Ukrainian Literature

Liam

Liam

Administrator
It is, perhaps, not very surprising that we don't have a thread on Ukrainian literature. Ukrainian literature is very "small," and most Ukrainian authors prefer to write in Russian: this guarantees them a bigger readership, on the one hand, and better chances at being translated on the other.

So far, we have threads on four young Ukrainian writers:

Yuri Izdryk
Andrey Kurkov
Taras Prochaśko
Yuri Andrukhovych

To this list, I would also like to add the name of Oksana Zabuzhko, who writes mostly about the problems of women in modern-day Ukraine. Two of her novels are already available in English, another one (Sister, Sister) is coming out in 2013.

Some of their writing is available in Russian translation here.

Finally, no discussion of Ukrainian literature is complete without the name of Roman Fedoriv (no English wiki, sorry).


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Eric

Former Member
I think we should have a thread for Ukrainian literature as it suffers from the "censorship of non-translation", i.e. we have little access to Ukrainian literature if we want to read books in English. The danger is that Ukrainian literature will be written off as a "minor literature". I expect there are lots of authors that we don't yet know.

But we have to be careful about using the term "young" authors. Fedoriv was born in 1930, Andrukhovych, Zabuzhko and Kurkov are all over 50, and even Prokhasko was born in 1968. There must be a whole generation of newer authors by now. But as usual with semi-unknown literatures, sifting the interesting authors out from the wannabes and one-novel-wonders is not an easy task unless you access Ukrainian-language book sites - and, of course, understand what you read there.
 
Daniel del Real

Daniel del Real

Moderator
Now my question goes for all of you who have a deeper knowledge in languages: is there a big difference between Russian and Ukrainian? From what I read at wiki, languages come from the same origin and have mutual intelligibility.
Liam, Eric, can you broaden on this?
 
Liam

Liam

Administrator
They are mutually intelligible to some degree, like Irish and Scottish Gaelic, but Ukrainians understand a lot more Russian than Russians do Ukrainian, :). But if a Russian person were watching a Ukrainian film he probably wouldn't need subtitles, although there are all sorts of differences between written and spoken language, of course.
 
Liam

Liam

Administrator
@ Eric:

I did not mean to imply that Fedoriv is a young author. In fact, he's so old, he's dead, :). But he is an incredible writer (or so mother sayeth) who is not very well-known outside of his country.

As for others, who are indeed in their 40s and 50s, perhaps I made a mistake in referring to them as "young." What I meant is that they have only begun to publish fairly recently, and they're all contemporary.

On the subject of Ukrainian literature being "minor": I think it IS minor, because most Ukrainian authors dumbly refuse to write in their own language and prefer Russian instead, for obvious reasons.

I wouldn't call Ukrainian literature poor for all that, but I would call it sparse. Or uneven. Or not-as-great as that of its eastern or western neighbors. In fact, if I had to name two Slavic countries with great, truly great literatures, I would definitely settle for Poland and Russia.

As much as it pains me to say this, Ukraine would be at the end of my list, well behind the Czech Republic and the former Yugoslavian countries.
 
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Eric

Former Member
Liam, Ukrainian literature will flourish in the English-speaking countries only of someone bothers to translate it. Up to the present, this mostly means that when somoene gets to teach a few terms at an American university, all his books, the ones that he has been plugging during his stay, gradually get published, while other Ukrainian authors continue to be ignored.

Poland is, no doubt, streets ahead of Ukraine with regard to a sophisticated translated literature (Milosz, Gombrowicz, Witkiewicz, Schulz, Konwicki, Iwaszkiewicz, Tulli, Chwin, Tokarczuk, and several more). But Ukraine also, no doubt, produces good things. There must be regular Ukrainian translations of belles lettres into English, not just the occasional "genius" and "token Ukrainian" being translated.
 
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Girlathewindow

New member
There are many important reaons for the lack of Ukrainian literature, not the least of them, that Ukrainian literature was banned and destroyed during the annexation and occupation of Ukraine by many nations in even recent history. I urge you to read the book "Whistletree" which, although it follows a fictional storyline, is based on Ukranian historical and circumstantial truth. The book can by found on Amazon.com (electronic book also available on that site)
 
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lawpark

Reader
On Polish literature, I recently came across an article: (I find on local library's online resource for academic papers)
Wilczek, Piotr. "The Literary Canon and Translation: Polish culture as a case study." Sarmatian Review 32.3 (2012):1687+.
The author is a Polish literature professor, he started by showing his amaze at the 6 Polish works picked out by Harold Bloom in the Western Canon, and then proceeded to talk about how minor literature is represented depends so much on English translations and anthologies.
 
pesahson

pesahson

Reader
I've read about 1/3 of The Museum of Abandoned Secrets. There are two plots. One takes place in modern day Ukraine, the second one and the more interesting depicts partisans during WWII. I contemplated reading just the war plot, but those two are intertwined and that would be impossible. I couldn't stand reading the contemporary part because it revolves around a couple. There are descriptions of them being sensual and sexual with each other (nothing gratuitous or graphic) but they use such infantile language that the whole thing (infantility+sexuality mixed together) made me really hate it. Maybe it was the fault of the translation. I don't know.
 
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froyim_gratch

New member
Liam said:
It is, perhaps, not very surprising that we don't have a thread on Ukrainian literature. Ukrainian literature is very "small," and most Ukrainian authors prefer to write in Russian: this guarantees them a bigger readership, on the one hand, and better chances at being translated on the other.
Click to expand...
The problem is the same as in Switzerland. If you limited Swiss literature to literature written in Swiss dialects you would deprive them of Rousseau, Max Frisch, Friedrich Dürrenmatt and Christian Kracht.

Ukrainian literature is Nikolay Gogol, Isaak Babel, Sholom-Aleykhem, Eduard Limonov and Mikhail Yelizarov. Kotlyarevskiy, Lesya Ukrainka and Taras Shevchenko is Ukrainian language literature. In Kiev it is about as prominent as Irish language literature is in Dublin.
 
Cleanthess

Cleanthess

Dinanukht wannabe
Froyim, a very warm welcome to the forum!
Gogol, yes, a great Ukrainian writer and Taras Bulba a great Ukrainian modern epic. I've never forgotten these lines:

But the future is unknown, and it stands before us like the autumn fog that rises from the swamp: in it the birds fly senselessly up and down, flapping their wings, not recognizing one another. The dove does not see the hawk, the hawk does not see the dove; and no one knows how close we are flying to our doom.
 
Bluszczokrzew

Bluszczokrzew

Reader
Recently, I've read two books by contemporary Ukrainian writers. Both won some critical acclaim and have numerous translations (incl. to English).


1. Oksana Zabuzhko, Museum of Abandoned Secrets: I really enjoyed it and surely will read something else by this author. The book is lengthy, but well written and planned. We have several interconnected narratives, each taking place in a different time period (which makes the plot difficult to understand at the beginning). The events from the past (II world war) step into the contemporary times. Unfinished stories demand to be completed by the living. Modern characters are not aware that they re-enact the events and relations from the past and have only a vague precognition about it. This idea of past haunting the present is not uncommon among post-communist writers. It was one of the distinct features of so-called "Polish magical realism" of early 90ties (Olga Tokarczuk, Paweł Huelle, Stefan Chwin). Magical realism was a literary way of dealing with the troubled past, forgotten lives and tragedies. The book of Zabuzhko is a great example of the genre.


This is also a very interesting picture of early post-soviet Ukraine. Mass media are transforming from a vocational model (serving the people, dealing with social issues), into a commercial, marked-based one, with a strong connection with corrupted politicians. There is also a unique figure of ex-KGB officer. These guys are often potrayed shallowly, as a mere instruments of oppressive apparatus. Here we see his every-day face - an aging common man.


There are also flaws. pesahson (above) is right: the couple is infantile (e.g. the guy is a post-soviet macho), their dialogues are irksome and I often skimmed through them.


2. Serhiy_Zhadan, Mesopotamia: This is a collection of short stories and poems. The stories take place in one of the districts of the city of Kharkov. The characters know each other, the stories are loosely interrelated and each is written from the standpoint of different character. Neither the stories, nor the style appealed to me. I don't think I will remember the book a year from now. The same is for the poems. I was quite disappointed, because the book recieved some prizes.
 
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