Sometimes I feel I am a total fool who has no right to talk about literature, let alone to sow readers’ heads with my own views on how a good novel or a story has to smell – with blood and sweat or wheat ears. Every time I sit down to write about Oles Ulianenko, I become entangled in my own limited life experiences which make it difficult for me to speak about a man, whose biography reminds one of a breathtaking thriller, whose novels are a clot of vast and awesome realism incomprehensible to me, whose way of life cannot be squeezed into the limits of normality.
Oles Ulianenko is one of the brightest novelists of a new generation of Ukrainian writers. A laureate of the Small Shevchenko Prize for literature, he is the author of several shocking novels which fought hard to find their way to readers through the publishers’ apprehensions and the most variegated censorship.
Oles Ulianenko is a hermit, whose life is a source of constant rumor. His code of personal behavior and creative ideas is so extravagant and different from the established image of an intellectual that literati often are completely baffled by him. His novels evoke resentment and even indignation by their savage metaphors and a too expressive way of thinking. His truth has a shattering effect. Some critics call him a bum and a muckraker. Once a woman-pensioner lost her consciousness while reading his Stalinka on a commuter train. The other woman thanked him for being sincere, saying that she could not spare her monthly pension to subscribe to the journal where his new works will be published. Oles is perhaps the only writer in Ukraine today who is a literary prizewinner and still does not have a decent sized book.
A lot has been written about you in the press in a recent year. Isn’t this proof of your having become famous?
Sure. Of course every writer has his ambition. But I’ve never sought cheap popularity, never made an ass of myself by thrusting my face into a television camera. But when an old woman came to me in the street and asked to write my autograph on a scrap of paper, I felt real happy. I am grateful to those people who, unlike the critics, knew and loved my books long before I became a prizewinner.
What do you think about those who say the Shevchenko Prize has compromised itself and become outdated?
The very name of Shevchenko means a lot to a writer. After all, he was the first and only person at the time who called Ukrainians Ukrainians. Let those writers who are calling for the abolition of this prize first refuse their nice apartments and houses they received from the totalitarian regime (so cursed by them today). All that our intelligentsia can produce is a high-pitched cry, as no authority has ever existed for it. And that is its biggest woe. Let their “long-cherished Washington” come here with his just laws, and they will catcall it, spit on it, and finish it on three counts.
Your last novel, Fire Eyes, like Stalinka, is characterized by extreme realism, the descriptions of various pathologies, perversions, and violence. Is this the way how you emotionally respond to such reality, or is it just a tribute to the contemporary literary conjuncture?
What conjuncture? To follow the immediate literary tastes of the public is a disease of teenagers and our intellectuals. It is easy to please them. One only has to write dozens of beautiful novels and stories about nothing. To be such a good-for-nothing author as Borys Vian, from whose schizophrenic gibberish they get a rush? No, never.
What do you consider Grand Guignol, and isn’t there too much of it in your novels?
To hurl labels like Grand Guignol is the habit of vagabonds who tend to reject everything that is outside of their pot.
Do you like the society you live in?
No society will ever suit me. But I love the country I live in. An anarchist by nature, I do think that the state is necessary. See, such a peculiar combination of extremes...
There is a belief that an artist needs something like dope to bolster his creative energy. For some it’s alcohol, for others – drugs, sex, occasional bloodletting, or even attempting suicide.
I often meet hysterically cheerful people in the streets. I have never been in such a state. I can smile, rolling an unbelievable mess in my head. My joy is moderate, and I always strive toward the golden mean in my world view so that later I’ll never have to regret about the things lost. When I was 35, it dawned upon me that love does not necessary mean madness or tearing the shirt on my chest. My dope is a wish to get rid of the thoughts that trouble me at nights, preventing me from falling asleep, urging me to do something. I am often asked: “Ulian, how could you write something decent if you don’t booze?” Our intellectual elite, having neither proper thoughts nor fortune, is doomed to stir up a tempest in a shot glass of vodka. Once the elite was the most rich and powerful people who could influence kings and tsars like Russian aristocrats. There was an elite in Ukraine in Cossack times. By the force of his spirit Shevchenko could be part of the then intellectual elite but he suffocated in the stifling atmosphere of tsarist Russia. By the way, the communists formed an elite too, because they were the actual masters of the country’s wealth, who invented and control its laws. I would not like our contemporary intellectuals to regard alcohol as the only source of inspiration. Such people are disorderly and without culture. They think that hard drinking can inspire them to big discoveries. Some even try to write under the influence. Man has to constantly combat his baser instincts like lust and drinking. It is easy to get drunk and then cry how unhappy you are. Perhaps, such behavior is characteristic of the Slavic nature. That’s why I prefer Europeans. They are all pragmatists whose words and deeds are never at odds.
What is cynicism?
It is an irresistible wish to grab as much money as possible, with no scruples about the means used and then stand on the balcony of a five-room apartment and spit down on the passersby in the street, bragging about one’s intellectual superiority. We’ve raised a terrible younger generation with calculators in their heads. Well, this is a result of adopting slightly decadent Western ways. Cynicism – disdain for the memory of one’s ancestors, graves, churches, and parents – flourishes among the Ukrainian literati, in their books, where they savor in describing the details of rape and indulging their own weaknesses. This is what I tend to regard as a lack of culture and not sticking one’s finger up one’s nose.
Are you a radical?
I am a radical in my works, but I live under very harsh conditions. I allow myself to work hard, earn little, and don’t regret it.
Do you still want to change the world?
Everyone is trying to change this world in his own small way. The point is that we do not know what we are living for. If you do not know how to be good to people, at least learn not to harm them.
Is your perception of life passive, distant or active?
It is the Buddhist who covered with swarms of flies likes to sit and passively observe how life flows and changes around him. A Christian is different. He is always a fighter. Passivity ruins the world.
You always emphasize your Christian beliefs. Do you think that a crisis of Christianity is imminent in our society?
There will be never a crisis of Christianity. What our society witnesses today is a crisis of man. If you trace the history of any religion up to now, you’ll see that there have always been scoundrels among the clergy. Our world has been tailored according to the Christian scheme. And he who transgresses it will find himself walking in the mud. There are priests who come “to work” in the church only because they do not want to go and work on a collective farm. It is our intelligentsia who present these separate cases as a crisis that threatens to topple the Christian religion in this country. The average person believes in God, demanding no proof of His existence. Christianity is a universal religion that prohibits man from doing certain things. And perhaps it is this quality that makes the Christian religion so vital. It is not fear that keeps a man from committing murder but a deep physical feeling of a mortal sin. And this is the essence of Christianity.
Do you support the view that literature is an art of entertainment?
Yes, I do. The first mission of literature is to provide interesting reading. And I work hard to do this. As a matter of fact, I do not like all the novels that I have written until now, especially considering the effect they produced on some squeamish intellectuals. After reading one of my novels, one female critic pounced on me, screaming at the top of her lungs that such evils cannot be found in Kyiv. But you need not even go far, enter the hall of your apartment building, and you can stumble on thirteen-year-old “boys” having sex with a twelve-year-old “girl”. And most of the people pretend that such things do not exist. They prefer to live in the world of Tolkien. Ours is an abnormal society where actors try to teach the President, and circus clowns dictate their rules on how good television programming has to be made. For all his millions, Shwartzeneger has enough common sense not to give orders to Clinton.
What is your first response when someone utters the word “culture”?
I don’t reach for a pistol. A German farts at a dinner table, and an American puts his feet on a table. Is this enough to allow us to call them animals? Isn’t it a way of expressing personal culture? We got used to trust only the good manners our mothers taught us and pretend that nothing else exists beyond them. Village schoolteachers believe that the world has been created exclusively for them. When their offspring come to the city, they think they caught God by His beard. This part of our population is cheeky, pushy, self-centered, and demanding. They show a remarkable persistence in elbowing their way toward those places where they will be warm and well-fed. At any cost they are trying to get there where they meet no resistance but where they can get the highest satisfaction of their needs. They occupy posts which are not meant for them. As a rule, they make clueless writers, engineers, doctors... To them, the world is a trough. Where do they get their swinish impudent feeling of superiority? The boor cannot be the chosen one. If so, the world collapses.
Do you think it is important now to establish how Ukrainian Soviet literature has compromised itself?
I think one should not discard old bricks which can be used to reinforce our state-creation positions. Even monuments to Lenin ought to be preserved in some places. Some people have a short memory. They forgot how they pulled the triggers and shot their victims in the back of their heads. That part of our history is our shame and pain. Soviet literature is a powerful agitation institution the experience of which should not be neglected.
Do you often resort to epater?
When you tell the truth it is already epater.
Photo by Viktor Marushchenko,The Day:
Oles Ulianenko has the courage to look at the world objectively







