“The Grand Harmony,” by Bohdan Ihor Antonych, translated by Michael M. Naydan. London: Glagoslav Publications, 2017. 74 pp. ISBN: 978-1-911414-35-3 (paperback), $21.30.
A collection of poems on religious themes written in 1932 and 1933, “The Grand Harmony” is an examination of Bohdan Antonych’s intimately personal journey to faith, a journey filled with self-questioning and doubt. The collection marks the beginning of Antonych’s development into one of the great poets of his time. During Soviet times, it was banned for its religious content.
Antonych (1909-1937) was born in the Lemko region of Poland and began to write poetry in Ukrainian as a student at the University of Lviv. He published only three collections of poetry during his life; three additional collections were published posthumously. In the brief span of his life, Antonych proved to be an exceptionally innovative poet and an accomplished essayist. He has been described as an imagist, a mystic, a symbolist and a pantheist.
His small body of published works were highly influential to later Ukrainian poets, especially in the tumultuous times of the 1960s and 1980s. As opposed to the patriotic tendencies of a number of western Ukrainian poets in his time, Antonych’s approach was an art for art’s sake one with high-minded aesthetic principles. He died at the age of 28 due to complications from pneumonia.
The translator, Michael M. Naydan, is a Woskob Family Professor of Slavic Languages and Literature at Pennsylvania State University.