Ukrainian literature: Individual writers
On Sunday Morning She Gathered Herbs
Ol'ha Kobylians'ka (1863-1942)
Translated by Mary Skrypnyk
Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2001
ISBN 1-895571-34-0 (paper)
A novel based on a traditional Ukrainian folk song, the tragic story of a young man torn between two women and poisoned by one of them. In Kobylians'ka's interpretation it is a story of the eternal conflict between passion and reason, between personal happiness and social constraints, between freedom and its practical limitations.
The Selected Poems of Oleh Lysheha
Oleh Lysheha (1949- )
Cambridge, MA: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1999
ISBN 0-916458-90-3
Oleh Lysheha is considered the "poets' poet" of contemporary Ukraine. A dissident and iconoclast, he was forbidden to publish in the Soviet Union from 1972 to 1988. Since then, his reputation has grown steadily to legendary proportions.
Recreations
Yuri Andrukhovych (1960- )
Translation and Introduction by Marko Pavlyshyn
Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1998
ISBN 1-895571-21-9 (cloth), 1-895571-24-3 (paper)
A novel of carnivalesque vitality and acute social criticism. It celebrates newly found freedom and reflects upon the contradictions of post-Soviet society.
Peltse and Pentameron
Volodymyr Dibrova (1951- )
Translated by Halyna Hryn. Foreword by Askold Melnyczuk.
Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1996
ISBN 0-8101-1219-1 (cloth), 0-8101-1237-X (paper)
In these two novels, Volodymyr Dibrova - one of the best prose writers in Ukraine today - tells the story of how the Soviet system was sustained by individuals who never truly chose to support it but simply lacked the courage to oppose it.
The Cathedral
Oles' Honchar (1918-1995)
Translated by Yuri Tkach and Leonid Rudnytzky
Washington - Philadelphia - Toronto: St. Sophia Religious Association of Ukrainian Catholics, 1989
ISBN 0-88054-157-1
The original Ukrainian version, first published in Soviet Ukraine in 1968, caused a political storm because of its criticism of the destruction of Ukrainian historical and cultural monuments. The author focuses on the issue of national identity and historical continuity as symbolised by an ancient Cossack church threatened with destruction at the hands on an eager 'cultural worker'. Other issues such as the philistinism of mindless Soviet bureaucrats and ecological disasters that have resulted from the destructive drive for 'progress' at all costs are interwoven with the main theme.
About the Harrowing of Hell. A Seventeenth-Century Ukrainian Play in its European Context
Translation, introduction and notes by Irena R. Makaryk
Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions, 1989
ISBN 0-919473-89-X
Translation of Slovo o zbureniu pekla, a seventeenth-century Ukrainian religious drama which forms a nexus between Western and Eastern dramatic traditions and is probably the last manifestation in Europe of the genre of harrowing of hell plays.
Duel
Borys Antonenko-Davydovych (1899-1984)
Translated by Yuri Tkach
Melbourne: Lastivka Press, 1986
Set in the first years of the new Soviet Ukrainian state, the period of militant Communism. Kost Horobenko, an upstanding young Communist, is forever duelling with his alter ego, the Ukrainian nationalist. A gripping psychological novel.
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky (1864-1913)
Translated by Marco Carynnyk. With Notes and an Essay on Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky by Bohdan Rubchak.
Littleton, Colorado: Ukrainian Academic Press, 1981
ISBN 0-87287-205-X, 0-87287-258-0 (paper)
A psychological novel about the life of the Hutsuls, Ukrainian highlanders living in the Carpathian Mountains, that draws widely on pagan demonology and folk legends. One of the masterworks of modern Ukrainian literature.
Sonata Pathétique
Mykola Kulish (1892-1937)
Translated by George S. N. and Moira Luckyj. Introduction by Ralph Lindheim.
Littleton, Colorado: Ukrainian Academic Press, 1975
ISBN 0-87287-092-8
A play, employing a large cast of characters, set in Ukraine and depicting the events of the years 1917-18 when the sleepy life of a small provincial town is disrupted by massive discontent with the Russian government, by the resurgence of dormant Ukrainian nationalism, and by the subversive activity of Bolshevik agitators.
Moses and other Poems
Ivan Franko (1856-1916)
Translated by Vera Rich (Moses) and Percival Cundy (other poems)
New York: Shevchenko Scientific Society, 1973
Translations of the epic poem Moses and a selection of shorter works by Ivan Franko, one of Ukraine's greatest poets – "the voice of Western Ukraine" at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century.
Lesya Ukrainka
Lesya Ukrainka (1871-1913)
Selected Works translated by Vera Rich. Life and Work by Constantine Bida.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1968
A selection of poems and plays by Lesya Ukrainka, one of Ukraine's pre-eminent poets, who contributed greatly to the development of Ukrainian Modernism and its transition from Ukrainian ethnographic themes to subjects that were universal, historical and psychological.
The Poetical Works of Taras Shevchenko.
The Kobzar
Translated by C. H. Andrusyshen and Watson Kirkconnell
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964
Translations into English verse of the entire poetical works of Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861), Ukraine's greatest poet, together with annotations and an introduction dealing with the creative life of the poet and the times in which he lived.
Song out of Darkness
Translated by Vera Rich. Edited by V. Swoboda.
With a preface by Paul Selver, a critical essay by W. K. Matthews,
and an introduction and notes by V. Swoboda.
London: The Mitre Press, 1961
Selected poems by Taras Shevchenko, Ukraine's greatest poet, translated from the Ukrainian.