Vladimir Sosyura, Love the Ukraine. May 1951
English version by Florence Randal Livesay, based upon the literal translation by Paul Crath.
Dreams of Ukrainian sovereignity had some ideologues so alarmed that they banned this poem by Vladimir Sosyura, a lyrical hymn to his native land that fell fully within the Soviet parlance of nationality. The poem was at first printed and reprinted by the Soviet State Publishing House of the Union republic, and was accorded the highest official tribute, the much-coveted Stalin Prize. Fatally misjudging the changing signs of the times, the Leningrad literary monthly, Zvezda (Star), published a Russian translation in May 1951. Then all hell broke loose on the poem, the poet, the translator, the editors of Zvezda, and on Ukrainian literature in general, which was branded as “vice-ridden,” nationalistic, heretical, ideologically perversive, escapist. Then the attack spread to the men of letters of various other Soviet national republics, finding them guilty of similar vice-ridden tendencies.
Original Source: Zvezda, May 1951.
Love Ukraine like unto sun shining,
Like wind and like grasses and waters,
Like hours so happy, in moments rejoicing
And even keep love in misfortune.
Love Ukraine in dream and awakening
Thy cherry-blossom Ukraine!
Ever-living and new in her beauty
And speech as of nightingale singing.
She resembles a leafy orchard
And, like one, she shines over the ages
Among fraternal nations.
Love Ukraine with all your heart And with all your deeds.
For us she is the one in the world,
One in the expanse of her sweet charm.
She dwells in the stars and the willows,
She lives in each heart-beat,
In flowers, in birds, in electric fire,
In every song, in every thought,
In the smile of a child, in a maiden’s eyes,
In the crimson shimmering of battle-banners.
As in the Burning Bush, never extinguished,
She lives in lone paths and in woodland,
In the blare of factory whistles
And in the billows of the Dnepr.
And in those purple clouds.
She lives in the cannon’s blasts, in dust dispersing
The foreigners in green uniforms,–like dust!
She lives in the bayonets which in the darkness
Hacked out for us a bright and evident
Road to springs.
0 youth! Let thy laughter belong to her,
Thy laughter and tears, and all things whatsoever
Unto the bitter end.
Thou mayest not love other nations
If thou lovest not the Ukraine.
0 Girlhood! As thou lovest her blue sky,
Love Her in every moment.
Thy beloved would not love thee
If thou lovest not thy Ukraine.
Love Her in toil, courtship and battle,
Love Her like the Song which glides
With the Morning Star …
Love Ukraine with all thy heart,
And we will forever be with her!
Source: Ukrainian Quarterly (Summer 1951), pp. 253-54.