CERTAIN THINGS HURT ME SO MUCH, I FEEL AS THOUGH THEY WERE BURNING ME AT THE STAKE
The name of writer Mariya Matios has been increasingly popular of late. The reason is simple enough. She has published three books within a short period and caused reverberations in literary circles, like a stone tossed into dead water. An acknowledged poetess, she has also made her name as a prose writer. Now is the time to sum up the results. Precisely this was done at a soiree held at the plush conference hall of the National Writers’ Union of Ukraine. Quite a number of ranking guests were in attendance. Ranking not bureaucratically but in terms of talent and recognition: poets, prose writers, and critics.
The emcee, writer and critic Petro Osadchuk, started by quoting Mariya Matios as saying before entering the audience, “I’m very nervous.” Well she might, for the audience she was facing was not made up of ordinary readers but established professionals who would not waste their breath on wholesome praise. On this particular occasion, however, praise was abundant: “wonderful language, combining things tragic and comic” or “when I read that book (The Nation) I had a lump in my throat...”
Mariya Matios kept silent for five years, precisely the interval between her last collection of verse and three books published recently, collectively known as “Calvary” (Life is Short, The Nation, and The Woman’s Lasso). They appeared as a small shock and explosion at the same time, followed by over forty reviews in various periodicals. And this considering that far more famous and better promoted names than the newly born prose writer did not receive even one- tenth of the following, at a time when Ukrainian literature and criticism were only halfway up, still somewhat isolated. The author admits, “Working on ‘Life is Short,’ I felt as though I held a scalpel rather than pen... dissecting the process in which man experiences joys and sorrows ...” This is probably what attracts the critics. Experts say she is an ethno-psychoanalyst, touching on the innermost archetypes of the nation, trying to help find an answer to the question, Who are we? In one of her poems Matios writes: “I wonder who I am./ A white frisk and wary squirrel/ Racing up a tree, nut in paw,/Or just a happy woman,/ Lucky to be happy like this.”
A sharply discordant note in this choir later sounded in a rather prestigious Kyiv newspaper whose editors must have carelessly allowed a somewhat obnoxious author have his spiel who chose to ignore basic rules of ethics. That author, in turn, must have mistaken dirty political technologies for literature, life stories, and literary criticism. The result was some eleven points having nothing to do with Mariya’s writings. It all came down to defamation of character, distorting her personal views and persuasions; rampant bias aggravated by cynicism and irresponsibility, lumping together private life, duty, passages from literary works, even national security. In a word, quite a mess and a weird one.
The Day offers a more professional and weighted observation made by one of Ukraine’s oldest writers, Shevchenko Prize winner Anatoly Dimarov: “I didn’t know we had a woman writer like that, but then I came across her book The Nation. I started reading it and let me tell you frankly, it has been a long time since I had last witnessed such literary level. I was particularly amazed by what she tells about the Bukovynian people. A singular view, revealing such colorful aspects... I can only marvel at a young lady with such talent. It’s a major breakthrough in literature, reminding one of Hryhory Tiutiunnyk and other luminaries of the 1960s. Eventually we met and she said, ‘You know, certain things hurt me so much I feel as though I were burning at the stake...’ That’s what I call giving of oneself. It’s extremely important and I am happy to know that another serious author has entered our literature. I don’t know about poetry, for I’m also a prose writer. But her prose – I do believe her book is the only one deserving the prize.
