Marjana Gaponenko’s name is unfamiliar to most of Ukrainians. The German-speaking author of Ukrainian origin has had her books translated into English, French, Italian, Thai even – but not Ukrainian. But that’s not for long. The publisher “Books XXI” intends to print the novel Who is Martha? translated by Nelia Vakhovska. It is this text that wins international literary awards for the Ukrainian writer, including Alpha and Adelbert von Chamisso Prize, which is awarded to German-speaking authors for whom German is a second language. The book, published by well-known publishing house Suhrkamp Verlag, tells the story of Luka Levadsky – professor, hermit by way of life and ornithologist by vocation. According to Roksolana Sviato, literary critic and translator, he is “an old weirdo, who understands the language of birds and who has for his entire life been much more comfortable among birds and bird vocabulary, than with people.” At old age, Levadsky moves to Vienna and intends to die there. There are no direct references to the character’s origin, but there are some hints, and the author admitted later that he is from Lviv. The texts by Marjana Gaponenko contain many recognizable details of Ukraine. It is not surprising, as Marjana was born and spent her childhood in Odesa. In a moment of boredom, she started to learn German, and then began writing in it. At first, her texts were printed in German newspapers, and then they were noticed by publishers as well. Right now Marjana travels from city to city with presentations and readings of the new novel Das Letzte Rennen (The Last Race), but dreams of life in a village. Horses are her hobby, and Marjana says that she in many ways resembles them. She does not want to exchange her Ukrainian passport for German or Austrian citizenship, though she mostly lives in Vienna and Mainz. She loves birds and elderly people. We have talked to her about the cosmic heights, the proximity to nature, and the multilingualism.
Marjana, there is a distinct Ukrainian element perceptible through your image, your texts and characters. You have been living in Europe for many years, and that must have certainly affected your identity. But how do you identify yourself?
“As long as I will be writing, Ukraine will always be present in my texts. It will not play a central role, though. I do not live there, so I cannot afford writing as if I belonged to this society. However, I do want to advertise Ukraine. These figures are the litmus paper for Europeans. I’m very sensitive about what is happening in Ukraine, and I do not understand when Europeans call the war in Ukraine ‘a crisis’ or ‘the Ukrainian-Russian conflict.’ And yet I am away from Ukraine, despite having spent my childhood there.”
Tell us about this Ukraine – the country of your childhood.
“I remember long winters and endless white landscapes, the way I was riding on a sled with friends, and how we drove each other. Also, I remember clouds of dust. My mother even told me that the first word I uttered was ‘dust.’ This is the first concept that I had known. I do not romanticize it. I felt like we had the steppe behind us, with these clouds of dust, and the endless sea before us. As a child, I thought it was the end of the world. I often recall Odesa, and I have nostalgia. But this is the bridge that had long been burned. I do not want to dig in its ashes.”
And what do you feel when you visit Ukraine? And, actually, do you want to come back?
“I would like, but on the other hand it is scary. It’s like entering a room full of your childhood toys – but it’s dark in there, and everything is covered in dust. You look inside for a moment, but in fact it has long been closed.”
The trajectory of places you had lived in is quite unexpected: Odesa, Krakow, Dublin, Mainz, Vienna... You can continue the list. What do you have from this permanent change of routes and locations? How does your writing benefit from it?
“Previously, I was a hundred percent sure that it gave a lot. But people change, and the older I get, the more I find it not to be true. I do not think that cities one has lived in have any global impact on the worldview. It is influenced perhaps by personal background and experience, but not by the city of residence. You walk the streets, visit museums, live there for a few years, but so what? It does not even depend on whether you communicate with people. Every person is a microcosm with its own history. And you reap what had been sown in you.”
Do you sometimes have the desire to settle down, to take root?
“I certainly have it. But it should be something very simple and rustic. I have always lived in cities but I want to leave it. I want to live in a village.”
In an interview following the Alpha award you were talking about “the return to nature.” What was the seed in your personal history, which has grown into the desire to unite with nature?
“I’ve seen many examples of how easily one can live. And I was upset that I had lived differently. I want to afford to buy a small cottage in a village and raise chickens. My great-grandmother used to breed chickens before the World War Two. I grew up on these stories about cows and how she had to go fetch water from the well every day, regardless of weather. I know this is difficult. But I have matured to this. We are not born for the city.”
And this desire to exit the city – was it born from the constantly accelerating progress?
“I use modern technology, but I am not chasing the fashion. I do not care which model my cell phone is. The main it has to do is work. I am against consumerism, and generally I tend to treat things with care. I use a thing until it ‘passes away.’ I do not like shopping for new collections. We need to remain faithful to the things that are faithful to us. On the other hand, the progress is good if I live to it, and I want to reach the age of 96 years...”
Like your hero Levadsky?
“Yes, exactly. I want to grow old so I would not understand people around me and fly into space at 96. For me it is the goal number two after the life in a village. Not only I want to fly into space, I want to fly to the Moon. And look out on us from there. It would be the culmination that would complete a human life perfectly. I cannot imagine greater happiness. However, it is a pity that one cannot spit on Earth from there, because it is impossible to do in weightlessness. We must strive to cosmic heights, but realize that we are tiny. This is something that can make us grow.”
If you were to fly to the Moon nevertheless, and were to leave some message for earthlings – what would you write to them?
“I would write something very funny – not because I’m from Odesa. Though I remember my mother, for example, for whom the more dramatic the situation was, the more she was prone to laughter... Flying to the Moon, I’d write some quote from the ‘Donald Duck’ – though I don’t know yet, which one.”
You write a lot about old age. Why?
“I’ve talked to people who were ninety and more. After this experience you gauge the wingspan these people had. You see how wide the extent of their thought was, and how miserly the people are nowadays. We feel like kings of the world. But we have absolutely no chance to reach their level. I do not mourn. But as these people depart, the entire era is leaving. We are others.
“I have mentally caught up with the elderly age. I realized that sooner or later everything comes to an end. One does not need to fear death. Death is necessary. We need death to feel joy and happiness. We need it to remember for what purpose we have been given this time on earth. We have much to learn. And as strange as it sounds, but I learned a lot from animals. For example, horses. I take care after them every day. It so happened that I married a man who has been associated with horses since childhood. Horses do not like hypocrisy. With these observations I feel better with people; I find it easier to see through them. From the horses I learned responsibility, sense of tact, and ability to show respect.”
You were the first to speak about animals, and I also have some questions about them. I wanted to ask about your favorite bird. After all, the character of Who is Martha? is an ornithologist.
“My favorite bird is the green woodpecker. It is sometimes called ground woodpecker, because it can often be found on the ground. It often tries to fly near the ground, but the flight is not harmonious, because it does not correspond to its build. It jumps like a slightly tilted tree stump.”
One book explores the topic of birds, the other – horses. What’s next?
“I think I’ll stop on horses. It’s a natural stop, because it reflects my reality. When I was writing about birds, I really devoted much time to learn everything about them. I read stacks of books, I observed them through binoculars. But this time, the knowledge was already in me.”
The last set of questions is about the language. In an interview you said that you started to learn German out of boredom. How did this transition go when you realized that you wanted to write in this language?
“It was a kind of inner necessity. I just sat down to write; at first I was not very good with grammar, I made many mistakes, but then the understanding came. All the components you are learning, after all, combine into a whole picture.” [The last sentence is spoken in German. – Ed.]
I wanted to ask about the language you think in, but you have just responded to the question.
“Actually, everything depends on the environment. In Odesa, my Russian switches on; in Lviv, my sense of Ukrainian comes back (my 10 years of studying it in school were not in vain); and in Poland I think in Polish. I do not want to idealize any language. I value its functionality, not metaphors. Previously I wrote poetry, and thus began my journey to prose. I paid attention to the beauty of a language and its imagery, but then I became more… analytical, or something. I think that sooner or later the process of writing poetry becomes unnatural. I also do not understand how one can write poems about refugees or something like that. It’s better to sit beside them and have a talk. Otherwise, this is hypocrisy.”
The character of Who is Martha?, Levadsky, comes from Lviv. When asked where he was from, he responded that he was from Ukraine – but in fact he was from two utopias: the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Soviet Union. He went to die in Vienna. Why?
“He is an old man with a terrible diagnosis. He was afraid; he remembered that he was alone. He spent his childhood in Vienna. Finally he returns not to Vienna, but to his childhood.”
This book is finally being translated into Ukrainian. What do you think before its release?
“Levadsky comes back home!”
