A MODERN INTELLECTUAL IS OFTEN A CONFORMIST
The Day: There is a fable about people always gathering under the same Christmas tree decorated with gifts denoting certain human traits and benefits of this world – power, career, wealth. They take off all gifts except the packages labeled “good” and “intellect.” Why?
K. S: There are many such fables. Some are quite witty. Personally, I like the one about a young man helping a traveler being attacked by robbers. The grateful traveler invited him to the market where he was selling carpets, so he could reward his rescuer. The young fellow said he did good deeds simply because he wanted to and that he needed no reward, but then he came to the market. At the carpet shop, he saw a boxed tree with red, yellow, and white fruits. The merchant said, “If you take the red fruit everybody will respect you and you will have power. If you take the white fruit you will be rich and famous. Now look at this yellow and wrinkled one. You pick it and old women will love you.” The young men thought and then took the yellow fruit. The fable ends with “And now let us pray for the wealthy, wise, and glorious favorite of the sultan’s mother.” Such fables are often funny but quite edifying. As for why those people wouldn’t take “intellect” and “good,” the answer is simple: because almost everybody believes he is both. In this sense it is always interesting to read memoirs. They contain truthful information about the author, but not much. An individual never sees himself for what he really is. Actually, it is impossible to do so. The main trait can be found only in something like an ameba. A modern educated intellectual is extremely complex. He has to play countless roles. He is often on the conformist side – at least in our country. As a conformist, he is a chameleon; he can adjust in any situation or environment; he knows how to talk to a friend, colleague, and his boss. Therefore, forming a definite picture of such an individual is impossible, the more so that he is not even sure of his own precious self. And of course, everybody prefers to be seen as clever and kind.
THE STATEMENT THAT OUR PEOPLE MAKE CAREERS ABROAD THEY CAN’T MAKE HERE IS A MYTH
The Day: How would you explain the fact that our domestic talent somehow does not strike root in this country but flourishes abroad, be it somewhere in the West or even in Russia?
K. S: I don’t quite agree. Tell me precisely whose talent has flourished so abroad? Which of our dissident writers has made a spectacular career in the West? Vasily Aksenov made his name in the USSR with A Ticket to the Stars [1961]. Yevtushenko? Did the kind of verse he writes in the West make him famous? They are all drawn back to Moscow, because they are sincerely appreciated only in Russia. The О migr О Nabokov won international acclaim, but he worked and lived abroad, and wrote in English, so he is essentially an English author. All the creative emigres of the first wave suffered from lack of funds and understanding in Berlin, Paris, and Prague; they had trouble getting across to the foreign reader. It is understandable in general, as a Russian or Ukrainian, or any other author for that matter is interesting only when writing about his own country, which he not only knows but is also innately aware of.
Of course, all those noted Ukrainian writers – they are middle-aged, so there is no way to call them young – traveling abroad under US or Canadian grants receive a good chance to make their names and earn some money with lectures and meetings before various audiences. They can also help with translations of their books. However, all such people are treated as interesting guests, and they will never make great writers. They return home. So the statement that our people make careers abroad they can’t make here and that they make big money that way is a myth. If any Ukrainians did make careers outside Ukraine it was in Moscow for the most part. It’s just that Russia, particularly Moscow offers better book-publishing opportunities. Books written by our authors get larger print runs. If you write in Russian, you’re likely to become known abroad, because there are lots of translators from the Russian. Few can translate from Ukrainian, and there are no such translators in certain countries. So much for the literary domain. In music and ballet the situation is different. There are several very successful Russian performers: Vishnevskaya, Rostropovich, Nureyev, Baryshnikov. But it’s a handful and their art is international, and they won recognition at home. And there countless others that have tried to follow in their footsteps and returned to sing, play, and dance at home.
The Day: What about films?
K. S.: I can’t think of a single Ukrainian filmmaker who made his name abroad. I know only one film director, the Russian Konchalovsky who worked for quite some time in Hollywood, but he’s back in Moscow. As for successful Ukrainian movies, one is instantly reminded Paradzhanov’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. It’s a wonderful production, as all of his mature works. Paradzhanov was an artist and architect, his films are strikingly rich in fantasy and visual beauty. They are canvases come alive. He was himself a work of modern art, unusual in every respect. Of course, he was regarded as an exotic orchid in the cinema tree. Yet the headlines he made in the West were mainly because he was persecuted by the Soviets. So I just can’t imagine any our filmmakers, however brilliant, enjoying such popularity, should they try their luck in the West. Yuri Illienko and Kira Muratova make great productions; they are well known in the West, but only because they made them here.
THE RICH LACK THE CULTURE OF ARISTOCRACY
The Day: Why do our patrons of the arts, those that can afford to support our culture, focus on everything foreign? Is it lack of culture or it’s just that everything we make in this country turns out low quality?
K. S.: I don’t know much about our patrons. I think that patronage and sponsorship are quite different. If we discuss Tretiakov, Morozov, Shchukin, or the Khanenkos, we’ll be talking a different level of culture. Those people had a different concept of what they were doing. Now we have people investing in entertainment, various television shows, for example, to advertise their products. That’s only natural, things like that are done in the West. Also, I believe that the decade of Ukrainian independence is too short a period for our propertied class to develop that sort of cultural finesse. It takes time. Wealthy Ukrainians haven’t gone far from the wild stage of primitive capital accumulation. In the West, it was buccaneers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We live in a more civilized period and here the loot – property taken away by force on the high seas – is absent (perhaps because Ukraine doesn’t have access to the ocean). But on the whole there is a definite highwayman touch to our wealth. Yet making just one step from Long John Silver to a gentleman wearing a dinner jacket and knowing French is very difficult. It takes time. We all remember Dreiser’s books about that financier, titan, and stoic Frank Kawperwood. In the end the hero asks himself what he has made all that money for. Just so he could make more money, it appears. No other explanation. Kawperwood, indifferent to the arts in principle, relying on consultants, creates an art gallery because he is well aware that investing in art is a very good way to invest; true works of art continue to grow in value. But one has to live to realize that one must invest in art and rely on true experts. And then one’s name will be remembered long afterward, the way we remember Tretiakov, Morozov, Khanenko, or Tereshchenko. This is the main objective a patron or sponsor must set himself. Not an instant payoff like getting quick and big returns, but winning acclaim lasting for centuries. Kawperwood realized in the end that money had not made him any happier. That’s a generalization, but it’s also a fact.
RESPECT FOR THE ELDERLY LIKE THE LOVE OF CHILDREN IS A SIGN OF A SOCIETY WITH A FUTURE
The Day: Why is it that Ukrainian men are not the way Ukrainian women would like to see them (this is sometimes described as a national pathology)?
K. S.: I’m afraid I don’t understand the question. Honestly. I think that women all over the world, not only in Ukraine, are not satisfied with their men. In this sense, Ukrainian men are far from being the worst. Not so long ago it transpired that women can do without men even in terms of childbirth. I remember reading an article in Literaturnaya gazeta years ago, titled “Take Care of the Men.” Scientists prove that men are dying out as a class because they are unwanted. It is terrible, because God, nature, or some supreme force created a man and a woman for good purpose; they were meant to give birth to other human beings, bestowing them with excellent properties, so they would make each other happy. Today, childbirth and the joy of making love are rudely divided, with the latter getting the dominant position and childbirth being pushed aside as something of minor importance. But that’s a different subject.
About Ukrainian men, I think that if they ate a little less you’d hardly find a more attractive male species anywhere else. Now what they’re capable of and what they actually attain is a different story. I believe it’s the result of our Soviet mentality; we don’t know how to work hard and honestly or how to set ourselves a certain objective, knowing that we won’t achieve it the very next day. Of course, one can earn some money finding and selling empty bottles, but making a quick buck like that is not real work. There must be a great deal of propaganda to change people’s attitude toward work, so they realize they really must study on and on, polishing and upgrading their skill, so they can attain something new and more interesting. I know this is trite moralizing, but we can’t just live from one day to the next. Most of our people are mentally and morally sound, look to the future, but I can picture this future only as something achieved by hard continuous work, by constantly adding to our knowledge. It’s a scientifically established fact that you can get to be an imbecile quite quickly unless you think and read and constantly practice your brains. Look at our pensioners, those that stop working and then mentally degrade so fast. On the contrary, those that stay energetic after retirement, constantly training their memory – if only by solving crossword puzzles – seem to be inoculated against senile decay. An idle brain becomes senile fastest. Back in the 1960s, we seemed to have humane laws concerning old age, when people could safely retire. And note that the old age pension law read that one could retire, but in reality it became compulsory. People retiring at the prescribed age were called pensioners, but with a derogatory implication. Previously, when one worked for as long as one physically could, no one treated pensioners that way. Respect for elders, just like love of children, is a sign of a society with a future. Yet this is not the only point. Pensioners stopped respecting themselves, decaying morally and physically. If nobody needs you any longer, if you’re just a silly old man or woman: why live any longer? This sense of life no longer having a purpose let alone prospects is what makes our society stand out so ugly among the more prosperous societies where women up to ninety go skydiving and granddads up to eighty study foreign languages and computers, where one finds plenty of clubs according to interest for the retired. And these people continue to work to improve themselves and for other peoples’ sake. That makes the crucial difference between service and work. One can work mentally, without producing any real assets, and I think that here one finds a lot of field of endeavor for those who really want to make our society better and happier. It if very important not only to raise pensions, but also increase the value of human existence at an age when one is supposed to be rewarded with pension for everything one has done with his own hands for the good of society.
THE YOUNG OFTEN PREFER PHYSICAL TO SPIRITUAL DELIGHT
The Day: A university professor has a unique opportunity to observe changes in the mentality of 20-year-old students, unlike their cohort, say, five years ago. What do you think of the current younger generation?
K. S.: They’re interesting, so very much alive, laughing, and confident. They know a great many things we had no idea about at their age and probably never will. For one thing, contemporary students are far better technically equipped. If they don’t feel like working, taking notes during lectures, they just go home and download the material from the Internet. Yes, they are different in many ways and far from all of them are negative. On the contrary, they are quite positive. In fact, to say students and youth is incorrect, it’s too general. There are separate conspicuously talented individuals, raised in a certain way, having read certain books in their childhood. This has a strong impact on the formation of the personality. Such individuals are invariably the minority of every year of study. This is only natural. There can be three or four really talented students per class. Maybe just one. But there are very many capable and thinking students. For the most part I deal with students at a capital institution of higher education, and most of them are from the city. Our department of the philology admits students knowing a foreign language, meaning that most of them are from the urban areas, because foreign languages are taught badly in village schools. In other words, our students demonstrate a decent cultural standard. It is also true, however, that they read considerably less. Books were previously a source of both emotion and information; today, information is obtained from entirely different sources. As for emotions, a lot of young people are rather cool-headed these days and not likely to shed tears over the perils of literary heroes. They often prefer physical joys to spiritual ones.
The Day: Do you envy them?
K. S.: No, I never envy anybody anything. I am quite content with what I have. What I would wish myself? More energy, better health. I am a sufficiently active individual, yet age is something I have to reckon with. I am interested in a lot of things, I do a lot of things, far more than the statistical man in the street, yet less than I wish I did. What do our young people lack? I think that they have a lot. They have their youth, prospects, and this world has become more accessible to them. Like most other people they lack understanding that life is short, that they shouldn’t waste even a single day, for you live only once, and life can’t be repeated.
THE DAY’S REFERENCE
Kira SHAKHOVA, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Foreign Literature, Taras Shevchenko National University; conducts general and special courses in nineteenth and twentieth century world (European and American) literature. He also graduated from there, took a postgraduate course at the chair of foreign literature, defended a candidate of science thesis and a doctorate, both on nineteenth century Hungarian literature, has trained over candidates of science; is a member of the Writers’ Union of Ukraine; author of 15 books and some 300 papers; for a number of years she has conducted her favorite course in the history of literature for the first-years author of textbooks on translating foreign literature, poetry, and prose.
