“Not judge, but think!”

Lina Kostenko became Professor Honoris Causa of the Mykhailo Drahomanov National Pedagogical University [see The Day, No.49. – Ed.]. It was a touching event, full of genuineness – obviously due to the fact that Kostenko used it as an opportunity to say “a few words people need.” In particular, they were also addressed to the poet’s daughter, Oxana Pachliovska, in the form of her new book, Madonna perekhrest (Madonna of Crossroads). The dedication reads: I learn you like a foreign language,/ Like signs encoded in a symbol./ I thank God for sending to earth/ A noble soul, embodied in You. (September 18 was Pachliovska’s birthday anniversary.)

This collection is very personal. It includes new poems, as well as those, written in various years, that have never been published before. It abounds in photos from family albums. The present was a total surprise, so no wonder that Pachliovska was deeply moved.

What followed was a silent dialog between the mother and daughter: smiles, eyes brimming with tears, and embrace. The audience realized they were witnesses to that very “glow of the home” mentioned in Madonna.

In order to render the atmosphere, we decided to compile this article of fragments from the speeches made by Kostenko, Pachliovska, Valerii Shevchuk, and other guests. Our own notes will be out of place. We will only add a piece of Pachliovska’s interview to The Day. It tells of her relations with Kostenko, which is why we thought it quite proper for the occasion.

Lina KOSTENKO:

“As you know, there is a widespread opinion that now economy matters the most. Cheap gas, the well-being of the people come first, and then culture will flourish. This is not true. Just remember how and when the greatest masterpieces were created. It was not when the painter or writer was comfortably off. Thus, Servantes wrote his Don Quixote staying at an inn due to the kindness of the inn-keeper, who himself had already been to debtor’s prison. And yet, Servantes created a masterpiece. So, a nation’s humanitarian aura should come first. (Eleven years ago I made a report about this at the Kyiv Mohyla Academy. Meanwhile, the nation still has got no humanitarian aura.) Of course, it does not solve all the social problems – but it gives that ennobling image of the nation which cherishes its dignity.

“One of the brightest aspects of this very ennobling image is literature. My idee fixe is that literature is like a high-voltage line of spirit, which goes through ages. My daughter Oxana found a line somewhere in my poem that this is a high-voltage line of Golgothas. This is also true, because the people who truly devote themselves to the culture of their nation, and who know what they do, sometimes have to pay with their lives for that.

“Another thing is resistance movement. Camus said that the world was divided in two, into plague and its victims. Our task is to keep away from plague. This is why I want to remind you that Ukraine had this high-voltage line of spirit, when there was resistance to the system. And there has always been this resistance, even back in Shevchenko’s time. The Sixtiers also continued this high-voltage line of spirit, and they wanted to pass it on to the next generations. The main thing was to find successors.

“Like Vasyl Stus wrote, there was ‘just a handful.’ It was way later that history labeled us as the Sixtiers. After that followed the Seventies, the Eightiers, the Ninetiers, and the Two-Thousanders. What next? A generation can’t be divided into decades. Some take just a year or two to blaze up, for others a lifetime is not enough. An 89-year-old Michaelangelo said that he had only learnt the humble beginnings of art. A genius always only learns the basics by the end of his life.

“So just ditch this classification. You’d better operate with such notions as ‘pleiad’ and ‘cohort.’ We actually became the Sixtiers exactly because we were a cohort. We were united by common values and mutual respect. I know of no other generation after us that would have such deep respect for one another.

“Then, a normal writer has to be born talented. It’s easy: you are born talented, so you can just enjoy writing. But in Ukraine everything becomes complicated: all sorts of regimes, plus the language you have to fight for. Maksim Gorky said that ‘language is the primordial element of literature.’ And Ukrainians have to fight for their primordial element. The Sixtiers did a lot in this struggle, especially the translators: Lukash, Kochur, Popovych… They rescued the language in Soviet time. They certainly did not do it for the present generation to corrupt it with Russian obscenities. Some might think that it is startling, bizarre, and exciting. No, it’s not. I’ll tell you that everything starts elsewhere, not with shock and scandal. The true things begin with solidarity and respect for each other, which is not to be found nowadays.

“When the Sixtiers were laying this high-voltage line of spirit, some died, others were banned, and still others gave in, and it affected their fates, lives, and art. Let us not judge, but think. We should think first of all, because people are so quick with passing judgment now. Let us be deeper and more decent. Dahl would say (and I am so fond of this noble man), ‘hoping for a decent man as an opponent.’ When arguing with someone, hope for them to be an honest person. If not, then take them down a peg or two, and fight. It’s not worth polluting society with enmity.

“So, the Sixtiers fought, but when it came to passing on their high-voltage line of spirit, no one would pick it. Times changed. A new independent state has arisen. So why does this state, paid for by so many human lives, get indifference instead of a proper attitude? Why was Volodymyr Sosiura’s poem ‘Love Ukraine’ mocked at? Someone found it funny, and they jeered at the poet, ‘Love Oklahoma.’ Okay, we have loved Oklahoma enough. So what?

“There was Vasyl Symonenko, who wrote that ‘only Fatherland cannot you choose.’ One author wrote maybe I should buy myself a fatherland. In order to buy a new, you will have to sell the old fatherland. This is dishonest.

“I don’t think that you, young people, were affected by it, because truth finds its way through generations and ages. When the Sixtiers arrived, there was an abyss of social realism between them and the 1920s. But we sought for those 1920s, and we connected to them. Nowadays there is an abyss between us and our successors, because we don’t like obscenities and commercialism. For some reason I hope that your generation will pick up the baton from us. Your generation is already quite different. I have notices that it doesn’t need bad legacy.

“One man from the Caucasus said that you can live without coal, but not without dignity. Kornilov, a White Guards general, also said, ‘I am afraid of nothing save for disgrace of Russia.’ When we have people who are afraid of nothing save for disgrace of Ukraine, then we will have Ukraine. I hope that it will be you, the young people.”

Olena BOIKO, director, Lybid Publishers:

“Our meeting is like a family treasure to me. One day you will be able to tell your children and grandchildren, that you listened to Lina Kostenko.

“Sometimes, Lybid is labeled Lina Kostenko’s publishers. We do not have this privilege yet, but we are grateful to the poet for trusting us with publishing her work. I would like to disclose a secret which no expert on her work will tell you. It’s a common knowledge that the poet is afraid of nothing, be it leaders, regimes, or unfavorable circumstances. However, I do know what she is actually afraid of: advance copies of her books.”

“We have quite a tradition to celebrate anniversaries with something new. What I’m going to tell now, will become a pleasant surprise for everyone (except a few people directly involved in the design). It will be a surprise for Oxana too, naturally. Today we are not having just a presentation of books – it’s the premiere of a book! Here is the advance copy of Lina Kostenko’s collection of poems Madonna Perekhrest, with a dedication to her daughter. With great confidence in the reader, the author opens her family album, as if inviting all travelers on the roads and crossroads of life to the glowing hearth of her earthly home. We are very, very thankful to her for this.”

Oxana PACHLIOVSKA, author, culturologist, chair of Ukrainian studies at the Sapienza University of Rome:

“My apologies for such emotional response to this surprise. If someone only had hinted that something was cooking! But no… I thank my Mom for such an incredibly wonderful and inexplicable gift!”

“In fact, it is very difficult to find balance between being a daughter and a colleague.” For example, when Mother says that she can breathe freely in Chornobyl, I understand that as a writer, she had to experience this. But it hurts me as a daughter. How can I find the line where one person ends and the other begins?

“Between me and Mother, between Ukraine and Italy there are no borders and all those false things that destroy human psyche and human soul. There is a microcosm of childhood fears, and worries about my mother’s persecutions and bans…

“There are moments when both of us, exhausted with The Day’s work, keep talking through the night, and cannot part till dawn. Then we will eventually rest on each other’s shoulder for a short nap. When you love your nearest and dearest with a love that has stood the test of time, solidarity, and joint work, this is a great gain.

“I ask myself why Mother started talking about the Sixtiers today, and why Valerii Shevchuk is here. And I feel so ashamed in front of them, because my generation failed to continue this high-voltage line of spirit. Asked why Ukraine is in such a state, Valeria Novodvorskaya answered briefly: ‘Because the heroes of national liberation struggle are in graves while their descendants are lying on the beach.’

“I would like to end with a fragment of Mom’s poem:

When is the end to this bondage?
It’s time to release.
Where are you, my golden pastorals?
The summer flies about,
and the fall rings.
Despair winds into black spirals.
Where is at least an echo of my word?
Ukraine has gone into yet another circle…
Again and again, one more time into nevermore?!
I long for a miracle, and a drop of wine.

“I would like to conclude with this: a European Ukraine will begin when each of us works a little or a big miracle feeling part of the dignity and freedom encoded in Ukrainian and European history.”

Valerii SHEVCHUK, author, translator, literary critic:

“There is a game in which you have to pick two or three epithets to a word. Often they will match the subject they describe. Thus when I recall, see, hear, or read Lina Kostenko, I think of her as of a heroic woman and a priestess of honor in art.

“There have always been heroic women in Ukraine’s history, next to men among whom there were huge numbers of heroes (since it is always the best whom we lose). I will only adduce a few examples. Take Roxelana. Some will say, what is heroic about this woman who rose to the high position of Sultan’s wife by a mere incident? Few will know that while she was Sultana, Turkish raids in Ukraine stopped, and Tartar raids became a lot less frequent. Besides, Nastia Lisovska was a poet. Now a big book of her poems was published in Turkey, her correspondence with Padishah in verse. I have seen it with my own eyes.

“And wasn’t Olena Pchilka, sister of Mykhailo Drahomanov, a heroic woman? An author and public activist, she raised her children in their native culture. Ivan Franko wrote of her daughter Lesia Ukrainka that she was ‘the only man in all united Ukraine.’ One can say that nowadays Lina Kostenko is the only man in all united Ukraine!”

“I have known her for a long time and I can say this with certainty. Besides being a heroic woman, Lina is also a priestess of artistic honor. I have an aphorism: never try to make the Muse become your servant in art. If you want to be a true artist, you serve the Muse. She is the goddess of art, and she deprives those, who want to enslave her, of their talent. The poet here may not have heard this aphorism of mine, but she has known it in the depth of her heart. She has learned it and made it her guiding light. Men broke down and gave up, but Lina never did. She is a person of high spirituality. Only people of high spirituality become artists. And to become the priestess of honor in art, she had to give up a lot of things in this perishable, greedy, and so uncertain world, because the world is not only God’s haven, it’s also haven of His antipode.”