“The Bearer of Sovereign Intonation”

I first heard about Lina Kostenko from a Lutsk journalist when I was a seventh grade schoolgirl. The journalist, who thought she was talking to a well-educated child, urgently asked me to see when Kostenko’s book Inimitability comes up on Lokachy bookstore shelves and buy one for her. Being a frontier town, my native Lokachy was supposed to sell at times some unexpected deficit goods. I was too embarrassed to tell her I did not know who Lina Kostenko was. I just said OK. Although I had often been visiting our bookstore (which is now — just fancy that! — a bar) even before, I began to do this more purposefully. I soon bought Inimitability — for myself and for Myroslava Schuster to whom I am grateful and who still works for the Lutsk newspaper Viche. Only some time later did I form an impression about the poetic book. When I first read it, I was just very glad. All I had had before was Lesia, but she was so far while Lina Kostenko was just next to me, a contemporary. This made me feel for many years to come that Ukraine does have a style. As Yevhen Malaniuk said, Lina Kostenko is “the bearer of our sovereign intonation.”

It gave me great pleasure to see and communicate with the poetess again when I became The Day’s editor-in-chief — after a so long time span. It was very important for me that when The Day was collecting a library for Chernukhy, the native village of Hryhory Skovoroda, Lina Kostenko came on her own volition, although it is common knowledge that she rarely goes out, which she has an absolute right to do. She not only brought us books but also said the words that I think must help children to live. In her poems, Mrs. Kostenko seems extremely open and frank, as only a true talent can be. But it is just the other day, when I wanted to share with her a happy birthday, that I suddenly realized that we know so little about her. Which is wrong indeed.

Mykola ZHULYNSKY, full member, National Academy of Sciences, Ukraine; People’s Deputy of Ukraine:

“I consider Lina Kostenko the proud Conscience of Ukraine, a state that still cannot stand on its two feet. I am convinced that whoever is at least a little familiar with Lina Kostenko’s work and civic attitudes will try to unbend his back and feel spiritual closeness with his Fatherland.

“Lina Kostenko has never bent her knees to anybody and never begged for anything. She has always considered it her duty to tell the truth with the expressive word which I think appeals the best to the Ukrainian reader. No, I am mistaken: Lina Kostenko’s word is almost out of the reader’s reach because the circulation of her books is negligible and it is next to impossible to buy one... But I am convinced that a poetess like this should be heard today in the remotest nook of this country. Unfortunately, her voice is not heard by force of the current circumstances, because of the inability to come to a broad circle of readers.

“She is a poetess who works with great responsibility on every word. She takes a well-balanced approach to each figure and shapes her poetical thought so carefully and finely that this creates the impression that her poetry is easy to understand and simple, while in reality behind this simple figurative thinking lies a titanic labor of intellect. In this sense, I would say Lina Kostenko is like Shevchenko. Lina Kostenko is a poetess for whom Truth is the main criterion — the Truth she has nurtured and suffered through. This is why she shows very high responsibility for her poetry, her figurative word.

“Mrs. Kostenko is a person very closed in on herself. She is cautious about people and does not allow herself to waste time because she is afraid that some banality may spoil her mood, creative enthusiasm, and, I would say, a special sensation of life. Yet, she is always open to friends, she is very sensitive to their warmth and sincerity.

“And Chornobyl, the subject Lina Kostenko is so absorbed in!.. For many years, she would travel to the Chornobyl area, walk with a backpack from one old and deserted house to another, striving to do her best to preserve the barely perceptible spirit and mood that still remained encoded in icons, charms, embroidered towels, household items, etc. She did it so vehemently and earnestly that I thought it was the sense of her life. That is her self: nobody can lead her astray. She has a very strong nature. This is really the proud Conscience of Ukraine.”

Yevhen MARCHUK, Minister of Defense of Ukraine:

“Lina Kostenko is so complex a figure that it is very difficult to single out a certain feature of it all at once. Figures like this cannot be discussed in plain terms. She is a poetic genius who will go down in the history of not only Ukrainian poetry but also Ukraine itself. By the caliber of her genius, she is the poetess of the century, the poetess of all human civilization. Moreover, this applies to all Mrs. Kostenko’s works, not only her famed Marusia Churai. This is a thinker who excels in filigree refined poetry. She is an obvious patriot — by her essence, not declarations. With her Marusia Churai alone, Lina Kostenko has done more for the national identity of Ukrainians than all the scholarly institutions combined have — although there were very serious problems with publishing this novel in verse during Soviet times.

“I have had a few meetings with Lina Kostenko, although I have known her for a very long time. I once happened to help Marusia Churai come out. In purely human terms, Mrs. Kostenko somewhat reminds me of Maya Plisetskaya whom I also had the opportunity to meet. These two women of genius are distinguished for an unconventional vision of the world of high categories. In Lina Kostenko, this unconventionality shows, above all, in that it is almost impossible to foresee her behavior in a conversation.

I mean it is impossible to foresee the turn of her thought and the angle from which she will see the point under discussion. The impression is her thoughts and consciousness are completely free of everyday routine problems. It is clear, of course, that this is only an impression. Despite everything, she knows how to translate very exalted historical and philosophical categories into poetry.

“In my opinion, what she did or is going to publish (I know she is working on a lot of things because she sets very strict requirements to what comes from under her pen, as well as to herself) deserves tens, if not hundreds, of doctoral dissertations. Much has been written. Yet, Lina Kostenko’s personality is still to be analyzed in the context of the dramatic history of the latest stage of independent Ukraine; nobody has seriously tried to solve the puzzle of this poetess. Fate had her working at very dramatic turning point. It was not easy for her to assert herself as poetess in Soviet times. I know how much pain Marusia Churai cost her, how she was tormented because the novel came out in an edition she did not like. But what she managed to publish at a time when many of our today’s super-democrats and super- revolutionaries kept a low profile or kowtowed to the regime deserves proper study and evaluation. At the same time, I cannot say she was a primitive dissident, an anti-Soviet. She stood high above all this, as she does now. She is one of the figures that tried to break down the imperial wall with her fearlessness.”

Serhiy TRYMBACH, cinema critic:

“Banal as it may sound, I consider Lina Kostenko the example of an individual who keeps her true self under any circumstances. We know her behavior, her poetry of the 1960s-1970s and later periods. We know what kind of a person she was in the 1990s and is now, at the turn of a new millennium. No ideological trends or powers can destroy her inner compass. In other words, this is a truly extraordinary human character. I think that character is the key word. Which, after all, Ukraine — the state as well as many individuals — is short of.

“What also makes Mrs. Kostenko a kindred spirit of mine is the fact that she (like many poets of her generation) took to the cinema in the 1960s. She wrote the screenplay Check Your Watches for a film directed by Vasyl Illiashenko. This movie had an unlucky fate: it was banned. Moreover, what had already been shot was burned. Then this screenplay was given to a very young director Leonid Osyka. The film was titled Whoever Will Return Will Love You. Even here she showed her character: she successfully demanded that her name be struck off the credits because she could not accept this kind of a compromise. Although, in my view, it was a good film, but still in one way or another it was a case of the arts defamed. So she could not possibly accept this. This is her lesson: she never tolerates any coercion of herself. She has never accepted (at least not to my knowledge) any compromises. This uncompromising quality is in fact what many of us are short of. It is clear, of course, that Lina Kostenko is one of the unique people who cannot be produced off some production line. But still, if at least somebody had seriously followed her example of public and artistic behavior, Ukraine would now be different. Unfortunately, there are too many spineless people (in her generation also). This spinelessness is literally washing Ukraine away.

“And, of course, I am impressed with the way Lina Kostenko works with the word. Hers is a colossal exactingness. I once had an opportunity to cooperate with her in this aspect. I edited a book named Politics and Art. The book’s author, Natalia Musiyenko, interviewed her. You should have seen the way Ms. Kostenko worked on the text! She brought it to filigree-level finesse. In other words, this is colossal responsibility before the reader. This is, unfortunately, also a rare thing, especially nowadays, when people often work according to the quick-and-dirty principle.

“And, of course, I also see her as the wife of Vasyl Tsvirkunov. Mr. Tsvirkunov is a longtime manager of the Dovzhenko Studios, a cinema researcher, also an uncompromising, honest, and decent person — a standard to follow. It is not in the least owing to his management of the Dovzhenko Studios that Ukrainian cinema touched dazzling heights in the 1960s. In the following decades also he behaved very decently (he was fired in he early 1970s, when Ukraine cowered under the ideological pressure of Malanchuk, the then Communist Party secretary in charge of ideology). So when Mr. Tsvirkunov passed away a few years ago, it was a great tragedy for Lina Kostenko. But she very courageously endured the pain of bereavement. I remember her appearance at a Tsvirkunov memorial soiree at the House of Cinema. She told a story of her husband and her own destiny; she absolutely correctly defined him as a chivalrous man. It is not accidental that this gentleman was next to this lady. I think this was one of the most outstanding married couples in Ukrainian history. A very beautiful and moral couple, as is a piece of art.

“In other words, I consider Lina Kostenko simply irreproachable — as an individual, a poet, and a woman. As to why she distances herself from what is going on in Ukraine... Maybe, she is right because there is too much sleaze, too many people (including people of art) are for too vain. And she is a Poet. This is, incidentally, one of her lessons too. A poet should not let himself sink into the circus-like mire of vanity which our today’s political and cultural life is. She is outside this circus. A poet should not be a jester. A poet should remain a poet. Lina Kostenko is Lina Kostenko. And nothing sticks to her. In other words, she is really a pure Poet. Her poetry and spirit are strikingly pure. This is a Poet for all seasons.”

Ivan MALKOVYCH, poet; director, A-BA-BA-HA-LA-MA-HA publishing house of literature for children:

“Once Yury Andrukhovych wrote an article on Lina Kostenko, titled ‘An Uncaught Queen.’ So our best poetess still remains sort of an uncaught queen. I still remember the revelry I felt when I would reread Over the Banks of an Eternal River dozens of times in my youth: the book came out after a long pause, when Lina Kostenko’s works were not published. A friend of mine and I, students at an Ivano- Frankivsk musical school, set almost half the book to music... I like rereading this collection — harmonious in terms of poetry, layout, and design — even now.

“Later, when I was a Kyiv University student, I, like perhaps all the young and not so young poets of the time, would ask myself, ‘And what would Lina Kostenko say about my poems?’ There was a soiree of my poetry at the League of Writers. For some reason, the hall was packed, half the audience had to stand. Then came a debate, somebody was speaking in a critical vein... And suddenly all froze and began to step aside in excitement: Lina Kostenko herself was entering the hall! Most of us saw her for the first time. I will be grateful to Mrs. Kostenko until the end of my life for the substantial support of my youthful poetic endeavors. It is thanks to her blessing and reviews that my first book of poetry came out much before it was planned to.”