Andiivska Emma.Kavarnya: poetry.Munich, 1983

“And from the gate—a dragon drinks a cup of coffee. And—as it is—a photonic tongue…”

Emma Andieievska. Kavarnya: poetry. / Cover design, endpapers, and author portrait—Yakiv Hnizdovsky.

Munich: Suchasnist, 1983. — 123 p. — (Biblioteka Prolohu i Suchasnosti; No. 160). — Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 83-50512.

Publisher’s cover of heavy cream paper: on the front, the author’s surname and the title are printed in burgundy, below which is Yakiv Hnizdovsky’s round black-and-white emblem featuring stylized curls of steam rising from a coffee cup. The cover shows light rubbing and small spots, with a small tear at the bottom of the spine. The text block is firm, and the paper is uniformly cream. On the verso of the title page is a stamp from the State Library of Victoria (Australia) indicating the book was withdrawn from the collection on October 21, 1993, and a handwritten “Ex Ukr.” mark; the same shelf mark is pasted on the front cover. Condition: good.

Lifetime edition. The book has historical and cultural value and is of collector’s interest; Yakiv Hnizdovsky’s design is of independent artistic interest.

INFORMATION

“Kavarnya” is a collection of poetry by Emma Andieievska. Its main sequence, which gives the collection its title, unfolds as a series of twenty-three poems—from “Holy Days in Ordinary Time” to “A Cup of Coffee”—each presenting the café in a different spatial or metaphysical form: “A Café Without Windows,” “A Café-Restaurant on the Seaside,” “A Café with a Tendency Toward Metaphysics,” “Young Men with Dyed Mohawks.” This sequence is followed by other sections of the book, including “The Calls,” in which everyday images of the café transition into surreal and apocalyptic motifs—the Last Judgment, a dragon, a “photonic tongue.”

Emma Andieievska (1931–2018) was a poet, prose writer, and painter, and one of the leading representatives of the “New York Group” of Ukrainian émigré poets; she lived in Munich from 1957. Her poetry is characterized by dense metaphor, surreal imagery, and linguistic play, setting her apart among Ukrainian authors of the second half of the 20th century.

The book was published as No. 160 in “Biblioteka Prolohu i Suchasnosti,” a series from the Munich publishing house of the same name, which for several decades published works of Ukrainian émigré literature. The cover design, endpapers, and stylized author portrait were created by Yakiv Hnizdovsky (1915–1985), a Ukrainian graphic artist and long-time collaborator of the publishing house. This copy comes from the State Library of Victoria (Australia): on the verso of the title page is a stamp from this library indicating that the book was withdrawn from the collection, and on the cover is the same “Ex Ukr.” shelf mark from the Ukrainian-language collection.