Comma Instead of a Period

“The End” is one of the notions our literati used very indiscriminately only recently. For quite some time they expostulated on the end of literature, ideology, history, reflection, time, you name it.

Finally, as The End debates reached the cheapest periodicals, it came time to dwell on The End of the Millennium. In overripe civilizations public consciousness tends toward such eschatological reflections that manifest themselves more intensely as the calendar shows the approaching new era. Moreover, there seems to be special class or chic in being the first to announce yet another finale. It is like putting a full stop at the end of some nightmarish metatext. Although more often than not the final period turns out to be a comma.

If my memory does not play me false, the end of the arts was also announced among other things. Although I doubt the validity of this thesis, I have long lost all interest in the goings-on in the creative domain. Anyway, exploring art exhibits or other bohemian events looked absurd to me, so I put the final dot there for myself. And proved wrong.

By sheer chance I came across a one-man show at Ivano-Frankivsk’s famous S Object Gallery. Without much excitement I looked through a collection of good professional prints, inventive, even impressive water colors, and once again told myself how absurd it was wasting one’s time gawking at someone else’s pictures. But after I was told that the author, Roman Bonchuk, was 18 and that the exposition also had his book, 48 Rooms of a House, I knew I had bumped into a genuinely extraordinary phenomenon. Needless to say, I was mostly interested in the book. Of course, with talent and an art school diploma, being naturally aware of form and color, one can produce mature works even at an early age. But a collection of philosophic essays written by a fellow fresh out of high school?

48 Rooms impresses one not so much by its refined “surrealistic” style or maybe by an overcomplicated image-bearing structure, as by the author’s exceptional, almost encyclopedic erudition. I am quite prepared to assume that his free kaleidoscopic quoting from Cohen, Derrida, or Heidegger is meant to mystify the reader, but frankly speaking, I lacked the intellectual reserves to make sure. A thick cobweb of images, names, quotation, pseudoquotations, reflections, allusions, associative insight, phonetic dissonance and syntactic syncope, veiled context, denial of previous theses or their total absence, pure void – someone would perhaps describe his style as verging on the final extremes and additional evidence of The End. However, it is the young man’s first book, meaning that it is just the beginning – or that “there will be another Day”, as my favorite newspaper says in its ads. To me it is another proof that life is more inventive than the boldest of forecasts, and that it responds with surprises to one’s being tired of culture and showing a somewhat snobbishly skeptical attitude.

I will not dwell again on the rising generation, the more so that Roman Bonchuk is the exception rather than the rule among his coevals who prefer Pepsi or Gin Tonic and by no means Jaspers or Loutard. Most importantly, the new generation turns out capable of producing individuals like Roman, so one should not grieve over the language being exhausted, the crisis of culture, or The End of History. One must keep in mind that life and the show go on, no matter how intricately one builds one’s logic to prove or disprove it. One must learn not to put the imaginary full stop anywhere. In fact, I am ending this feature with a comma.