Poetry
Новая зямля
Not translated into English
Yakub Kolas · 1923
Synopsis
At the end of the nineteenth century, Michał, a forest ranger, lives with his family in a house in the forest, near the Neman. He works tirelessly in the hope of finally buying land of his own, where he can live in peace, free of the chains of the lords. Around him, his brother Antoś, a skilful and warm-hearted head of the household, Hanna, with her generous heart, and a man who takes other people's property make up the picture of a peasant home, its labours and its landscapes, crossed by sharp social conflicts.
Context
Begun in the 1910s, the poem was completed in the first half of the twenties and appeared in volume form in 1923. It draws on the history of the author's family: his father, a forester in the service of the Radziwiłłs, dreamed of owning his own field. A Polish study compares it with a Ukrainian novel about the land written twenty years earlier, and a Belarusian composer, Yuri Semenyaka, made an opera from it.
Who it is for
A long narrative poem in verse, in Belarusian, rich in detailed landscapes; no French or English translation.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as an encyclopaedia of Belarusian peasant life at the turn of the century; critics have compared it to ancient tragedy and to the great English dramatist.
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