Conclusion

To understand Pervomais’kyi’s role in fostering the rise of Ukrainian-Jewish cultural self-identification, one may want to assess the consistency with which he incorporated Jewish issues in each and every genre of his writings.¹⁵³ Pervomais’kyi’s attempts to create a corpus of Ukrainian translations from Yiddish should also be viewed within the same context.¹⁵⁴ That the attacks against Per- vomais’kyi by Ukrainian literary officialdom (“pogrom,” to use the expression of Moisei Fishbein) coincided with a new wave of repressions against Ukrainian national-minded writers is further vivid testimony of Pervomais’kyi’s thoroughly amalgamated Jewish-Ukrainian identity.¹⁵⁵ Hence it comes as no surprise that Moisei Fishbein, whose poetry is heavily charged with Ukrainian- Jewish symbolism, not only epitomizes the Ukrainian-Jewish tradition but also claims Pervomais’kyi’s legacy.¹⁵⁶

Becoming the voice of the speechless and making the dead be heard was Pervomais’kyi’s utmost humanistic value.

He considered his mission fulfilled if he could help the victims of violence find their voice through his medium. He equated the desire to win with the will to power, finding it ethically unacceptable, since it implied violence toward, or oppression of, somebody else. This explains Pervomais’kyi’s rejection of ideology, political or religious. In one of his last poems, “Zniatiie so Khresta” (Taking from the Cross), published posthumously, Pervomais’kyi reimagined himself as Jesus being taken from the cross. He would have considered it pathetic to identify with Jesus solely as a martyred Jew or a Christian offering; instead, he identified with Jesus as a suffering, dying, and hence mortal human being whose voice was lost and last will unknown. Pervo- mais’kyi, the dying Jesus, did not need churches or temples-on-the-blood, those unnecessary testimonies to his ex post facto historical or moral victory. Nor did he seek ascension and resuscitation, another superfluous manifestation of his posthumous triumph. He sought only to capture the voice of a dying victim. The rest was falsehood.

Pull over here a big rock:

Let my earthly flesh rot

And turn forever into earth,

So that God does not revive me.¹⁵⁷

The revival is not so much the resuscitation as the victim’s voice speaking through the poet. Poetry, Pervomais’kyi’s substitute for religion, is compassion without comfort, mercy without promise, and sympathy without faith. Throughout his life, Pervomais’kyi sought and found voiceless victims—alive and dead, imaginary and real, male and female—and helped them speak.

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Source: Petrovsky-Shtern Yohanan. The Anti-Imperial Choice. The Making of the Ukrainian Jew. New Haven; London: Yale University Press,2009. — 384 p.. 2009

Conclusion

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