Dawn, Wind, Mountains: Andrii Karabelesh's Lyrical Subject

• In Event: The Transnational Slavic Lyric

Abstract

The Carpatho-Rusyn poet Andrii Karabelesh (1906-1964) turned to the lyric early in his career to explore the phenomenon of the Carpatho-Rusyn subject alienated from his surroundings and in search of a great culture beyond the borders of Carpathian Rus'. During his student days in Prague, imprisonment in Nazi concentration camps, and exile in Communist Czechoslovakia, he abandoned images representative of Russia (the rising dawn) and Czechoslovakia (the blowing wind) and dedicated his last collection of poetry In the Carpathians (1955) to lyrical investigations of the mountains (Carpathian Rus'). This presentation will survey the evolution of Karabelesh's alienated lyrical subject from his early verse published in the First Czechoslovak Republic to his late style crafted to fit into the ideological restrictions of the Soviet world.

Author

• Nicholas Kyle Kupensky, US Air Force Academy