But... the Lord is Silent

But...The Lord is Silent / Olha Kobylianska &Yevheniya Yaroshynska
trans. from the Ukrainian by Roma Franko
Saskatoon: Language Lanterns, c1999.
470 p.

This is volume 3 in the Women's Voices in Ukrainian Literature series from Language Lanterns, and it's the last one that I'm reviewing -- all the others can be found in earlier reviews here on the blog. 

This volume has two contributors, Olha Kobylianska and Yevheniya Yaroshynska. The first one is better known, and the book is about 2/3 her work. She was from Bukovyna province in the west of Ukraine when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, and as such she learned and wrote in German early in her career, eventually switching to Ukrainian. Her work feels very much like late 19th century European writing to me  - it's flowery, full of nature and high themes - although she is considered a great modernist. Many of her pieces included here are very short stories, some that are more like fragments, and they do show that particular historical moment well. She also includes a more psychological perspective in her stories that was not usual in older writings. I appreciated what she wrote and found a lot to think over. 

But I really enjoyed the last 8 stories in the volume, by Yevheniya Yaroshynska. She writes in a more down-to-earth manner, and talks about things like love and idealism and feminism. On the Banks of the Dniester was the longest piece in this section, really a novella at about 90 pages. I really enjoyed it; various young people, deception and star-crossed love, lots of talk about ideals in education etc that are a bit didactic but still interesting, and most unusually, a happy ending. I was waiting for the disaster but no, everything turned out well. In some of the other pieces, this is not the case, especially in the haunting In the Forest, which deals directly with war and insurgency.

Something that has stood out for me in all the volumes of this historical series is that the contents sometimes feel very contemporary, even after a century. The shifting territories, war, and so on. Things you don't want to be contemporary at all. In this book, the mentions of the cruelty of Russian soldiers sounds right up to date.

The translation here is smooth and almost unnoticeable in its clarity. Roma Franko did an excellent job with all of these volumes, the stories reading very naturally in English. I highly recommend this entire series if you are interested in women writing at the turn of the last century in Ukraine. There is so much to learn and you really get a feel for the intellectual milieu of the era -- so much interest in reclaiming culture, language and history, and in championing women's rights. It's hard to believe it was so long ago.