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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

The Most Solid Ukrainian Newspaper’s Business Card This is how The Day’s observer Yuri Andrukhovych is referred to in Moscow

13 November, 2012 - 00:00

Recently, The Day’s columnist and perhaps Ukraine’s best known young writer Yuri Andrukhovych visited Moscow at the invitation of the Crimean Club literary salon.

Although Andrukhovych wrote in The Day that Moscow’s literary soirees draw small bohemian audiences, his was a pleasant exception from the rule; his visit must have been expected as an important event in literary circles. Be it as it may, the prestigious Russian weekly Novoe vremia carried a feature dedicated to him in the “Faces” column, alongside the portraits of Michelangelo Antonioni and Svetlana Alekseyevich. The title reads “Bestseller Translated from Ukrainian.” Remarkably, the author is not condescending, as is customary in all Russian publications dealing with Little Russia. In fact, the tone is unmistakably respectful. The weekly euphorically announces that Yuri Andrukhovych’s famous novel, Perversion, which made headlines in the West last year, has finally started to be translated into Russian. This is followed by the author’s resume. Aware of Mr. Andrukhovych’s popularity with our readers, we thought it worthwhile to describe the Novoe Vremia piece (slightly abridged). After all, the nation should know its heroes.

The author of the article writes that works by this young Ukrainian writer are published in Italy, Germany, Poland, Austria, Sweden, Canada, and the US. Yuri Andrukhovych is invited to lecture at Berlin University, takes part in international seminars and conferences. Western critics point to him as a most noteworthy representative of post-modernism, comparing him to Umberto Eco.

It seems only natural that a Ukrainian has succeeded this time in grasping a certain shift in modern consciousness, what is generally referred to as the spirit of the times. He calls it perversion. Its sexual context apart, the notion seems inherently characteristic of the Ukrainian mentality, being constantly cast aside, aloof, in a historically prescribed state of passivity. Hence the shadow of a doubt about one’s own actual existence. In Andrukhovych’s novel, the hero, a modern Ukrainian poet, mysteriously vanishes from a mysterious symposium in Venice.

His status as the ombudsman of Ukrainian culture is also secured by Andrukhovych’s biography. He was born on March 13, 1960, in Ivano-Frankivsk. After graduating from Lviv’s Institute of Book Printing, he headed a scandalous avant-garde literary group called Boo-Bah-Boo (Ukrainian acronym for “Burlesque-Buffoonery-Extravaganza”) which strove to introduce “carnival aesthetics” not only in literature, but also in the city’s life. At the turn of the 1990s he emerged as a herald of the European lifestyle. At present, Yuri Andrukhovych is a member of the Board of Experts of the International Renaissance Foundation in Kyiv, coeditor of the Small Encyclopedia of Modern Ukrainian Literature in press, and Candidate of Science (Philology).

Before long Yuri Andrukhovych will become available to the Russian reader, Novoe vremia sums up with satisfaction. Well, it is nice to realize that we have caught up with “big brother” at least in this sphere, and in the words of our Moscow colleagues, largely thanks to The Day, Ukraine’s most solid newspaper with Yuri Andrukhovych as its visiting card.

 

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