By Andriy OKHRYMOVYCH
"It is only when a dollar prostitute breaks into fluent Ukrainian that
it will all start to happen," rattled a tipsy intellectual next to the
grocery store, not without reason considering prostitutes as an integral
part of the complex organism of a big and, moreover, metropolitan city.
He explained what starting meant very simply: the official language
would then be functioning naturally throughout all layers of the societal
cake. I think this is a kind of normal reaction to the nauseatingly sweet
smell of mothballs and warmed-over ideas of the sublime which were broken
in the West by the crowbar-like phallus of Henry Miller's brilliant style.
In Ukraine, it is Andrukhovych, Andrusiak, and Vynnychuk who try to commit
at least a pale semblance of this act. Their successes are not so impressive.
What seems to be missing in their quest for triumph is a mere trifle -
the specific linguistic material produced by skid row, the army, and prison
camps. For this ample, colorful and far-from-stupid human stratum in Ukraine
still uses Big Brother's language.
Also in this stratum is the dollar prostitute. The sweetness of contact
with her should be ensured not by ethnographic pseudo-folk shows and finely-psychological
hogwash, such as yellow and blue decorated rooms in soldiers' barracks
(replacing "Leninist" recreation rooms?), but, above all, by the vigorous
authority of the Ukrainian language which, starting from Parliament, should
embrace not only all army and police personnel but also criminal godfathers.
They should be worked with, they should be drawn into useful life, with
adequate utilization of their extraordinary energy. One should not fear
brute force, dirt, or anything else. Let us not forget that the cream of
the beau monde often has its roots in beggars, if not pirates.
Let us endeavor, at least like the rooster from a joke: "If I catch her,"
he was thinking about the hen, "I'll make her my bride, if not - I'll at
least warm up."
