The law of united literatures

The international writers’ forum “Words without Borders” was initiated and organized by the Writers’ Union of Ukraine. The organizers and participants said that for two days the forum turned Kyiv into the literary capital of the world, where writers from 15 European and Asian countries, including Great Britain, Belarus, Poland, Georgia, Bulgaria, Latvia, Tajikistan, Russia, Serbia, and Japan, gathered. Two other countries intended to participate, but at the last moment the Macedonian delegation had to cancel its visit owing to unforeseen circumstances. The Lithuanian delegation could not attend because of the death of Alfonsas Maldonis, a classic of Lithuanian literature.

“We can say that we carried out all our tasks by 100 percent,” said Serhii Borshchevsky, one of the forum’s main co-organizers, who is a member of Ukraine’s Socialist Party and probably the only Ukrainian translator of Spanish literature. “We managed to bring representatives from many countries-heads of creative circles, specialists in Ukrainian studies, and translators,” he says.

Among the guests at the forum were several prominent figures, like Motohiro Ono, the head of the Japan-Ukraine Cultural Relations Society and founder of the Japan-based publishing house Dnipro. Borshchevsky calls another guest, Vera Rich from the UK, “simply a classic.” For the past 20 years she has been translating from the Ukrainian, Belarusian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Old Icelandic, and Spanish. She is known as the author of the most complete English version of Shevchenko’s Kobzar. In 1997 she was awarded the Franko Prize, and in 2006 she received the order of Princess Olha of the 3rd degree. Knuts Skujenieks, a participant from Latvia and another Franko Prize recipient, is the Latvian translator of a collection of Lesia Ukrainka’s poems entitled Sister of the Thunderstorm.

The forum participants were offered a fairly dense two-day schedule consisting primarily of paper presentations and tours of Kyiv for the foreign guests. The forum was capped by a literary and artistic soiree held at the National Philharmonic Society, where poems were recited and various participants expressed their gratitude for the organizers’ hospitality. Two foreign guests, Belarus’s Sergei Zakonnikov and Georgia’s Vladimir Sarishvili, recited their poems about Ukraine. Zakonnikov received a wild round of applause when he reached the very moving final line of his poem: “Glory to Ukraine! Long live Belarus!”

Makvala Gonashvili, head of the Writers’ Union of Georgia, was open and sincere: “If there is at least one person waiting for you in some country, this country becomes your homeland. Now I know that Georgia has become the homeland of all the forum participants. When we are together, we are not threatened by any danger in the world.”

The Polish poet and prose writer Wojciech Pestka is convinced that “for two days some of the borders that exist among people disappeared, and the word regained its value and dignity.” Aleksander Nawrocki was even more expressive. The Polish poet, prose writer, essayist, literary critic, and organizer of the UNESCO-sponsored “Days of Poetry” declared that “Ukraine is our second soul.”

The central point of the agenda was the signing of an Agreement on Cooperation by the countries that participated in the forum. Borshchevsky explained: “Another task before us was to create Words without Borders, the International Association of Creative Unions. Ten countries have already signed the agreement. These 10 signatures are a starting point because the agreement sets up the legal framework for our cooperation. Additional arrangements were made during the forum. For example, Viktor Baranov, the editor in chief of the journal Kyiv, and Aleksander Nawrocki, who heads a similar periodical in Poland, agreed to exchange journal issues. Nawrocki also presented short anthologies of Hungarian and French poetry to encourage work on the next anthology in Ukrainian.”

The forum’s main line of work was to help advance Ukraine in the world by boosting the production of a greater number of translations. According to Borshchevsky, there is a significant disproportion between how well we know other literatures and the extent to which Ukrainian literature is known in the world. The organizers conceived the forum as an incentive for the world to become acquainted with literary Ukraine. Another goal is to restore student exchanges among universities, similar to the type that once operated in the former USSR. This is difficult quotidian work, but crucially important.