The Voices of Babyn Yar

by Marianna Kiyanovska, Oksana Maksymchuk (Translator), Max Rosochinsky (Translator), Polina Barskova (Introduction)

Overview

“[A]n extraordinary work within the literary canon of the Holocaust.” —Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Literary Work

With The Voices of Babyn Yar—a collection of stirring poems by Marianna Kiyanovska—the award-winning Ukrainian poet honors the victims of the Holocaust by writing their stories of horror, death, and survival by projecting their own imagined voices. Artful and carefully intoned, the poems convey the experiences of ordinary civilians going through unbearable events leading to the massacre at Kyiv’s Babyn Yar from a first-person perspective to an effect that is simultaneously immersive and estranging. While conceived as a tribute to the fallen, the book raises difficult questions about memory, responsibility, and commemoration of those who had witnessed an evil that verges on the unspeakable.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674268760
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	08/09/2022
Series:	Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature , #3
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Marianna Kiyanovska is the author of more than a dozen books of poetry, prose, and literary translation and her works have been translated into eighteen languages. She received the 2022 Zbigniew Herbert International Literary Award. In 2020, Kiyanovska was recognized with the prestigious Taras Shevchenko Prize for The Voices of Babyn Yar. She was also awarded the 2013 Gloria Artis Medal for Merit to Culture in Poland.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments 13

Introduction "Writing the Disaster in Tongues: Marianna Kiyanovska's Voices of Babyn Yar" Polina Barskova 15

Preface. "Voices from the Edge: Translation, Memory, and Mourning" Oksana Maksymchuk Max Rosochinsky 25

The Voices of Babyn Yar

Eyes filled with tears so dense they won't flow 37

Only now can I speak of this 39

I hold a bullet under my tongue 43

I would collapse in the street right here 45

Hundreds of streets could fill this vastness 47

I'm nearing, nearing, near 49

The mundane has vanished 51

I won't save a soul 53

Africa Africa 55

I fed my cat with saliva 59

Happiness is present and eternal 61

If I survive I'll simply be a tato 63

At the train station two found rest 65

I really don't know if I'm afraid 67

Rebbe Leivi Yitzhak Shneyerson 69

I'm here I'm he I get up off my knees 71

This war-so long I nearly grew up 73

These last parting moments should they be forgotten 75

There was terror yet 77

Tears are not a solace 79

In order to bear witness I need not survive 81

This yar is like the world 83

Jews with suitcases large awkward bags 85

The future will hold me no more tonight in the twilight 87

To the yar call those with guns 89

And yet 1 will utter it 91

The window's gaping open, glass panes gone 93

In the room there hung 95

I don't know if it's possible to cry 101

Achingly carefully 103

My bedridden mother begged me 105

Throat felt terribly sore today 107

I'll lie just as I fell 109

These streets lie in ruins 111

Rebbe taught nobody's immortal 113

World has started to stink 115

Sun-drenched days under occupation 117

This morning I studied the mirror 119

Midnight coughing so hard it makes the walls shake 121

I'm putting together a collection in these final weeks 123

I tripped and fell Abraham said 127

There may be hope yet 129

Now all of this, I say, let it be over 133

Once I danced was a dancer in a ballet maybe 135

Sweet-tasting poison slow-flowing 137

We're like fish, pike and perch 139

Our neighbors came by they say we must stay together 141

What has changed: there are rats in abundance 143

Weeping I walk turning around looking back I weep 145

The before means that tato is home with a smile on his face 147

It seems to me I'm deafeningly silent 149

Dog at the door, I didn't know how to speak to it 151

I thought it surely couldn't get any worse 153

All happening at once: the bullets and the apples 155

This ultimate naming of things that I now attempt 157

We used to go fishing, me and the boys 159

We shall not make history we are the nobodies 163

Tears turn into crystalline grus 165

Old age creeps up when I read the news 167

My clothing fits loosely haven't had any food for days 171

We used to come here to build a bonfire 173

Up to this day I lived like anyone 175

This is the yar where Hans does his work 177

This is the poem with which I scream 179

Notes 183

Editorial Reviews

In a translation that nudges close to the linguistic breaking points of the original, while retaining the fullness of its poetic registers and plethora of references to Ukrainian, Jewish, Soviet, and Western contexts, the seasoned translators-cum-poets Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky draw attention to an extraordinary work within the literary canon of the Holocaust.

MLA Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Literary Work

Kiyanovska has collected the imaginary testimony of individuals entwined in these unspeakable atrocities. Now they speak…Paradoxically, because the poems are presented as poetic communications, permeated with interjections from the poet herself, they do not further rend the fabric of reality, but have an utter authenticity that can only be explained by vision.

Orion - Matthew Zapruder

There is no doubt that The Voices of Babyn Yar is destined to become a classic text in the Ukrainian canon. Will this poetry save nations or people? Of course not. But it will forever serve as a reminder of the human capacity for evil—a prompt we seem to require on a regular basis.

Times Literary Supplement - Askold Melnyczuk

In 2017, the poet Marianna Kiyanovska published her collection Babyn Yar: Holosamy. It has now been translated by Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rozochinsky in a virtuosic English version…[The] poems include a discussion of the Nazi genocide, Soviet revisionist history, and recent conversations about identity and citizenship.

Jewish Renaissance - Amelia Glaser