Chernivtsi’s poetic meridian
“Chernivtsi, located midway between Kyiv and Bucharest, the Crimea and Odesa, has always been a secret capital of Europe, where sidewalks were swept with bouquets of roses, and there were more bookstores than bakeries,” reads the inscription near the entrance of the Chernivtsi Museum of Arts. It is located in Holovna Street, where Olha Kobylianska Street, the pedestrian route most appreciated by tourists, begins.
In early September the secret capital of Europe, also the legal administrative center of the Chernivtsi oblast, was full of poetry. It spread over the entire historical center of the city, the crowded cafes, the dark corridors of the abovementioned museum, the gilded molding of the local theaters, and poured via the university’s splendid halls right onto the cobbled roadway of streets and squares, which, according to translator and literary critic Mark Belorusets, are living memories of their imperial past.
The first International Festival of Poetry Meridian Czernowitz gathered litterateurs from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Ukraine, as well as translators and everyone willing to listen and hear. However, they did not just listen to poetry, but looked and tried to touch it. The organizers of the festival should be paid their due, as not only did they undertake the initiative (which under our circumstances usually entails unexpected upshots) and managed to organize it very well, without the usual mess, failures, and blanks, but also provided “interaction” between poetry, music, video art, theater, and photography.
The only thing the festival’s organization committee can be reproached with is that the promises of most ringing book launches did not come true. To make it more precise, premieres did take place, but we did not see the books. But that is no organizers’ fault. In particular, we found out that the book of correspondence between the renowned German-speaking Jewish poet, born in Chernivtsi, Paul Celan, and his peer and friend Gustav Chomedde will see the light no sooner than in October. The book will be published by the main publisher of Celan’s oeuvre Barbara Wiedemann. The German edition of correspondence between Celan and Chomedde (it’s too early to speak about the Ukrainian translation) will appear in print on October 1.
A similar story happened to the second premiere of Meridian Czernowitz, Igor Pomerantsev’s book Vynarni (Groggeries). Pomerantsev is a litterateur, publicist, radio journalist, dissident, festival organizer, and wine critic. This book lacuna is the result of a misunderstanding between the former chief editor of the Grani-T Publishing House Diana Klochko and the owners of the publishing house. When Vynarni was ready to go to print, Diana resigned, whereas the author’s rights were retained by the publishing house. Thus, during the festival, nobody could touch the announced Vynarni which, incidentally, was translated into Ukrainian by Klochko.
ON TRANSLATION
“All poems have their own drive, which is impossible to translate,” said Pomerantsev, the author of the “wine” book that had fallen victim to the games of the Ukrainian publishing business. However, maximum proximity to the original poetic drive is very important for the international festival, where several dozens of foreign writers are taking part. According to Klochko, translation is not merely a way to come to terms, but a separate full-fledged poetic stratum, especially if the question is about the complex and multilayered fabric of poetry.
This year the translators’ milieu at the festival included by far the most authoritative Ukrainian translators of German literature: the Kyivites Mark Belorusets and Chernivtsi resident Petro Rykhlo. The latter is convinced that Chernivtsi will not lack translators even when the festival’s president Sviatoslav Pomerantsev starts to implement his ambitious plans to turn the Meridian Czernowitz into one of the grandest European literary events.
“Once the number of participants grows, the number of translators will increase as well. Chernivtsi meets all the conditions to hold a large-scale festival. This is a poly-cultural and polyglot city. For example, there is quite a large number of Romanian-speakers, but the first festival did not feature Romanian poetry. Apparently, next year we should involve both Romanian and Polish poets, since these ethnic groups are also represented in Chernivtsi. Ukraine has quite a strong new generation of translators, one simply ought to give them possibility to work,” Rykhlo said.
FROM LOCAL TO GLOBAL
The professional high-quality translations, the good organization of the event, and the interaction of renowned European litterateurs with Ukrainian poets and writers are things that gave a European feeling to the festival and contemporary Ukrainian poetry. As for Chernivtsi, it is quite a European city. The so-called European values can be seen here and take on various forms, such as visual owing to architecture, and auditory owing to poetry and multilingualism (one should recall at least Olha Kobylianska). But there is another side to Chernivtsi, the West European one. Some interesting thoughts in this regard were voiced by Pomerantsev: “Chernivtsi has always been one of the cultural centers of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It collapsed, the time has changed, yet there is a notion used by the culture historians, ‘retrospective utopia.’ The former parts of Austria-Hungary have a typical phantom chagrin, retrospective utopia; they want to find themselves in the new history. Austria is a tiny country with colossal complexes. This country was called the Eastern Empire, the Eastern Reich-Oesterreich, but it is quite small in area. Can you imagine how painful the lose of their space must be for Austrians? Therefore they eagerly go to Chernivtsi, communicate with us, and create symposiums and seminars. This affection is mutual. Yes, there are elements of surrealism and historical absurd, but this affection should continue to exist, as it gives rise to chemical reactions, related to culture and the modern times.”
The surrealist feeling of belonging to a single cultural space, which fills the participants of such festivals, is quickly ruined by reality. But perhaps society is able to gradually integrate into Europe on its own. Such hope appears as one hears in the streets of a Ukrainian city both German, and, what is more important, Ukrainian poetry. After all, the Meridian Czernowitz festival is an example of civic integration, when a group of people joins the European space, or the space of poetry, as Lviv poet Oleh Lysheha says, avoiding geopolitical formulations.
THE CITY AS A SEPARATE CHARACTER
Due to the mixture of poetry and Austrian architecture the city itself became a participant of the festival. “In the time of Paul Celan, during the interwar period and the Romanian period of Bukovyna’s history, cultural life was flourishing in Chernivtsi,” says Rykhlo, a literary critic, translator, professor at the Chernivtsi University, “There were lots of German and Jewish poets who wrote in Yiddish. Celan is only a tip of the iceberg in the group of the German-language poets. One can mention dozens of names here. Kobylianska created her works in that time. A number of Romanian poets, specifically the group Ikonaru, which is interesting for avant-gardists, were forerunners of Romanian surrealism. Chernivtsi was quite a small city with a population of 100,000, but at the time it published five German-language newspapers. There were also Romanian, Ukrainian, Yiddish, and Polish liberal and conservative papers. In the 1930s there was even a chauvinistic paper, published by Bukovynian Germans influenced by the Reich. By comparison, today Chernivtsi does not publish a single daily newspaper. In the interwar period many books were published and the city’s residents watched plays staged by leading European theaters.”
“When I came to Chernivtsi in 1987 for the first time, it seemed to me that the residents of this city, which is more Austrian than Ukrainian, late-Gothic and with typical Jugenstiel, have nothing in common with it,” Belorusets said about his first encounter with Chernivtsi, “Later, being at a Leipzig conference dedicated to Paul Celan, I visited the exhibit ‘One day in Chernivtsi’ of a renowned photo artist. The pictures showed young people photographed with these houses in the background. Then I understood that architecture formed people, and these people somehow change because of being related to this architecture, though they may be unaware of this.”
IS CHERNIVTSI A UKRAINIAN CITY?
Like many other Ukrainian cities, Chernivtsi has a complicated history, as complex as the ethnic structure of the city’s population. Chernivtsi is not a Ukrainian city in terms of culture, although Ukrainians have always made up the bulk of the population. This situation is the same today. But unfortunately, there is no renowned, worthy festival that would be dedicated to Olha Kobylianska or Yurii Fedkovych. It is not about laying flowers, delivering emotional speeches and similar events, organized for the miserable money allotted from the budget. It would be interesting to hear and see Kobylianska and Fedkovych in tandem with avant-garde theater, electronic music, video art, and progressive contemporaries. Including Liudyna (The Human Being) and Lukian Kobylytsia in the school curriculum does not suffice to recreate cultural values after their total destruction. Unfortunately, the presence of Ukrainian culture in Chernivtsi remains doubtful, as before. This is also the case elsewhere.
“Every city has its own historical and cultural heritage, but they need organizers, people of initiative who would not speak how hard it is for them, but roll up their sleeves and get down to work,” Rykhlo said.
A city that has been inhabited since ancient time by Ukrainians, Romanians, Jews, Austrians, Germans, and which identifies itself as a Ukrainian city offers a colossal opportunity to develop and deepen one’s cultural sensitivities. This does not mean that we should hang flags and plant guilder roses all over Chernivtsi, rather that comfortable conditions be created for the development of all cultures and somewhat more attention and assistance should be offered for the Ukrainian one.
Igor POMERANTSEV, poet, publicist, radio journalist, member of the organizing group of the festival Meridian Czernowitz:
“Everything depends on civic society and specific individuals. I have already said once that Yurii Andrukhovych, Oksana Zabuzhko, and Serhii Zhadan have already entered the European Union and joined NATO. And I’m speaking not only about these three personalities, rather about the psychological guidelines of a great part of the Ukrainian population. The very long period of Communist rule resulted in nearly a complete loss of culture, deliberate liquidation of historical and cultural memory. Today Ukraine’s civic society is regaining its cultural and historical memory. This is achieved with blood and sweat, through grandiose scandals about who is a hero and who’s not. These scandals are blown-up. History should be treated calmly, one should sort out everything, not engage in politicking. This festival is an attempt to recreate the short period of historical and cultural memory of Chernivtsi connected with Austro-Hungarian Empire.”
Elizabeth HEIMSOETH, the festival’s guest, wife of the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Germany to Ukraine Dr. Hans-Juergen Heimsoeth:
“During the several years of our stay in Ukraine, we have had to travel a lot and watch how Ukraine has been gradually becoming more open to Europe. As for the cultural aspect of integration, Ukraine should have its own voice in this. This means that it should present itself to the world through the most renowned speakers of the Ukrainian language, i.e. writers and singers. This way, thanks to culture, one can build a bridge between Ukraine and the EU countries. This is my first visit to Chernivtsi and I am very surprised to see that people here indeed have a greater connection with Europe and are closer to our lifestyle, like our attitude to work and our understanding of ethics.”
Terezia YATSENIUK, head of the Monitoring Council of the International Charity Foundation Open Ukraine, which helped with festival’s organization:
“The first condition is an exchange of cultural experience and values on the national level. It is very important that in spite of everyday problems people do not forget about intellectual development, both for themselves and their children. This may seem inappropriate, given the current crisis, but even in hard times one should not forget about the social sphere and focus merely on the economic one.
“Speaking about the exchange of experience on the national level, I mean getting involved in the European cultural integration of Ukraine’s eastern and southern regions. How can this be done? One should simply go there, free of charge, as volunteers. Folklore circles, poets and artists. This should not be obtrusive; conversely, it should be done in a gentle manner, with love.
“Surely, the cultural development of such a big country as Ukraine cannot depend merely on enthusiasts and volunteers. This movement should be headed by the state, which should take a more active part in funding projects that are interesting and needed by society. The Open Ukraine Foundation was established three years ago to promote Ukraine abroad. In particular, our foundation is the only one in Ukraine to give grants for translations of the works of contemporary authors into foreign languages. We have translated the anthology of Ukrainian literature into Czech, and recently we have published an English-language review of modern Ukrainian literature and distributed it in the international embassies in Ukraine and book fairs in Moscow, Vilnius, and Frankfurt am Main.
“Our foundation gives grants for the travel expenses of the artists. Owing to this Ukrainian writers and artists have managed to present their works abroad. These include the writer Andrei Kurkov, artists Yulia Kosterieva and Yurii Kruchak, the writer Liubko Deresh and the Nostri Temporis ensemble. We have placed Solomia Krushelnytska’s bust in the Grand Theater of National Opera in Warsaw and a memorable board to the first Austrian Minister of Health, the Ukrainian Ivan Horbachevsky, in Vienna. Ukraine has people and things to be proud of. And the aim of our foundation is to speak about Ukraine’s achievements.”
