SOLOMIYA PAVLYCHKO: "Feminism is a good instrument for calling things by their right names"

She is not talkative, always on an equal footing with interlocutor: she only gives a few sage words, a quick smile. One has to confess whether one wonders if it is just a mask. Off and on I have seen her at the Institute of Literature, Osnovy Publishers, during literary soirees, presentations, etc., and watched her discreetly. I noticed that she did the same — I mean she always watched those around her. Most were strangers to her, but I could sense that hers was not idle curiosity. What was it? Maybe subconsciously she expected to attract their interest?

Eventually we met for an interview, but before I relate it, a few words about this woman whose name is well known in literary Ukraine and beyond. Is she really as devout a feminist as she seems in her writings and public appearances, a person determined to ruin all and every taboo?

Solomiya Pavlychko's candidate's thesis was on American literature and the doctoral on the theory of literature. Since 1985 she has been with the National Academy's Taras Shevchenko Institute of Literature. She teaches at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy National University and has lectured at the Taras Shevchenko University (Kyiv) and those of Alberta and Harvard. She is the author of papers on Ukrainian, British, and American literature, theory of literature, feminism, and numerous translations from English, including Sir William Golding's Lord of the Flies and David Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover.

Q: Are you aware of belonging to your generation, I mean sharing a collective consciousness peculiar to a certain age group? If so, do you feel comfortable?

A: The notion of generation is a very relative one. As a rule, each generation begins more or less harmoniously, but then serious partitions and problems emerge within. This has always happened and my generation is no exception. I know people who make me feel comfortable. Oksana Zabuzhko, Yuri Andrukhovych, Vasyl Herasymiuk, Ihor Rymaruk. There are also people a little older, like Bohdan Zholdak, Volodymyr Dibrova, and Yuri Vynnychuk from Lviv (I am very fond of his works). Of the literary critics I would like to single out Tamara Hundorova, Vira Aheyeva, and Mariya Zubrytska from Lviv. However, they are not among those taking jealous care of tradition. Rather, they have a strong destructive creative instinct, they are ironic, with even a scandalous touch. A literary critic cannot be placed level with a prose writer or poet, because he or she places a certain role in the cultural domain, but these people give me comfort.

Q: Solomiya, you do not seem to be fond of mass meetings, loud discussions, or celebrations. So who are you? An armchair scholar? A homebody?

A: You are right, I am not fond of loud meetings and parties, but I will always go out in the street and take part in a meeting or a big party if this is necessary. I remember meetings at the turn of the nineties’ as the happiest years of my life. Together with many others I have mentioned how we rallied in front of Parliament or on one of Kyiv’s squares and how we shared feelings and emotions we are not likely to experience ever again. I like literary soirees, but of course I work at home or at a library most of the time. I am a regular library visitor and this is a very special experience, considering today’s economic situation. In winter the manuscripts hall at the Vernadsky Central Reference Library, my most frequented place, is kept at 10-12OC, so one’s fingers go numb turning the pages.

I do not believe in the adage about one’s home being one’s castle. I am not the type of person to confine myself to four walls. I like to be with people, meeting different people. After all, I teach at a university and work with the Osnovy Publishers (she heads the Editorial Board on a voluntary there — Ed.).

I guess this answers your question about my being a homebody. However, we all live within the limits of our society, and the family is a way of communal life. I don’t know whether I am a good housewife. My daughter will grow up, and then it will be clear whether I was a good mother.

Q: Could you say you are raising her the way your father did you?

A: Well, if you mean that there are certain limits she is definitely forbidden to cross, the answer is yes. She has a busy schedule. Apart from school, she takes English, French, and music lessons.

Q: How feminist are you in daily life?

A: I am interested in feminism as a scientific and intellectual phenomenon. Works by Western feminists dealing with philosophy, linguistics, and literary criticism, give one a pretty good idea about today’s feminism. This is not kitsch as certain people maintain. Unfortunately, these works have not been translated, as far as I know, except Julia Kristeva’s Stabat Mater which is available in Ukrainian.

I am interested in feminism as the key to understanding certain literary phenomena. The problem is not new. After Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex the topic has been mulled over for forty years. I simply apply some of the methods to Ukrainian literature, but I don’t do this mechanistically. I mean I don’t visit an author and say, “Hi, I came to make a feminist analysis.” This analysis ensues from the text itself. Today such studies can only be multifaceted, because feminism is being combined with psychoanalysis, deconstruction, and so on.

How feminist am I in my daily life? In full measure, I think. I have already told how I was raised. A genuine feminist education is when your parents say that you must rely on your own resources. No happy marriage, no friends or patrons can make you happy, just yourself alone. I have tried to live that way, and I hope that my daughter will follow in my footsteps.

Q: Woman and politics on the one hand is a subtle spiritual and delicate corporeal structure and brutal cynical reality on the other. How would you balance these two substances today?

A: This is an interesting subject. I have just finished an article for Cambridge University Press. It is about women and their role in Central and Eastern European politics. And there is a chapter dedicated to Ukraine. I had time enough to ponder the subject and now I am convinced that this “subtle spiritual and delicate corporeal structure” has nothing to do with politics and women in politics. Only women who are totally alien to the Ukrainian stereotype of a good housewife and loving mother clad in an embroidered blouse, singing like Nina Matviyenko, can make real politicians. Personally, I have nothing against this stereotype – I respect it – but modern politics have proved it to be totally obsolete.

Only a strong and aggressive woman can count on success in politics. One that views the world critically and ruthlessly, taking it for what it really is. Here one comes across conspicuous characters like Natalia Vitrenko, Slava Stetsko, and Yuliya Tymoshenko. Three perfect antipodes. But they have certain things in common. Determination. Each is resolved to play an all-or-nothing game. They are all sober-minded and viciously attack the powers that be. There is no traditional feminine softness about them. Our society in the east and west of Ukraine chose to elect these women to Parliament which is evidence of extremely interesting processes underway. Stereotypes are changing.

There is another trend. There aren’t many women in politics, but their number is increasing. A good sign.

Q: Sometimes, in order to assess one’s own accomplishment, it is worth making a long trip. As a scholar with a broad range of interests, how would you describe the place of Ukrainian literature in the world literary process?

A: I broached the subject perhaps after ten years of studies of British and American literature. I am magnetically attracted to Ukrainian literature. It has so many paradoxes and problems still to be solved. Here one can always make striking discoveries. Manuscripts stored at our libraries contain treasures, and when you come across one the sensation is out of this world. And yet I would like to return to British and American literature. There are things which I find extraordinary. And so would others, I’m sure.

Now about Ukrainian literature in the world. Regrettably, this place is not as important as it should be. This literature is little known, even in the Slavic countries, let alone the Germanic and Romance ones. True, the situation is getting better. Translations are made and books printed in the United States, Canada, and Britain. There are many university people engaged in Ukrainian studies, including politics and the economy. This, of course, prompts interest in national literature. In other words, the process is underway, so that the best Ukrainian literary works will eventually become known the world over. Of course, one can hardly expect them to make an impetus like, say, Lev Tolstoy, Marcel Proust, or Thomas Mann. We don’t have such literary giants. Not yet, because history continues. We will have them eventually. After all, our national literature is very young.

It is quite possible that the current generation of literati will make the first breakthroughs. Works by Yuri Andrukhovych and Oksana Zabuzhko are being translated into English, and there is an English version of Volodymyr Dibrova’s book. These authors write about things in a language understandable in the West.

One can read words like “world-renowned,” “brilliant” before or after almost every name here. Something you will never find anywhere else in the civilized world. This is pathetic. Evidence of guilt and inferiority complexes. I am sure, however, that the time will come when our books will appear abroad en masse.

Q: How would you describe the literary situation in post-totalitarian Ukraine?

A: I do not think that Ukraine can be regarded as totally post-totalitarian. There is totalitarianism in certain cultural and literary models. We are still witness to young authors or schoolteachers, or even the entire world being taught the ideological principles and canons of Ukrainian literature from high tribunes. The canonical gallery of classic starts from Kotliarevsky, on to Shevchenko, Franko, and ends with Oles Honchar. As for the latter, I consider it utterly cynically to place him anywhere close to these classics. Former party secretaries calling for promulgating and developing Honchar’s traditions, treating literature as “serious business” rather than a game, sound to me quite depressing. Another thing is that no one is forced to abide by these “directives.” This is good.

I marvel at one thing about the current literary situation. Everyone has an opportunity to speak one’s mind, without fear of retribution. We live at a time of free and conflicting ideas and principles.

I think, I hope that the future will bring us cultural and literary prosperity, but making prognoses is a most thankless task. There could be great cataclysms, even catastrophes.

Q: Now that we have computers we know about virtual reality. We also have telecommunications. While expanding man’s creative abilities, this serves to ruin traditional values like family ties. What losses do you think technological progress is inflicting on us?

A: I am all for technological progress. On the one hand. On the other, I must be a conservative woman deep inside. For one thing, I do not allow my 11-year-old daughter to spend too much time with her computer. I wouldn’t want her to get the taste for virtual reality. Not at her age. I think this would have a destructive effect on her own perception, even mentality. I think that every novelty must be somehow linked to old values. There in real-life nature, trees growing from the earth and not springing at you from the monitor. There are real animals, not electronic toys – all those dinosaurs and chicken that children “take care of” by working the keyboard or joystick. In my opinion, computers must not be loved but treated rationally, as yet another modern amenity.

If this progress means the eventual loss of the mother tongue, this would be a terrible disaster, because without this language there will be no national identity. And without this identity there will be no Ukrainian civilization, no Ukrainian state, no economic progress, nothing! This is the sad aspect. Another thing is that we are losing certain traditional values. This is not a loss but a gain. In the countryside almost every man beats his wife now and then, and she has no one to protect her or complain to. And then, on Sunday, both go to church, wearing their best clothes. If this is a “traditional value,” it makes me sick. Well, this is a separate subject that can be discussed endlessly. Personally, I consider that civilization means losing some values and gaining others.

Q: Perhaps also the problem of hypocrisy and cynicism, is that right?

A: Of course. Any patriarchal culture is imbued with cynicism and hypocrisy, for there is the superior race with its fist law. In other words, my attitude to traditions is very ambivalent. I don’t like things superficial – superficial folk or national culture, like an super-sweet glazed cake. I wouln’t want the Ukrainian image to be presented that way. I think that Ukraine has a chance to survive as a modern European nation only after it modernizes. This does not mean that there will no longer be folk choirs. Cultural values must be liberalized. We must learn to call a spade a spade. In this sense feminism could serve as a very effective tool.

Photo by Oleksiy Stasenko, The Day:
Solomiya Pavlychko: “In my relationship with my parents I never felt any generational conflict”