convictions. Pointing to Antonych’s pantheistic worldview, he raises a logical question: “It is in vain that Antonych uses the fashionable word ‘pagan,’ as others are doing now, too. Does Christianity, especially in its original form, forbid union with nature? Didn’t the Christ love nature ardently? Aren’t His best teachings linked to mountains, rivers, and the sea? Isn’t the poet who wrote the Book of Psalms singing the songs of nature? Has Antonych forgotten hundreds of sincere Christian hermits who left this world to join nature? Why were our ancient monasteries founded in the most poetical cities? By learning the grandeur and beauty of nature we come to know our God deeply, and in this endeavor there is no necessity whatsoever to turn into a pagan.”
Ohiienko had more to say to the highly respected poet. He commented on the poet’s civic stand from the point of view of state-building. Acknowledging the social motifs in his works—‘pensive country,’ ‘the Lemkos’ never-ending misery’ — he expressed a wish that the poet shape himself into a citizen. The scholar believed that the poet-citizen was looking through still too “shyly” from behind Three Rings. It was Ohiienko’s deep conviction that Antonych’s poems existed, for the time being, for the elect only.
This claim calls for an explanation. “Poetry for the elect” is a very true description because Antonych wrote as a talented, extremely well-educated intellectual. He received his M.A. from the Department of Philosophy at the Lviv University. The university was going to send him, as a gifted student, to Bulgaria for in-depth study of the Slavic languages. However, the son of more influential parents was chosen instead.
Antonych was a member of the Association of Independent Ukrainian Artists (ANUM) and edited the journal Dazhboh. He was justly considered the greatest Western Ukrainian writer, second only to Ivan Franko.
What concerns Antonych’s stand on civic issues, it is best to cite the poet himself. On many occasions he emphasized that he was a national poet. He was convinced that “an artist had to serve for the glory of his Motherland.” Despite his declared indifference to politics, through his works Antonych was heading toward “a union with the civic stand of classical Ukrainian poetry.” That is why he turned to Shevchenko and his poetry, which for him was “more durable than bronze and copper.”
In “The Country of Good News” he described Shevchenko as “fire, person, and storm” and a man who “is looking a hundred years ahead). He also wrote about Franko, calling him “a teacher and poet, an educator, and a builder” who taught us “to boldly direct the future paths to the goal.” In the abovementioned awards speech he emphasized that his national identity was in both content and form.
Antonych was criticized from all sides for his declared non-partisan position. In one of his articles O. Havryliuk, a pro-Communist author, put him alongside poets with a nationalistic bend, whose ideas he classified as bourgeois.
Antonych believed that art is a “social value” and thus a “national value.” In the article “National Art” he wrote: “An artist is national when he acknowledges himself as a representative of this nation and feels that his psyche is in accord with the collective consciousness of his people.” His next volume The Book of the Lion (1936), which was published prior to Ohiienko’s review, contains the poem “Motherland” in which the author openly declared his civic values: “Listen, the Motherland is calling / Her son with the simplest, / Unique, and eternal words.”
The same collection includes the poem “A Word to the Shot” that is permeated with grief over the savage massacre of Ukrainian writers by Stalin’s henchmen in 1934. He admired the heroic feat of young Ukrainians near Kruty and condemned the aggression of Fascist Italy.
Ohiienko did not have the full picture, but his ideological imperatives dictated certain views. Above all, he cared for nation building and strengthening the Ukrainian spirit, a prerequisite for the nation’s revival. This explains his comment: “A poet must serve not only pure poetry, but also the ill-fated Ukrainian Nation—no one should forget about this even for a minute. Meanwhile, Antonych is far from this: his topics are international and are not building blocks for our Nation. This is poetry for the elect.”
Then, in the concluding remarks, we read: “Today, when we must rally all self-conscious Ukrainian forces to win a happy future for our People, our poets must play the most prominent role in this. With their fiery words they must kindle the national spirit and enlighten our future path, bringing better life to our people.
“The purely lyrical topics are needed for festivities. Meanwhile, we are enveloped in heavy and cruel everyday life. It is our deep belief that many of our contemporary poets, including the poet of the sun Antonych, will soon spark the people and come up with sincere national motifs. A Ukrainian poet must be, in the first place, a patriotic citizen.”
Therefore, the criticism of Antonych’s insufficient civic engagement (i.e., distinct national bend) was in line with Ohiienko’s overarching ideology. Although in his programmatic articles, he declared his non-partisan status, or poetic disengagement, he consistently pursued his mission of a servant of the national idea and the one who rouses the national spirit.
Ohiienko balanced out his critical remarks with the praise he heaped upon Antonych for the poem “A song about an Outcast (Dazhboh, 1932) and “Excerpt.” The former was published in Nasha kultura back in 1935 (Issue 2). The poem ends with the following words: “My dream, my troubled voice / In my tragic Motherland.”
Referring to this line, Ohiienko said that the poet used it to “give a vivid patriotic character to the entire poem.”
In addition to critical remarks on Antonych, Ohiienko published many of his poems in his journal—nine in 1935 and six in 1936.
To conclude, the year of 1935 was marked by intensive interpretation of Antonych’s works. The selection of his poems for publication was well thought-out. These were works filled with Antonych’s brand of patriotism, which was based on love and nagging longing for the Motherland—for example, he wrote about “[our] tragic Motherland,” “our fathers’ land,” “a village among alder trees and hazel bushes,” “red-tiled roofs,” “perfect curses,” etc. There are also deeply lyrical poems, primarily describing nature (“Bird Cherry Poem” and “Mowing Time”) or love “The Unloved.”
To be continued in the next issue of Ukraine Incognita.
Prof. Yevheniia Sokhatska works at the Department of the History of Ukrainian Literature and Comparative Studies at the Ohiienko Kamianets-Podilsky National University and heads the Ivan Ohiienko All-Ukrainian Society.
