Conclusion

Fishbein enriched the Ukrainian literary tradition in various ways. He con­tributed to the genre of philosophical lyrics represented in Ukraine by only a handful of significant but scattered texts of the Neoclassical school (for example, Zerov, the early Bazhan, the late Pervomais’kyi, Stus).

Whatever Fishbein touched poetically he transformed into metaphysics. He drew from Aleksandr Tvardovskii’s “la ubit podo Rzhevom” (I Was Killed Near Rzhev, 1945 - 46), portraying how national memory epitomizes the soldier’s death, and transubstantiated it into a reflection on the imminent resurrection of the human soul.¹¹³ He turned to the Ukraine-born Russian poet Arsenii Tarkovskii (1907- 89), well known for his Neoplatonic motifs, and transformed his erotic images into philosophical ones.¹¹⁴ As if gathering Ukrainian exiles “lost” to other cultures, he brought back to Ukrainian culture the legacy of those Hebrew, Yiddish, German, Austrian, Romanian, and Hungarian poets whose ex­perience or imagery is directly linked to the Ukrainian past and present. Fish- bein elaborated Pervomais’kyi’s metapoetic language, “nationalizing” it and transforming it into the image of the Ukrainian language per se.¹¹5 Last but not least, Moisei Fishbein’s messianism seems, among other things, to be a response to Pavlo Tychyna 1919 prophecy: “Vozdvyhne Vkraina svoioho Moiseia!” (Ukraine will establish its own Moses!).¹¹⁶

Fishbein’s journey brings us to a number of unexpected conclusions.

Constructing a new identity using Ukrainian and Israeli models is both chal­lenging and tempting. Fishbein emphasized that for a Ukrainian-Jewish writer the only possible entrance into Ukrainian literature is through integration into the nationally oriented Ukrainian strata. If a literary figure is not willing to ac­knowledge the Ukrainian share in twentieth-century martyrdom and its painful postcolonial ramifications—what is he or she doing in Ukrainian discourse? Al­though for Ukrainians as a whole the language might not be the first and fore­most manifestation of their national impulse Fishbein assumes a more pro­Ukrainian stance on the language issue. For Fishbein, the Ukrainian language is no longer a trivial medium of communication. On the contrary, it is at the center of his poetic and human experience and the object of intense intellectual reflec­tion.

According to Fishbein, to be a Jewish poet in Ukraine is to invest one’s ef­forts in the Ukrainian linguistic revival and to address constantly the painful is­sue of the purity of the Ukrainian language. Whoever he or she is, a Ukrainian poet of Jewish descent should teach, chastise, instruct, and inspire the elites, en­riching Ukrainian culture with the tradition of Judaic prophecy and leadership. Fishbein’s itinerary demonstrates that there is no other way for a Jew to con­struct a self-identity in a postcolonial country other than to elevate—if not re- deem—the colonial culture. For many, the price to be paid for that personal in­vestment might seem exorbitant. But Fishbein paid it magnanimously.