Kupchynskyi Roman.Skoropad: a poem.New York, 1965

“I stand and think: My God, / Was it reality, or could it be — / A mirage?.. A dream?.. A sleep?!”

Roman Kupchynsky. Skoropad: a poem / afterword by Ivan Kedrin, “The Poem, Its Background, and Its Author”; dust jacket, illustrations, and design by Edvard Kozak.

New York: Chervona Kalyna Publishing House, 1965. — 128 pp.: illus. — 26 cm. — Printed in the United States of America by Sentry Press, New York.

In a softcover edition with white cardboard: on the front cover, Kozak’s green-and-black drawing — a Cossack rider against the backdrop of the sun and a wagon train, and a decorative title inscription; on the back, a castle on a cliff above a village and two girls in traditional dress, with the monogram “E. K.” In the text — chapter headings in the typeface, drop caps, and full-page illustrations. Small gray spots and specks on the front cover, slight darkening of the edges. The text block is firm, the paper is clean, without inscriptions or stamps. Condition: very good.

Lifetime edition. The book has historical and cultural value and is of collector’s interest, while Edvard Kozak’s graphics are of independent artistic interest.

INFORMATION

A former Cossack sets out on horseback for the outskirts of Komarna, to the castle of Tsyapyn, where the knight-prince Tsyapka-Skoropad had shut himself away — a cheerful and hospitable commander of “Ostroh,” who for some reason never appeared at the Gathering of Comrades. Next — the family coat of arms with two beavers, a sickle, and a sword, a study with busts of ancestors, a portrait of the prince on horseback, whose tail the painter “forgot to paint,” a living room — and a castle that wavers like a mirage. Beneath the humorous, almost fairy-tale narrative stands the Cossack community after the lost war of liberation. The poem is dated 1919–1922: it was written while events were still fresh, but it was published more than forty years later.

Roman Kupchynsky (1894–1976) — poet, prose writer, journalist, and composer, commander of the Legion of the USS and UGA, author of over eighty songs, many of which became folk songs. In 1921, he co-founded the “Chervona Kalyna” publishing cooperative in Lviv and edited it until 1939; during the interwar years, he was a feuilletonist for “Dilo”; in 1949, he moved to the United States. “Skoropad” is his second major poem after “The Great Day” (1921).

The book was published by the revived “Chervona Kalyna” in New York. The afterword was written by Ivan Kedrin (1896–1995), a journalist and publicist who worked for “Dilo” in interwar Lviv. Edvard Kozak’s (1902–1992), caricaturist and publisher of “Lysa Mykyta,” design here is comprehensive: the dust jacket, chapter headings, drop caps, and illustrations form a unified concept with the text.