Prose about Lviv and research on Les Kurbas

Before the weekend the final ceremony of the book competition LitAccent 2010 was held in the bookstore Ye in Kyiv. Since 2007 it has been organized by the Internet edition LitAccent which covers news and tendencies in Ukrainian and foreign literature. Its editor, literary critic and professor Volodymyr Panchenko, was the master of the ceremony.

There are only three nominations in the LitAccent of the Year: fiction, literary criticism and the anti-award Golden Bubble, for the worst book of the year. This year Volodymyr Panchenko, Yevhenia Kononenko, Viktor Neborak, Roksolana Sviato, Yana Dubynianska, and Oleksandr Stusenko composed the jury.

Fiction authors were first to be awarded. Based on the results of several rounds of evaluation, the jury selected a short list of three candidates. They were the poet and publisher Ivan Malkovych with the book Vse Poruch (Everything is Near), Taras Prokhasko with botakE, and Andrii Sodomora and his work Sliozy rechei (Tears of Things). Finally, Sodomora won. As Yevhenia Kononenko said, his prose is “a reflection, declaration of love of the city, the city’s philosophy, the soul’s mysticism, the city’s soul — a conversation of a city resident with his native city and poetry in prose. In addition, this book is very well printed.” It’s interesting that until now Sodomora was better known as a translator and journalist. Moreover, Sliozy rechei didn’t provoke any excitement in Ukraine. Therefore, giving the award exactly to this author was unexpected. On the one hand, it’s strange how experts ignored many other notable, interesting, powerful and resonant books of 2010, and there were enough of them, though less than in previous years. On the other hand, such an approach shows that the jury members did not chose the easy way, but really looked for the books which corresponded to their ideas about quality literature. They didn’t fear to go against the conventional opinion of the majority and this is not bad.

“It took me a long time to move toward prose,” says Sodomora. “While translating, I always dreamed of writing, though there were people discouraging me from this. The sympathy toward my book is actually sympathy toward old Lviv, which is leaving us, and which I want to keep alive.”

The book by the Canadian scholar of Ukrainian origin Irena Makaryk Peretvorennia Shekspira. Les Kurbas, Ukrainsky modernism i radianska kulturna polityka 1920-kh rokiv (Transforming Shakespeare. Les Kurbas, Ukrainian Modernism and Soviet Cultural Policy of the 1920s) (translated from English), a book by Yarolav Polishchuk I kata, i heroia vin liubyv. Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky. Literaturny portret (He Loved Both Executioner and Hero. Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky. A Literary Portrait) and a collection of articles by Liudmyla Tarnashynska Ukrainske shistdesiatnytstvo: profili na tli pokolinnia (Ukrainian 1960s: Profiles Against the Background of the Generation) were the candidates for victory in the Literary Criticism nomination.

Irena Makaryk and her Transforming Shakespeare, dedicated to Kurbas’ staging of works by Shakespeare, got the award. After attempts to get in touch with the scholar via Skype failed, Roksolana Sviato said a few words about this edition: “This book is especially valuable because, unfortunately, research where Ukrainian culture is found in a broader, world literary context is rarely published in Ukraine. The value of the research also lies in the fact that it is written in an exciting and interesting way, there is an intriguing plot. Irena Makaryk considers the staging of Shakespeare as a kind of marker of cultural and political transformations in Ukraine.” By the way, speaking about the drama topic, Roksolana Sviato told the audience a very curious fact: as it turns out, a Ukrainian playwright of the 1920s-1930s Ivan Mykytenko, was once called the “Ivan Shakespeare of Soviet literature.”

Perhaps the most intriguing moment was waiting to find out who will get the Golden Bubble, the anti-award for the worst book of 2010. Mimes brought in a huge yellow-golden air balloon, which Panchenko solemnly and cheerfully pierced with a needle. After the explosion a sheet of paper with the decision of the jury came out of the exploded balloon. And then, a huge disappointment — experts decided not to give the Golden Bubble to anyone! Panchenko explained the unexpectedly mild verdict by the fact that the current situation in the Ukrainian literary process is not cheerful at all, the numbers of copies are on the level from a previous century, the state is not interested in promoting our writers either abroad or inside the country, so it’s difficult to speak about any explicit book failures. However, such explanations didn’t look very persuasive. Perhaps members of the jury simply didn’t agree on a single candidate? It is only known that preliminarily the book by Mykola Zhulynsky Nation, Culture, Literature and Pavlo Volvach’s Virshi na rozi (Poems on the Corner) were candidates for the anti-award.

Anyway, some more top books will join those praised during previous competitions: books by Oksana Zabuzhko, Serhii Zhadan, Lina Kostenko, Valerii Shevchuk and others. Now readers can evaluate the choices of the literature experts.

TO THE POINT

Due to the discontinuance of the broadcast of the Ukrainian service of the BBC, the book competition of this radio station will obviously cease to exist as well. Instead, a new competition “A Book for a Christmas Tree” was recently held in Kharkiv. It was won by Voroshylovhrad by Serhii Zhadan.