Соломія Павличко - Теорія літератури

Liudmyla Taran and Oksana Zabuzhko are the most prominent. But there were also men, including Oleksander Hrytsenko and Attyla Mohylnyi.

Moreover, publication of the forbidden classics of Ukrainian literature from the last centuries compelled virtually every writer to reconsider their place on the continuum of letters.

The eclecticism of the scene was reflected in the first, informal literary journals that appeared in the mid-Eighties. These were most often typewritten in many carbons, rendering some of them nearly illegible. And yet they were passed from hand to hand and widely discussed. Two places in Kyiv where it was possible to meet the writers themselves were the apartment of Mykola Riabchuk, a critic, poet, prose writer, editor, publisher, and above all the catalyst for a new generation; and in the office of Ihor Rymaruk, who remains the poetry editor for the «Dnipro» publishing house. Informal literary readings first took place in the rooms and studios of individual writers and artists, among a narrow circle of friends, spreading gradually and semi-officially to various public lecture halls and finally ending up at the Writers’ Union. The events electrified both writers and audiences, who understood that they were participating in a political and aesthetic metamorphosis. It later became clear that these two not necessarily concentric revolutions had occurred simultaneously; both had great significance and helped free the culture from all manner of conventions, restrictions, and recipes.

Young writers held evening readings of erotic poetry — that it was suddenly possible to write about sex intoxicated them. This had, after all, been a forbidden subject since the Twenties. Moreover, one could write about the military, the brutality and violence of the Soviet regime, and about Lenin-Stalin-Trotsky and other related figures. Finally, writers needed to formulate some version of their national history. Was Ukraine an occupied territory, or had communism been a stabilizing agent binding together a heterogeneous population? What was Ukraine really like? What relationship did it bear to the country refigured by folk stories, or by the intelligentsia in the diaspora? And what was «my» role as a Ukrainian writer to be in the new society? What is «my» true literary heritage? The questions of inheritance and traditions inspired countless arguments.

In the «new» texts, words and sentences and syntax were broken (some of this had occurred in the Twenties, but as it had later been proscribed by the state, it felt entirely new). Raw obscenity and street idioms never before used in Ukrainian fiction or poetry, began appearing in print with some regularity. Western literatures had known similar euphorias over the breaking of taboos: first in the Thirties, and later in the Sixties. These days Henry Miller shocks no one; he merely annoys the feminists. However, the vulgate did open doors for new wave prose writers such as Bohdan Zholdak and Volodymyr Dibrova, as well as for a few poets, including Oleksander Irvanets.

Another crucial change in attitude had to do with where a writer sought approval and empowerment. Heretofore, a writer remained unrecognized unless his or her book was published in Russia or until he or she was mentioned by an important Moscow literary critic. Suddenly Ukrainian writers lost interest in this game. Although the West remained indifferent to their work, a benediction from the East seemed irrelevant. Ukrainian literature began curing itself of an old and deep sense of provincialism, marginality, and inadequacy. She (literature) was no longer interested in the refined and specialized languages of the worker, the professor, or the collective farm director. Models of intellectual and aesthetic orientation were shattering and writers began looking for approval from within.

Eclecticism still reigns: formalism, free verse, rap-influenced recitation all thrive side by side. The principal transformation in poetry, as well as in prose, had to do not with form but with diction. In the last years, urban sounds, anxieties, cynicism, and crude humor have won admission to the palace — no, make that the pub — of art.

Older critics tended to view these developments as little more than posturing and bravado. They simply couldn’t see beyond Rymaruk’s long hair or Pashkovskyi’s military boots, which really were imposing. (Alas, he no longer wears them.) The «hooligans» meanwhile mocked the language of politically engaged art at every turn while at the same time attending anti-Soviet demonstrations and gatherings outside Parliament, and supporting the students who held a hunger strike in October of 1990.

In 1991, Ukrainian independence, the most important event in the country’s history in this century, freed writers enormously. As long as they remained stateless, they were more or less stuck with endlessly shoring up the foundation on which a literature might be built. All earlier attempts over the last hundred years at creating «art for the sake of art» had failed. Now, at last, writers can move beyond their role as missionaries proselytizing on behalf of the Ukrainian language. Today, for the first time, they have a choice. Those who wish to may work in politics, education, or as propagandists, using their gifts for ideological purposes. Others may rally under beauty’s banner or, on the contrary, strive to shock with deliberate ugliness.

Neonationalists are not impressed by this liberation. They continue to claim that the new state, its spirituality, and its literature, do not accommodate them. They reject the influences of the West, declare religious belief the first sign of creative force, and aim at building «a true state» and a «real» national literature. It’s not hard to understand their concern: Ukraine has not turned into the land of their dreams and the Ukrainianaphones remain an oppressed minority in most eastern Ukrainian cities.

Independence has, however, had even less happy consequences: it has created a crisis in publishing which is felt by every writer in the country. Ukraine does not have a single paper mill within its borders. Until 1992, the country had no independent publishers. The last books of Zholdak, Vynnychuk, Dibrova, Rymaruk, Herasymiuk and others were published in 1991. Only a handful of books appeared in 1992, and