An interesting meeting took place at The Day’s editorial office. Our guest was a colleague from Russia, Yekaterina VARKAN, managing editor of the NG-ekspres supplement to Nezavisimaya gazeta. The purpose of her visit was so unusual it rated an interview.
Yekaterina, will you tell us secret? Are you here on business or just to marvel Kyiv in spring?
Varkan: We came here as private citizens, but our visit has a very unusual purpose. We want to find the site for a very special monument.
What kind of monument?
Varkan: Believe it or not, it’s going to be a monument to fatback and the legend will read, “From grateful Muscovites.”
Quite an extravagant idea. Who does it belong to?
Varkan: Our well-known writer Andrei Bitov. He could make the whole project a splendid reality. There are certain things that are absolutely international. Fatback is one such thing. Vodka is another. I mean articles of daily culture that to some extent or another illustrate the national character and at the same time bring people closer together. There is an expression, marble fatback or lard marble. In a word, here one can carry out an interesting and sufficiently deep action, the more so that we already have the experience of erecting a monument to the hare in Mikhailovskoye.
Please, tell us more.
Varkan: The action took place in 2002, and was timed to the 175th anniversary of the hare running across Pushkin’s path. It is a famous story, when Pushkin tried to leave Mikhailovskoye for St. Petersburg in 1825, but a hare ran across his path and the poet turned back, fortunately for otherwise he would have been on Senate Square together with the Decembrists. All this was thought up by Bitov and Rezo Gabriadze, a sculptor and artistic director of the famous puppet theater. Scholars gathered for the opening, telling different versions of the incident with the hare, while world-renowned drummer Vladimir Tarasov and bassoonist Aleksandr Aleksandrov from Germany did Pushkin Jazz with Bitov.
But here you can’t rule out their treating your idea negatively, saying Big Brother is laughing at us again.
Varkan: Well, first of all we want it modest but beautiful, so the Kyivans will like it. Besides, there is an obvious element of self-abasement — “From grateful Muscovites.” Thus, I’m not afraid of such a reaction. Our idea will be defended by none other than Bitov, and I’m absolutely sure that his way of handling the matter is not likely to offer serious grounds to make our actions look political.
There are many powerful cultural figures — Bulgakov, Gogol, and Shevchenko — that unite our peoples. Perhaps it would be more proper to use something from their creative legacies? Figuratively speaking, there has been a hare in the life of every great writer.
Varkan: Without a doubt. However, it seems to me that one should not take inspiration from texts by great masters. One ought to find ideas of one’s own and justify them. This will be alive and not stupid.
In the case with fatback it turns out in keeping with that cliche about the Little Russians stuffing themselves with fatback. Examples are plenty. Take [the Russian film] Brother-2. It shows precisely that kind of Ukrainian. So this perception does exist.
Varkan: I don’t think that fatback consumption is a shortcoming. I love fatback, even though I’m Moldovan. On the contrary, I think it’s an international sign, in a way a sign of reconciliation.
Apart from fatback, don’t you think that the relations between our countries are really complicated, that the intelligentsia, rather than easing tensions, is pouring oil on the fire?
Varkan: Good people constitute the majority of any ethnic group. I’ve traveled enough and have never been mistreated. They way they meet you depends on how you behave; people will treat you the way you treat them. Getting back to our project, such things, if they are done with loving care, are perceived with love. Take that monument to Chizhyk-Pyzhyk (from a classic ditty about a sot who fell and messed his pants — Ed.) in St. Petersburg, also done by Bitov and Gabriadze. At first they made fun of it, but now there is a constant flow of visitors, and the monument did not damage the city architecture in any way. Same with the monument to the hare. At first, they were all against it, but then it was a lead story on “Vremia” [popular Moscow TV news program].
How about financing the project in Kyiv?
Varkan: First we must see how realistic the whole thing is. Kyiv’s sausage factory or our Cherkizovo Meatpacking Combine might get interested.
Have you found the site?
Varkan: No, I don’t know Kyiv well enough, unlike many other cities. I just can’t figure out where to look.
Indeed, a difficult task. You must have noticed that the municipal authorities are quite generous about monuments. The whole of downtown is already packed with them, and they aren’t of the highest artistic value, mildly speaking.
Varkan: Of course, it may not be exactly downtown, just as those bedroom communities are not perhaps precisely as they should be. No one’s telling us to hurry, so we must first take a good look around and get the necessary authorizations. If an idea becomes popular a lot can be accomplished on the spur of the moment. Also, I very much rely on Bitov’s intuition; he has never made poor gestures. Too bad he doesn’t write as much these days as he used to, yet he can be very effective turning his attention to other things. He constantly travels abroad, lecturing. I hope he will be with us on our next visit.
If it were up to you, what other monument would you erect?
Varkan: I can’t tell you offhand, it takes a lot of imagination. We have an idea, a monument to the horse chestnut, for it’s a purely Kyiv symbol. Of course, I don’t mean sculpting the tree, something else, quite original could be contrived. We have an agreement with Yasnaya Poliana to build a monument to burdock, and not necessarily immortalizing the weed in stone; there are plenty of live species in every public garden. It’s much more interesting to erect a monument to an idea, thought, symbol. All it takes is fantasy.
