Taras Hryhorovych Murakami

I would like to assure you straight away that we have nothing against contemporary Ukrainian literature. Thank goodness, we have it. As for classical Ukrainian literature, it is no longer “cool” to read it. This is not our problem, but it raises a bit stupid and childishly cautious question: “Why?”

Although present-day people are computerized from head to toe, the book has not vanished. Walking down the streets of Kharkiv, one can see second-hand bookstores. Libraries are open from Monday until Saturday, as they were 20 years ago (the staff have not perhaps changed), loan-division shelves are bending under the weight of the wanted books, the Internet is crawling with all kinds of sites, where one can download or order any book in any shape with any autograph at a negligible price of 25 hryvnias.

All this is, of course, true except for the word “any.” On no occasion can this word be applied to Ukrainian (very much and not so much classical) literature. If you come into a bookstore today, you will find all Paulo Coelho’s publications at a price of ten to 100 hryvnias, all installments of The Temptation of Angelique, and the self-teaching guide Hara-kiri for Dummies. If you wish so much, you can buy a dictionary of the professional jargon of Chukotka toilet cleaners and other exotica of this kind. But when asked about Ukrainian literature, salespeople tend to scratch the back of their heads and point to the shelf that warns: “Caution: contemporary Ukrainian literature.”

Actually, it is too expensive to buy books (not only by Ukrainian authors) now, so most of the bibliophiles are using the Internet—its advantage is that one can find anything there. For example, clicking Murakami, Zhadan, and Shchogolev will display several thousand, a few hundred, and as “many” as ten links, respectively. (Nine of the latter will refer to one student essay on the melodiousness of the language and the guilder-rose color.) Incidentally, if you are fed up with your computer but you don’t know how to get rid of it, just type “condition of contemporary Ukrainian literature” in the search engine window. Your comp will first heave a deep sigh and then freeze.

But not all is that bad because there are people who have sacrificed their time and even health for the cause of serving the Ukrainian written word. These are literature students of various specialties. They remember such names as Shevchenko, Shevchenko, and — you will never guess — Shevchenko, whatever the case. (Incidentally, this is the only category of the populace who will tell Shevchenko the poet from Shevchenko the soccer player.) But once you ask them what he wrote in addition to The Testament, the “circuit” will go bust.

To avoid tormenting students, you’d better ask them what they are reading and hear them answer: “Oh, it was a cool book all right.” Asked what he/she means by what now seems to be a term “cool,” the student will say: “There’s so much sex, murders, perversions, foul language, ‘unprintable’ words…” “And what about classical Ukrainian literature? Do you read any?” “With all we have to read for classes, I am sick and tired of it already!”

To add insult to injury, students who major in Ukrainian literature are unable to recall even the most significant names of this literature, but they can chat only too well on – and even quote a few lines from – the poetry of Yesenin, Mandelshtam, Akhmatova, and others. Yet it is a clear case of swanking, a white-collar bluster of sorts. For an “expert” who can understand and admire Mandelshtam’s superb poem “This Incorrigible Night” but looks like a stupid ass at the page that reproduces, in a snow-white purity, Pavlo Tychyna’s intimate whispers about the first breaths of love (“Oh, Ms. Inna, Ms. Inna…”), knows nothing about poetry, prose or (sorry for having to quote a Marxist classic) the family, private property, and the state. Kolobok (a Russian fairy tale – Ed.) in a goblin-cum-big-brother-style translation is his household book! And when you imagine that this would-be teacher will only use Ukrainian in the classroom, i.e., for official purposes, but switch to customary and “cool” Russian during school breaks, at home, in public transport, etc., you begin to shudder: his strenuous teaching efforts will be producing nothing but slapstick artists, the bearers of a quaint Comedy-Club-style esthetic identity called Taras Hryhorovych Murokami.

So, ladies, gentlemen and “comrades,” who are now in charge of independence in this country, unless you offer a full-scale governmental support to young authors and popularize the “old ones” (i.e., classics) at a modern scholarly level, Ukrainian literature will really seem boring, incomprehensible, and… unnecessary.