By Yuri ANDRUKHOVYCH, The Day
I live in a part of the world that has since time immemorial been an object
of suspicion and despised, a territory called Halychyna. Thus, perhaps
I have no alternative but consider myself a postmodernist. A joke, of course,
but a sad one.
There are regions remaining solid and true, even in their ruined and
ugly condition. As for Halychyna, it is thoroughly artificial, put together
by pseudo-historical conjectures and dirty political intrigues that are
easily seen through. Those saying that Halychyna is just a 150-year-old
invention of several Austrian ministers are right a thousand times over.
A nauseatingly sweet idee fixe nourished by certain conspiratorial
strategists who at one time or another set themselves the chimerical goal
of expanding Europe eastward, even if just a bit. Expand Europe they did
not. What they got in the end was a kind of buffer, a cordon sanitaire.
The hapless Ivan Franko gave in to their mystification, hence all his troubles,
all his disoriented labors of Sisyphus.
In perspective, compared to Polissia, for example, this land has a comical
enough aspect. Polissia is a cosmic cradle of paganism, located in the
basins of the Prypiat and Desna, having purely Aryan roots and undisturbed
Derevliany tribal sources with original genetic and cultural codes, most
archaic folklore, epos, dialects, lakes, turf deposits, gothic pine trees,
along with traps for animals and humans slightly wounded by the pursuing
wolves. Polissia is a national substrata, Ukraine's Chornobyl choice, it
is reality incarnate, crude authenticity and sincerity, retaliatory campaign
of the Messiah Onopriyenko along its railroads and highways. Polissia is
slowness and gloom, time brought to an almost total standstill, a lingering
communist eternity hatefully besieging ancient Kyiv; it is that very profoundly
dark Ukrainian spirit.
From the standpoint of Polissia, Halychyna does not exist, yet it is
there, but the fact is worthless. Halychyna is not Ukraine but a kind of
geographical makeweight, a Polish hallucination. Halychyna is thoroughly
like a dummy, an inflated doll striving in every way to impose on Ukraine
its non-Ukrainian will, formed somewhere in underground Zionist laboratories.
Halychyna is deprived of its own epos, ever dominated by dirty jokes. In
fact, it is a rootless space convenient for any nomadic tribes, putting
forth Armenians, Gypsies, Karaites, and Chassidim. Halychyna is a backyard
nourishing Freemasonry and Marxism. It is misleading and false, a stinking
zoo packed with echidnas and chimeras. Here only bastards like Bruno Schultz
or all those smaller replicas of Stanislavsky and Kafka. And if one is
not a bastard but, say, Vasyl Stefanyk, the only choice one has drinking
oneself to death in a backwater town like Rusiv. "There are more geniuses
in Ivano-Frankivsk now than in Moscow," sneers the sharp-tongued Ihor Klekh,
also from Halychyna and also brilliant as evidenced by his latest book
published in Moscow.
An ironical tone is more than appropriate, for Halychyna is thoroughly
ironical and immoral, hence its eternal apostasy and time-serving, unwavering
adherence to the Church Union of Brest, and children sold to America. Halychyna
is as ostentatious and frilly as a French cuff, aristocratically arrogant,
ridiculously bowing and scraping in all directions, kissing hands, and
facing closed doors with inherent rustic lisping and lip-smacking; it is
endless drowsy after-lunch bull sessions, always about Europe, the European
spirit, European values and purpose, European culture and cuisine, about
the road to Europe, that "we are in Europe," while all of Halychyna's cultural
heritage can be placed in a medium-size Lviv suitcase. All Halychyna can
do is try hard to follow in Europe's footsteps, and Europe has long been
unable to accomplish anything new (as Spengler noted long ago). Halychyna
is a plagiarist, made even more pitiful by selecting the most lifeless
of all possible objects of plagiarism.
The rest is coffee, homemade liqueurs, pies and cakes, housewife dictatorship,
needlework done on napkins, jams and preserves, rushnyk embroidered towels,
carpets, tastelessness, and kitsch. In a word, Galician suburbia in full
glory.
Compared to Polissia, Halychyna is just pitiful; it is postmodern.
But I have a different prospect. Rather, I have none, for I am here
within, it is my territory, it is my suspect and despised world. The fortified
walls surrounding it have long been torn down, moats filled with historical
and cultural broken porcelain, fragments of black Havarechchyna ceramics
and Hutsul tiles. My line of a defense is myself, but I have no alternative
other than hold a fort which is falling apart before my eyes.






