Volodymyr LYS: There are no “little” Ukrainians for me

Volodymyr LYS is a prominent writer, whose amazing novel Yakiv’s Century won the Grand Coronation, becoming the best literary work in the ten years that the well-known literary contest Coronation of the Word has been held. Incidentally, Yakiv’s Century has also been nominated for BBC’s Best Book. According to the Ye bookstore, it is a bestseller. Few people, however, know that Lys is also a playwright (five of his plays have been staged in different Ukrainian theaters) and a journalist (head of the politics department at the Lutsk-based newspaper Volyn). He is also a fellow-townsman of The Day’s editor in chief. (In Kyiv and some other places beyond Kyiv Volhynians treat each other like family.) Larysa Ivshyna underwent internship at the newspaper Radianska Volyn (Soviet Volhynia) while Lys was working there, and they have kept in touch since. Thus, during his recent visit to the capital, the writer came to the editors’ office in order to present his Yakiv’s Century and received a photo album and two-volume Extract +200 from The Day.

Volodymyr LYS: “Do you remember, when you were an intern at our newspaper, I told you that you were destined for great things? First, you had good writing skills. Second, you were probably the only intern who treated us to cognac after the end of her internship (Laughing).”

Larysa IVSHYNA: Hopefully, that was not the only thing you remember me for.

V.L.: “I have followed how your newspaper gained speed. Several years later, as I opened your periodical I feared that suddenly I would see a rollback. Thank God, no rollback has happened. Apparently, everyone is aware what it means, to keep to the level. I am proud that a Volhynian has created such a newspaper.”

L.I.: And I am proud of all of you! Volodymyr, back in that time I looked and listened attentively. Our Volhynian newspapers had very interesting personalities among their personnel, such as Radianska Volyn’s editor-in-chief Polikarp Shafeti.

V.L.: “Shafeti created an extraordinary newspaper for the oblast. In the time of perestroika it reached a pressrun of 240,000 copies. It even entered the UN reference book after ranking first in terms of content and pressrun in proportion to the million-strong population of Volhynia not only in the Soviet Union, but the entire world, it seems to me.

L.I.: The Day recently published an article by the Lviv-born Muscovite Evgeny Gontmakher, entitled “I came to provincial Moscow from European Lviv” (No. 207, November 12, 2010). Similarly, I did not feel a provincial girl when I came from Lutsk to study in Kyiv. Apparently, it was because people read a lot back then. Almost every family subscribed to two or three newspapers. Clearly, those publications did not present an ideological challenge, yet real life had its reflection on their pages.

V.L.: “Although I worked in the propaganda department, I had an outlet in the columns ‘Vision of Life’ and ‘Man and Morals.’ Besides, I wrote theater reviews, going through two formative stages: as a young playwright and a young theater critic.

“An interesting incident happened to me already back then. Our newspaper had heavily criticized a KUN member for being a corrupt businessman. He made this political and organized a rally near the editors’ office with several dozens of people taking part. I came out to them and heard one man say, ‘This is the same Lys who wrote in his articles that there was no Ukraine.’ I took the man who said this by the hand and said, ‘Let’s go to the library. If you find at least one publication of mine against Ukraine and the Ukrainian language, I will publicly cut off my hand. If not, I will hit you in the face in public.’ He immediately fell silent, started mumbling that maybe he mistook me for another person. Shafeti was blamed too for fighting bourgeois nationalism. Indeed, Polikarp is a contradictory personality. But those times were contradictory too. You know there have been many incidents for which he deserves respect. For example, a teacher invited a priest to her brother’s funeral. I asked Shafeti not to write about this in the newspaper. My argument was that if anything happened to my father, who was rehabilitating after a stroke, I would want a priest at the funeral, though I was clearly aware that I could be fired for this or excluded from the party. The information never appeared in out newspaper, though he had been demanded to publish it. A person’s humanity transpires in such situations.”

L.I.: Besides, as a result of different circumstances, people in Volhynia were less deprived of individual space than in the central or eastern regions. This gave us greater chances.

V.L.: “You are absolutely right. Many people who were sent to Volhynia suddenly discovered that this ‘backwater’ had an immensely rich history. There is a famous phrase by Anatolii Dimarov ‘I came to Volhynia as a Stalinist and returned as a nationalist.’ Maybe, he did not immediately become a nationalist, but he was already undergoing transformations.”

L.I.: Incidentally, in my school there were many teachers from the eastern regions. I had a feeling that at some stage we got closer. As a result, they became people that were not completely Soviet, like some Volhynian residents.

It seems to me, in the early 1980s the then first secretary, who apparently wanted to show his internationalism, decided on the occasion of yet another anniversary of the USSR to change the Promin movie theater’s name into Moscow, and hotel Svitiaz into hotel Russia. I remember there was a wave of indignation. Later people paid attention to this issue and during perestroika the old names were brought back. This example proves one thing: the feeling of one’s land has not been erased from people’s consciousnesses, namely owing to editor Polikarp Shafeti, the journalists Valentyna Shtynko, Feodosii Mandziuk and Volodymyr Lys. These people were very important.

V.L.: “When we moved from the Kherson region to Volhynia I had to look for a job. I found one. But the editor of the raion newspaper said that the first secretary did not like people with mustaches. As I came out from there I understood that I would not work there. This was an encroachment on something sacred.”

L.I.: Your mustache looked anti-Soviet.

V.L.: “Probably.”

L.I.: Are you better known as a writer or a “forecaster”?

V.L.: “I provide weather forecasts when somebody asks me. Sometimes I think about quitting. But again December 26 is approaching: ‘according to my method every day in the period between December 26 and January 6 determines the weather for every month of the coming year’ the former editor said, and the current one agrees that the newspaper needs this: the number of subscribers grows, the pressrun increases. Maybe the people want to be deceived. Two funny incidents have happened to me. An extravagant lady came to the Kyiv launch of my novel The Mask and said that she read a weather forecast for the next year in one of Kyiv’s newspapers, made by a person with the same surname as the author. ‘Maybe it’s him?’ she suggested. The art expert Diana Klochko replied, ‘A serious writer cannot do this kind of thing.’ I had to admit everything. Another time a renowned American professor came to Lutsk. She was shown the Lubart Castle and university. After all, they brought her to me. She asked, ‘Do you work as a meteorologist?’ ‘No? Do you work at the Meteorology Center?’ she went on. I replied, ‘I’m Ukraine’s chief shaman’ and asked her companions to translate. I don’t know whether the lady believed me, but she started to speak about shamanism. It’s good that I knew some Buryat and Yakut, so I could keep up a conversation.”

Nadia TYSIACHNA: What did you feel when your novel was named the best literary work in the ten years that the Word Coronation Contest was held?

V.L.: “I never hoped to achieve this. However, I have a family of writers. My wife Nadia Humeniuk is a winner of numerous literary awards. She has authored dozen of collections of stories and poems for children and five ‘adult’ books of verse. The last of these is Voice of the Fern. She has also written novelettes, including A Meeting on the Boys Bridge and The Mystery of Prince’s Hill, as well as the novel White Wolf on Black Road. In Soviet times I published the novelette Behind the Threshold and the novel Asters in the Blockhouse. I have been writing for decades. I have been the winner of the Coronation of the Word competition twice: in 2008 I received the first award for Sylvester’s Island, and this year I won the Grand Coronation. I know what they say about Yakiv’s Century. Polissian Yakiv’s life has touched many people.”

L.I.: In the preface to Extract +200, I quoted Otar Iosseliani’s phrase. The outstanding Georgian film director said that Ukrainians have a long and rich history and culture, and great cinematography, personalized by Oleksandr Dovzhenko, Serhii Parajanov, Ivan Mykolaichuk, and Yurii Illienko. He urged Ukrainians to make themselves known in the world. How should we make our voice heard in other countries?

V.L.: “We should speak about what is special for us, something that Poles, Germans or French don’t have. Currently there are many Ukrainian writers, whose works could be interesting in any corner of the world if translated, but unfortunately they are scarcely known.”

L.I.: Please name them.

V.L.: “There are the fantastic writers Yevhen Pashkovsky from Kyiv and Bronislav Hryshchuk from Khmelnytsky. It is gratifying that Halyna Pahutiak from Lviv has acquired recognition recently. In fact, there are two very strong prose writers in Lviv, Halyna Pahutiak and Halyna Vdovychenko. There is Oleksandr Zhovna, who works in a boarding school for children with physical and mental disabilities in Kirovohrad oblast. Incidentally, his novelette served prose works. As for me they even outmatch his verse. It is also worth mentioning Ksenia Kharchenko, Stepan Protsiuk, Halyna Petruseniak and Leonid Kononovych.”

L.I.: Recently an odious minister said that Ukrainian literature lacks personalities of the scale of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. What do you think?

V.L.: “Only a defective man could say this, because a real educated person, an intellectual, will never say that one nation is superior to another one. For example, such a small people as Islanders have created wonderful literature.

“Maybe now I will say somewhat seditious things. I like Dostoevsky’s works, though not all of them, of course. As for Tolstoy, I have never liked him. Moreover, I consider this writer a great hypocrite. When you read private letters of a writer who says that literature is not serious, that the only worthy thing is to buy land — only this is real life — you start thinking: nobody forced him to write. Why does nobody publish those letters? They modestly hush up that he owned huge land plots in four gubernias. Why do they keep silent? You should not keep silent about any personality, neither in art nor social spheres.

“Speaking about our literature, we have a genius prose writer Vasyl Stefanyk, the talented Viktor Petrov-Domontovych, the deep Roman Andriashyk, who did not acquire the recognition he deserved, and the philosopher Valerii Shevchuk. And Valerian Pidmohylny, who said in only two novels, A Town and Little Drama, so much that other writers have not been able to tell in 10 or 15 works. We should not compete with others, we should just create original literature. Once Oksana Zabuzhko aptly said: why can’t a Polissian villager be interesting for the world, when the world takes interest in a Macondo resident created by Gabriel Garcia Marquez? True, why are the residents of South-American rainforests or Turkish towns covered with snow, presented by Orhan Pamuk, better?”

N.T.: What is the reason?

V.L.: “We should publish books and promote ourselves. For example, the Scandinavian countries — Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland — allot colossal money for the translation of works by their writers and poets. Owing to this we know and read these works. I wish there were such a program in Ukraine! Maria Matios, in my opinion, writes literature that may be interesting for readers from other countries. There is the original Taras Prokhasko. A remarkable writer, Yaroslav Pavliuk, used to live in Lviv. Everyone would come to him and could not praise the visit sufficiently. The man died. Unpublished novels remain. But there is nobody to publish them.”

L.I.: Where should we look for hope?

V.L.: “In the early 1990s I had to reply to similar questions, asked by readers in their letters and the visitors of the editors’ office. I replied in a short way: in family, traditions, some eternal things that are passed on from generation to generation. My son Serhiko was once tasked at school with researching his genealogy. We could go as far as the seventh generation. And in his class, according to him, the pupils mostly know little about their grandparents, let alone great-grandparents. I think the source of optimism is as follows: we will assert what we know about our families, land and country. And we will cling to this like a tree clings to the land with its roots.”