Poetry
Зелена Євангелія
Bohdan-Ihor Antonych · 1938
Synopsis
A collection opened by an epigraph, “of all phenomena, the strangest is that of existing”, and built in three chapters separated by two lyrical interludes. From start to finish, it sings of the accord between the living and the inert, man caught in an animate nature: the poet constantly compares himself to the animals and plants of his country, and the Carpathian countryside becomes a gospel of greenery and sap.
Context
Its author was working on it at the same time as the previous collection, whose composition it reuses. The book appeared in 1938, the year after his death, from the publisher Izmarahd in Lviv, at the same time as a last collection about the city. The work was subsequently banned in Soviet Ukraine; it reappeared in the country only in 1967, in a selection published in Kyiv, the year a complete edition was appearing in New York.
Who it is for
A slim collection of about fifty pages, to be read in order, as its three chapters answer one another; the vocabulary is rare and teeming, drawn from the speech of the Carpathians.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the crowning achievement of its author's work and as his posthumous masterpiece.
Sources for this page 11
The pages consulted to check this page.