The writings of the Ukrainian poet Ivan Kulik have been forgotten primarily because of his bold revolutionary themes. He is remembered chiefly as a literary bureaucrat and party functionary — he served on the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine. He was the first chairman of the Writers' Union of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Israel Yudelevich Kulik was born in the Ukrainian township of Shpola in a family of a melamed. Yiddish was spoken at home, but everyone in the family also spoke Russian. He graduated from a four-class grammar school in Uman. He made friends with the village boys, to whom he passionately retold the adventure novels he read. After his older brother had been arrested for revolutionary activity as a teenager, he became part of the underground.
In 1911, he was accepted to the Odesa Art College but had to drop out, having no money to pay for his studies. In 1914, he left for the USA. Working in the mines, he came into contact with Marxist circles, and started writing for the New World, a New York emigrant newspaper. Yisroel now went by the name of Ivan, a bilingual journalist who printed over a hundred articles in Russian and Ukrainian emigrant periodicals between 1915 and 1917. It was also there, in Novy Mir, that his poems in Russian started to appear.
In 1917, with his friend Nikolai Bukharin (a future member of the Central Committee), he returned to Ukraine through the Far East, where the list of his adventures expanded considerably — he became one of the founders of the Bolshevik Party of Ukraine, the first head of the Red Cossacks, a Bolshevik agitator and agent in Western Ukraine, a newspaper editor, a military commissar, he was wounded twice, and finally, he was sentenced to death by Polish legionnaires. Kulik was lucky — he managed to get out of prison and promptly published his first book of poetry. From that moment on, he wrote his poetry exclusively in Ukrainian.
What came next was also very exciting — working for the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, serving as a consul in Canada, productive work as editor and promoter of literary projects.
As is probably to be expected, it all ended with his arrest in 1937: there was plenty to charge Kulik with — ranging from left-wing leanings and association with Bukharin to his right-wing leanings and friendship with Mykola Skrypnyk (by that time, the legendary Ukrainian People's Commissar, who tried to merge Bolshevik ideas with national revival, had already shot himself).
"...from 1925 he had been an agent of British intelligence, recruited to work for Britain by members of the "Intelligence Service" in Canada during his tenure as consul of the USSR."
Kulik's wife, poet Luciana Piontek, was executed several weeks before Kulik. In 1956, they were acquitted:
"The ruling is reversed, and the case is closed on account of the corpus delicti."
The Third Song
Dove colored, grape shaped curly clouds
Fall into the cloudy green crowns
Sails on the horizon turn their shrouds
To hurry from the Black sea to the sea of sun
And closer, behind the stiff breakwater,
Above the overcrowded red shore
So easily blue smoke gets a score,
Competing with the summer breeze in its headquarters.
Yes, this is Odesa. For where else we hear,
In which cities, in which of all the seas,
So carefree, so vibrant and clear
Chords of the sun, of waves and chimneys?
See, how the harbor vitalized!
State farming tractors, hundreds of cohorts
Send wheat and rye to the hospitable port,
West and East, to Sunset and Sunrise!
The wings of scarlet banners cut the air,
Like an iron swarm, ships cross upcoming flood.
Here runs a stone cascade of stairs,
That was once stained red with our blood.
There now blood of fragrant wheat flowers,
filling the harbor: for two giants are
Already here, rising mighty towers -
the elevator and the refrigerator.
The mob on Deribasivska is not
As it has been; the flames of scarlet ties
Of marching pioneers is so hot
That burns the doubts of those of little faith.
For gearwheels of an upcoming era
crunched in its jaws an ordure of old Odessa:
its dudes, its pickpockets, its cholera,
its Catacombs with their stifling air.
So nice to listen how in old Peresyp.
the factory tum-tums begin to drum.
This is the heartbeat of renewed Odessa,
Not knowing of spleen and boredom.
.
And this old world, so withered and marred,
Or fled away a million miles or lieu -
It left us only bronzy Richelieu,
Mock-Roman Duke on sunny boulevard.
ХІ
And what did see Vasily getting there?
Unnumbered pickpockets, pimps, harlots.
New impudent hosts of the Steppe’s Palmira
On Deribasivska were scurrying to and fro.
Or he could see a terrace of Fanconi,
Where sprawled fat clients every day,
Or horses’ sparkling hooves carrying away
The cocksure sluggard stuffed with money.
With flabby flesh the beach of Langeron
Was so packed - you hardly saw the water!
And Moldavanka knaves on and on
Extatically turned to their slaughter.
And with an expression awkward, even sick,
A stranger here, like prophetic Prince Oleg, -
"Black Pushkin rose over the Black Sea",
Eulogized and praised “by all colleagues” ...
(Did you expect metaphors? I will keep them,
The old Odessa doesn’t deserve my art,
I have a lot, but not for this one, sealing
Its careless perky stamp on bourgeois).
But horror bit by bit erased this seal,
tormented them, chilling their skin,
In anticipation as thunder from the Sea
Bellowed of a coming “Potemkin".
It was the fifth and suffocating year
The tension hardened, and like a spike
on factories it pierced through the air -
a quick and a mortal sentence - the Strike!
………….
Nobody could recall what age and year,
In which bay this ghost first wandered on seas,
But on all the latitudes it could be seen:
the Strait of Magellan, or maybe where
The devil Oribel had built his nest,
In northern waters on the Ortak stone,
Or Cabo Verde, or a land unknown -
It wanders through the sea without rest.
May the merry sun shine on the sea,
May constellations promise lucky travel,
And benefit. May water be like silk,
And may the ship sway gently like a cradle,
But at the time, when ocean and sky
Become one faded whole in twilight dim -
A moving shadow like a speckle in the eye
On the darkening horizon can be seen,
And from the captain to the kitchen boy -
All tremble with horror, cry for ruined hopes,
There is no path out of the decoy,
And gulping abyss waits with open mouth.
I had a dream - I got a wound,
spread in the dirt with bleeding chest.
The bare ruins lay around
And flame devouring had its fest.
Survivors fled. I was alone,
The darkness fell, the mist was rising…
And where had been my sweet home,
In blossoming, like Paradise,
it was a burned desert now!
The enemies defeated us...
It was a torment to the soul:
My heart was broken, hope lost!
But oh, it was a mere moment!
I have to stand! I can’t give up!
I can’t lose faith, for we are potent,
We ‘ll win, I still must have hope!
It’s only me here on the ground!
And vanquished am only I!
…
You see - red flowers all around
Are blossoming under the sky!
But no! They are red banners!
Like birds, they float high above!
And listen! Do you hear thunder?
It’s the voice of war, the voice of battle!
They’re coming, coming! There are Legions!
Swords clatter, clatter - can you hear?
There are hundreds, thousands... millions!
Brave giants are already near!
Like rays shine their spears!
Like thunder rumble their songs!
Let the enemy tremble with fear,
For we are beating you all along!
There are no such obstacles
That make this march stop
And silver bells ring in the sky
Like a festive song of hope!
All dreams come true, so strange and so beautiful.
Hey, there, stop! You opened for us
New bold achievements, to a shining future
An unlimited path.
I hear the sweet-singing choirs,
Which take me to paradise,
I'm here!… But alas! And tears
Are flowing from my blinded eyes.
….
I woke up. With feeble fingers
I tried to stop the blood in vain.
Once more I was condemned to linger
In the torment and the burning pain.
My hope passed away so quickly,
I am leaving all I loved behind!
But nonetheless the dream secretly
Hides in the depth of mind!
And there is only one condition
On which I will accept my death:
I want to die with recognition
That I give my last breath
At the moment when my dreams the best
So radiant, so ambitious
fulfill the mission on earth!
