Essential Poetry of Bohdan Ihor Antonych

BOHDAN IHOR ANTONYCH (1909-37) was an early twentieth-century Lemko-Ukrainian poet. He received a degree in Slavic studies at Lviv University and published five books of poetry before his untimely death at age 28.  MICHAEL M. NAYDAN is the Woskob Family Professor of Ukrainian Studies at The Pennsylvania State University in State College. He is the translator or co-translator of over 40 books, including Zelensky: A Biography, with Alla Perminova. LIDIA STEFANOWSKA is a professor of Slavic literatures at the University of Warsaw in Poland. She is the author of Antonych, Antynomii [Antonych, Antinomies], a deep analysis of Bohdan Ihor Antonych’s work.

• Acknowledgments      A Note on the Translation     MICHAEL M. NAYDANA Biographical Sketch of the Poet     MICHAEL M. NAYDANBetween Creation and the Apocalypse: The Poetry of Bohdan Ihor Antonych   LIDIA STEFANOWSKA  Part I: From the CollectionThe Grand Harmony (1932–1933)     Musica NoctisDe Morte IArs Poetica II, 1Liber Peregrinorum 3  Part II: From the CollectionThree Rings: Long Poems and Lyrics (1934)Self-PortraitThree RingsAn Elegy about a Singing DoorAn Elegy about the Keys to LoveAn Elegy about the Ring of a SongThe WeddingThe Country TavernTo the WindA Landscape from a WindowGobletsA PrinceMaplesThe VillageChristmasKolyadaThe Green GospelPrimordial SummerThe SnakeThe ForestAn Elegy on the Ring of NightThe NightA Late HourMorningThe ArrowBitter WineA Bitter NightA Night on St. George’s Square  Part III: From the CollectionThe Book of the Lion (1936)The Sign of the LionDaniel in the Lion’s DenBallad about the Prophet JonahA Song about the Light before Time         The Samaritan Woman by the Well          Six Strophes of MysticismRosesCarnationsPeoniesTulips         VioletsA Monumental LandscapeThe Square of AngelsApocalypseStarlion; or The Constellation of the LionMagicopolis; or How Myths are BornSands         The Round Dance  A Song on the Indestructibility of MatterA Prayer to the StarsRed TaffetaThe Tale of a Black Regiment  Part IV: From the CollectionThe Green Gospel (1938)FIRST CHAPTERAn InvitationTo the Beings from a Green StarAn Ecstatic Eight-Strophe PoemFIRST LYRIC INTERMEZZOThe First Chapter of the BibleTwo HeartsA Portrait of a CarpenterThe FairSECOND CHAPTERThe Sign of the OakDuetThe GardenSECOND LYRIC INTERMEZZOA Bird Cherry PoemA Sermon to the FishCarpSpringCherry TreesTHIRD CHAPTERGoldseaThe FleeceA Prayer for the Souls of Drowned GirlsAmbassadors of the NightTo a Proud Plant, that is, to MyselfThe Lady of DiamondsThe Home beyond a Star  Part V: From the CollectionRotations (1938)RotationsCities and MusesBallad of the AlleyForeverA Ballad on Azure DeathThe Bottom of SilenceThe End of the WorldThe Concert from MercuryDead AutomobilesTrumpets of the Last DayEnding  Part VI: From Poetry not Published in CollectionsA Lviv ElegyGreen FaithA Prayer      Part VII: From the CollectionA Welcome to Life (1931)The Mad FishThe StratosphereThe BeeAutumnAbout a StropheAutobiographyA Welcome to Life  General IndexIndex of Poem Titles in EnglishIndex of Poem Titles in Latin and Ukranian

“In Ukraine, Antonych was and remains something akin to a poetic cult figure, first and foremost among younger poets. The striking innovativeness of his poetic mode of thinking has profoundly shaped the creative expressiveness of succeeding generations, including the most recent.” - Yuri Andrukhovych (Ukrainian poet, novelist, and essayist) “[Antonych’s] poems . . . deserve to be read alongside the work of his great contemporaries, such as Lorca and Mandelstam. It’s there that the poet’s metaphoric power comes fully into its own. Michael Naydan has done a major service in carrying over Antonych's dense, syntactically supple verse into English.” - Askold Melnyczuk (poet, novelist, and professor of English, University of Massachusetts at Boston) " . . . as far as Naydan's selection is concerned, The Essential Poetry is truly excellent and leaves almost nothing to be desired . . . a praiseworthy and important step in the process of introducing this major Ukrainian poet (still largely unknown in the West) to readers and scholars in the English-language world." (Journal of Ukrainian Studies) "Between Arcadia and catastrophe-this is where the Ukrainian poet Bohdan Ihor Antonych fearlessly searched for the truth, 'the primeval word' that shapes the work of the most original literary explorers. Though his life was cut short in 1937, before he had reached the age of thirty, he produced a number of memorable poems, all of which live on in the musically rich translations of Michael Naydan. Longing to transcend his dark moment in history, Antonych was determined to find his 'home beyond a star,' in poems that reflect what he learned from translating Rilke, reading Whitman and Czeslaw Milosz, and imagining how 'the night heals everyone forever.' His ecstasies and elegies are indeed essential reading." - Christopher Merrill (author of On the Road to Lviv) “These translations bring us the intimate and ecstatic visions of a young poet as he steps onto the world stage. Through an archetypal animation of nature, where ‘woodpeckers strike green sparks from the trees,’ we follow Antonych, ‘a pagan in love with life,’ in search of ‘the primal word’-‘fire, a god, a bird, or a storm’-and by his exuberance, between ‘human fear and rapture,’ we are lead through his visionary journey, where ‘Sleepwalkers sing on the roofs, / landscapes turn silver, / walls in rooms rustle like the forest, / and the dead moon, the blue moon / opens five gates of night / above a black and glimmering city.’ These are magical poems." - James Brasfield (translator of The Selected Poems of Oleh Lysheha)