[A Russian-born educator, Struve is internationally known for his critical studies of Slavic literature. In the following excerpt, he provides a brief overview of Bagritsky's works, focusing on the Lay of Opanas.]

[Bagritsky's] first volume of poetry, Yugozapad (SouthWest, 1928), in some points resembled Tikhonov's early romantic realism. It was possible to trace in it the same influences—of Gumilyov and the Acmeists, of the English ballads (which he translated), and of Kipling. One of his favorite heroes seems to have been Tyll Eulenspiegel. A decided romantic who looked at the Revolution from outside, Bagritsky saw it as something strange and alien but recognized its elemental, sweeping force. In one of his best lyric poems, in which one feels the winds of the Revolution blowing about, he speaks of "strange constellations rising above us," of "strange banners unfurling over us," and likens himself to "a rusty oak leaf" bound to follow in the wake of these strange banners. In some of his poems, however, he tried to draw closer to the Revolution and to portray it other than subjectively. Such is his famous Duma pro Opanasa (The Lay About Opanas), which for a long time was regarded by Soviet critics as one of the masterpieces of Soviet poetry. It is a long poem, in which the lyric and the narrative elements are intermingled, telling the story of a simple Ukrainian peasant, Opanas, who flees from a Communist food-requisitioning detachment commanded by Kogan, a Jew. While fleeing, Opanas encounters the "Green" anarchist band of Makhno and is forced to join it. When Kogan falls into the hands of Makhno, Opanas is ordered to shoot him. He decides to let Kogan escape, but Kogan refuses the offer and chooses death, which he faces with proud indifference. Later on, the Makhno bands are defeated by the Reds, and Opanas is taken prisoner. Questioned by the Red commander Kotovsky, he admits having shot Kogan and submits docilely to his own execution.

The Lay About Opanas is a heroic revolutionary poem. The underlying romanticism of its conception is unquestionable. In form it has been influenced by Ukrainian folk poetry and by Taras Shevchenko, the national poet of the Ukraine. Its free and quick-changing meter recalls Ukrainian folk songs. There are in it some beautiful evocations of the Ukrainian landscape. In its combination of naive simplicity and romantic hyperbolism it also derives from folk poetry.

In his later poems, collected in Pobediteli (The Victors) and Poslednyaya noch (Tbe Last Night), Bagritsky tried to identify himself even more closely with the Revolution and Socialism, but at heart he remained a romantic; his sense of life, and zest for it, saved him from becoming didactic or doctrinaire. In the autobiographical narrative poem "Fevral" ("February"), which was published posthumously, the romantic note is again sounded very clearly. But South-West (for which Bagritsky made a careful and small selection from the poems written during the first ten years of his poetic activity) remains, I think, his best book, full of genuinely spontaneous poetry and striking a distinct personal note. Such poems as "Pigeons," "The Watermelon," and "The Cigarette Box" deserve a place in any anthology of modern Russian poetry.