The Grand Harmony

Bohdan Ihor Antonych

• Publisher: Glagoslav Publications B.V.
• eBook ISBN: 9781911414377
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The extraordinarily inventive Ukrainian poet and literary critic Bohdan Ihor Antonych (1909-1937), the son of a Catholic priest, died prematurely at the early age of 28 of pneumonia. Originally from the mountainous Lemko region in Poland, where a variant of Ukrainian is spoken, he was home-schooled for the first eleven years of his life because of frequent illness. He began to write poetry in Ukrainian after he moved to the Western Ukrainian city of Lviv to continue his studies at the University of Lviv. He published just three collections of poetry in his lifetime: A Greeting to Life (1931), Three Rings (1934), and The Book of the Lion (1936), with the latter two firmly establishing his reputation as one of the best poets of his time in Ukraine. Three additional collections, The Green Gospel (1938), Rotations (1938), and The Grand Harmony (1967), were published posthumously. A collection of poems on religious themes written in 1932 and 1933, The Grand Harmonyis a subtle and supple examination of Antonych's intimately personal journey to faith, with all its revelatory verities as well as self-questioning and doubt. The collection marks the beginning of Antonych's development into one of the greatest poets of his time. During Soviet times it was banned for its religious content. It was first published in its entirety in 1967 in New York. The Grand Harmony first appeared in English translation in a bilingual edition with Litopys Publishers in 2007, which has long been sold out. The poems "Musica Noctis," "De Morte I," "Ars Poetica 1" and "Liber Peregrinorum 3" were reprinted in The Essential Poetry of Bohdan Ihor Antonych: Ecstasies and Elegies (Bucknell University Press, 2010). One can find additional poetic renderings of Antonych's selected poetry in the translations of various well-known American poets under the title A Square of Angels (Ann Arbor: Ardis Publishers, 1977), which was edited by Bohdan Boychuk.

I

THE GRAND HARMONY

UT IN OMNIBUS GLORIFICETUR DEUS

May the Lord be Glorified in Everything

You’ve placed a dreadful burden on my shoulders,

and I must carry it without fail.

Dead things are the happiest—of all Saharan deserts

the fire of Your grace burns most intensely.

You’ve placed the sun on my shoulders.

---

You’ve shown my mute eyes a forbidding goal,

a violet sun in the blue treasure chest of the heavens,

but you have failed to give thunder to my lips—just the rustle

of poplars growing solitarily amid quiet fields,

but I categorically need the language of thunder.

---

I am a miserable, lisping, worthless poet,

how can I utter Your omnipresence

without grand words or praise? You’ve thrown

the severest of talents onto my back,

in good time because of the silence of lips.

---

Though I’m walking to the crossroads, to the yellow of the fields,

I will speak with each passer by as though with a brother: listen, friend,

brush against the stalks of grain and bow your forehead in thought:

wanderer of dreary days, for the entire universe

is filled with the imprints of His palms, every atom filled.

VENI SANCTE SPIRITUS

Come, Holy Spirit!

Come, come to me, Holy Dove,

begin to play above my desk with bright wings,

fill my heart with the joy of the plenitude of angels

and protect me before the evil of weakness.

---

I will raise up my downcast head in weariness

from above yellowed folios and papers...

Table of contents

• Copyright
• Dedication
• Biographical Note
• Antonych Writing God: The Metaphysics of The Grand Harmony
• I. THE GRAND HARMONY