Грицько Чубай. А світ — вертеп

Грицько Чубай

Work proposed for translation:

А світ — вертеп 
Poetry (1968)
Length: 120 pp.
Copyright: Heirs: solochubay@gmail.com

Hrytsko Chubai (1949 – 1982) is a prominent Ukrainian poet, a key figure in the literary and artistic underground of the 1960s–1980s in Lviv. Due to political persecution, he was unable to obtain higher education, although he tried to enter the universities of Kyiv and Lviv. In 1968, he published his first poetry collection The Figure of a Voice in samizdat and wrote the poem A Nativity Scene — a philosophical criticism of the Soviet empire. He was an influential figure in the informal artistic community that united poets, artists, and musicians in western Ukraine. He founded the self-published literary magazine Skrynia. He actively translated from English, Polish, Czech, and Spanish, including the works of Tadeusz Różewicz and Thomas Eliot. In 1975, he created one of his most famous poems, To Speak, to Be Silent, and to Speak Again. He was eventually enrolled in the Moscow Literary Institute, but in his third year he fell ill and died prematurely. Hrytsko Chubai’s poetry became widely known thanks to the songs of his son Taras, the frontman of the band Plach Yeremii.

The collection But the World is a Nativity Scene reveals the versatility of Hrytsko Chubai as an author of political-satirical texts and a gentle lyricist. Especially in the poem A Nativity Scene, as well as in other texts, the poet criticizes the totalitarian system that destroys individuality, forcing people to wear masks and adapt to its requirements. However, the author poses a question not only to society, but also to each of us: are we not running away from ourselves and the truth about ourselves? This is a kind of updated Hamlet question “to be or not to be,” but already in the conditions of Soviet totalitarianism, when the question of one’s survival arises not only as a biological being, but also as a personality. The poems are saturated with dynamics and movement — this is life on the edge: the hero is forced to constantly evade the tenacious hands of the system, its deceitfulness and imposed social roles. At the same time, Chubai is a gentle lyricist who is deeply moved by the life of nature and man in its cyclicality and transience, his poems reveal a deep rootedness in the metaphysical aspect of the world. He seems to witness the emergence of many things, to be at the origins of what truly exists, to delve into memory and extract prophecies for the future.