The name of the poet Yakov Halperin, writing in the press under pen names Iakiv Halych and Mykola Pervach, might be familiar to the reading public from a recent (pre-war) literary scandal. In October 2021, the now late literary scholar Leonid Katsis voiced harsh criticism towards the two-volume book on Babi Yar, "Ravine of Death — Ravine of Memory" compiled by literary historian Pavel Polyan (Nerler), and accused the latter of overt propaganda and condoning collaborationism. Further details of the skirmish can be found at gorky.media, and we will only point out that the motive for these harsh accusations was an essay on the fate of Yakov Halperin — an abhorrent renegade for some and a Ukrainian patriot for others.
Yakov Halperin was born in Kyiv in April 1921. In 1939, the young poet was awarded a scholarship by the People's Commissariat of Education at an All-Ukrainian literary contest to mark the 125th anniversary of the birth of Shevchenko. In 1940, he entered the philological faculty of Kyiv University. He started publishing in 1938 in Ukrainian and Russian under the pen name Iakiv Halych.
"He was short, round-faced, with curly dark-blond hair and a clever, subtly sarcastic smile. He had the habit of keeping his lips tightly pressed together — apparently in an effort to give his face a tough expression. Despite a severe limp, he had a light and quick gait".
When war broke out, due to his severe limp (the effects of childhood polio), he was not drafted. He spent the entire summer of 1941 at trench works, and in September, when the fall of Kyiv was imminent, he determined to stay behind in the city: "I must see the Germans entering my Kyiv."
During the population registry by the Germans in November 1941, Yakov claimed he had lost his passport. For a while, he hid with Svetozar Dragomanov's family. With the help of Izidora Kosach-Borisova, Lesya Ukrainka's sister, who had good contacts with the officials at the city council, Dragomanov helped Halperin to obtain documents in the name of Iakiv Halych and to get legal status.
He joined the Writers' Union of Ukraine, founded by Olena Teliga. Under Mykola Pervach's pseudonym, he contributed to the OUN newspapers "Ukrainskoye Slovo" and "Litavry" — publishing poems and criticism.
(OUN — Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, which sought to establish an independent unified state of Ukraine).
After the ban of these publications and the first waves of arrests of OUN members, in one of her final letters, Teliga wrote: "Ia[kiv] now showers me with very kind poems with and without dedications to me, but the poems are complete ‘ours.'"
In May 1943, Halperin's wife, the relationship with whom by that time was very strained, summoned him by a note to chat. He left his friend's apartment, where he was hiding, and never returned. As soon as he met his wife, Gestapo officers arrested the poet. Whether she consciously took part in it, memoirists provide no unequivocal answer. But alongside the Gestapo officers, waiting for the poet was a pre-war neighbor named Levitin (a Jew on his father's side), whom he had encountered shortly before that unfortunate day and who had been collaborating with the Germans and had probably set up the arrest.
Yakov Halperin died a few months before the liberation of Kyiv. His manuscripts were lost. Halperin's poems only came out in print half a century later. Many of them survived, memorized by heart by the poet’s friends Naum Korzhavin, Mark Berdichevsky, and Boris Kashtelanchuk.
I
There is a wind of autumn, cold and fierce,
when the sun burns out in the West.
It is raging - the wind! —
and you ask: what is it?
- Snowstorm is coming, and you’ll lose your peace.
In the near future
You foresee new suffering and torture,
You’ll have you mouth numb and frozen pulse,
and only - silently and secretly - your eyes
will pray - and curse...
Snowstorm is coming, overwhelming, cold.
Don't ask; why are you so furious, Fate?
But do not blame yourself for the frozen heart,
I lost all words - snowstorm is in the world.
So, do not you look into the lifeless height,
So, do not you peer into the abyss bled to death -
You, fading out, still with living breath,
still vibrant —
take a rest.
II
Oh you, fierce hatred, my mistress!
I am alone among the enemies!
The moment I tell them my name
they’ll curse me no less than thrice.
But I’ll keep silent with my mouth full of blood,
I’ll clench my teeth to kill the word at birth.
I could breathe flame -
but then it’ll come the worst,
I know, now it is not the time.
But he is coming on edges of shining swords,
and you will feel again and again
the might of the poet’s prophetic word,
where every syllable is full of rage and pain.
1940
I say that maybe very soon
we all will die, oh, toastmaster,
the city where we were born,
will become ashes, toastmaster,
and the old raven will descend
up to the Golden Gate at noon.
I say when the disaster comes
You don’t argue with loved ones,
You rush to them, oh, toastmaster,
Like roaring of strings and brass
Of concert-halls rushes to us
Breaking all bounds, oh, toastmaster.
I greet you, oh, the time of reaping!
The rye is heavy, the air is bitter,
The rafts are waiting, but what’s the matter!
What toast shell we raise, toastmaster?
What shall we drink to, toastmaster?
For sunlit fields, for pouring Spring
That overfloods the land with roar,
for the dark sea and sunset lasting,
For dreams as sweet as child’s dreams are,
For the greens, for summer downpour,
That crosses groves and forests thirsty,
And for the grief that isn’t disaster,
And for the fact that we’ll argue,
I say: we later will argue,
who is to die, oh, toastmaster...
May, 1941
Did you hear it -
A spring storm came
throwing thunder and hail?
Poets dreamed of love and fame
and many glorious rhymes.
It seemed to them: rhymes marched like trained troops,
odes like flocks of birds,
At the publishing house a polite cashier
paid them a generous purse.
But they will not encounter Muse,
They will not catch her sight,
She is sweetie and vehement,
and her lovers are fierce.
I kissed her on the heady lips,
I held her in my arms.
Autumn came with its snowstorm,
Together with falling stars.
I used to tell her - come what may,
I’ll go with you through life,
I see the grief, I hear the grief,
I foresee it will be the grief;
But iron is in my scarlet veins,
fire is in my eyes,
And on my lips - mischievous and thin -
is irresistible laugh.
Oh, never, never I won’t forget,
Cerulean autumn days.
My eyes became cruel, and in my chest
anger weaved a nest.
I do not seek the lost Paradise,
I’ll willfully take my grief -
With all your pain, with tears and joys,
I accept you, Oh, Lady Life!
I swear on my pain, on my joys and tears -
I swear on my last breath;
I gonna laugh, pals, I gonna laugh,
And laugher my will be fierce!
The half-decayed photos once will tell
About our faces, dark and stern.
Vinyl recordings that survived bombs
Will speak in their voices dull and flat,
Not like the vibrant voices we used to have,
And hastily prepared reports
Will open rusty columns in newspapers.
They’ll find in huge dumps of memoirs
Scintillas of sufferings and thoughts.
From our lines they’ll take the heavy words,
Born in a calm between the mortal battles
And they will be surprised; how could
We think then of the grass and of the sky.
But their hearts will never understand
Neither our grief for those who was killed,
Nor silence of the cities lying dead,
Still smoking... Nor our hatred that
Is irresistible like a hunger, nor
Demonic pride that we are the only that
Are gifted both to suffer and to win.
1940
The universes were born and fall
into oblivion... But the eternal is
the habit of the smart ones to raise the glasses
and do not whine in times dark and cold.
By midnight let the friends to gather here...
Like our foregoers, we’ll begin the feast
without a chairman and resolutions,
but with a cupbearer, wine and jest!
Friends! Let us drink - for we do know why;
To praise the courage of ours to stand
In battles upcoming for the native land
Where we were born and where we will die.
December 31, 1940
We keep silence at rest stops. We warm up our overcoats
on cold bonfires. And then we plead: “Start a song!”
A hoarse young bass voice begins: “Oh, my hop here grows!” -
and the other, interrupting: “Oh, across the Danube Cossacks rode”.
We were taught not to believe neither in romance nor in the devil.
For blood you shall render blood. With blood you’ll wash it away.
My mother’s warm hands I’ve forgotten already.
Only occasionally I recall my mother’s warm hands,
pristine silence and the creaking of weather vanes.
This is what the song says: “Not to love would be better.”
For we forgot the last time we kissed.
We trample the frozen ground marching to swamps uninhabited.
What winds will be blowing then, what will spring greet us with?
There will be downpours, there will be explosions of rain,
The Finnish sun will rise over cold rivers and plains,
We will march through Suomi all over its swamps and slopes,
Forcing rivers by swimming and wading, time and again.
And then we'll be back. We will return from afar.
We will forget the batteries pouring fire.
Oh, a Cossack rode over the Bug and crossed Palenioki,
Oh, the journey it was, and the Rheine was the end of the way.
1940
