Jacek DEHNEL: “Buttocks for a writer are more important than hands”

A young, but already well-known, Polish writer Jacek Dehnel was one of the guests at this year’s Book Arsenal. The publishing house Komora timed the publication of a Ukrainian translation of his book Saturn. Black Images from the Lives of Men of Goya Family namely to this event. This novel is based on myths, assumptions, and real knowledge about the outstanding Spanish artist, his private life, and his family. Dehnel plays with some quite controversial hypotheses on the topic. But he focuses on creation of a large-scale picture of psychology of creative work, unhappy family, and world perception. Saturn turned out to be intense in terms of the plot and aesthetics at the same time. The Day decided to take an interview with Dehnel during his stay in Kyiv. On this day he was making a tour across the historical part of the city, visiting the houses where his ancestors used to live – the Polish writer has Ukrainian origins.

Jacek, let’s speak about Saturn, your first book which has been published in full in a Ukrainian translation. It seems to me that this novel, like some of your other texts, has a typical “old-time” wiring, using to some extent the style of the 19th-20th centuries’ novels, the great narrative, but on the other hand, you quite sharply criticize the patriarchal world, which gave way to this kind of aesthetics.

“In Saturn I was inspired above all not by the novel of the 19th century (this can be said about Lala, which was published in fragments in Ukrainian, and where the text is connected with Ukraine, Kyiv), but rather by Kurosawa’s Rashomon, where each hero tells the same story through their own perception of the world. Their stories are not necessarily lies, but some other feelings and reflections of a lack of communication between the people. Like in the story about six blind people and an elephant: one of them caught his leg and said that the elephant looked like a tree, another one caught his tail, and said that the elephant reminded a lace, and so on. This is the way in which Saturn was written. This book tells about the discrepancies in expectations and needs of people who generally are unable to communicate with one another in a patriarchal system of relationships. In particular, men in patriarchal families are unable to show to one another some positive emotions, sensitiveness, tenderness, because this runs counter to manliness. And because of that they are full of aggression and lack mutual understanding. However, they do love one another, but in this ‘traumatized’ way. Each character in my book speaks their own language. Francisco Goya is brutal and harsh, like a bull. Xavier is melancholic and introspective; Mariano is a very superficial man who loves entertainment and pleasant life. The fact that I am criticizing the patriarchal nature of Goya’s family does not mean that I don’t value his creative work. Neither my love for fine art of Spanish king’s court means that I am an adherent of monarchy. Or love to sacral art does not mean that I’m religious. In my understanding too much ideology makes literature weaker. People who have such inclinations cannot be convinced in anything, because they don’t need to be convinced, and you will only antagonize the people who are not convinced.”

I know that you used to be an artist. What now?

“I have returned to pictorial art. Actually, I have a family of painters. My mother is an artist. My mother’s aunts, cousin were artists. That was a family of great artistic traditions. Since childhood I have been sure that I would become an artist. This was apparent, not because someone told me so, but because I thought so. Now I miss it. For at a certain point of time my literary work, this ‘sideline hobby,’ was noticed, I received awards, started to publish books, and this ‘ate’ my free time, and I simply did not have any time for painting. I have been missing it for a long time, and this frustration to some extent even gave way to Saturn. This book is a kind of nostalgia for painting, where there is a totally different feeling of physicality and every gesture is performed differently from when I write texts. On a computer you can press a key in some or other way for a letter to appear, and if something goes wrong, you just press backspace and write anew, whereas in painting the gesture is the groundwork, I feel it as an extremely physical thing. Hence the description of the way Xavier paints. Now I have started to rent a studio again. I was lucky that there were premises given for rent in our house. I am coming back to painting, which is very pleasant. The most important thing that appeared in me thanks to painting is the way to look at the world. You acquire a special approach to light and shadow, which is why my descriptions of objects are so detailed and ‘artistic.’”

You have mentioned that literature “ate” your time. How do you earn your living?

“By writing. However, I know that in Ukraine, like in Poland, it is hard to make money on literature. It has been only several years that the market of commercial literature, love stories, detectives started to develop in our country. The authors of fantasy novels have been earning money for several years. There are people who can live from publishing one book in several years. I have a different situation though. That is why I receive something from prose writing, but I don’t get anything from poetry, I translate a bit, write columns in several publications, I get paid something for literary soirees, sometimes get invitations to the jury of literary competitions – all of this make all of my earnings. Owing to this I can afford not to work in an office.”

When you were writing Saturn, you were seriously working with documents. Is this your general approach to prose?

“Inspiration for me refers above all to verse, and a big novel requires ‘sitting.’ In case with such novels as Saturn or my newest novel about the woman who pretended to be a Greek-Catholic martyr, who was allegedly tortured by Russians to make her switch for Orthodox Christianity, you have to sit in archives, read biographies, documents, because they make the core of the book, you must feel the language of these personalities, and adapt it to present-day reality, understand their way of thinking. I am joking that buttocks for a writer are more important than hands. Big prose has moments of inspiration, but they are few, this is a slow and lengthy process. There is a lot of contemplation, verification whether everything is in concordance on all sides, whether some or other deed is possible.”

Which of the characters do you like the most?

“Some readers decided that the book is against Goya. But it seems to me that they are all alike in their situation, they all suffer from misunderstanding. This is not a struggle of a terrible father and good son. Everyone has something on his conscience. Everyone is injured and unhappy. None of them is innocent. At the same time the main character in the book is Xavier, the son of the great artist. The book starts with his birth and ends with his death.

“Ekphrasis [detailed descriptions of pictures. – Author] are connected by monologues of characters. There are readers who do not like ekphrasis, and there are those who consider it to be the best part of the novel. I think for this book everything is equally important. And the descriptions of ‘Black Images’ are a continuation of the general narration on a metaphorical level.”

What is the situation in current Polish literature as you understand it?

“I have an impression that in Polish literature a considerable role was played by the fact that three greatest figures of the mid-20th century, Witkacy, Schultz, and Gombrowicz, used grotesque, excessiveness. And the language was for them the most important moment. They all were brilliant, they wrote wonderful texts. But to some extent that was detrimental for the Polish literature, because for many years after that Polish writers thought that the plot was not important and that only the language mattered. This tradition of being focused on merely the language led to weakness in plot and psychology. In my opinion, the newest generation has come up with a cult of a well-made, well-constructed book. A book with a plot. This is improving the general situation with the prose. Besides, we have absolutely phenomenal poetry, but not many people read it. It seems that all Poles write poetry, but the situation with reading is much worse.”

They say the same about Ukrainians.

“It is not accidental that the majority of Ukrainian poetry in Poland is published by publishing house Biuro Literackie, which also publishes Polish poetry. We have strong connections between the poets, they translate one another’s works. Our modern poetry is a phenomenal show performed for five persons.”

In a preface to Saturn you recall the Central-European topics, culture, and writing. How important is this topic for you?

“It is important. There is a region, from the eastern border of Germany, from Switzerland and Italy and to the Baltic countries, part of Belarus, part of Ukraine or even whole Ukraine (this is my first visit to your country, so it is hard to judge), the Balkan countries, which is clearly neither Russia, nor Western Europe, this is something else. You can see this even from architecture. And though architecture of a Slovenian village is one thing, and architecture of a Polish village is something else, and the architecture of a Ukrainian village is something different from the previous ones, they have some things in common. And the way we look at art and literature, too. There is a special space where culture and traditions are mixed, the myth of Mitteleuropa, Central Europe. Of course, all great imperialisms of the 20th century tried to say that none of this existed, but it does exist. For example, we cannot say that Polish poetry is West European. The topics and the way of writing differ, and they are typical not only of Poland, but of all Central European countries to some or other extent.”

Can you characterize them somehow?

“This thing is hard to catch. Changeability is one of the main typical features of Central Europe. We identify these things subconsciously rather than rationally. Recently I was on Italian-Slovenian border. There I saw on a museum building a memorial plaque which depicts Franz-Joseph and palms. I immediately realized that a similar plaque could be present in Lviv, in spite of the palms, in spite of the Italian language in which it is written. There is a kind of buildings, architecture of churches – as soon as you see them, you immediately understand that you’re in Central Europe. There is a specific kind of construction. The nicest thing is that you feel it under your skin. There are boundaries, but they are dim.”

How did you like Kyiv?

“This city has a scale, and I like it. The buildings of the 19th and 20th centuries are very nice, there is much of wonderful Secession. My ancestors used to live here, I visited the houses where they lived, even walked the hallways of these houses. I mean for me personally Kyiv is an important place. I’ve heard about it since my childhood, this city is a legend from the past. I will also mention the beautiful churches. And the wonderful cityscapes – I didn’t know that Kyiv stands on so picturesque hills. I live in a very flat city – Warsaw. At the same time Kyiv is chaotic in terms of architecture. Old buildings, buildings of Soviet and baroque times stand next to one another, there are lots of developments dated 1990s and later. This is why Kyiv resembles Warsaw, which was heavily damaged during the war.”