music: Denys Sichynsky, 1901
lyrics: Ivan Franko - "National Anthem", 1881
performance: Choir "Homin"
Historical background: "It's Not Time" is a poem by Ukrainian writer Ivan Franko from the cycle "Ukraine" from the collection "From the Highs and the Lows" published in 1893/1897. At one time, along with several other poems in the cycle, it was banned under Polish rule and the rule of the Russian Empire. It was one of the most popular Ukrainian anthems of the early twentieth century.
The poem was addressed to Ukrainians in the East and West, who were divided between the Russian and Austro-Hungarian occupiers, and called for the realization that the highest need of every Ukrainian was to unite around the great idea of Ukraine's liberation and independence. Fedir Pohrebennyk noted the enormous formative and mobilizing power of this seemingly simple poem: "...such a strong, powerful revolutionary word, full of faith in the liberation of the people, such a desperate call to fight for holy ideals, Ukrainian poetry before Franko had not known."
For western Rusyn-Ukrainians, the merit of Franko, and this poem in particular, also consisted in the realization of the unity of the great Ukrainian nation from the Carpathians to the Caucasus. In his "First Letter to Galician Ukrainian Youth" Ivan Franko wrote: "We must learn to hear ourselves as Ukrainians - not Galician, not Bukovinian, but Ukrainians without official borders."
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25 мар 2024
