1708: Pavlo Hrabovsky on Socialist Populism, Workers, Freedom, Poetry, and Human Dignity
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Medium (Personal)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2026/06/28
“I am no singer of wondrous nature,
With its cold indifference;
The dispossessed peoples do not leave my mind —
To them I have given all my feelings.”
“Amid bright, gilded expanses,
I see people without a piece of rye bread…
Blue sky… birds… from beneath the nightingales’ choirs,
Like a knife, everywhere strikes the peasant’s groan.”
“Let those little folk inclined to rapture
Sing to us in every voice
Of paradisiacal dreams and blessed corners —
Where people weep, there is no beauty anymore!”
“Forward, for the native land and freedom,
For the shackled, oppressed people,
Though you find nothing there but pain,
Though unrewarded labour awaits us!”
“Forward, against evil, of one mind!
The hostile mob has grown large.
Let us not think to live without sorrow,
For life is inevitable struggle.”
“A bold word — that is our artillery;
Bright deeds — those are our swords.”
“Let us throw off the rule of executioners and fanatics,
So that man may become human!”
“I would wish, my native land,
That you might win your freedom,
That the long-awaited paradise
You would expect from yourself alone.”
“That the greatness of the common people
Might reign in Rus’,
That the enchanting peasant beauty
Might grow in love and grace.”
“Where are you, sowers
Of truth for all the people and of brotherhood;
Where are you, workers
Of noble thought and steadfast spirit?”
“Scatter, handful by handful,
The cleanly winnowed grain:
The enemies have long been mocking
Mother Rus’!”
“Work for others days and nights,
Do not sleep through a single moment of labour;
And when sorrow takes hold, when your eyes begin to weep —
Drown it all more quickly in the cup…”
“Do not grieve that your unwelcomed life
Is covered in darkness,
That your little heart is all drenched in blood,
That your finest feelings have been slandered;
The world is swept with the scent of the grave,
And prison rules to the very end…”
“Upon our decayed corpse
Immortal brotherhood will grow!”
“I am human… Weaknesses oppress me;
I feel them, yet I have no strength to flee;
Petty dreams, vain anxieties
Have chained me all around, like executioners with a fetter.”
“It is not for us always to sing of flowers
And admire the Dnipro…
The hour has come to care for the path of enlightenment,
To secure the people’s welfare;
To stop, all around, the voices of groaning
That cut the heart at once,
To scatter the darkness of superstition,
To strengthen minds with reason.”
“Let the dead letter not lure you
Into quarrels, concealing the essence;
Whether Germans or Slavs are more glorious —
Such disputes will not save the land.”
“A people abandoned to misery,
A people crawling in the gloom,
Must lose its native traits
And be erased from the earth without a trace!”
“‘Art for art’s sake’ has not existed, does not exist, and cannot exist in reality; it is an empty, hollow-ringing phrase — nothing more.”
“Poetry must be one of the factors of universal human progress, and in the native land in particular — of progress for all the people; a means of struggle against the world’s injustice, a bold voice for all the oppressed and wronged.”
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