The Poetry of Pavlo Tychyna Reconsidered George G. Grabowicz
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Harvard UkrainianCreating Studies and36, no. Con 3–4Ce (2019):aling 447–93.ModernisM 447 Creating and Concealing Modernism: The Poetry of Pavlo Tychyna Reconsidered George G. GrabowiCz Ty Chyna as ProbleM and ParadigM he TyChyna probleM can be stated succinctly. There is a gen- eral consensus that Pavlo Tychyna (1891–1967) is the outstanding TUkrainian poet of the twentieth century. This opinion emerged in the early 1920s and has solidified and remained in place despite all the changes and perturbations that followed; it is shared even by those who condemn Tychyna for his “betrayal of his Muse,” his “vacillations,” “errors,” patriotic or moral “bankruptcy,” and so on. Accompanying this is a widespread perception that emerged already in Tychyna’s lifetime, but became particularly marked in the half century since his death, that his poetry is radically discontinuous, that it divides clearly and neatly into the “early” and the “late”—suggesting thereby not just phases or periods, but essential hypostases, indeed artistic and existential antip- odes. The “early” poetry (the parameters here are vague, but it entails either his first three collections, Soniachni klarnety [Clarinets of the Sun, 1918], Pluh [The Plow, 1920], and Zamist´ sonetiv i oktav [Instead of Sonnets and Octaves, also 1920], or all of his poetry up to the end of the 1920s) is inspired and orphic and expresses with unprecedented power the national rebirth and tragedy of the revolution and civil war (more correctly, the Russian-Ukrainian war of 1917–1921), whereas the later poetry (the liminal moment here is often taken to be 1933–1934, and his poem and collection by the same name “Partiia vede” [The Party Leads], but earlier dates have also been proposed) is one of ever-greater conformism, support for the party linked to ever-greater timidity if not cravenness, and fundamentally nothing short of a lingering death of the poet. Two key questions that are begged here are the actual moment (if 448 grabowiCz such there is) of this transformation, and more importantly, the criteria by which this transformation is perceived and determined. To these we shall return. The canonic interpretation of Tychyna in the Soviet period was also clear-cut: the non- or anti-Soviet position was to stress and appreciate the “early” Tychyna and largely dismiss the “late” one; the Soviet posi- tion was to affirm the “late” (now redefined as “mature”) Tychyna while appropriating whatever was salvageable or pertinent from the earlier period (and what was not salvaged was ignored or directly censored). Paradigmatic of this approach was Leonid Novychenko’s 1956 study Poeziia i revoliutsiia (Poetry and Revolution), where Tychyna’s poetry is perceived precisely through the topoi of “maturation,” of acceptance of the revolution, and a shedding of what is confused, “abstractly human- ist,” and vacillating.1 Most revealing, however, are the postindependence developments. In effect, the Ukrainian literary establishment abandoned the Soviet position and mechanically (and opportunistically) accepted the earlier anti-Soviet one without, however, any deeper examination of the issues and criteria involved and without reconsidering or even noting various basic, underlying attitudes (populism, collectivism, ambient illiberalism, and so on; that no Soviet practices or modes of thinking were abandoned goes without saying). Characteristically, this new version of Tychyna, where his “early” period was now prioritized and his “late” period denigrated (and basically ignored), was written for a new history of twentieth-century Ukrainian literature by none other than Leonid Novychenko—the most articulate and assiduous spokesman of the earlier Soviet view.2 But although the “pluses” and “minuses” were now reversed (this was the default mode of the time, and the formula itself was widely satirized), the polarized perception of Tychyna remained. A detailed examination of Tychyna’s reception must be left for another occasion; here one can only note the bare outlines. His first collection, Sonia chni klarnety, was received with universal acclaim. Mykola Bazhan, himself an outstanding poet of the late 1920s, described much later how reading this collection gave him an intoxicating sense of the power of the Ukrainian word: Ніколи не забуду тієї безсонної ночі дев’ятнадцятого року, коли мій друг приніс мені книжку з рясними соняшниками на обкладинці. Ми з ним сиділи в лісі при багатті (бо виїхали всім 1. See Leonid Novychenko, Poeziia i revoliutsiia (Kyiv, 1956; 2nd ed., 1979). 2. See Istoriia ukraïns´koï literatury XX stolittia, bk. 1, 1910–1930-ti roky, ed. V. H. Donchyk (Kyiv, 1993), 183–203. Creating and ConCealing ModernisM 449 технікумом на заготівлю дров), і читали, і п’яніли, і кричали з радості, насолоджуючись красою українського слова, яке з такою, не чуваною нами досі музичністю грало, співало, бриніло, гриміло, лилося зі сторінок незабутньої тієї книги. Мені здається, що я стрибком рвонувся до глибшого розуміння владності й таїнства української поезії в ту далеку передосінню ніч у лісі біля Умані, де в хащах ще шуміли банди, і скакали вершники, і розсипалися раптом кулеметні черги, і шурхали вгору омахи багаття, освітлюючи глупу, темнолику ніч. А для нас тоді над усім уже заколивалися «Сонячні кларнети», віщуючи чистими променями своїми і день, і радість творіння, і ясність шляхів. До самої смерті збережу в пам’яті цю ніч, до самої смерті збережу в серці незмірну подяку Вам за Bаше слово, Ваш геній, Ваше серце.3 Similar responses were palpably true of other poets as well. In the leading journal of that time, Mystetstvo (1919–1920), where a number of Ukrainian poets were publishing their poetry, one can see the light- ning speed—in a matter of a few months—with which Tychyna’s poetry was affecting his fellow poets and reshaping their very idiom: poets as different from Tychyna as Mykhail´ Semenko were now attempting to sound like him.4 In a relatively short time his poetry was translated into other languages, beginning with Russian, Polish, and then Czech. The critical reception, which involved such leading figures as Mykola Zerov, Borys Iakubs´kyi, Andrii Nikovs´kyi, Iurii Mezhenko, and Volodymyr Iurynets´, was virtually unanimous in seeing Tychyna as not only the defining figure of the times (a znakova postat´ par excellence), but even as an unprecedented phenomenon in Ukrainian literature. Writing in 1928, and buttressing his arguments with a position taken by the academic critic Oleksandr Bilets´kyi (itself, basically, a statement of consensus), the philosopher and critic Iurynets´ considers Tychyna—in matters of form and technical sophistication—the superior of such can- onized masters as Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Franko, and Lesia Ukraïnka.5 3. Bazhan’s letter to Tychyna, dated 25 January 1961 (and written in Kyiv) is clearly intended as a synthesizing encomium; see Spivets´ novoho svitu: Spohady pro Pavla Tychynu, ed. H. P. Donets´ (Kyiv, 1971), 16. 4. See Mystetstvo: Literaturno-mystets´kyi tyzhnevyk Ukraïns´koï sektsiï Vseukrlit- koma, 1919, no. 1 (May). 5. That is, citing Bilets´kyi, “Украинская критика отвела ему первое место на современном украинском парнасе, и его собратья по перу признают, что великие предшественники поэта—Шевченко, Франко, Леся Украинка в техническом 450 grabowiCz The accolades, however, did not remain unchallenged for long. In response to the collection Viter z Ukraïny (Wind from Ukraine, 1924), with its seemingly uncritical acceptance of the Bolshevik Revolution and the new Soviet order, the nationalist and militantly anti-Soviet poet and critic Ievhen Malaniuk, then living in Warsaw, writes Tychyna off as morally and poetically defunct.6 Although still questionable in the 1920s, this judgment became widespread with the appearance of Tychyna’s collection Partiia vede (1934), which seemed to provide incontrovertible proof that the poet had become an official spokesman for, and in effect an accomplice to, the Stalinist regime. His accession to various official posts and honors—PhD in 1934, deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR in 1938, director of the Institute of Litera- ture of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences from 1936 to 1939, director of the combined Institutes of Literature and Language from 1941 to 1943, national commissar of education during the war years, chairman of the Supreme Council of the Ukrainian SSR in 1953, and in 1952, 1956, 1960, and 1966 member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine—provided ample proof of his utterly official cast; his membership in the nomenklatura—so the argument went—made every utterance and every line he was to write in this period moribund. The poetry of the late 1930s, Chuttia iedynoï rodyny (A Feeling of One Fam- ily, 1938), and the 1941 collection Stal´ i nizhnist´ (Steel and Tenderness, named with an obvious play on “Stalin”) were simply taken as retreads and continuations of Partiia vede; and the fact that his published late poetry (from the postwar years to his death in 1967) was indeed all but отношении не могут с ним равняться.” Аnd then amplifying on it for himself, Iurynets´ writes: “справа йде не лише про техніку; техніка тут тільки претекст, символ чогось іншого; а власне того, що в Тичини вперше дуже широка школа культурних становищ знайшла свій дійсно поетичний вираз без усякої домішки проповідництва, яке так помітне особливо в Шевченка і Франка.” See Volodymyr Iurynets´, Pavlo Tychyna: Sproba krytychnoï analizy (Kharkiv, 1928), 19. 6. See his diptych, “Suchasnyky,” in Ievhen Malaniuk, Stylet i stylos (Poděbrady, 1925), the first part of which lavishes praise on Maksym Ryl´s´kyi and specifically references his collection Synia dalechin´ (1922). The second poem, entitled “Pavlovi Tychyni” and dated November 1924, begins as an encomium, but turns midway into a caustic indictment of the poet (“від кларнета твого—пофарбована дудка зосталась… / …в окривавлений Жовтень—ясна обернулась Весна”), which, by all indications, refers to the second poem of Viter z Ukraïny, “Plach Iaroslavny,” pt. 1 (“дикий вітер повіяв примару… / …Божевільну Офелію—знов половецьких степів”).