Poetry
Хрэст на свабоду
Not translated into English
Alaiza Pashkevich (Tsiotka) · 1906
Opening lines
На усходзи красна неба.
Нас не дзивиць — так и трэба!
Кроў рэками льецца у мора:
Салдат гине там ад гора.
In the east the sky is red.
It does not surprise us: so it must be!
Blood flows in rivers into the sea:
The soldier perishes there of grief.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from be.wikisource.org
Synopsis
A collection of revolutionary poetry, written in the wake of the events of 1905. Its lyrical hero is a fighter devoted to his people, and the poems, in a declamatory and exalted tone, draw on metaphor and on the imagery of folklore to call for the national and social liberation of the Belarusians. The title announces a baptism of freedom, and the struggle for it runs through the collection from beginning to end.
Context
The collection was published in 1906 in Jowkva, in Austrian Galicia, where the author had taken refuge, in the same year and the same place as another of her books, Skrypka bielaruskaja. It brings together poems born of the uprisings of 1905. In 1956, a Belarusian weekly in Poland marked its fiftieth anniversary, and verses by the author were translated into Polish in the seventies, then included in an anthology of Belarusian poetry published in Wrocław in 1978.
Who it is for
Poems in Belarusian, oratorical in style; no French or English translation of the collection.
Prizes and reception
Together with the collection published in the same year, the book that earned its author acclaim as the singer of the struggle.
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