Literary Slavic New York

By Bogdan Horbal, Curator, Slavic and East European Collections
April 15, 2021

The New York Public Library’s World Literature Festival, happening right now, celebrates books and writers from around the world and reflects the languages spoken in our communities. Since we're also celebrating Immigrant Heritage Week let's focus on Slavic immigrant writers and poets who were or still are active in New York.

Slavs started arriving in New York in the second half of the 19th century and forming ethnic enclaves in the city. New York soon became a significant center of Slavic publishing activity, including both books and periodicals. Also, numerous writers and poets of Slavic background called New York their home or spent time in the city. They wrote about New York as well as broader topics while publishing their works both locally and elsewhere.

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 New York Group of Ukrainian Poets played an important role in developing Ukrainian literary modernism in the 1950s and 1960s.  The Group's seven founding members included:

Maria Rewakowicz edited one anthology of the group's writings, Pivstolittia napivtyshi: Antolohiia poezii N'iuIorks'koi hrupy (2005), and with Vasyl' Gabor she co-edited another, N'iu-Iors 'ka hrupa: Antolohiia poezii, prozy ta eseistky (2012). Ihor Kotyk published a monograph on the New York Group member Yuriy Tarnawsky's poetry: Ekzystentsiinyi vymir v poezi Iuriia Tarnavs 'koho (2009). 

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In 2019, Ostap Kin,  an archivist, librarian, and  Research Center Coordinator at Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University edited New York Elegies: Ukrainian Poems on the City.  The book includes poems by more than 30 Ukrainian poets both from New York and other places. They are presented in their original version along with their English language translation by Kin and several others. Valzhyna Mort, a poet herself, noted that: “While participating in the artistic imagining of NYC, the Ukrainian voices gathered here themselves originate from a place that has been imagined as wild, mystical and political. The New York of these poems is a space of meditation on identity, solitude, and history. One might predict the overreaching influence of Whitman and Mayakovsky, but would be enriched by discovering the presence of James Baldwin and the voices of Harlem Renaissance.”

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Leszek Józef Serafinowicz (pen name: Jan Lechoń) was an accomplished Polish poet and literary critic who lived in New York City.  Wojciech Wyskiel wrote about the New York period of Lechoń's life in Kręgi wygnania: Jan Lechoń na obczyźnie . Stanisław J. Kowalski focused on Lechoń's career in New York as a journalist and editor in Jan Lechoń jako redaktor i publicysta w okresie nowojorskim (1991). Selections of poems, articles, and entries from Lechoń's diaries written in New York appeared in Lechoń nowojorski (1999) prepared by Maciej Patkowski and Beata Dorosz. Some of Lechoń's works were originally published in New York, including:

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Irena "Lenta" Główczewska was born in the city of Łódź, Poland and immigrated in 1962. She lived in New York and worked at the Sid Deutsch Art Gallery. Between 1983 and 2002 she wrote about the artistic, cultural, and intellectual life of New York City for the renowned Polish literary journal, Zeszyty Literackie. Her essays were later collected in the book Nowy Jork: kartki z metropolii 1983-2002 (2004) with an introduction by the Polish poet Julia Hartwig.  Sydor Rey (aka Izydor Reiss) was a Polish novelist and poet of Jewish background who arrived in New York in 1939 and stayed in the city at least until 1960. In 1945 he published here a book of poetry Pieśni mówione which among other poems included “Kobieta w Nowym Jorku.” He also wrote a novel on New York's Lower East Side.

Vladimir Mayakovsky traveled to the United States and spent some time in New York City. While in the city he wrote the poem "Brooklyn Bridge" (1925).  In 1940, Vladimir Nabokov arrived in the city and briefly settled with his wife in Manhattan (his archive is held by NYPL). Other Russian poets and writers settled in the city permanently. Boris Vetrov compiled two anthologies of their works. They were published by Slovo as Russkie poety N'iu Iorka (2006) and Poety i prozaiki N'iu-Iorka (2007). More recently Tat'iana Ivleva compiled Tsvetok emigranta: Roza vetrov: antologiia (2020). “The Flower of the Emigrant. Rose of the Winds " is an anthology of contemporary Russian authors scattered all over the world, including New York, who continue to write in Russian. The book includes poems, samples of short prose, and collections of black and white photographs. 

Yasha Klots, professor of Russian studies at Hunter College, CUNY interviewed several Russian poets who live in or near New York City and published these extensive interviews in Poety v N'iu-Iorke: o gorode iazyke, diaspore ( 2016). Among interviewed poets from New York City there were:

  • Dmitrii Bobyshev
  • Vladimir Gandel'sman 
  • Katia Kapovich
  • Bakhyt Kenzheev
  • Vasyl' Makhno
  • Irina Mashinskaia
  • Val'zhyna Mort
  • Evgenii Ostashevskii
  • Vera Pavlova  
  • Elena Suntsova
  • Maryna Temkina
  • Aleksei Tsvetkov

    • Klots is also interested in tamizdat literature, which refers to Russian works written in the Soviet Union, smuggled abroad in manuscript, and published in the West, including in New York (see his Tamizdat Project).

    Russian authors based in the city continue to publish their works. Among them is Tat'iana Vladimirovna Iankovskaia who was born in Leningrad, Soviet Union (now St. Petersburg, Russia) and since 1981 has lived in New York. In a brief description of her book Dalekoe-dalekoe leto (2020) she wrote: "The stories gathered in this book are very different—dramatic and humorous, tragic and lyrical. They tell about the past and present of people who have found or have not found themselves at home or in exile, about the influence of chance and personal choice on fate." 

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    Vantsenti Vasilev (b. Radomir, Bulgaria) is a chemist and a writer. After receiving his education in Bulgaria and working in various factories, he left for Italy in 1988 and a year later arrived in New York. In 1992 he was hired by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. His first book Semenata an strakha is a memoir about the humiliation and hopelessness of a young scientist under a totalitarian regime. He has also published Razkazi ot Niuiorskata biblioteka(2011).

    Svetozar Daniel Simko was born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia in 1959 and emigrated with his family in 1968. He worked as a librarian at The New York Public Library until his death in 2004 and is also known as a poet, writer, and translator. His translation of Georg Trakl's, Autumn Sonata, received the Poet’s House Translation Prize. His own English language poetry has been translated into Czech, Slovak, and German. A posthumous collection of his poetry was published in 2009 under the title The Arrival.

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    Local Slavic authors have also been guest speakers at various events organized by The New York Public Library. Yuriy Tarnawsky (Ukrainian) and Lara Vapnyar (Russian) read fragments of If This Is a Man (also issued in the United States as Survival in Auschwitz)by Primo Levi during an event at the Library's historic Stephen A. Schwarzman Building commemorating the author's 100th anniversary of birth. In 2019, Gennady Rusakov, a Russian poet and the winner of the 2014 Russian "Poet" prize read his works at the Roosevelt Island Branch where he also shared stories from his time as an interpreter at the United Nations. On April 17, 2021, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library (SNFL) will hold a ZOOM event with Alexander Stessin, a New York doctor and award-winning Russian-language writer.

     

    English Language Resources