The Voices of Babyn Yar / / Marianna Kiyanovska.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2022 English
• VerfasserIn: Kiyanovska, Marianna,
• MitwirkendeR: Barskova, Polina,; Maksymchuk, Oksana,; Rosochinsky, Max,
• Place / Publishing House: Cambridge, MA : : Harvard University Press, , [2022]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Series: Harvard library of Ukrainian literature ; 3
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (160 p.)

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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contens -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Writing the Disaster in Tongues: Marianna Kiyanovska’s Voices of Babyn Yar -- Preface: Voices from the Edge: Translation, Memory, and Mourning -- Eyes filled with tears so dense they won’t flow -- Only now can I speak of this -- I hold a bullet under my tongue -- I would collapse in the street right here -- Hundreds of streets could fill this vastness -- I’m nearing, nearing, near -- The mundane has vanished -- I won’t save a soul -- Africa Africa -- I fed my cat with saliva -- Happiness is present and eternal -- If I survive I’ll simply be a tato -- At the train station two found rest -- I really don’t know if I’m afraid -- Rebbe Leivi Yitzhak Shneyerson -- I’m here I’m he I get up off my knees -- This war—so long I nearly grew up -- These last parting moments should they be forgotten -- There was terror yet -- Tears are not a solace -- In order to bear witness I need not survive -- This yar is like the world -- Jews with suitcases large awkward bags -- The future will hold me no more tonight in the twilight -- To the yar call those with guns -- And yet I will utter it -- The window’s gaping open, glass panes gone -- In the room there hung -- I don’t know if it’s possible to cry -- Achingly carefully -- My bedridden mother begged me -- Throat felt terribly sore today -- I’ll lie just as I fell -- These streets lie in ruins -- Rebbe taught nobody’s immortal -- World has started to stink -- Sun-drenched days under occupation -- This morning I studied the mirror -- Midnight coughing so hard it makes the walls shake -- I’m putting together a collection in these final weeks -- I tripped and fell Abraham said -- There may be hope yet -- Now all of this, I say, let it be over -- Once I danced was a dancer in a ballet maybe -- Sweet-tasting poison slow-flowing -- We’re like fish, pike and perch -- Our neighbors came by they say we must stay together -- What has changed: there are rats in abundance -- Weeping I walk turning around looking back I weep -- The before means that tato is home with a smile on his face -- It seems to me I’m deafeningly silent -- Dog at the door, I didn’t know how to speak to it -- I thought it surely couldn’t get any worse -- All happening at once: the bullets and the apples -- This ultimate naming of things that I now attempt -- We used to go fishing, me and the boys -- We shall not make history we are the nobodies -- Tears turn into crystalline grus -- Old age creeps up when I read the news -- My clothing fits loosely haven’t had any food for days -- We used to come here to build a bonfire -- Up to this day I lived like anyone -- This is the yar where Hans does his work -- This is the poem with which I scream -- Notes to Poems