Григорій Косинка. На золотих богів

Григорій Косинка

Work proposed for translation: 

На золотих богів
Short stories (1920–1926)
Length: 120 pp.
Copyright: Public domain

Hryhorii Kosynka (1899–1934) was a Ukrainian writer and representative of the so-called “Executed Renaissance”. His real surname was Strilets. He was born into a peasant family near Kyiv. There is evidence that during the revolutionary events in the former Russian Empire, he served in the army of the Ukrainian People’s Republic. In 1919, Kosynka published his first work, On the Golden Gods. He lived between Kyiv and Kharkiv, trying to avoid persecution by the Soviet authorities. He became a co-founder of several literary organisations, including the Writers’ Association and Lanka, which later transformed into MARS (Workshop of Revolutionary Word). The 1920s were a period of artistic revival, but the terror of the 1930s turned out to be a disaster for Ukrainian culture. Kosynka was arrested on charges of “counter-revolutionary activity” and executed in December 1934. The reason for this was his works, which depicted Soviet reality in an unbiased and realistic manner, which did not meet the ideological requirements of the authorities. In Ukrainian literature, Hryhorii Kosynka is considered one of the most outstanding authors of short prose.

The collection includes several short prose works. The plot of the work On the Golden Gods is concise: a bloody battle between peasant and White Guard troops sweeps through the village. Afterwards, the peasants mourn the fallen soldiers and murdered families, sadly surveying the burned-down houses. The author repeatedly turns to military themes, practising his skill in recreating the tense moments of battle, as we see in the work Triangular Battle. Another work, In the Rye, tells the story of the hardships of a young deserter. The young man is completely lost, but he never stops looking at the world with love. In Anarchists, the main character, the stern and battle-hardened otaman Kost, recalls his murdered beloved as well as the deaths of other people, experiencing a dissonance between his inner sensitivity and his acquired cold-bloodedness. Kosynka also writes about the difficulties of rural post-revolutionary life. In the work At Dawn, he depicts the defencelessness of peasants against armed and cruel White Guard soldiers. In Politics, he tells of the complex family relationships of peasants, whom post-revolutionary circumstances have divided into camps. However, Kosynka’s plots are not always supported by political context; sometimes they are simply a representation of the complex realities of life at that time, as in the works In Shturma’s House and For the Beets.