Do not think shallow thoughts…
Immortality is somewhere out there…
Lina Kostenko’s return to Ukrainian society has already made itself felt. Proof of this is the response of the press to the new edition of her novel Berestechko, considering that the print media are probably the most difficult child begotten by the democratic progress of the Ukrainian type. Our journalist community, accustomed to all kinds of hot stories, immersed in the bottomless sea of pluralism, all of a sudden fell respectfully (and sometimes confusedly) silent and, together with the rest of society, parted to make way for Lina Kostenko, giving her the floor and waiting for her meaningful message. You will agree that one can expect such response “once in a dream that never came true,” to quote from Kostenko (although she had love in mind).
No differing points of view this time, perhaps because there is no other side to the coin of truthfulness and honest attitude to oneself and society. There are few other personalities in Ukraine capable of silencing journalists, politicians, and the entire Ukrainian society in such a way. In fact, there can’t be many, because they have the necessary and almost mythical aristocracy of the spirit, or moral authority, and their undeniable stand does not change with time, space, and even less so with the political or other — underground, mainstream, postmodernist, post-postmodernist, etc. — wind. These people do not like to pose for the cameras, and their statements instantly acquire historical meaning.
“She walks on earth with her feet and touches the starry sky with her head,” says Larysa KADYROVA, People’s Artistic of Ukraine, Zankovetska Drama Prize laureate who recited Kostenko’s poems during the launch of Berestechko.
“Lina Kostenko said that the launching of any project is like the start of a new life. Everyone must think this over. For me, launching a project is like a confession, repentance… Everyone must remember that the time will come and he or she will have to make this confession before fellow humans and before the Lord. I think this is precisely what Kostenko has been writing about all her life. The big question is whether others will hear her message,” adds Maria MATIOS, writer, laureate of the Taras Shevchenko National Prize.
Another evidence of the importance of Kostenko’s return is the response of those in power. This response is telling not only because it comes from the new political leadership, but also because it illustrates the quality of Ukrainian statehood achieved over the past 20 years. Two decades ago this state ought to have embraced the ideology of the Sixtiers, in the narrow sense, and that of all their predecessors and descendants, in a broad sense. As it was, the Minister of Culture of Ukraine attended the launch of Kostenko’s new edition of Berestechko like a guerilla.
“I want no part in this satanic show,” said Kostenko at one time and became an inner emigre, joining a cultural-historical expedition to study the debris of Chornobyl’s Exclusion Zone. She traveled a total of 40,000 kilometers, saving Polisia’s ethnographic heritage and thus securing Ukraine against a cultural Chornobyl disaster — and distancing herself from omnipresent vulgarity.
A cultural Chornobyl disaster means, among other things, sterility of the soul, when there is no poetry left, when a poet is squeezed into the narrow mold of public crier and that poet’s solid inner world is broken up into politicized slogans, the way a temple is torn down for bricks. It would be very wrong to regard Kostenko as a political poet. In the case of an outstanding poetic personality dividing poetry into public and intimate verse appears to be a school textbook approach. After all, Ivan Franko was fond of collecting bunches of fallen leaves and Stus studied the grammar of love. In Berestechko, Bohdan Khmelnytsky overcomes his defeat with love. During the launch soiree Lina Kostenko said that what surprised her was the fact that Khmelnytsky got married after Berestechko. Anyway, with Kostenko all victories, defeats, and victories over defeats are flowing between “the banks of an everlasting river.”
Larysa Ivshyna, The Day‘s editor in chief, says that Lina Kostenko is a sage teacher for our society and tough taskmaster for those in power. Perhaps the first thing one ought to learn from Kostenko is the understanding of freedom.
Says Dmytro DROZDOVSKY, press secretary, Kyiv Mohyla Academy, one of those fortunate enough to have greeted Kostenko with the new edition of Berestechko from the stage: “Freedom is achieved in the process of creating an individual personality. Without this everything is tinsel.”
Mykola ZHULYNSKY, director, Taras Shevchenko Institute of Literature at Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (NANU), NANU academician, chairman of the Taras Shevchenko Prize Committee: “There is a prophetic idea in the historical novel Berestechko. We have suffered a political defeat. We must get over it and struggle on. I think Lina Kostenko conveyed this idea in her address. Personally, I was especially impressed and excited by that atmosphere of lifted spirit and hope. Kostenko’s return isn’t coincidental. She has emerged as a symbol of our expectations that Ukraine won’t slip into the abyss and sink in the swamp of exhaustion and hopelessness. I have never seen her like this; I have never seen her so cheerful and optimistic. She has called on us not to abandon the efforts. We must treat everything with laughter and good humor. This soiree has a great symbolic meaning. It convinces me that the Ukrainian spirit finds new stimuli. The Day has for many years been trying to focus on historical, cultural, and moral problems. Your efforts haven’t been in vain. People have finally become aware of the need of cultural values.”
Maria MATIOS: “It is true that we aren’t on our knees; we are dormant like a volcano. That’s why I don’t view our future with pessimism, despite the current situation with Ukrainian culture, and especially with Ukrainian book publishing. No one will ever prevent us from linking to what Kostenko calls the ‘high-voltage line of the spirit.’ This is also a measure of our freedom, so we shouldn’t look for this freedom on the television screen. We should simply read Lina Kostenko. Hers is a master class in freedom. This is what freedom must be like, beautiful, sunlit, and powerful. Immortality is somewhere out there…”
Yurii SHCHERBAK, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Ukraine (an excerpt from his address at the launch of Berestechko):
“This book is about our national pain, our historical defeat, and about the demons of the past that are still perched on the shoulders of the Ukrainian people, determining this people’s age-old complexes.
“However, this defeat, perceived by the poetess with her heart, and by us with our hearts, brings catharsis, consolation, and hope.
“Many a battle have been lost by the Ukrainian people in its long struggle for independence, but the war hasn’t.
“Lina Kostenko’s poetry remains political even in its best lyrical manifestations, as was that of Adam Mickiewicz, Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Franko, Lesia Ukrainka, Yevhen Malaniuk, and Vasyl Stus.
“Kostenko’s addressing the most acute, resonant themes in Ukrainian history, like Berestechko or Chornobyl, and her attempts to perceive and re-examine them are proof that she has never been silent, not even when she didn’t publish any poems or make public appearances, due to some or other reasons.
“Lina Kostenko’s silence was her loud voice of protest.
“Regrettably, our society more often than not kept silent.
“We must admit that we haven’t learned Lina Kostenko’s lessons — and those of her noted predecessors — well enough.
“Are our politicos, who have led Ukraine to the new Ruin, capable of passing the harshest of judgments upon themselves the way Bohdan Khmelnytsky does in Berestechko?
“Will ever I receive forgiveness
For my sin against the people,
For living hell in our paradise?
“How come Ukrainians, with their soft power of art, have failed to become an inseparable part of the European continent?
“Was it because of ignorance, laziness, failing to understand that Ukraine’s main exports should be not only steel and cast iron (whose production leaves behind ecological disaster areas), but also the immortal Ukrainian arts? They are our brand, our creed, our hope for cultural expansion across the world.
“Let us hope that the rising generation of European Ukrainians will carry out this expansion.
“How come Ukrainians in the diaspora, who can stage plush conventions, banquets, and other festivities commemorating past events, have failed to arrange for and finance a quality English and other translations of Lina Kostenko’s works? How come they have failed to organize a Ukrainian lobby at the Nobel Committee (we know that there are such lobbies there and that they are quite effective)? I respect the Ukrainian diaspora that has done so many good things for Ukraine, yet they do not support all projects. because they have their own priorities. As an ambassador of Ukraine to the United States and Canada, I have repeatedly raised this matter in front of those who are doing a great deal for the good of Ukraine, but I have received no answer.
“Lina Kostenko has delimited the territory of our national cultural sovereignty and driven a sharp line between compromises tantamount to the start of capitulation and self-destruction.
“After all, Ukrainian poetry has always been that of resistance, during the times of Valuev’s ukases and Skaba’s and Malanchuk’s bans. In our times Stus and Kostenko have become symbols of this resistance.
“To this end I would like to ask the younger generation of our writers who have been raised on Kostenko’s poetry: ‘You look down at the so-called Sixtiers, blaming them for what you consider to be subservience, but have you become cultural leaders of this nation? Are you capable of offering resistance to the voracious Ukrainophobic occupier?’
“The time will come and we will have a new Flood, new Purification, then we will once again become aware of ourselves as a people that has begotten great poets and statesmen. We have ‘no time for defeat.’
“Dear Ms. Kostenko, I am confident that we will remain invincible for as long as you keep building the Ukrainian Temple of Spirit and Freedom.
“I am confident that, while my two-year-old grandson Oles learns your children’s poems by heart, we will exist as a people in the 21st century.”
Larysa IVSHYNA, editor in chief, Den / The Day (excerpt from address at the launch):
“A whole generation has been brought up in the spirit of Lina Kostenko’s poetry that cultivated literary Ukrainian, [national] taste and style. I wish the younger generation — school and university students — received a set of books by Lina Kostenko. Berestechko‘s revised edition is apparently the first step in this direction.
“I think that Ukrainian newspapers should produce more quality, meaningful materials, because we are left with a huge low-quality, cheap legacy. There aren’t many quality things in our daily cultural circulation.
“Recent years have marked a period of a great cultural famine. We are still unaware of the scope of this shortage. We must see Ukraine in a different light. I have said time and again that the [national] policy with regard to the television channels and their proprietors should be geared to keep them reminded of their public responsibility. Such launches as this one must be broadcast. We must conduct a constant dialog with people who raise our standard not just higher but sky-high.
“I regard the efforts of the newspaper Den’ as its duty. A newspaper must be a place where the nation can communicate with itself. Even if Lina Kostenko may have disapproved now and then, we have always tried to attract the reader’s attention to the lofty concepts upheld by Kostenko’s poetry.
“By her silence Kostenko eloquently showed us the scope of the problems over the past couple of years. Those who could hear her silent voice became aware that the Ukrainian world must continue being replenished with quality. This is what our young people and the older generation need. This is what all Ukrainians need.
“I can only admire the Lybid Publishers’ project, above all the synergy effect it has produced. So many brilliant people put together, an example of unity worth being emulated. We constantly see bad people get united; they know how to go about it. It is necessary for the good people to learn to unite.
“Over the past couple of years our freedom of expression has turned into self-isolation and segmentation of the information space. We have wasted time doing all kinds of stupid things. Lina Kostenko turned her silence into a powerful capital of freedom, so much so we all rushed over here to see what freedom looks like. Those who saw it must continue implementing it. We have lots of theoreticians, but I’m fond of Ukrainian practitioners.
“We have our own contemporary Berestechko (and I often refer to the fact): in 1999 there was a president but no people; in 2004, there was the people but no president. Defeats are very bitter experiences but good teachers.
“It was so simple, so very natural, /A light in a window of Dovzhenko’s home. I feel happy to know that there is a light in a window on Honchar St., that behind that window Lina Kostenko is working at her desk. We must also take part in this process. I thank you, Ms. Kostenko!”
Volodymyr PANCHENKO, literary critic, professor, Kyiv Mohyla National University:
“Lina Kostenko is a symbolic figure. She is so meaningful when she keeps silent, and even more so when she addresses our society. Much has been said during this launch about the new historical times mentioned by Oxana Pachlovska. We all realize that Ukraine has found itself at a crossroads. True, this not the first nor last time. We see that Lina Kostenko feels rather optimistic about this step taken by history. At the same time, we are worried and the question, Quo vadis, Ukraine?, remains. Even now I notice people increasingly often looking around, being unsure of whether or not take this or that step, make this or that statement. Nothing bad has happened as yet, or so it seems. Anyway, there is that uneasy feeling. Today we must speak our minds as never before. We must hear honest voices.”
Anatolii KVASIUK, restorer from Lutsk:
“When I was a student, my friends and I read and re-read Marusia Churai, and at one time I knew half of the text by heart, so I was very happy to receive an invitation to this launch from The Day’s editor in chief. I couldn’t fail to attend it. For my generation Lina Kostenko is like a banner, a symbol of freedom and intellectual will. Not all people who have great talent have such great willpower. Too bad far from many of my generation learned from Lina Kostenko’s poetry. We have to use the cultural potential she founded in teaching this and next generations. We must see to it that the lessons of the Berestechko defeat be finally learned.”
