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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

Literature Without Readers

23 March, 1999 - 00:00

By Vyacheslav MEDVID, The Day

Not long ago one man close-to-literature man bewildered the author of
this article by asking what he could read of modern Ukrainian prose. It
was not the question that bewildered me but its idiotic year in and year
out reiteration by such "intellectuals."

Ten years ago, I recall, I seriously listed names and tittles, and painstakingly
explained what in them might be interesting for a person who had never
read a single Ukrainian novel. I even used comparisons: for example, Feodosiy
Rohovy's novel Holiday of the Last Threshing is much more progressive
than the topically similar and then better known Russian novels by Valentin
Rasputin and Yuri Bondarev. Five years ago I had to answer more thoroughly,
resorting to comparisons to world literature and the names of Joyce, Faulkner,
and Proust. And, finally, two years ago my answer was like a philosophical
treatise: let us say that in modern literature there are many styles and
techniques, different and sometimes opposing esthetic schools and concepts.
The same man listened to me attentively and, as if illustrating the famous
anecdote "The Chukcha is not a reader but a writer," asked I listen to
his - honestly speaking - absolute poetastery. Fortunately, his poetic
spring dried up in his youth, perhaps together with his interest to literature.
However, he kept interrogating me regularly about literary news without
ever reading a single work of those I recommended.

Can you recognize the type? I assure you, one can meet him every day
in every cafe and at every literary soiree.

The author of these lines had to come almost by chance to one of many
now countless conferences on problems of postmodernism to finally find
the explanation of such a remarkable phenomenon as such people's prevalence
in modern culture. At the conference the spirit of enlightenment and the
finest intellectualism prevailed; the papers read were intelligible only
to those initiated into problems of philosophy, history, and theology;
the discussions heated to the point of brutality. In one of them, I must
admit, I argued with a respected colleague, seeking to prove that the former
war of ideologies and esthetics now has given way to a war of texts and
the most prominent feature of contemporary postmodernist writers is their
fear of life. And, perhaps, overcoming this fear can become the strongest
incentive for creativity.

Having returned to my home city and dropping into the traditional cafe
I met local writers who vied with each other in telling about the conference
and were so well informed about its behind-the-scenes events and discussions
that I was taken aback. It seemed to me that I knew much less that those
who had not been at the conference. It impressed me so that when the traditional
man came to me with his traditional question about the news of modern Ukrainian
prose I almost lost my temper and said that any information should be paid
for.

 

 

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