HRYTSKO CHUBAI

HRYTSKO CHUBAI (1949-1982) was born in the Volyn region. A central figure of underground Ukrainian culture in Lviv in the late 1960s and the 1970s, he was harassed and repressed by Soviet authorities for most of his adult life. Chubai edited the samvydav (samizdat) journal Skrynia (The Chest, 1971), an apolitical call to non-conformity, for which the journal’s contributors were supressed. His first collection of poetry, Hovoryty, movchaty, i hovoryty znovu (To Speak, To Be Silent, and to Speak Again) was published posthumously in 1990. A more complete collection of his work—Plach Ieremiï: Poeziï (Jeremiah’s Cry: Poetry)—was published in 1998 followed by the definitive publication P’iatyknyzhzhia (Pentateuch) in 2013. Many of his poems were interpreted as songs by his son Taras who, both as a solo musician and with his group Plach Ieremiï (Jeremiah’s Cry), greatly expanded access to his father’s writings in post-Soviet Ukraine. A book of Hrytsko Chubai’s children’s poems, Skoromovka ne dlia vovka (Tongue Twisters Are Not for Wolves) was published in 2008.

Songs set to Hrytsko Chubai’s poetry were sung by Taras Chubai at Contemporary Ukrainian Literature Series events entitled Svitlo i Spovid: Light and Confession, which took place in April 2008.