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This book examines the early poetry (1956–1971) of the Ukrainian/American writer Yuriy Tarnawsky, one of the founders of the New York Group of Ukrainian poets and a unique figure among Ukrainian writers with regard to his experiments with forms. Demonstrating the radical changes that occurred in his poetic style between the 1950s and 1970s, Maria Grazia Bartolini analyzes the relationship between these innovations and the similar shifts taking place in Western poetry and culture during the 1950s and 1960s, when new forms of expression and a new consciousness developed in the interstices between modernism and nascent postmodernism. The book provides the reader with a selection of unpublished materials from the Yuriy Tarnawsky Papers at the Bakhmeteff Archive of Columbia University.
“Maria Grazia Bartolini has given us a sophisticated, persuasive study of a closed period in the creative biography of a Ukrainian poet deeply imprinted by his Western intellectual environment. The book is a major contribution to the understanding of a unique figure in Ukrainian literary history, as well as a revelatory case study of the difficulty of rejecting inherited tradition without succumbing to the levelling force of contemporary cultural convention.”
— Marko Pavlyshyn, Australian Slavonic and East European Studies
“‘In the Tight Triangle of the Night’ is a significant new contribution to American and Ukrainian literary history. The present book reveals Yuriy Tarnawsky’s distinctive poetic voice largely fueled by the European and American literary and philosophical trends from the late 1950s to the early 1970s, thus making his oeuvre far richer and more crucial for the understanding of not only the experience of Ukrainian emigration but also the cultural shifts of his time. In addition to providing thorough philosophical, historical, and cultural contexts to Tarnawsky’s works, the book includes unique archival texts. The work brings the Ukrainian émigré poet’s experience to thriving life within contemporary debates on the complexity of reality. Through the insightful exploration of aesthetic theories, literary trends, and poet’s lyrical works, Maria Grazia Bartolini invites her readers to uncover a wealth of new knowledge. Enjoy!”
— Tetiana Ostapchuk, Visiting Researcher, University College London
“Maria Grazia Bartolini’s brilliant book combines deep literary and philosophical knowledge with the fruits of archival research, providing her readers with long-awaited insights into the work of one of the most compelling voices of Ukrainian-American literature. Contributing exciting perspectives on the history of twentieth-century Ukrainian poetry, ‘In the Tight Triangle of the Night’ offers close readings of key texts by Yuri Tarnawsky and studies the profound changes that his poetics underwent over the years. Bartolini engages in innovative discussions of the dynamics of modernism and postmodernism in Ukrainian literature and brings to light new materials on the heritage of Ukrainian culture in the diaspora, including its literary contacts with Soviet Ukraine. In Bartolini’s interpretation, Tarnawsky is a poet at the cutting edge of Western art whose works invite us to reconsider the history of Ukrainian literature and redouble our attention to its global entanglements.”
— Alessandro Achilli, University of Cagliari
Maria Grazia Bartolini is Associate Professor of Medieval Slavic Culture and Slavic Linguistics at the University of Milan. Her research interests focus on modern and early modern Ukrainian literature, with particular attention to poetry, visual culture, and cultural history.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration and Translations
Introduction
1. The New York Group and its Meta-Critical Discourse: Between Modernism and the New Avant-Garde
2. “Running Barefoot Home and Back”: The Life and Poetry of Yuriy Tarnawsky
3. In Sartre’s Shadow: Zhyttia v Misti and Existentialism
4. Rewriting Space: Idealizovana Biohrafiia (1964), Spomyny (1964), and Bez Espanii (1967)
5. The Path Toward Abstraction: Ankety (1967–68)
6. Ut Pictura Poesis: Object, Poetry, and Visual Arts after Ankety
7. The Poetics of Nothingness and the Death of the Subject
Epilogue
Appendix. Unpublished Poems (1954–55)
Bibliography
Index