I have recently reread one of Pokalchuk’s early prose works entitled Ozerny viter (Lake Wind), an extremely lyrical legend, dedicated to his native Volhynia. This is a story of the immortality of the human soul, which is able to love truly and fills the immediate surroundings with love. The writer left a 140-page unfinished sequel to this work — Syn vitru (Son of the Wind). Only time will show whether we will see this work in print: people responsible for the writer’s literary heritage will have to determine whether this incomplete text contains any plot intrigue, i.e., whether the writer managed to create it in the last days of his life.
Today it is very painful to read or hear statements of contemporary critics analyzing Pokalchuk’s prose works. It seems that hardly anyone tried to read his works in a serious way. Literary critics want to perceive them as exclusively “pornographic prose,” so they ascribe his works to “mass literature.” These judgments are too superficial. For one thing, Pokalchuk’s works do not have the brutality and humiliation that is typical of pornographic prose. Neither can his writings be included in mass literature, because he is a true penman with a profound worldview. (Incidentally, thinking critics never call Stephen King’s works “literature for the masses.”)
In order to understand the writer, one should first of all learn to read his works carefully and reflect on the reasons behind his writing rather judge from standpoint of the plot.
Recalling Pokalchuk’s early works, especially the books Khulihany (Hooligans) and Zaboroneni ihry (Forbidden Games), it is clear that sexual scenes in these works are derivative from and supplementary to the picture of the social cross-section of our life, which in reality is simply awful in its indifference to the individual’s destiny, especially that of teenagers from problem families.
I fail to understand Yaroslav Holoborodko, who writes in his book Underground. Ukrainian literary establishment: “Yurko Pokalchuk likes the role of a sexograpic artist. He is not averse to wearing the toga of the guru of literary sex obsession (…) His male and female characters (in Zapamarochlyvy zapakh dzhunhliv (Dizzy Smell of the Jungles) — A.L.) touch the depths of life in a brothel. The brothel is the place where they receive moral-psychological and intellectual revelations. The brothel is the place where they undergo a spiritual-mental treatment and get rid of all their complexes and the remains of neurosis. The brothel is the place where they feel, understand, and experience real reincarnations of the body, spirit, and mind.”
Holoborodko is eager to view Pokalchuk’s characters and the author himself only in this narrow dimension: a Soviet writer breaks away to the free countries of Asia and Latin America, and it turns out that attempts at free love become his only interest there. Consequently, the mere reason behind his examination of foreign brothels is that they were strictly off limits for a Soviet man, who was constantly under state surveillance on trips abroad. Thus, our adventurer makes everything possible and impossible in order to partake of the “forbidden fruit.” Surely, Pokalchuk does write about these things, but it is clear that the people in these countries are his first and foremost interest. But is it possible to learn a country and its populace without personal communication? Why cannot one go to exotic women? Pokalchuk’s lyrical hero makes all of this not to assert himself once again as a male — in reality he wants to get to know these women and get an insight into the inner world of these people.
The academician Mykola Zhulynsky knew Pokalchuk since both were young men. They met in Lutsk in the early 1960s and later saw each other in St. Petersburg, where Yurko studied and Mykola worked at a plant for a while. In his memoirs Chas polamavsia na tvoiemu berezi (Time Has Broken on Your Bank), Zhulynsky notes: “I did not accept everything in the oeuvre of this erotomaniac, the author of obscene stories, and scandalously explicit stories and novels — I told Yurko about this, but he steered me from this subject, saying: ‘The most important thing is that young people like it. I turn inside out the things that everyone has at the bottom and is aware of but is afraid or ashamed of speaking about. People don’t even dare confess these things to themselves. I know that my erotic writings are not something that others want to write about, but for some reason they are popular with readers.’”
Pokalchuk described life in all its dimensions. His books, such as Patsany (Lads) and Zaboroneni ihry, were published under the slogan “Always Shocking Truth.” And his truth is really shocking. It is thanks to this kind of books that we see the conditions in which the present-day generation is growing, with the state never taking care of them, because it treats each citizen’s dignity as if it were litter. (Why citizens allow the bodies of power to treat them in this way is a different question.) Our children are left to the mercy of fate.
Pokalchuk did accomplish a great social deed — for 20 years he was the patron of the Pryluky Penal Colony for Minors. Unfortunately, we cannot see any continuation of this cause. Everyone is fully absorbed in one’s own problems. One needs to reject one’s egoism, try to resolve not only one’s own creative problems but also those of other people, and be a citizen rather than simply a writer. Few people are able to do so.
“If by reaching the depths of human soul each of my books helped at least one person to rise above his sorrow and embarrassment, I would consider that I have attained my goal. In my early childhood years I was struck by the unjustified evil in people, and I decided to fight it.
“I have chosen by direction by fighting the time and searching for sense in the original innocence of spirit and flaming passion, in faithfulness to high feelings and rage of agitated emotions in situations bordering on existence and nonexistence, when the flame of imperishable purity flashes each time and illuminates the way that leads outside the space and time. ‘The one who follows a star never returns,’ Leonardo said, I’m following one,” Pokalchuk wrote in the foreword to a collection of his short stories published in the anthology Desiat ukrainskykh poetiv/ Desiat ukrainskykh prosaikiv (Ten Ukrainian Poets/ Ten Ukrainian Prose Writers). These words seem to serve as his creative motto and are symbolic for his heritage.
The Day’s FACT FILE
Yurii Pokalchuk, Ph.D in Philology, was a writer, translator, and member of the National Union of Writers (NSPU) since 1976. He headed the international relations department of the NSPU in 1994–98 and was president of the Association of Ukrainian Writers in 1997–2000.
Pokalchuk was born on Feb. 24, 1941, in Kremenets into a family of a regional ethnographer. His mother, Oksana Tushkan, was a great granddaughter of Nikolai Gogol’s younger sister. The future writer spent his young years in Lutsk, where he finished school and studied in the Pedagogical Institute. Later he enrolled in the Oriental Languages Department at Leningrad University. He was the first Soviet translator of the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. He also translated works by Ernest Hemingway, Jerome D. Salinger, Julio Cortazar, Jorge Amado, Mario Vargas Llosa, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Rimbaud, and many other authors. Pokalchuk wrote over 15 literary works.
Pokalchuk had a command of 11 (!) languages and was fluent in Polish, English, Spanish, and French. He travelled a lot and visited 37 countries. He lectured in Great Britain, the US, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, Portugal, Spain, Poland, and Russia.
Pokalchuk was called an extraordinary person. His favorite subject was erotic-psychological novels. His book Ti, shcho na spodi (Those at the Bottom) is regarded Ukraine’s first erotic book.
He authored the books Khto ty? (Who are you?), I zaraz, i zavzhdy (Now and Always), Koliorovi melodii (Colored Tunes), Kava z Matagalpy (Coffee from Matagalpa), Velyky i maly (Big and Small), Shablia i strila (Sabre and Arrow), Khymera (Chimera), Te, shcho na spodi, Dveri v… (Doors into…), Ozerny viter, Inshy bik misiatsia (The Other Side of the Moon), Inshe nebo (The Other Sky), Odisei, batko Ikara (Odysseus, Father of Icarus), Vony kazhut (They Say), and Chas prekrasny (Time is Beautiful).
Pokalchuk’s best known books include Taksi-bliuz (Blues Taxi), Okruzhnaia doroga (Circular Road), Zaboroneni ihry (Forbidden Games), Zapamorochlyvyzapakh dzhunhliv (Dizzy Smell of the Jungles), and Kamasutra.
In the 1990s Pokalchuk started to work with the band Mertvy piven. He launched a new project with them — reciting poetry to music accompaniment. This was how Vohni Velykoho Mista was created. All the albums were performed in the French style of chansons in which the lyrics are very important.
Taking care of minors in penal colonies was a sort of hobby for Pokalchuk. For him this life page began in 1986, after he visited the Pryluky Colony. Thereafter, for more than 20 years, Pokalchuk constantly dealt with problems of juvenile delinquents, and together with director Maksym Babakov even shot a documentary film about a penal colony for minors — Special Attention Zone.
The writer is buried in Baikove Cemetery.
