#lina kostenko

[rrondo]

“Ще вчора була я висока, як вежа. Здається, ще трохи – дістану зеніт. 

І раптом, як вибух, – обвал і пожежа. Розтрощений камінь – уже не граніт.

Руйновище віри, і розпач, і розпач! Під попелом смутку похований шлях. Зажурені друзі сахнулися врозтіч. Посіяне слово не сходить в полях.

На те й погорільці, – будуємо хатку. Над хаткою – небо. А знов голубе. Найвище уміння – почати спочатку життя, розуміння, дорогу, себе.”

  Ліна КОСТЕНКО 

tattoo by korniets.tattoo

[klimt7]

Le ali

LINA KOSTENKO

Le ali

È vero, per chi ha le ali il suolo non serve.

Se non c’è terra, ci sarà il cielo.

Se non c’è un campo, sarà la libertà.

Se non c’è un amore, saranno le nuvole.

E questa è la verità degli uccelli.

Ma per l’uomo? Com’è per l’uomo?

Vive sulla terra, e non sa volare.

Ma ha le ali. Sì, ha le ali!

E sono ali non di penne e piume,

ma di verità, di onore, di fede.

Qualcuno le ha come fedeltà in amore.

Altri come eterna aspirazione.

Altri come onestà nel lavoro.

Altri come generosità e attenzione e cura.

Altri come canzoni o speranza.

Altri come poesia, o come sogni.

L’uomo non sa volare…

Ma ha le ali. Sì, ha le ali!

(traduzione di Luigi Marinelli)

.

[amelancholic]

Lina Kostenko once said :

Це ж треба мати сатанинський намір,

Чаїть в собі невиліковний сказ,

Щоб тяжко так знущатися над нами,

��а ще й у всьомy звинувачувати нас...

Their satan plannings always were much rougher,

The rabies was well hidden deep inside,

It can't be cured, and that is why we suffer,

And victim blaming just an extra bloody bite!

- https://lyricstranslate.com

[tannydm]

Day 13 - night poetry

[shamanicnoise]

Крила

А й правда, крилатим ґрунту не треба. Землі немає, то буде небо.

Немає поля, то буде воля. Немає пари, то будуть хмари.

В цьому, напевно, правда пташина… А як же людина? А що ж людина?

Живе на землі. Сама не літає. А крила має. А крила має!

Вони, ті крила, не з пуху-пір"я, А з правди, чесноти і довір"я.

У кого - з вірності у коханні. У кого - з вічного поривання.

У кого - з щирості до роботи. У кого - з щедрості на турботи.

У кого - з пісні, або з надії, Або з поезії, або з мрії.

Людина нібито не літає… А крила має. А крила має!

Ліна Костенко

[marykk1990]

My next post in support of Ukraine is:

Next site, will be another Ukrainian. Lina Vasylivna Kostenko (Ліна ��асилівна Костенко). She is a poet, journalist, writer, publisher, and a former soviet dissident. She was a founder of the Sixtiers poetry movement. I'll attach an article about the Sixtiers and one about Lina Kostenko. Lina "has been described as one of Ukraine's foremost poets and credited with reviving Ukrainian-language lyric poetry." She was born in Rzhyshchiv in Kyiv Oblast in 1930. She received many honors during her life, including an honorary professorship, at Kyiv Mohyla Academy and doctorates for Lviv & Chernivtsi Universities. She also received the Shevchenko National Prize, which is the highest state prize of Ukraine for works of culture & arts. It has been awarded since 1961 & is named after Taras Shevchenko, of course. Some of her works were removed from print during soviet times, and some of her poems were published outside of the soviet union and Ukrainians didn't have access to them, except through what is known as samizdat. That was a dissident way of spreading censored & suppressed works. People would reproduce these works, often by hand, and they would then be manually passed around to different readers. In 2005, then President Viktor Yanukovych tried to give Lina the highest Ukrainian award & name her a Hero Of Ukraine, but she tuned it down, saying, "I don't wear political jewelry."

#StandWithUkraine

#СлаваУкраїні 🇺🇦🌻

I usually post quotes by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but today, I'm going to share a quote from Lina Vasylivna Kostenko.

#StandWithUkraine

#СлаваУкраїні 🇺🇦🌻

[molfarua]

🥰 Cute reading of a poem by Lina Kostenko from a little Ukrainian woman “I’ll stop, I don’t understand what a miracle it is”

🥰 Миле читання вірша Ліни Костенко від маленької Україночки «Спинюся, не розумію, що воно за диво»

[alcestas-sloboda]

Why Ukrainians didn’t produce a Tolstoy?

there are a lot of things that can piss me off, today it was this tweet:

and all i wanted to do was to ask this person, why the fuck do we need a racist misogynistic piece of shit as a standout author if we have Shevchenko as our prophet?

but you don’t know who he is? of course, you don’t. that is the thing with imperialism: you destroy other cultures while promoting yours as the only way to legitimise your rule. even if those territories are of higher cultural development. but there is always a way out of it: kill them all. kill anyone who poses an existential threat to your hegemony. throw them into jail. forbid them to write and paint. send them to gulag. kill them. torture them. execute them.

if you don’t know Ukrainian literature, it doesn’t mean that it‘s nonexistent. if you don’t know "a Ukrainian Tolstoy", it means there is a Ukrainian Bahrianyi, who was sent to the gulag but ran away and was the first person in the world to openly criticise USSR in his pamphlet Why I am not going back to the Soviet Union. "I don't want to go back to the USSR because a person there is worth less than an insect"

there is a Ukrainian Symonenko and a Ukrainian Stus. there is a Ukrainian Lesya Ukrainka and Olha Kobylyanska. a Ukrainian Kotsiubynskyi, Ukrainian Drach, Ukrainian Olena Pchilka and Ukrainian Lina Kostenko. and so many more of the bravest people who despite all wrote in the Ukrainian language about Ukrainian people and for Ukrainian people.

there are thousands of beautiful texts that weren’t translated because this would’ve harmed the empire. that is why you are reading Dostoevsky and not Khvyliovyi.

but there are also thousands of texts that were never written. just how many more poems would’ve Stus written if he wasn’t killed by the Soviet regime? how many more texts would have Pidmohylnyi, Semenko, Yalovyi, Yohansen, Zerov written if they weren’t shot at Sandarmokh?

just how many texts have the world missed out on because Khvyliovyi committed suicide as he couldn’t live in the world with Stalin’s repressions. "today is a beautiful sunny day. I love life - you can't even imagine how much", - he will write in his death note as he shot himself with his friends waiting for him in the next room.

or maybe there was a Ukrainian Nobel Prize in Literature waiting for Tychyna? maybe, but he submitted to Soviet authorities and started writing hails for the regime, suddenly forgetting his own literary style and living his entire life in fear. fear of what? fear of getting caught. of getting destroyed just as all of the previous Ukrainian intelligentsia.

I’m tired of my people being silenced. I’m tired of my poets being undermined by "great” russian literature. it’s not worth a single Symonenko’s poem. it’s not worth a single paragraph of Bahrianyi‘s prose.

the greatness of russian literature lies on the bones of Ukrainian writers. to be this high, they killed hundreds and they are still doing it today.

the body of Ukrainian children’s writer Volodymyr Vakulenko was found in the mass grave in Izium in September 2022.

there will be a Ukrainian Nobel Prize in Literature, and there will be more Ukrainian books. there will be Ukrainian Zhadan and Zabuzhko, Liubka and Izdryk, Deresh and Kidruk. there will be Ukrainian literature.

another funny thing is that this person is Indian and let me tell you: the fact that you stand up for one empire even when your own country has suffered from the doings of another is evidence of deep colonial trauma and I hope you will cure yourself soon

[lina-vas-dom]

Пусть подождут поэмы и октавы. Я насмотрюсь на солнце и на травы. Наговорюсь с хорошими людьми. Не дни уходят, а уходим мы… А день и ночь — короткие мгновенья, Ведущие к уходу и забвенью, Ничтожные фрагменты, где мажор Сам отступает в этой странной битве. А Время — глянь! — великий дирижёр, Листает ноты на своём пюпитре. /Лина Костенко

Let them wait for the poems and octaves. I'll see enough of the sun and the herbs. I'll talk to good people. Not the days are leaving, but we are leaving… And day and night are short moments, Leading to care and oblivion, Insignificant fragments, where major He himself retreats in this strange battle. And Time - look! – great conductor, He flips through the notes on his music stand. /Lina Kostenko

[kobzars]

Exhibition "ALLA GORSKAYA. BORIVITER" (Kyiv, Ukraine) until 28.04.24 is the first retrospective exhibition of the artist, which presents more than 100 works of painting, graphics, sketches of monumental works from museum and private collections, as well as archival materials.

The exhibition introduces visitors to the sketches of the most famous mosaic panels created by Horska's group in Kyiv and eastern Ukraine, stage designs for Les Taniuk's performances, and portraits of prominent Ukrainian figures such as Vasyl Stus, Ivan Svitlychnyi, Vasyl Symonenko, Ivan Drach, Lina Kostenko, and others. Especially for the exhibition, contemporary Ukrainian artists Oleksiy Say and Mykola Marusyk created a video and light installation based on the stained glass window "Shevchenko. Mother".

Alla Horska was a Ukrainian artist of the Sixties, a dissident, public figure, and human rights activist. The dramatic story of Alla Horska painfully resonates with the present: during her lifetime, she faced bans and dismantling of her works, expulsion from the Union of Artists, persecution by the KGB, and later brutal murder; now, the artist's mosaic panels in Mariupol, destroyed by the Russian occupiers, are being destroyed.

In particular, the composition "Boriviter", whose name appears in the title of the exhibition, was terribly damaged as a result of shelling of the city by Russian troops.

[panimoonchild]

Every nation has its diseases, and Russia has an incurable one

Today Lina Kostenko, a symbol of Ukrainian literature, celebrates her 94th birthday. She is a sixties poet, writer, and dissident. Laureate of the Shevchenko Prize, the Antonovych Prize, and the Legion of Honor. In 1967, together with Pavlo Tychyna and Ivan Drach, she was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. She never betrayed her beliefs.

The title of this post is her words.  I want to share with you some of her popular quotes:

[radical-revolution]

"The main thing is to look into the eyes of the beast and simply to remain human."

Lina Kostenko

[theartofmetal]

147. Кров у наших криницях (Blood in Our Wells) - Drudkh (Black Metal, 2006)

Art by Vasily Perov: "The Last Journey", 1865

The lyrics for this album are taken from classical Ukrainian literature. You'll find adaptions from poems by Lina Kostenko, Oleksandr Oles and also several tracks that contain elements of the poetic movie "Mamay" (2003)

[shippingdragons]

The ProEnglish Theatre of Ukraine in Kyiv and the Finborough Theatre, London, UK, continue their ongoing partnership with a unique poetry collaboration, premiering online at www.finboroughtheatre.co.uk from Friday, 24 February 2023 at dawn (6.23am), a year exactly since Russia invaded Ukraine.

Four Poems From Ukraine features four classic Ukrainian poems of the last 180 years, performed first in English by British actors, filmed in London and Toronto; and then again in Ukrainian (with English subtitles) by Ukrainian actors, filmed in the bombsites of Irpyn.

The performers include poet, composer and activist Bréon Rydell who recently returned from an extended fact-finding mission to Ukraine; Linda Thorson, best known for her iconic performance as Tara King in The Avengers; star of stage and screen Toby Stephens; and Kristin Milward who in December 2022 became the first foreign actor to perform in Ukraine since the invasion with the Finborough Theatre production of Pussycat in Memory of Darkness (which will shortly return for another run at the Finborough Theatre). The Ukrainian actors are all members of the ProEnglishTheatre of Ukraine – Alex Borovenskiy, Artistic Director of the ProEnglish Theatre of Ukraine; Yulia Prylutska, Daniil Prymachov and Kateryna Yakymets.

The poets are Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861), widely considered as one of the founders of the modern written Ukrainian language; Lina Kostenko (born 1930), famed for reviving Ukrainian-language lyric poetry, and one of the defining figures of Ukraine’s Sixties poetry movement; Serhiy Zhadan (born 1974), one of the most significant contemporary poets of Ukraine, whose influence extends into further fields through his work as an essayist, musician, translator and social activist; and Kateryna Kalytko (born 1982), winner of the 2017 Joseph Conrad Literature prize.

The video is entirely free-to-view, but we are asking for donations to the ProEnglish Theatre of Ukraine to support their ongoing work!

[shamanicnoise]

Lina Kostenko's poem - Wings(1958)

Translation 'word-to-word':

The wings

It's true that there is no need in soil for winged.

There is no ground, then there will be a sky.

No field, then there will be freedom.

There is no pair, then there will be clouds.

This is probably the bird's truth...

And what about a human? What is a human?

Lives on earth.

Doen't fly by itself.But it has wings.

And it has wings!

Those wings aren't made of fluff and feathers,

But of the truth, virtue and trust.

Someone's - from loyalty in love.

Someone's - from eternal bursting.

Someone's - with sincerity to work.

Someone's - from generosity to care.

Someone's - from a song, or from hope,

Or from poetry, or from a dream.

Human does not fly...But it has wings.

It has wings!

Lina Vasylivna Kostenko (Ukrainian: Ліна Василівна Костенко; born 19 March 1930) is a Ukrainian poet, journalist, writer, publisher, and former Soviet dissident. A founder and leading representative of the Sixtiers poetry movement, Kostenko has been described as one of Ukraine's foremost poets and credited with reviving Ukrainian-language lyric poetry.

[ua-stranger]

Очима ти сказав мені: люблю.

Душа складала свій тяжкий екзамен.

Мов тихий дзвін гірського кришталю,

несказане лишилось несказанним.

Життя ішло, минуло той перон.

Гукала тиша рупором возкальним.

Багато слів написано пером.

Несказане лишилось несказанним.

Світали ночі, вечоріли дні.

Не раз хитнула доля терезами.

Слова як сонце сходили в мені.

Несказане лишилось несказанним.

©Ліна Костенко

©Lina Kostenko

(Фото були зроблені в місті Харків;The photos were taken in the city of Kharkiv )