"God Is a Rusyn": Anthology of Contemporary Carpatho-Rusyn Literature

Irina Hardi-Kovachevich

Irina Hardi-Kovachevich IRINA HARDI-KOVACHEVICH (b. 1944) was born in Rus´ki Kerestur in what was then Yugoslavia. After completing Rusyn school, she studied South Slavic literature at the University of Novi Sad. She worked as an actor for the Diadia theater company and as a journalist for the Rusyn newspaper Ruske slovo. From 1965 until 1984 she was an editor of the newspaper and from 1984 to 1987 she was editor-in-chief. She then took a position at the Serbian daily Dnevnyk as cultural editor. Hardi-Kovachevich began writing poetry in college, and her first poems appeared in youth magazines. She has published three books of poetry, A Seed in the Hand (Na dlanï zarenko, 1969), Nameless Reality (Bezmena iava, 1980), and Unanimity (Iednozlozhnosts, 2004). She has also written drama, as well as three books of stories for children. Hardi-Kovachevich won the Aleksander Dukhnovych Prize in 2008. 234 SERBIA [From Iednozlozhnosts] The Word It began the universe and gave birth to God. It sang hymns and pastorals. Printed— it inspired fear. It followed shepherds through deserts, it grew in the cradle, it survived battles, it preserved for all eternity. Written, it made young heads pay, spoken— it made old hearts burst. The child cries in vain when it is not nurtured by mother’s breast. It renders the seed of man infertile if it does not spring up in a woman. Gilded with gold, paid for with gold— it bears witness to man.
 Distance Where we have not been and where we will never be is a better life. IRINA HARDI-KOVACHEVICH 235 What we have not had and what we may have wanted is a better dream. Stuck in the short-term, we still strive for eternity. Bound to it as the stars to the distant sky, we grieve.
 Witness We are guilty before ourselves and before others for causing pain! That which injures can easily cripple oneself and others. But, how does one witness to life when one is not living? How do you know what it means to have something, unless you compare with one who has never had it, or with one who has it no longer? ...