The Intellectual as Hero in 1990s Ukrainian Fiction 9781442695887

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The Intellectual as Hero in 1990s Ukrainian Fiction

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Mark Andryczyk

The Intellectual as Hero in 1990s Ukrainian Fiction

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto  Buffalo London

© University of Toronto Press 2012 Toronto  Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com Printed in Canada ISBN 978-1-4426-4332-1 (cloth) Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with vegetable-based inks.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Andryczyk, Mark, 1969– The intellectual as hero in 1990s Ukrainian fiction / Mark Andryczyk. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4426-4332-1 1. Ukrainian fiction – 20th century – History and criticism.  2. Intellectuals in literature.  3. Heroes in literature.  I. Title. PG3924.F5A54 2012

891.7993409353

C2011-907110-X

This publication was made possible by the financial support of the Shevchenko Scientific Society, USA, from the Ivan and Elizabeta Khlopetsky Fund.

This publication was made possible by the financial support of the Canadian Foundation for Ukrainian Studies. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for its publishing activities.

Contents

Acknowledgments  vii Introduction: Approaching the Post-Soviet Ukrainian Intellectual; or, the Word ‘Intellectual’ Pronounced with a Ukrainian Accent  3 part i: euphoria  15 1 New Prototypes of the Ukrainian Intellectual in Post-Soviet Ukrainian Prose – The Swashbuckling Performer  17 2 New Prototypes of the Ukrainian Intellectual in Post-Soviet Ukrainian Prose – The Ambassador to the West  24 3 Deconstructive Revelry  33 part ii: chaos  65 4 New Prototypes of the Ukrainian Intellectual in Post-Soviet Ukrainian Prose – The Sick Soul  67 5 A Return to the Margins  82 part iii: community  109 6 Agents of the Metaphysical  111 7 A Community of Others  121

vi Contents

Conclusion  142 Notes  147 Bibliography  163 Index  171

Acknowledgments

I am thankful to the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute for providing me with an opportunity to work on my monograph in the Fall of 2006 as a Eugene and Daymel Shklar Research Fellow. I am grateful to the Shevchenko Scientific Society (the Ivan and Elizabeta Khlopetsky Fund) and the Canadian Foundation for Ukrainian Studies for financially supporting the publication of this book. I would also like to thank Yurko Kokh for his permission to use his wonderful painting for the cover of my book.

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The Intellectual as Hero in 1990s Ukrainian Fiction

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Introduction: Approaching the PostSoviet Ukrainian Intellectual; or, the Word ‘Intellectual’ Pronounced with a Ukrainian Accent

There is a joke circulating in contemporary Ukraine that if someone wished to wipe out the entire post-Soviet Ukrainian intellectual scene all it would take is one bomb, thrown at the city of L9viv, during one particular weekend in mid-September. The black humour of this jest takes on even gloomier undertones when one looks at Ukrainian history and the strategies that were implemented by various regimes, throughout the previous two centuries, in order to humiliate, marginalize, compromise, and even exterminate the Ukrainian intellectual. So who are these Ukrainian intellectuals, why do they endure such a precarious existence, and, finally, what are they all doing in L9viv for one weekend every autumn? The complex task of addressing the first two questions forms the main impetus behind this book. The answer to the third question, on the other hand, is straightforward: annually, for over ten years, in the early fall, the lion’s share of Ukraine’s intellectuals gather in the Western Ukrainian city of L9viv to participate in what is known as the Publishers’ Forum. The Forum has consistently been the single largest cultural event in post-Soviet Ukraine, during which literature presentations are scattered throughout the city’s plethora of cafes and theatres, often to the accompaniment of music and visual art performances. Contemporary Ukraine’s leading writers gather there for a few days of carousing, catching-up with friends and colleagues, and sharing their latest publications – many of which actually focus on Ukrainian intellectuals themselves. And the fact that Ukrainian intellectuals/artists are featured as protagonists in most of the leading books of fiction to have been written since the Soviet Union collapsed offers a key to exploring the initial two questions posed above. The Ukrainian intel-

4  The Intellectual as Hero in 1990s Ukrainian Fiction

lectual as a protagonist in Ukrainian literature has, thus far, received very little attention in the scholarly world. But it is an important subject, the analysis of which can provide insight into the complexities of Ukrainian identity as well as into the roles that an intellectual plays in modern-day society. A general enquiry into post-Soviet Ukrainian literature has not yet been undertaken in an English-language monograph, and this book does not purport to offer such an analysis. It will instead focus on the various approaches taken by several prominent contemporary Ukrainian writers as they treat certain common themes in their fiction – an endeavour that leads them into an exploration of crucial issues that are of broad cultural resonance. Specifically, this study comprises an analysis of the construction of the identity of the post-Soviet Ukrainian intellectual protagonist in prose written between 1990 and 2001, a period roughly corresponding to the first decade of independent Ukraine’s existence. As momentous socio-political changes were taking place in Ukraine, much of the prose written by the country’s newest generation of writers at this time provides especially rich material for various approaches to the intricate task of defining an intellectual. The origin of the term intellectual is often traced back to Georges Clemenceau’s designation of the individuals who defended Alfred Dreyfus against conservative authorities during France’s renowned Dreyfus affair at the turn of the twentieth century.1 Since the term has come into use, there have been various attempts at classifying who is an intellectual. Included among the propositions are scholars, writers, thinkers, artists, those ‘living for rather than off mind,’2 those who ‘live off as well as for ideas,’3 ‘a small group of highly creative (often individualistic) individuals,’4 and ‘all those whose activity essentially is not the pursuit of practical aims, all those who seek their joy in the practice of an art or a science or metaphysical speculation.’5 Modern discussions concerning intellectuals and their role have centred on their relationship with society and with government or other organs of power. Should the intellectual be concerned with society or remain an outsider? Should the intellectual be politically engaged or indifferent? Should the intellectual be in the service of the government in power or critical of it? Scholars have proposed several prototypes of the intellectual, each of which features different combinations of the aforementioned in/out and engaged/disengaged variables. The ‘philosopher-king,’ the ‘messianic bohemian,’ the ‘court jester,’ and a rational ‘Robin Hood’ are four such models that help illustrate the various approaches applied to these relationships.

Introduction  5

In his fundamental The Treason of the Intellectuals Julien Benda states that intellectuals should be above the material world and the masses (without ignoring them). These ‘philosopher-kings’ are an exclusive group with a moral obligation to use their talents in the service of truth. Writing in the 1920s, Benda felt that the European intellectual had abandoned intellectual activity and, having become a pawn of politics, become increasingly bourgeois and nationalistic. Albert Salomon traces the development of the intellectual from the Renaissance to the French Revolution, presenting the image of an individual who possesses the truth but maintains a distance from society and its rules.6 According to Salomon, after the revolution, the intellectual becomes a ‘messianic bohemian’ – a member of the elite of a world in revolution who has a vision of progress and order. Ralf Dahrenhof sees the intellectual as a ‘court jester’ whose position outside the social rank affords him freedom to criticize power and to relay to it uncomfortable truths; such intellectuals have the duty to question authority and to doubt everything that is obvious.7 Edward Said believes that an intellectual who is exiled or marginalized can better protest against the status quo. His intellectual is ‘an individual endowed with a faculty for representing, embodying, articulating a message, a view, an attitude, philosophy or opinion to, as well as for, a public.’8 But Said’s intellectual is not simply a romantic ‘Robin Hood,’ but an individual who rationally researches suppressed sources and outwits his opponent in debate. Other approaches to the role and position of the intellectual regarding society and government counter these modes on some points while mirroring them on others. Ahmad Sadri writes that ‘Intellectuals are inherently a universally alien and alienated caste.’9 Karl Mannheim believes that because intellectuals are not attached to any particular social class they enjoy the freedom from having their political viewpoint prescribed to them.10 Jean-François Lyotard’s intellectual lives in a postmodern time in which the intellectual and his oppositional function are replaced by art and artists with non-universal, local ambitions.11 Additional confusion stems from the existence of the two terms intellectuals and intelligentsia. The latter term emerged in the Russian Empire (including Russian-ruled Ukraine) in the mid-nineteenth century and comes from the Latin word intelligentia (intelligence). According to the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, intelligentsia refers to ‘a broad social group consisting of professionally trained specialists’ while intellectuals are ‘a subcategory of the former that includes only those who serve as culture-bearers and the custodians of the tradition of creative and critical thinking about society’s problems.’12 Ivan L. Lysiak-Rudnyts9kyi

6  The Intellectual as Hero in 1990s Ukrainian Fiction

defined an inteligent as ‘one whose social function is the creation and protection of spiritual values.’13 Martha Bohachevsky-Chomiak, on the other hand, provides a more specific interpretation of the two terms; writing about the Russian Empire at the beginning of the twentieth century, she describes the intelligentsia as ‘those people who share a future-oriented, optimistic and largely materialistic outlook, who were democratic in their political convictions, hostile to the regime and to the church, and who tended to glorify the people and to value highly an active involvement in oppositional activity,’ while the term intellectual ‘had the usual mildly pejorative connotation of referring to someone dedicated only to scholarship with slight regard to “politics” or to the real issues of life.’14 And Martin Malia offers this definition: ‘The word intelligentsia itself most probably is no more than the Latin intelligentia – discernment, understanding, intelligence – pronounced with a Russian accent.’15 This list of various definitions of, and discussions pertaining to, the term intellectual indicates that, despite the great volume of writing on the subject, the term itself remains rather ambiguous. Although this definition will be approached as broadly as possible in this study, it is necessary to establish a working definition of the term intellectual in order to conduct this analysis. Thus, when using the term intellectuals in this study, I am generally referring to creative individuals – artists – and also to those, including critics and scholars, who devote their lives to the analysis and interpretation of the creative activity of such individuals. But as I employ this working definition in my analysis, I will simultaneously apply another approach to understanding the term. Following Bernard Barber and Said, I believe that an analysis of different facets of intellectual activity and the images and performances that make up intellectuals will help provide a deeper colouring to this designation.16 To this end, I will demonstrate the functioning of the postSoviet Ukrainian intellectual in various fictional narratives and offer insight into the construction of the identity of such intellectuals in postSoviet Ukrainian prose. By providing a detailed analysis of the creative processes of this construction, different aspects of the intellectual, including many of those touched on by various scholars above, will become apparent. This approach will buffer any limitations inherent in the working definition without unnecessarily expanding the boundaries of this investigation beyond its intended scope. A brief and generalized review of the modern history of the Ukrainian intellectual will be helpful in providing a sense of the issues pertain-

Introduction  7

ing to Ukrainian intellectual that have been addressed in prose of the post-Soviet period. The concept of the intelligentsia emerged in Ukraine during the populist era in the second half of the nineteenth century. Intellectuals, of course, existed in Ukraine prior to this time period; from the nostalgia of the Left-bank Ukrainian gentry and the early Romantics to the messianic revolutionary activity of the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood, modern Ukrainian literature has been driven by intellectuals whose development mirrored that of their neighbouring counterparts. In the populist era, however, the image that was established for the Ukrainian intellectual would prove to be the dominant prototype that would be challenged and manipulated in various ways throughout the twentieth century, including the period under analysis here. A socially engaged intellectual with a decidedly rural orientation and strong dedication to serving the Ukrainian people, such as the protagonists inhabiting the prose of Ivan Franko and Ivan Nechui-Levyts9kyi, formed the prevailing stereotype of the Ukrainian intellectual that would be confronted in post-Soviet Ukrainian prose. The turn of the twentieth century had ushered in the Western European ideas of modernism to Ukraine. With it, the call of ‘art-for-art’ssake’ and a distancing from the masses and politics provided at least the idea of another possible role for the Ukrainian intellectual. Decadence and an urban orientation differentiated the early modernists, most prominently Ol9ha Kobylians9ka, Volodymyr Vynnychenko, and Ahatanhel Kryms9kyi, from earlier generations of Ukrainian intellectuals. Although a complete break from populist responsibilities does not occur in this period, the modernist image of the intellectual proved to be influential and appealing for the post-Soviet generation of Ukrainian intellectuals. The revolutionary socialist intellectual dominated the 1920s in Soviet Ukraine. Politically and socially engaged, supportive of the government and oriented to both the city (the proletariat) and the countryside (the peasant), intellectuals in the early Soviet period were inclined towards theories of the avant-garde that rejected the past and looked toward a progressive future. Iurii Yanovs9kyi’s neo-romantic novel Maister korablia (The master of the ship) sees his era’s new art as a powerful creative force destined to provide harmony in the world. His contemporary Mykola Khvyl9ovyi depicts the new Soviet Ukrainian intellectuals as idealists gradually becoming disillusioned with progress in the Soviet Union and wary of their future in it. Ukrainian intellectuals who

8  The Intellectual as Hero in 1990s Ukrainian Fiction

emigrated to Western Europe after the fall of the Ukrainian National Republic, as well as those living in Western Ukraine during this period, were characterized by intense political engagement and the propagation of patriotic and nationalist ideals in art. In the early 1930s socialist realism was proclaimed as the officially sanctioned course for Soviet Ukrainian culture. A strict role for the Ukrainian intellectual was designed during the Stalinist era; complete subservience to the government, extreme political and social engagement, and a marked rural orientation characterize this period. The post-Stalin Soviet era continued to demand support for authority, but it also saw the emergence of subcultural intellectual groups. Three sometimes overlapping intellectual groups came to define this era in Ukrainian culture: (1) those who continued to function as an instrument of the Communist Party, much in the same manner as earlier (while generally enjoying the relatively freer intellectual atmosphere of Khrushchev’s Thaw); (2) dissidents, who were politically persecuted for their intellectual activity and criticism of the government (a group that was politically and socially engaged); and (3) marginalized intellectuals, who formed an unofficial underground culture (a group that was generally apolitical, socially disengaged, and urban oriented).17 It is the third group that provided the intellectual type with which the post-Soviet Ukrainian intellectual would most closely identify. The underground, unofficial cultural scene that existed in late-Soviet Ukraine proved to be very influential on the succeeding generation of Ukrainian intellectuals. Intellectuals from such a milieu differed from the shistdesiatnyky (Sixties Writers, who constituted a large part of the intellectuals of 1960s, Thaw-era Ukraine) in that they generally were less publicly political than their predecessors and were driven chiefly by an interest in cultural developments in the broader world, from which the nations within the Soviet system had been closed off. They sought the freedom to create outside the confines of socialist realism and to acknowledge the influence of previously proscribed artistic achievements, both Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian. These artists rejected the cult of ‘the Soviet person’ and instead stressed individualism in their art. Analogous movements developed in other parts of the Soviet Union, especially in Moscow, St Petersburg, and the Baltic republics. In Ukraine, intellectuals who were involved in these movements came to be known as the simdesiatnyky (Seventies Writers); the centres of their unofficial culture were the cities of Kyiv and L9viv. The Kyiv scene featured several circles of individuals that contribut-

Introduction  9

ed to ‘alternative’ culture in the republic’s capital. In his article ‘Al9ternatyva u Kyievi’ (Being alternative in Kyiv), Oleksa Semenchenko lists Bohdan Zholdak, Les9 Podervians’kyi, and, above all, Volodymyr Dibrova as the leaders of the cultural underground in Kyiv.18 Earlier, in the second half of the 1960s, a group of poets known as Kyivs9ka Shkola (The Kyiv School) had formed in Kyiv. Consisting of Vasyl9 Holoborod9ko, Viktor Kordun, Mykola Vorobiov, and Mykhailo Hryhoriv, this group often wrote in free verse as part of a concerted effort to reintroduce the form (which was dismissed by Soviet cultural policy as being unartistic and subversive) into Ukrainian literature. Kordun describes the group’s ethos thus: Про Київську школу поезії можна говорити в кількох аспектах: як про суто поетичне явище, головною познакою якою стала свобода творення; як про групу молодих нонконформістів, життєвим вектором яких була свобода волі в усіх її виявах; як про експериментальну психологічну спробу жити інакше, аніж інші покоління, жити так, ніби все відбувається у вільній незалежній державі; як про братство творців поезії, головним і надзвичайним завданням яких була сама поезія.19 [The Kyiv School of poetry can be discussed in several aspects: as a purely poetic phenomenon that maintained free creativity as its chief characteristic; as a group of young nonconformists who designated free will in all of its dimensions as their chosen path in life; as an experimental, psychological attempt at living in a different manner from other generations – to live as if your life were taking place in a free and independent country; as a brotherhood of creators of poetry, who held poetry itself as their main and extraordinary duty.]20

Kyivs9ka Shkola reacted to Soviet society and its restrictions on free intellectual exchange by means of exclusion, denial, and a hermetic escape into poetry. L9viv also featured several, occasionally overlapping, underground cultural scenes. The group that would prove to be most influential on subsequent generations of Ukrainian intellectuals was one that included Mykola Riabchuk, Viktor Morozov, Oleh Lysheha, Roman Kis9, Orest Yavors9kyi, and their unofficial leader, Hryhorii Chubai. They would gather in Chubai’s basement or Riabchuk’s kitchen to read, discuss, and exchange contraband literature, and share new poems, songs,

10  The Intellectual as Hero in 1990s Ukrainian Fiction

or paintings that they had created. In his article, Semenchenko singles out literature’s role in Soviet Ukrainian underground culture: Тут треба зазначити, що за умов тоталітаризму найкращим полем для альтернативи була література, для творення якої потрібні лише ручка і папір (може, ще гітара або горілка).21 [It should be noted that under the conditions of totalitarianism, the best way to be alternative was through literature, whose creation requires only a pen and paper (and, maybe, a guitar and some vodka).]

Chubai and his colleagues did just that and in 1971 they circulated a literary almanac entitled Skrynia (The Chest) in samvydav (samizdat) format. In addition to poetry and prose written by members of this group and Chubai’s translation of Tadeusz Różewicz’s play Funny Old Man, the almanac featured a ‘questionnaire’ proposed by Roman Kis9 to members of this ‘Brotherhood.’ The questionnaire, which can be understood as a manifesto of sorts, warns of conformity and uniformity and is primarily concerned with existential issues and the role of art in society. Vasyl9 Gabor writes that, ‘Unlike the Sixties Writers, any belief in the government had evaporated for the Seventies Writers and they consciously objected to totalitarian, government-enforced principles in literature and art.’22 Like their counterparts in Kyiv, these intellectuals were not publicly political. Nonetheless, these men were Soviet outcasts who had been pegged by the authorities as dangerous, thrown out of the higher education system, and subsequently allowed no alternative but to work at menial jobs. Thus, both in Kyiv and in L9viv, underground cultural groups of the 1970s featured intellectuals who existed on the fringes of Soviet society, sharing that space and occasionally crossing paths with various other countercultural movements, including the ‘hippie movement.’23 These intellectuals were marginalized by Soviet society to a position of eccentricity – they were not following the path that led to advancement in the Soviet world. In society’s eyes they were outsiders, oddballs, and derelicts – and most importantly, they were different. As intellectuals who were Ukrainian, who resisted systematic russification and identified with a Ukrainian culture that was different than the sanctioned, restricted one of the Soviet world, they were seen as being especially subversive. They were prime candidates for what Oksana Zabuzhko refers to as ‘all nine of Dante’s circles’ that the typical Ukrainian intellectual of that era had to pass through.24

Introduction  11

Unlike the Sixties Writers, many of whose writings debuted in the relatively less restrictive times of the Khrushchev Thaw, the Seventies Writers were, from the start, subjected to the harsh crackdowns of the Brezhnev era, during which the dictates of socialist realism were strictly reinforced. With no access to official publications in which they could publish their works, the Seventies Writers responded by ‘writing for the drawer’ and receding to a hermetic existence – an existence that Oleksander Hrytsenko described as ‘living under the snow.’25 Besides shunning the ‘above-ground’ Soviet world for the above-mentioned reasons, these individuals hid from society due to a fear of repression and the doubt that they would be able to induce any change in the totalitarian system: witnessing the persecution suffered by the politically active Sixties Writers only cemented this attitude. Their hermeticism found a philosophical grounding in ‘Eastern philosophies stressing the autonomy of the individual, of an identity separate from society.’26 However, it was within this underground that these individuals were better able to create a mirror society in which they could coexist and maintain their convictions. Artists’ studios, cemeteries, and basements substituted for galleries, centre squares, and theatres where creative works debuted and were critiqued. These underground cultural communities and their activities became legendary among other, younger non-conformist intellectuals, who themselves were then drawn into them. The result of such communities was a synthesis among individuals who worked in various artistic genres – writers, visual artists, and musicians; these relationships would prove to be important in the late eighties and early nineties when this culture moved from the underground and entered the public sphere. They would provide a starting point for the next generation of Ukrainian intellectuals – the visimdesiatnyky. Visimdesiatnyky (Eighties Writers) is a term that refers to the Ukrainian intellectuals who emerged during the final years of the Soviet Union and came to dominate Ukrainian culture in the first decade of Ukraine’s existence as an independent country. It is a term that is used loosely and does not define a fixed group of individuals. It is also a term that has its detractors; Zabuzhko, as a member of this grouping herself, prefers the designation of ‘the generation of the year 1986’ to the term ‘Eighties Writers’; she sees the latter as an innacurate comparison with the Sixties Writers and as being symptomatic of the Soviet need to systematize.27 Over time, however, the term has commonly been accepted and is utilized as a generational designation in discussions of Ukrainian culture.28

12  The Intellectual as Hero in 1990s Ukrainian Fiction

I will analyse contemporary prose works written by the Eighties Writers within approximately the first decade of Ukrainian independence that feature post-Soviet Ukrainian intellectuals as their chief protagonists. This time frame represents the first wave of new prose to emerge in the post-Soviet period, and all of the texts examined in this book were written and first published between 1990 and 2001. Never in the history of Ukrainian literature has the Ukrainian intellectual been given so much attention in prose as in the period under discussion. It is one of the key issues explored in Ukrainian literature today. My study will concentrate on the prose of seven writers who belong to the Eighties Writers: Volodymyr Dibrova, Iurii Izdryk, Kostiantyn Moskalets9, Oksana Zabuzhko, Iurii Andrukhovych, Ievheniia Kononenko, and Iurii Gudz9. Besides having written their prose within the above time frame and having focused on Ukrainian intellectuals in their prose, they are among the leading authors in contemporary Ukraine and their works constitute the major subjects of discussion in contemporary Ukrainian literary polemics. All of these writers obtained degrees in various fields at Soviet institutions of higher education, but they became known in the 1990s primarily as writers of belles-lettres. The prose works focused on in my study include Burdyk (Burdyk) by Dibrova; Podviinyi Leon: istoriia khvoroby (Double Leon: the story of an illness) and Votstsek (Wozzeck) by Izdryk; Vechirnii med (Evening mead) by Moskalets’; Pol’ovi doslidzhennia z ukrains’koho seksu (Field Work in Ukrainian Sex) by Zabuzhko; Rekreatsii (Recreations), Moskoviada (The Moscoviad), and Perverziia (Perverzion) by Andrukhovcyh; Imitatsiia (Imitation) by Kononenko; and Ne-My (Not-us) by Gudz.’ Although I will concentrate mostly on these prose works, other works by these writers, as well as texts written by other post-Soviet Ukrainian writers, will also surface in my discussions. In my analysis of these prose works I have observed three developments, or tendencies, that marked the first decade of post-Soviet Ukrainian prose – euphoria, chaos, and community. Each of these will be treated separately in part 1 (Euphoria), part 2 (Chaos), and part 3 (Community). However, it is important to emphasize that all three developments often occur simultaneously within a particular prose work, sometimes even within one particular fragment of one of these works, with the movement towards community driven by the conflict created by the coexistence of the first two tendencies. They represent three key tendencies that, together, formed the dynamics of the literary process of the Eighties Writers in this period. In these three parts

Introduction  13

I will locate the issues that drove this literary process and discuss the polemics that ensued as this process evolved. My analysis will focus on the construction of the identity of the post-Soviet Ukrainian intellectual in these prose works and on the relationship between these intellectuals and their society. This relationship will be given extra attention in three chapters, which all bear the title ‘New Prototypes of the Ukrainian Intellectual in Post-Soviet Ukrainian Prose’ and are found in parts 1 and 2; it is here that the contribution to Ukrainian literature made by the Eighties Writers, in introducing three new kinds of Ukrainian intellectual heroes in their prose of this period, will be shown. Two such prototypes, The Swashbuckling Performer and the Ambassador to the West, are euphoric heroes who emerge in unison with the expressed euphoria of contemporary Ukrainian literature. The third prototype, The Sick Soul, is a disillusioned hero who is formed by the chaos engulfing Ukrainian cultural life in the 1990s. Demonstrating the ways in which these fictional characters are created and looking at the various facets of their activity within a literary narrative will help to define the term intellectual and the intellectual’s place in contemporary Ukrainian society. Through a detailed analysis of these prose works, I will define the major developments in Ukrainian literature of the 1990s and will pinpoint the intellectual protagonist as a key site where the post-Soviet Ukrainian identity is being constructed.

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Part I: Euphoria

The final few years of the Soviet Union’s existence and the early years of Ukrainian independence marked an ‘era of festivals’ in Ukrainian culture that attracted representatives from various corners of the Ukrainian culture space. Mass gatherings celebrating change offered an opportunity for the cultural achievements of several generations of non-official Ukrainian culture to emerge from beneath the underground and establish contact with a wider public. These gatherings were also attended by former dissidents who had suffered at the hands of the Communist Party as well as by those who had loyally carried out the Party’s cultural policies in the past but now propagated nationalist slogans with equal zeal. Older Ukrainian intellectuals, some of whom had enjoyed success in the Soviet system, generally welcomed Ukrainian independence but were wary of some of the effects brought on with the ensuing open access to the world. Western commercialism and pop culture (with its loudest representative, rock music) were changing the tone and imagery of cultural gatherings in Ukraine. Older intellectuals reacted and adjusted in various ways. Some blamed rock music for endangering Ukrainian culture and saw strong ties with the government as the only means of survival for high art against the encroachment of capitalist culture.1 Others responded to the commercialization of art, and their own impending irrelevance in the cultural scene, with nervous sarcasm.2 But the newest generation of intellectuals, the Eighties Writers, embraced these changes and used them to rise up, with the support of the Seventies Writers, to the street, and from there onto the festival stage. Inspired by the communal instincts of survival practised by the Seventies Writers in the face of repressions and influenced by the uncompromising spirit of their artistic endeavours, the Eighties Writers – who, according to Vadym Skurativs9kyi, belonged to ‘the first truly

16 Euphoria

free generation in Ukrainian history’3 – were primed to be the ones to lead the transformation of Ukrainian culture, once the opportunity to do so suddenly revealed itself. Several literary groupings within the Eighties Writers, such as Luhosad and Propala Hramota, sprang up at this time and appeared with rock groups and other performers at public gatherings flocked to by youth masses; the grouping that was at the centre of most of the major cultural happenings in this movement of euphoria was Bu-Ba-Bu. Composed of Viktor Neborak, Iurii Andrukhovych, and Oleksandr Irvanets9, Bu-Ba-Bu stands for burlesk (burlesque), balahan (farce), and bufonada (buffoonery). The group set out to refresh Ukrainian culture through the injection of carnival laughter – the tonic that was, at once, the product and the stimulant of the festive spirit of the euphoric movement. The members of Bu-Ba-Bu together with other Eighties Writers would become the generation of Ukrainian intellectuals that would most energetically take on the challenge of applying their creative talents to the revival of Ukrainian culture in an independent Ukraine. The dominant ideas to emerge out of the euphoria generated by the collapse of the Soviet Union were those of newness and change. The novel, an underdeveloped genre in the history of Ukrainian literature, became the medium of focus for the Eighties Writers; the role of narrative in the construction of identity intrigued and stimulated Ukraine’s newest wave of writers. The Eighties Writers implemented the prevailing sense of upheaval into their prose by deconstructing their isolationist, monolithic, and centralized Soviet inheritance. They also attacked the duties of Ukrainian art that had been assigned to them by the Ukrainian national myth and, correspondingly, attempted to redefine the role of the intellectual in Ukrainian society. They replaced traditional cultural models that emphasized political engagement, civic duty, and stability with ones that encouraged freedom, play, and flux. New approaches to prose produced new kinds of protagonists, including a key figure in the writings of the Eighties Writers – the post-Soviet Ukrainian intellectual. By featuring protagonists in their prose who themselves were intellectuals, they were able to directly show the role that art plays in defining absolutes and in assigning identities. With postmodernism, they found a way to celebrate the instability and complex diversity of their post-colonial Ukrainian identity. Out of the euphoric movement in post-Soviet Ukrainian literature, two new prototypes of the Ukrainian intellectual – ‘the swashbuckling performer’ and ‘the ambassador to the West’ – emerged onto the pages of these writers’ prose.

1 New Prototypes of the Ukrainian Intellectual in Post-Soviet Ukrainian Prose – The Swashbuckling Performer

Ми сьогодні ще вип’ємо? – запитав він. Так, але не забувайте, що о восьмій ваш вечір поезії. … Так що доведеться читати вірші, хлоп’ята … [‘Shall we do some drinking later today?’ he asked. ‘Yes, but don’t forget that your poetry evening’s at eight.’ ‘… So you’ll have to recite your poems, lads.’] Iurii Andrukhovych, Rekreatsii

Located at the centre of the various celebrations that marked the ‘era of festivals,’ the post-Soviet Ukrainian intellectual emerges from this era as a celebrity whose performance is capable of stimulating the masses. Performance was a cornerstone of Bu-Ba-Bu’s approach to literature and helps to explain their dominance over the emerging cultural scene in the early years of Ukrainian independence.1 Among the new images of the Ukrainian intellectual that were presented in post-Soviet Ukrainian prose works, as part of a deconstruction of previous literary prototypes, is the intellectual as performer. The Ukrainian intellectual as rock star, reveller, and lothario is a depiction favoured by Iurii Andrukhovych in his prose works; it is the first of two new prototypes that will be discussed here. Perhaps no literary work captures the era of festivals in Ukraine better than Andrukhovych’s first novel, Rekreatsii (Recreations). Written in the fall of 1990 and first published in the journal Suchasnist9 in 1992, the novel is the story of four young Ukrainian poets gathering at the Festival of the Resurrecting Spirit in the fictitious town of Chortopil9 in the Carpathian Mountains. In Rekreatsii Andrukhovych offers many scenes

18 Euphoria

of sex and drinking and utilizes contemporary urban Ukrainian slang to capture the revelry that existed in Ukraine at the time it approached independence. He presents such decadence unfolding amidst bombastic sloganeering and insincere, hollow espousals of various Ukrainian national myths in order to portray the nervous, latent euphoria as well as the contradictoriness that also marked this time of reform. Transformation and change are the key ideas of this period, accompanied by an uncertainty of what exactly Ukraine will be changing into. The novel’s four writer protagonists, Hryts9 Shtundera, Iurii Nemyrych, Orest Khoms9kyi, and Rostyslav Martofliak, are a far cry from the humble, nation-serving Ukrainian intellectuals of previous eras. They are narcissistic, self-promoting men who are more concerned with sating their carnal appetites than with applying their artistic talents to create great art or preach to the people. Khoms9kyi arrives in Chortopil9 with the following self-image: Саме так, Хомський, – довгий і широкий сірий плащ, тижневий заріст на підборідді (бродвейський стиль), волосся на потилиці зібране хвостиком, темні окуляри зразка шістдесят п’ятого року, капелюх, саме так, мандрівник, рок-зірка, поет і музикант Хомський, чи просто Хома, веселий скурвий син власною персоною ощасливлює провінційний Чортопіль своїм візитом.2 [Just right, Khomsky – a long, loose grey coat, a week’s stubble on the chin (Broadway style), hair gathered in a ponytail, sunglasses circa 1965, a hat, just right, the traveller, rock star, poet, and musician Khomsky, Khoma for short, this cool son of a bitch is bestowing upon provincial Chortopil the joy of a visitation by his very own person.]3

Andrukhovych’s version of the new Ukrainian poet appears replete with several familiar symbols of defiance and counterculture, hence the temporal reference to a period in American literature that was marked by public performances by beatnik and hippie poets. As for Martofliak, his wife Marta describes him, alternately, as a ‘blossoming genius,’ a ‘boring intellectual,’ and an ‘alcoholic maniac’ as well as a ‘conformist, official poet, scourge of God’ and ‘tool of the devil.’4 She predicts that, as at other festivals, in Chortopil9 the poets will be greeted by crowds of fans seeking autographs before they set out in search of of drink and sex. En route to the festival, Nemyrych and Shtundera stock up on condoms in anticipation of all the pretty girls

New Prototypes – The Swashbuckling Performer  19

that they will meet. Upon arrival at Chortopil9, Martofliak gets inebriated and ends up passing out in a cheap bordello. These men, however, are Ukrainian poets, and thus are still expected to fulfil their patriotic duty and write poems that will lead the Ukrainian people to salvation. At a reception, the matronly Klytemnestra Harazdets9ka, head of the Women’s Destiny Society, instructs Nemyrych that ‘Our poor nation needs courageous liberating words, not senseless playthings. What our womenfolk await from you is truthful poems about their hard lot.’5 Andrukhovych presents scenes of wantonness alongside repeated references to the great talents and expected social roles of this newest generation of writers in order to liberate these intellectuals from the traditional responsibilities assigned to them by the Ukrainian national myth; the ‘sacral’ value of their poems is drastically reduced when these poets are depicted as being too drunk to even remember them. These new Ukrainian intellectuals still have the power to move the masses but not because of their patriotic verses; their charisma radiates from their modish physical appearance and language, their wit and their sexual allure. Andrukhovych’s second novel, Moskoviada (The Moscoviad), repeats Rekreatsii’s perpetual drinking rituals and once again presents a young Ukrainian intellectual – this time the poet Otto von F. – as a self-centred womanizer. But this novel is set in Moscow, where Otto is studying at the prestigious Literary Institute, with the Soviet Union on the brink of collapse. Locating his protagonist at the heart of the empire that most recently colonized Ukraine, Andrukhovych proceeds to deconstruct this centre and its symbols and consequently defines his Ukrainian intellectual by demonstrating which Soviet and Russian symbols he rejects as components of his identity. Thus, in Moskoviada, we see the new Ukrainian identity constructed largely by the definition of what it is not. Andrukhovych utilizes a dormitory as a melting pot in which the various nationalities of the Soviet empire fuse into one ‘international’ Soviet person. Conversations among its inhabitants reveal individuals at different stages along this transformation and include Otto’s judgments of the measure of Russian chauvinism (and the related inability to sympathize with minority concerns) in each student. Correspondingly, Otto is gauging his sameness and his difference, as a Ukrainian, with other Soviet intellectuals. As Otto traverses the mega-city he often distinguishes between the ‘Eurasian’ characteristics of that which is Russian/Soviet and the ‘Euro-

20 Euphoria

pean’ characteristics of that which is Ukrainian, more specifically that of Otto’s native Galicia. In a passionate speech delivered at a shabby Moscow pub, Otto proclaims that he does not hate Russia, but that he is forced to protest its colonizing, imperialist ambitions: Але зараз, коли я п’ю кисле пиво посеред пустиря, обгородженого стовпами й колючим дротом, коли вітер зусібіч шмагає моє мокре волосся, коли навколо – суцільна велика азійська, перепрошую, євразійська, рівнина, перепрошую, країна, зі своїми власними правилами й законами, і ця країна має здатність рости на захід, поглинаючи маленькі народи, їхні мови, звичаї, пиво, поглинаючи також великі народи, руйнуючи їхні каплиці й кав’ярні, а головне – затишні сухі борделі на вузеньких брукованих вуличках, то я не можу склавши руки просто спостерігати і мовчати, ніби я хрін проковтнув. Мій товариш показав мені не так давно старі поштові картки з пейзажами того міста, де я живу. Цим карткам десь по п’ятдесят років. Але я закричав: я хотів би жити в цьому місті! де воно?! що вони з ним зробили ?! де моє право на моє пиво?!6 [But now, when I drink this acrid beer in the midst of a wasteland surrounded by poles and barbed wire, when the wind tosses my wet hair in all directions, when around me is one, great Asian, sorry, Eurasian plain, sorry, country, with its own rules and laws, and this country has the tendency to grow to the west, swallowing small nations, their languages, customs, beer, swallowing also larger nations, destroying their chapels and coffeehouses, and most importantly, quiet cozy bordellos on narrow cobblestone streets, I cannot just sit and watch silently with my arms crossed, as if I had just swallowed dick. A friend of mine showed me not so long ago old postcards with views of my native city. Those cards were about fifty years old. But I screamed: I’d like to live in this city! Where is it? What did they do to it?! Where is my right to my beer?]7

Utilizing a postcard as a figurative time machine, Otto imagines his native city the way it might have been before the Soviet occupation of Western Ukraine. The mention of beer alludes to the prevailing nostalgia-driven belief that beer in pre-Soviet Galicia belonged to a timehoned European tradition of brewing and, thus, was of a much higher quality than the beer produced there later by Soviet breweries. Accenting the differences between Ukrainians and Russians is not an entirely new movement in Ukrainian literature; however, one of

New Prototypes – The Swashbuckling Performer  21

the central ideas of Ukrainian socialist realist literature was to laud the similarity and mutuality of the two Slavic ‘brothers.’ Consequently, the dominant theme immediately preceding Andrukhovych’s emergence on the literary scene supported Russian-Ukrainian sameness. Andrukhovych uses this act of comparison as a key tool in his deconstruction of the empire and subsequent construction of the new Ukrainian identity. This Ukrainian intellectual, however, does acknowledge that these very same ‘Eurasian’ qualities that he so despises are also held by him and his people; he battles with these characteristics internally throughout the novel as he tries to leave the empire behind. As the plot in Moskoviada unfolds, Andrukhovych’s Ukrainian intellectual protagonist transforms into a James Bond–like character who discovers secret chambers containing the empire’s brain trust and its driving pulse. He parties, sleeps with various women, outwits the empire’s evil henchmen, and ultimately escapes at the novel’s conclusion, as Moscow becomes inundated and fades from existence. This ‘swashbuckler’ image for the Ukrainian intellectual is one that Andrukhovych propagates further in his third novel, Perverziia (Perverzion). The most ambitious of Andrukhovych’s first three novels, Perverziia is an exercise in postmodernism and the carnivalesque in the form of a whodunit. The novel’s protagonist, Stanislav Perfets9kyi, is a Ukrainian writer attending a conference on modern culture and civilization held in Venice. Perfets9kyi shares much with Rekreatsii’s four poets and Moskoviada’s Otto (drinking, carousing, wittiness, profound speeches), but in Perfets9kyi, Andrukhovych most directly materializes the idea of poet as performer, and, more specifically, as a modern manifestation of Orpheus, an idea with which he flirted in his first two novels. Perfets9kyi embodies the Ukrainian intellectual who is anticipated by the public and, by possessing a talent for performance, has the power to enchant; competence in performance is of great value in Lyotard’s postmodern age and can be a catalyst for change.8 The fact that Perfets9kyi has forty nicknames demonstrates that this Ukrainian intellectual is someone people talk about and are affected by. Such new Ukrainian artists are individuals no longer on the fringes of society, outcasts without an audience. They continue to stand apart from the masses, but this difference, this eccentricity, is formed by characteristics that the average person lacks and finds to be admirable in the stage-dwelling poet. With his protagonists, Andrukhovych has released 1970s/1980s Ukrainian intellectuals from their hermetic existence and re-established a relation-

22 Euphoria

ship with the public. And he accomplishes this without compromising their status as ‘others,’ thus allowing them to retain a sense of exclusiveness from the sovok9 – an important component of their self-identity. Each of Andrukhovych’s novels’ references the legend of Orpheus in some manner. In an essay entitled ‘Orphei khronichnyi’ (The chronic Orpheus), Andrukhovych traces the presence of ideas taken from the Greek myth in his own prose works, specifically the concept of crossing the line between life and death. The author discloses that Rekreatsii’s Iurii Nemyrych attends a reception with the undead at the Griffin Villa not only to rescue Amaltea Harazdets’ka (representing Orpheus’s Eurydice) but to undergo a ritual that will cure him of his fatal illness. Andrukhovych also parallels Otto’s immersion into the Moscow underground tunnel system, and Halia’s presence there, to Orpheus’s search for Eurydice in Hades.10 Other direct references to Orpheus and to other writers whose work has been inspired by the Orpheus myth are evident in Andrukhovych’s prose. The aspect of the Orphic myth most central to Andrukhovych’s prose is that of the artist as a rare individual who possesses talents that have the power to enchant.11 Andrukhovych’s Ukrainian intellectual protagonist Perfets9kyi is a master of many skills. At one point in Perverziia, Perfets9kyi dazzles a priest with his masterful playing of the organ. Later, Perfets9kyi attends the premier of the opera Orpheus in Venice – an adaptation of the Orpheus myth set in Venice. In a postmodern blurring between author, character, and text (a central theme in this novel), Andrukhovych’s poet, while escaping an assassination attempt, swings from a rope like a musketeer and lands on the stage during the production and, in essence, performs the role of Orpheus. As a review of the opera later describes, Perfets9kyi has enchanted the public with his performance: поява на сцені маловідомого новачка в ролі Орфея спершу породила серед вимогливої публіки деяке скептичне непорозуміння. Проте виняткова органічність виконавської манери останнього, виразність і вишуканість у кожному жесті чи нахилі голови, пристойні вокальні дані та висока фізична підготовленість його ж дають усі підстви ствер­ джувати про появу нової зірки на венеційському оперовому небосхилі.12 [the appearance onstage of a little known novice in the role of Orpheus at first gave birth to a certain skeptical misunderstanding among the exacting audience. Then the distinct organicity of the performing method of

New Prototypes – The Swashbuckling Performer  23 the latter, the expressiveness and refinement in each gesture or bend of the head, the decorous vocal gifts and his top physical readiness provide all the grounds to affirm the appearance of a new star on the Venice opera horizon.]13

So prevailing is such an image of the new Ukrainian intellectual in Andrukhovych’s prose (and in the literary output of Bu-Ba-Bu in general) that Tamara Hundorova feels that this superhero – the bohemian poet – is simply a replacement for the previous, poet-prophet superhero.14 Having little in common with previous incarnations of literary intellectuals who were depicted as defending the rights of the Ukrainian peasantry or constructing a new factory in record time, these men possess skills in combat, conversation, debate, the seduction of women, singing, and drinking. Most of all, these creative individuals are able to inspire awe in others because of their utilization of these skills. Volodymyr Ieshkiliev envisions Iurii Andrukhovych as a knight who ‘opened the Gate of Possibility for new, Ukrainian, urban literature’15 and interprets Moskoviada as a personal crusade to the East made by an aristocrat. The primary destination for the new Ukrainian intellectual in post-Soviet prose, however, was the West. And it is the intellectual’s function concerning the West that forms another dominant prototype of the Ukrainian intellectual in post-Soviet literature.

2 New Prototypes of the Ukrainian Intellectual in Post-Soviet Ukrainian Prose – The Ambassador to the West

ну що ж, тоді я поїхала, – звісно ж, Америка – the land of opportunities, пів-Європи, не нашої довбаної, а щонайщирішої, від Британії до Італії, сюди рвется, гроші, кар’єра … [so then, I’m off – to America, of course – the land of opportunities; half of Europe, not our screwed up one, but the real one, from Britain to Italy, is flocking over here, money, a career …] Oksana Zabuzhko, Pol9ovi doslidzhennia z ukrains9koho seksu

Prior to the dissolution of the USSR the Western world represented a forbidden realm for Soviet citizens that conceivably contained much of what the Soviet sphere lacked. An active interest in this world proved to be dangerous for the Seventies Writers, while for intellectuals emerging during the period of glasnost, the growing access to the West served only to increase its attractiveness. In his essay ‘Stanislav: tuha za nespravzhnim’ (Stanislav: nostalgia for the unreal), Iurii Izdryk describes the unquenchable thirst for information from and about the West for his intellectual circle in the Ukrainian city of Ivano-Frankivs9k at the time when this ‘manna’ and ‘fruit of Eden’ was first becoming available to them: Ми напихалися нею по саму зав’язку. Ми мацали божків, бовванів, ідолів, не встигаючи навіть як слід розчаруватися, бо треба було перемацати цілі купи – стільки їх наклепали, поки ми собі мирно зростали на одній шостій частині земної кулі.1

New Prototypes – The Ambassador to the West  25 [We were filling ourselves to the brim with it. We stroked little gods, statuettes, and idols, without even having the chance to become fully disillusioned with them because there were still more piles to be flipped through – so many of them had been generated while we peacefully lived on top of our one-sixth of the Earth’s surface.]

For the Ukrainian intellectual, the West represented not only free, democratic societies with higher standards of living but also the repository of decades of previously restricted intellectual wealth and cultural achievements. For the first generation of Ukrainian writers in years to have open access to that world, the West became a key topic. In postSoviet Ukrainian prose, through intellectual protagonists, the West is introduced to the Ukrainian reading public. The Ukrainian intellectual as the link between the newly accessible West and the people of Ukraine becomes another new prototype that often appears on the pages of postSoviet Ukrainian prose. Specifically, the Eighties Writers introduced the West to post-Soviet Ukraine by referencing Western ideas and personalities in their writings, by actually sending their intellectual characters to the West, and by sharing with the reader their observations of the once-forbidden, now suddenly accessible world. Sampling the West The desire to ‘catch up’ to the West resulted in a marked density of Western artefacts in the prose that emerged in Ukraine during its early years of independence. These artefacts represented something new and fashionable and were to line the path upon which post-Soviet society was to tread as it fled its isolated backwardness. The absorption of information described above by Izdryk was followed by a torrent of name-dropping of Western high and low culture in Ukraine’s new art. In Pol9ovi doslidzhennia z ukrains9koho seksu (Field Work in Ukrainian Sex), Oksana Zabuzhko makes a point of mentioning Western cultural institutions such as the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies in Washington, DC, MoMA, the Chicago Art Institute, International PEN, the New Yorker magazine, and the Times Literary Supplement. She also describes to her readers the concept of an ‘eat-in kitchen,’ and introduces them to the consumer product known as ‘Oil of Olay.’ In addition to frequent references to Rainer Maria Rilke in his novels, Iurii Andrukhovych often provides lists of names that combine the lofty

26 Euphoria

and the lowbrow as well as the Western and the Soviet, often to comic effect; good examples of this are the invitations that introduce the festival and seminar, respectively, in Rekreatsii and Perverziia. The Festival of the Resurrected Spirit program in the former announces a screening of the French soft-porn film Emmanuelle IV among performances by Ukrainian folk ensembles and rock bands. The Venice seminar in the latter promises the attendance of, among others, François Mitterrand, Giorgio Armani, Jodie Foster, Oksana Baiul, Wim Wenders, Vol9demar Zhyrinovs9kyi, Frank Costello, Elvis Presley, Elvis Costello, and Salman Rushdie; what results is an underlying sense of arriving and departing empires and an allusion to Ukraine’s entry into the process of globalization. As part of Moskoviada’s examination of the opposition between the Soviet (Russian) and European worlds, German and Russian names are combined by Otto von F. to form the hybrids: Condrad Klause Erich Dzerzhyns9kyi, Rainer Anzelm Willibald Kirov, and Wolfgang Theodore Amadeus Lenin. Sometimes Western artefacts appear in order to describe a character, to show us his or her familiarity with the West. We learn from Perfets9kyi’s will that he had possessed complete collections of albums by Tom Waits, Lou Reed, and other giants of Western alternative music. Volodymyr Dibrova’s protagonist Burdyk likes Deep Purple and Iurii Gudz9s hero references Alan Ginzberg. In Kostiantyn Moskalets9’s Vechirnii med (Evening mead), the narrator listens to Pink Floyd and Bach and smokes Gauloise cigarettes, ‘the smoke of choice for Alain Delon.’ Also in Moskalets9’s novel, Ukrainian and Western culture are often discussed by the novel’s characters simultaneously, mixing names from Western high and pop culture with contemporary Ukrainian names; this is an attempt to forcibly locate Ukrainian culture and its representatives within the European tradition, even though they had been closed off from it for so many years. Later, the narrator has a meeting with the Doors’ Jim Morrison, whose song lyrics are quoted in the novel. Moskalets9 portrays Morrison as an angel (of sorts) acquainted with Ukrainian writers who now also reside in the afterworld, again emphasizing the desire to have Ukrainian culture belong to the West. Ideas about the West, however, are often reduced to clichés because of a lack of actual contact with that part of the world. In Ievheniia Kononenko’s story ‘Special Woman,’ the cash-strapped single mother Nelia Tymchenko, a Kyivan intellectual, ponders an arranged marriage with a Westerner. Before meeting with the man, a Dane, her and her son’s images of this Western country are revealed:

New Prototypes – The Ambassador to the West  27 Ти знаєш щось про Данію? – запитала вона сина.  Звичайно! Це країна LEGO! Товарний штрих-код-57.  А Неля уявила старий будинок, на зразок описаного Андерсеном в однойменній казці, картини, шкіряні крісла, великий письмовий стіл і книжкові шафи від підлоги до стелі.2 [‘Do you know anything about Denmark?’ she asked her son.   ‘Of course! It’s LEGO country! Barcode 57.’   But Nelia imagines an old building, like the one in the eponymous Andersen tale, paintings, leather chairs, a large writing table and bookshelves that go from the floor to the ceiling.]

Both of these images of the West are based entirely on stereotypes, albeit two different ones, and reveal an actual lack of knowledge about the West, even for an intellectual from Ukraine’s capital. In both ‘Special Woman’ and the novel Imitatsiia (Imitation), Kononenko’s female Ukrainian intellectuals are presented as a conduit between Westerners who do humanitarian work with Ukraine and those who ultimately receive this humanitarian aid; they work in Kyiv for international firms that deal with East/West relations. With their good looks, sophistication, and intelligence, these women attract expatriate men, and their money, for the good of the Ukrainian nation. This idea of a Ukrainian intellectual woman as being the bridge to the Western world is also presented in Zabuzhko’s largely autobiographical Pol9ovi doslidzhennia z ukrains9koho seksu (Field Work in Ukrainian Sex). Like Zabuzko, the novel’s narrator travels to the West, representing and explaining her country to Westerners and making contacts with intellectual circles there. Such an image of the Ukrainian intellectual woman is a dominant one in post-Soviet Ukrainian prose written by women. Iurii Izdryk’s prose is also full of quotations from Western high-culture and pop-culture sources. The novel Votstsek (Wozzeck) includes references to the Western rock bands King Crimson, the Eagles, Queen, Smokie, and the Velvet Underground; the Eastern European rock groups Manna (Poland) and Plastic People of the Universe (Czechoslovakia); and the designer Gianni Versace. One part of the novel includes a lengthy list of clichéd images associated with various geographic locations around the world: літо в Гаваях, вечір на Бродвеї, скейтборд у Флориді, серфінґ на Багамах, фестиваль у Каннах, вікенд у Діснейланді … що там ще? Лижви

28 Euphoria в Карпатах, любов у Парижі, борделі в Амстердамі, пиво в Баварії, хокей в Канаді, реггей на Ямайці, рулетки в Монте-Карло, хмародери в Нью-Йорку, сигари на Кубі, війна в Югославії, золото на Алясці, полювання в Африці, емігранти на Брайтон-Біч, терористи в Палестині, нірвана в Індії, нафта в Еміратах, мистецтво на Монмартрі, гоген на Таїті, рок у Вудстоку, харакірі в Кіото, карнавал у Бразилії, зцілення в Люрді, джоконда в Луврі, смерть у Венеції, базар у Чернівцях, корупція в Уряді, Корида в Толєдо, чудо в Мілані, жах у Піднебессі, папа у Ватикані, вежа в Вавилоні, бомба в Хіросімі, румба в Барбадосі, караван в Пустелі, королева в Англії, сауна в Фінляндії, ленін в Мавзолеї, тіні в Раю, саркофаг у Чорнобилі, канкан у Мулен-Ружі, сир у Маслі, бузина на Городі, дядько в Києві, lucy on the Sky, острови в Океані, аліса в Задзеркаллі, fool on the Hill, істина в Вині, свято-щозавжди-з-тобою …3 [summer in Hawaii, an evening on Broadway, skateboarding in Florida, surfing in the Bahamas, the festival in Cannes, a weekend in Disneyland … what else? skiing in the Carpathians, love in Paris, bordellos in Amsterdam, beer in Bavaria, hockey in Canada, reggae in Jamaica, roulette in Monte Carlo, skyscrapers in New York, cigars in Cuba, war in Yugoslavia, gold in Alaska, hunting in Africa, emigrants at Brighton Beach, terrorists in Palestine, nirvana in India, oil in the Emirates, art in Montmartre, Gaugin in Tahiti, rock in Woodstock, hara-kiri in Kyoto, carnival in Brazil, healing in Lourdes, La Gioconda at the Louvre, death in Venice, the bazaar in Chernivtsi, corruption in High Places, a bull-fight in Toledo, a miracle in Milan, an inferno in the Tower, the pope in the Vatican, the tower in Babel, the bomb in Hiroshima, the rhumba in Barbados, a caravan in the Desert, the queen in England, a sauna in Finland, Lenin in the Mausoleum, shadows in Paradise, the sarcophagus in Chornobyl, can-can in the Moulin Rouge, cheese in Butter, a bird in the Hand, two in the Bush, Lucy in the sky, islands in the stream, alice in Wonderland, the fool on the hill, in Vino veritas, the festival-that-is-always-with-you …]4

The lengthiness, repetitive rhythm, and deluge of coordinates of this list have a head-spinning effect. The whole world has suddenly become accessible to the inhabitants of the lands that once made up the Soviet Union. The longitudinal line of Lyotard’s age of perfect information has just crossed the Iron Curtain; the post-Soviet space is overwhelmed with data, which is now constantly being arranged and rearranged by its intellectuals. For political scientist Volodymyr Vitkovs9kyi, post-Soviet

New Prototypes – The Ambassador to the West  29

Ukraine is formed by a post-intellectual society in which the greater the bombardment of information, the more difficult it is to arrive at a truth: ‘Once it is flooded by streams of information and disinformation that advertises, commercializes and provides low-brow entertainment, any bright or original idea becomes “dissolved” or deformed into a leastcommon-denominator form, ready for mass consumption.’5 In Votstsek, the world has been reduced to what seems to be a series of phrases on a travel agency poster. With the West now readily accessible, German, French, and especially English words and phrases often appear on the pages of post-Soviet Ukrainian prose. Zabuzhko introduces her readers to English-language phrases and words such as ‘beggars can’t be choosers,’ ‘mortgage,’ ‘insurance,’ and ‘fits all ages.’ Andrukhovych gives us ‘Ecco la primavera’ as well as ‘asshole’ and ‘Oh, fucking shit!’ while Kononenko presents ‘Fruitful cooperation in the nearest future.’ Izdryk offers ‘Lecken Sie mir Arch [sic]!’ lots of brand names of Western commercial products, and a chapter with the title ‘Never Say Never Again.’ These Ukrainian writers are presenting us with a new intellectual who is privy to the everyday situations and street language of the West.6 Travels to the West As soon as it became possible to do so, Ukrainian intellectuals began travelling to the West to participate in various conferences and cultural projects. Abroad, they often acted as ‘ambassadors’ for Ukraine, because for the West, these intellectuals represented Ukraine and Ukrainians. Such trips to the West figure in many of the works of postSoviet Ukrainian writers. In Zabuzhko’s Pol9ovi doslidzhennia z ukrains9koho seksu, the narrator spends time in New York City, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the state of Pennsylvania informing people there about Ukraine. In the early 1990s, Imitatsiia’s Mar’iana attends a school for artists in Western Europe and works in Kyiv with a circle of American expats on humanitarian aid projects. Stanislav Perfets9kyi travels to Venice to give a talk at the seminar ‘The Post-Carnival Absurdity of the World: What Is on the Horizon?’ Moskalets9’s narrator in Vechirnii med travels to Munich in search of a culture that respects its intellectuals. Dibrova’s narrator sneaks off to the United States with a group of young people who are travelling there to get employment experience at Western firms because, as the narrator puts it, ‘[towards the end of glasnost] it became clear that sights should now be set on American

30 Euphoria

money.’7 Dibrova then offers the reader over two pages of the narrator describing, in detail, an American supermarket.8 The fact that all these intellectual characters travel to the West demonstrates the idea that post-Soviet Ukrainian writers saw it as a duty for the intellectual to ‘discover’ the West for Ukraine and that one of their roles was to act as go-betweens for Ukraine and the Western world. Such fictional excursions to a previously inaccessible realm rendered these novels as travel novels describing exotic places for readers back home. In a sense, these intellectuals act as adventurers – pioneers in an unknown and intriguing land who share their distant experiences with their public back home. When discussing accounts of journeys made by intellectuals to the West in post-Soviet Ukrainian prose, it is important to point out the role played by the Ukrainian diaspora living in these lands, specifically, intellectuals from the diaspora.9 This diaspora was instrumental in organizing talks and conferences at which Ukrainian intellectuals were invited to participate; it is because of such gatherings that many intellectuals from Ukraine made their first journeys to the West. Thus, it is not surprising that members of the diaspora appear as characters in contemporary prose. The development of Ukrainian culture in the West was of great interest to intellectuals in Soviet Ukraine, especially in the late glasnost/early independence period. The once closed-off diaspora contributes a component to the construction of the post-Soviet Ukrainian identity, and the depiction of the relationship between the post-Soviet Ukrainian intellectual and his or her diaspora counterpart provides a site where this identity can be explored. Depictions of the diaspora reveal its genuine interest in Ukraine and acknowledge its efforts in helping Ukrainians travel to the West. In Dibrova’s Burdyk (Burdyk), the narrator (having swindled his way to the United States with a delegation of young professionals from Ukraine) runs into the retired émigré librarian Liubomyr Brynchak, who professes to love all Ukrainians and has organized a Ukrainian student club, Ukrainian basketball and volleyball teams, and exhibitions of Ukrainian artists. He has edited a Ukrainian journal, written poetry and prose in Ukrainian, and organized a Ukrainian library. A Ukrainian patriot, he has spent much of his life serving ‘the Ukrainian cause’ and is eager to meet with the latest delegation to arrive from Ukraine. In Andrukhovych’s Perverziia (Perverzion), Perfets9kyi has a love affair with the American-born, European-raised scholar Ada Tsytryna, who is of Ukrainian background. In Rekreatsii, Nemyrych and

New Prototypes – The Ambassador to the West  31

Shtundera are driven to the Chortopil9 festival by Dr Popel, a Ukrainian émigré psychiatrist living in Switzerland. He is familiar with the young poets’ work and graciously treats the men to Gauloise cigarettes, food, and Western condoms; he also promises to arrange an invitation to America for the two poets. In Zabuzhko’s Pol9ovi doslidzhennia z ukrains9koho seksu, Mark is an émigré professor at a Pennsylvania university who regularly invites intellectuals from Ukraine to his university and arranges funding for them. Such diasporic intellectuals, however, are also portrayed as being condescending, self-designated experts on all things Ukrainian. Despite their efforts, their prolonged physical absence from Ukraine creates a marked psychological difference between them and Ukrainians who grew up in the Soviet world. Their dated Ukrainian identity, conserved throughout many decades of isolation from the fatherland, may seem peculiar for people from Ukraine and, thus, the diasporic characters are often presented in a humorous light. Brynchak drives a huge car from the Eisenhower era and his front yard is a garden of Ukrainian clichés (garlic, poppies, watermelons). He treats the narrator to a traditional Ukrainian Christmas Eve meal, even though it is not Christmas. Unbeknownst to Brynchak, the novel’s protagonist continually pokes fun at him. When the protagonist asks if he can stay with the Brynchaks at their house, Brynchak responds only by telling him that there is room for him at a local Ukrainian church. Dr Popel also drives an old car – a Chrysler Imperial – and, as it is revealed, has a rather peculiar knowledge of Ukrainian literature and personal history. After dropping off Nemyrych and Shtundera in Chortopil9, the two poets part with him by referring to him as a mudak. Mudak is a contemporary Ukrainian slang word that roughly translates as ‘moron’ and is a term the older Dr Popel doesn’t know. Thus, Andrukhovych reveals that the newest generation of Ukrainian intellectuals, while accepting of the émigré intellectuals’ good graces and charity, nonetheless have difficulty identifying with them and thus consider them to be strange and foreign. Sometimes the diasporic characters move beyond being quirky, old émigrés and assume more negative characteristics. The narrator in Pol’ovi doslidzhennia z ukrainskoho seksu speculates that the reason Professor Mark spends so much energy helping out young intellectuals from Ukraine is because his marriage is in shambles and he just needs an excuse to stay out of the house. Dr Popel, it turns out, is actually an immortal demon who entices Nemyrych to take part in a sacrifice ritual. Ada Tsytryna is an agent spying on Perfets9kyi for a mysterious

32 Euphoria

Monsignor. Andrukhovych adds a demonic touch to this woman from the diaspora by using ‘Ad,’ the Old Ukrainian word for ‘hell,’ as the root of the name he assigns to her – Ada.10 The excitement of sudden access to a forbidden world and the new intellectual opportunities it offered stimulated the first wave of postSoviet prose and became a key topic in this writing. A frenzied flood of fragmented ideas and information complmented the festival-like atmosphere of the first years of Ukraine’s independence. Ukrainian intellectuals entered the globalized world in search of their identity. The West, and especially Ukrainians in the West, now became additional sources to be accepted or rejected in the construction of this identity. By demonstrating what in the West was accepted and what rejected by these intellectuals, the Eighties Writers constructed the identity of the post-Soviet Ukrainian intellectual in their prose. These two new prototypes of the Ukrainian intellectual – the charismatic performer and the conduit to the West – represent a conscious break from previous depictions of such characters in the Ukrainian literary tradition. Attempting to redefine their relationship with the Ukrainian people, the Eighties Writers performed this shift while propagating an atmosphere of celebration driven by Ukrainian art; in the euphoric movement, art’s role in discovering new ideas is emphasized, and the euphoric intellectual hero serves as a focal point of newness for society. It is in such a milieu that the prose of the Eighties Writers set out on a deconstruction of established notions of Ukrainian culture and identity.

3 Deconstructive Revelry

неможливість сюжету: насильницької послідовности й фальшивої хронографічности подій, характерів, гістерично вибухових контрапунктів: н е п о т р і б н і с т ь таких побудов [the impossibility of a plot: a forced coherency and a phony chronographing of events, characters, and hysterically exploding counterpoints: the n e e d l e s s n e s s of such constructions] Iurii Gudz’, Ne-My

Postmodernism saturated Western cultural discourse at the time that the Soviet Union began opening up to the world, and it was the ideas professed by postmodern theorists that inspired many of the literary debates in Ukraine in its initial years of independence. An understanding of postmodernism such as Matei Calinescu’s, which sees it as ‘a face of modernity’ that is characterized by ‘its opposition to the principle of authority’ and its ‘refined eclecticism, its questioning of unity, and its valuation of the part against the whole,’ provided Ukrainian intellectuals with a new theoretical approach with which to address their postcoloniality.1 Seemingly overnight, Ukrainian intellectual journals were filled with articles alluding to various aspects of postmodernism as Ukrainian scholars fervently attempted to draw near Western cultural movements. The 1996 publication of Mariia Zubryts9ka’s edited collection Slovo, znak, dyskurs: antolohiia svitovoi literaturno-krytychnoi dumky XX st. (Word, symbol, discourse: an anthology of literary and critical thought in the 20th century) gathered articles written by luminaries in the field, including Jacques Derrida, Umberto Eco, Edward Said,

34 Euphoria

Julia Kristeva, Paul Ricœur, and Michel Foucault. Luhosad member Ivan Luchuk would later write that this publication marked ‘a “velvet revolution” in the development of our literary and critical thought.’2 Postmodern discourse was generally rejected by older, entrenched generations of Ukrainian intellectuals, and it also sparked a heated debate among various writers who belonged to the Eighties Writers generation. The so-called Kyiv-Zhytomyr school of Ukrainian literature, which included, among others, Ievhen Pashkovs9kyi, Oles9 Ulianenko, Viacheslav Medvid9, Volodymyr Danylenko, and Serhii Kvit, vehemently resisted the infusion of postmodernism into Ukrainian literature. They criticized it for being devoid of seriousness and ignorant of the responsibility of a writer to his or her people. On the other hand, the so-called Galician school, which included writers of the Stanislavs9kyi Fenomen (Andrukhovych, Ieshkiliev, Izdryk, Taras Prokhas9ko) and Iurii Vynnychuk, were fond of, and influenced by, Western postmodern writers such as Jorge Luis Borges and Umberto Eco and welcomed Western postmodernism as that which could enliven Ukrainian literature by removing the aforementioned mandatory seriousness and traditional duty. Regardless of their stand on this issue, most of the writers focused on here exhibit the influence of postmodernism in their literary works. More precisely, they employ postmodern ideas in the deconstruction that takes place in their literary works. This deconstruction is aimed at various ‘tenets of truth’ that formed the foundation of pre-Soviet and Soviet Ukrainian literature. As the newest generation of writers in a free Ukraine, these writers shattered existing notions of Ukrainian identity and repeatedly reshuffled and reassembled the resulting fragments, inducing a state of flux for this identity. In this state of constant change, components of Ukrainian identity were uprooted and freed, and subjected to reinterpretation and redescription. Postmodern questioning of the power-politics related to the idea of truth proved to be an attractive tool for Ukrainian intellectuals attempting to address their colonial past. By exploring and exposing the operation of these power mechanisms within their own literary text, these writers attempted to free themselves of their colonial inheritance and its limiting structures – systems that ordered and formatted. The euphoria of the ‘era of festivals’ was complemented by a new literature, one that encouraged multiple points of views and identities (masks), promoted play in language, and espoused experimentation in structure and style. These Eighties Writers attacked the idea of the absolute by deconstructing inherited understandings of (1) narrative and the role of the author, (2) the authority of myths, and (3)

Deconstructive Revelry  35

language; special attention was given to re-evaluating the traditional role of the Ukrainian author and the Ukrainian language within the Ukrainian national myth. The new Ukrainian intellectuals who served as the chief protagonists in these prose works often led this deconstruction themselves in what was an attempt to free up the exploration of Ukrainian identity in post-Soviet Ukraine. Deconstructing Narrative In essence, the Eighties Writers were the last generation of Ukrainian intellectuals to have experienced Soviet cultural policy as adults. Iurii Sherekh viewed the epoch of socialist realism as a period of the ‘deintelligentsiazation’ of Ukrainian literature; it was a time when Ukrainian literature lost the momentum that it had achieved in its modernist period and instead returned to the literature of the populist era of the late nineteenth century.3 Attempting to shed all characteristics of socialist-realist literature, the Eighties Writers purposefully avoided its linear, straightforward plotting (which was meant to be easily comprehended by all readers) and instead returned to avant-garde experimentation in narration. Tymofii Havryliv interprets Ukrainian literature of the late 1980s and early 1990s as being ‘a delayed flare, a conversation between decades, a conversation with the Ukrainian moderne.’4 In analysing Soviet culture, Katerina Clark writes that ‘with each major political upheaval, the canonical points of temporal orientation have been reshuffled and a new genealogy has emerged to replace the old.’5 Following Clark, this process of selective rejection and affinity can be seen as part of a project of legitimizing society in a ‘myth of origins’ and ‘a line of succession’ that leads to the present. The Eighties Writers were choosing which elements of the past they would include in their construction of the new Ukrainian identity. A return to the experimentation of Ukrainian modernism and the avant-garde was coupled with an interest in late twentieth-century cultural theories. As the Western ideas of postmodernism became known to these writers, its approach to subjectivity in narration and the deconstruction of the authority of the author proved to be attractive for intellectuals who had experienced a colonial existence. As a result, post-Soviet Ukrainian prose featured a myriad of experiments with narration as part of a play with the role of the author. This play was conducted not only to theoretically expose the subjectivity inherent in any concept of truth, but also to deconstruct the role of the author in the Ukrainian literary tradition. Oksana Zabuzhko’s novel Pol9ovi doslidzhennia z ukrains9koho seksu

36 Euphoria

is a sophisticated rant delivered by a female Ukrainian intellectual concerning her nation, her gender, and their place in the world. For a novel that is unabashedly narcissistic and hyper-subjective, Zabuzhko employs a second-person narration intertwined with a first-person narration to create the effect of the narrator, who is also the chief protagonist, looking in a mirror and talking to herself; a kinetic, streamof-consciousness style effectively simulates a glance inward through layers upon layers of complexes and traumatic experiences in search of an identity. Much of her prose is composed of paragraph-length compound sentences broken up by scores of hyphens, commas, and parentheses; this is a style that forgoes chronological continuity and allows for frequent interjections and questions by the narrator to herself and to the reader while strictly maintaining the singular point of view of this narrator. Although an excerpt of several pages would be required in order to portray this narrative style fully, the following citation, will provide a good approximation: розумієтся, потім були обійми-облизування, поцілунки-перепросини, «моє маленьке», «доцічок мій золотий», – по кількох, розжарених в очу начервоно годинах лементу, ридань, грюкань дверми, супрово­джуваних шамотнявою безпорадного маминого втручання, – бо мами за тим усім не проглядалося, мама взагалі була фриґідна, ясне діло, заекранована, мов чорне світловідпихальне шкло (потім, у перших місяцях твого шлюбу, вона всунеться раз у ранці до кімнати молодят із весело диркочучим будильником: вставайте, сніданок готовий! – акурат у хвилину-коли, і по вибухлім скандалі плакатиме сиріткою в кухні, налякана й безпомічна: хотіла ж як ліпше! – так що, вгамувавшись і відтрусившись схарапудженим тілом, ти ж її, врешті-решт, і потішатимеш) …6 [Of course later there were hugs and kisses, forgiveness-begging, and the like, ‘my baby,’ ‘my golden girl,’ all this after several red-hot hours of pandemonium, wailing, sobbing, slamming of doors, accompanied by the shuffle of Mother’s feeble attempts to intervene – because Mother was quite beside the point in all this; mother was, in fact, frigid, and obviously out of it, a black window pane deflecting all light (later on, one morning in the early months of your marriage, she would poke her head into your bedroom with an alarm clock merrily ringing: wakey, wakey, breakfast is ready! – precisely at THE moment – and after the ensuing explosive scene she would weep like an orphan in the kitchen, frightened and helpless: she was just trying her best! – so that in the end you, having calmed

Deconstructive Revelry  37 yourself and shaken the rest of the shivers from your startled body, will be apologizing and cheering her up.)]7

The effect created by such narration is that of an explosion of scars and emotions that have been pent up and concealed for years by the colonized experience; having been held in check so long, they now burst out so quickly and simultaneously that it seems that the narrator/author is unable to harness them and pass them along to the reader in a more traditional, systematic fashion. Zabuzhko has reversed the colonial paradigm by placing the post-colonial subject at the absolute centre – to the extreme opposite position where its voice, and only its voice, is heard. Three works written by the Eighties Writers, Volodymyr Dibrova’s Burdyk, Iurii Gudz9’s Ne-My (Not-Us), and Taras Prokhas9ko’s ‘Nekropol9’ (Necropolis), all share an approach to narration that seeks to blur the lines between author, narrator, and character. All three works tell the story of the writing of a literary work, and it is by focusing on the writing and other creative processes of their characters that these three writers ponder the role of art in questions of identity and existence. Prokhas9ko’s short story ‘Nekropol9’ begins with a narrative of the writer Mlynars9kyi’s creative process; the narrative alternates between Mlynars9kyi’s own thoughts about his pending novel Nekropol9 and the actions that take place in the novel. At the conclusion of the first chapter, the reader is informed that all of the above constitutes the contents of a letter read by Mlynars9kyi’s biographer, Dr Vynnyk. Prokhasko utilizes such a narrative technique to demonstrate his (and Mlynars9kyi’s) concept of recording (technically graphing) the essence of being; this graphing interprets experience as being a sinuously connected series of seemingly random occurrences. Beginning with a verb (an action) and moving through a growing series of sublevels (other actions), a Venn diagram is drawn. In Mlynars9kyi’s Nekropol9, a group of lonely strangers individually purchase plots at a site that is slated to become a cemetery. One by one, they gradually visit their plots, bringing with them their personal traits and histories and sharing them with other plot owners. Eventually, they organize an orchestra and fly away in a hot air balloon. By this point in Mlynars9kyi’s novel, what Prokhas9ko has done is shown, in writing, a reflection of a reflection – a step towards creating a set of selfreflecting images that repeat unendingly. When Mlynars9kyi inserts himself into his own novel, the novel becomes the account of his writ-

38 Euphoria

ing of a novel of which he himself is part. Thus, when Prokhas’ko, at the end of his short story, introduces Dr Vynnyk as the author-observer, he is mirroring Mlynars9kyi’s self-immersion and, in essence, multiplying the effects one magnitude. As this phenomenon repeats (increasing the degree of multiplication with each repetition), Prokhas9ko’s multilayered crystal expands ad infinitum. Through this postmodern narrative technique, Prokhas9ko presents identities that are complex and ever changing. Identity is shown to be a construct of narrative and the artist as the agent (and object) of this construction. A central plot line in Dibrova’s Burdyk is that of the narrator compiling the writings of the late 1970s underground Kyiv cultural figure Burdyk and editing a definitive volume that would capture Burdyk’s literary legacy and introduce it to glasnost-era Ukraine; Dibrova utilizes this plot to carry the novel’s major theme of locating Burdyk’s generation of intellectuals in post-Soviet Ukraine. By allowing the reader access to the narrator’s creative process of piecing together parts of Burdyk’s life, the reader is shown segments of a whole generation of Ukrainian intellectuals and how a writer (the narrator) filters ‘facts’ into creating a story of the life and work of a man. In the novel, Dibrova often blurs the lines between author, narrator, and protagonist. As Maksym Strikha points out, the fact that Dibrova’s Burdyk is a highly autobiographical novel is hinted at by the name Dibrova chose for his protagonist: ‘Burdyk’ is a variation of Dibrova’s own nickname in the alternative culture scene of 1970s Kyiv – ‘Dibryk.’8 Additionally, the name ‘Dobryk’ appears in the novel as the last name of a young man whose identity is essentially stolen by the narrator in the process of his becoming a stowaway to America. The novel begins with a foreword and concludes with an epilogue (subtitled ‘A Dream’), but most of the novel is made up of three major chapters in which the narrator, chronologically, tells the life story of Burdyk. Each of these chapters is, in turn, divided into short subchapters that further break down these periods into various shorter episodes. In the novel’s three main parts, Burdyk is the protagonist, while the narrator is an observer absent from the action as the novel’s plot unfolds in a rather traditional fashion. However, each of the three chapters is followed by a lengthy commentary that, in two cases, is longer than the chapter itself. Throughout the novel, Dibrova makes a point of revealing to the reader the unavoidable presence of subjectivity in any creative work, no matter how objective it may claim to be. In the foreword, the narra-

Deconstructive Revelry  39

tor contemplates his presentation of the main character of his work – should he make Burdyk out to be a hero or a foil? In the commentaries the narrator becomes the novel’s chief protagonist in the story of the narrator collecting scraps of Burdyk’s existence and trying to assemble this publication. In tracing the steps made by Burdyk during his life, the narrator is, in a sense, replicating that life. Dibrova emphasises this idea when he sends the narrator to the hills above the Dnieper River – to that very same place where the essence of life was revealed to Burdyk – where the narrator carelessly loses the documents that he had collected concerning Burdyk’s life. And the final hours of Burdyk’s life are spent waiting for the tardy narrator to show up for a scheduled rendezvous. The narrator confesses that, after Burdyk’s death, he had planned to complete Burdyk’s writings himself and publish the results as Burdyk’s work; he claims that because he was better at remembering the details of Burdyk’s life than Burdyk himself, he wishes to write an addendum to the story of Burdyk. It is also in the commentaries that we are presented excerpts of Burdyk’s unfinished, major literary work Opudalo (The scarecrow), a collection of stories about Lenin. In one of the stories we are told that Lenin’s mutt is named Zaremba. Zaremba is also the name of a man that was part of Burdyk’s circle of friends, and thus a character in Dibrova’s Burdyk; additionally, it is the name of a character in Burdyk’s unfinished story Za Pidkladkoiu (Beyond the lining). In the novel’s epilogue, Diborva has the narrator and Burdyk meet one last time, albeit in a dream. The planned book on Burdyk is never published and a final exposition of subjectivity appears in a scene where the narrator imagines that even if the book had been published, it surely would have been ignored or rejected by the public: Уявляю, що вони казали б! Що Бурдика не було. Що я зліпив цей образ на базі власного життя, безмежно ідеалізованого. Я б, звичайно, навів їм докази історичності Бурдика і показав би писані його рукою чорнетки. Вони б на те сказали … Що я – некрофіліст. Двійник. Сальєрі. Що я заздрив не лише Бурдику, але й Гурському. Й матимуть певні підстави.9 [I can imagine what they would have said! That Burdyk never existed. That I pasted together this vastly idealized image based on my own biography. I would have, of course, presented proof of Burdyk’s historical existence and would have shown them notes that were written by his own hand. And they would have replied that … I am a necrophile. A Dopple-

40 Euphoria gänger. A Salieri. That I was jealous of not only Burdyk but of Hurs’kyi too. And they wouldn’t have been entirely wrong.]

While writing the story of his own generation, Dibrova is able to avoid being overly sentimental by providing a buffer of critical distance through the presence of his narrator. This play between alter egos allows Dibrova to approach a very personal subject from the past with the postmodern sensibilities of post-Soviet Ukraine. And Dibrova seems to be pre-empting an autobiographical reading of his fictional novel Burdyk by purposefully providing the reader with vaguely disguised hints that confirm this. This clever revelation of the author’s presence in a literary work is another, albeit less radical, example of the experimentation in narration adopted by many of Ukraine’s post-Soviet writers in their prose. And as a final layer of irony (a crucial component in all of Dibrova’s writings), at the end of Burdyk, the narrator never does publish the story of Burdyk and his generation. But in his novel, Diborva does just that. A writer whose works are generally void of irony but that share the experiments in narrative prevalent in the writings of fellow Eighties Writers is Iurii Gudz9. His novel Ne-My is an exploration of identity and the contributions of otherness, designation, and time to its development. The novel is assembled from various seemingly unrelated sections and is marked by a hyper-shifting narration and a fragmented plot. It begins with an excerpt from Khodinnia za merzlymy vodamy (Journey for the frozen waters), a novel-in-progress being written by Oksentii Vava, who is an old friend of the narrator. Ne-My then progresses into a swirl of subplots narrated by various voices. Characters are often given different names in different parts of the novel. The novel is an exploration of the fine line between unfamiliarity and intimacy. It is a novel about names and naming, about past and present identities and about memory. Its construction of a self reflects Nicola King’s belief that ‘“Remembering the self” is not a case of restoring an original identity, but a continuous process of “re-membering,” of putting together moment by moment, of provisional and partial reconstruction.’10 What unites the novel’s various fragments is the underlying theme of the relationship between the written word and identity. In one fragment it is stated that the writer Vava foresees his Khodinnia za merzlymy vodamy as new kind of prose work that, inspired by blues music, will feature voices that coexistin and intertwine for a bit but that ultimately retain their individuality. And then, suddenly, the narrator interjects with

Deconstructive Revelry  41 Ось звідти, мабуть, з’являється перша спроба найменування майбутнього роману – ‘Не-Ми’ – сховище для мимовільних мовчальників, ранньозимовий простір неспішного накопичення ісихастичного відчаю, щоденні й щонічні чаювання раю поміж вже з’явлених рядків …11 [And from this point, probably, we have the first attempt to name the novel – ‘Not-Us’ – a hiding place for the involuntarily silent, the earlywinter space of an unhurried, amassing of hesychast despair, for daily and nightly paradise tea rituals between lines that have already appeared …]

Exposing the reader to Vava’s creative process parallels Gudz9’s revelations of his own motivations for writing Ne-My that occasionally surface in the novel. By experimenting with narration, Gudz9 hopes to get to the essence of the act of naming and identifying. Characters forget their identities and have several different names. Ne-My performs a postmodern deconstruction of itself – it shows how literature names and renames, creates and destroys identities. The author becomes one who collects and presents fragments, leaving it to the reader to assemble them. Jean-François Lyotard’s fundamental postmodern revelation that socalled objective, scientific knowledge is itself dependent on the grand narrative of the progress of mankind is echoed by post-Soviet Ukrainian writers in their play with the idea of the narrative, subjectivity/ objectivity, and the role of the author. The most direct way they confront this subjectivity is by challenging the assumed objectivity of the author. The idea of truth is an especially attractive area of attack for post-colonial writers; in their novels they openly test the limits of the supremacy of the narrative’s authority. Iurii Izdryk’s novel Votstsek is a postmodern exercise in the construction and deconstruction of a text. The author traces the boundaries of a self through an onslaught of references and word games. It is very much a novel about crossing borders – the border between a self and an other, the border between body and mind, and the border between reality and hallucinations. Izdryk continually comments on the novel itself, deconstructing its plot and fusing doubt with any movement or statement made in the direction of the absolute. In order to conduct his exploration of identity, Izdryk employs a shifting narration; as the novel progresses, the narrator is splintered into pieces (I, you, he, That One, Votstsek). Consequently, subjectivity is constantly in the process of transference. The novel fades in and out between dreams and reality;

42 Euphoria

for Izdryk a line not only separates dreams and reality, but it also connects them. Votstsek is his attempt to straddle this line; the novel is the place where dream and reality meet and coexist. The author in Votstsek is shown to be the master of a text and his characters, manipulating them at will, purposefully and openly. At the same time, however, it seems that the author actually has no control over the text; just like his main character Votstsek, the author moves from fragment to fragment searching for an absolute to grasp, but to no avail. In his novel, Izdryk is able to create an atmosphere of events and actions spinning out of control; he creates the impression of the author/ Votstsek alternately fading in and out of existence. Izdryk’s deconstruction of the concept of truth in a text is a crucial element in his prose writing. Both in Votstsek and in Podviinyi Leon (Double Leon), Izdryk goes to great lengths to question and dispute any concrete action or event presented in these texts. In one section of Podviinyi Leon we are given a blatant demonstration of the power that the change of one or two letters or words has on a sentence. In it, we are presented with the point of view of one character, a man, in a list of ‘what ifs’ driven by the word ‘would.’ Ми зустрілися (б) просто на людній вулиці. Розділені потоком автомобілів, ми побачили (б) одне одного, і все відразу стало (б) зрозумілим. І ти посміхнулась (би) до мене, а я довго не міг (би) перетнути запруджену автомобілями дорогу, щоб подарувати тобі зламану троянду.12 [We (would) meet right in the middle of a crowded street. Separated by a stream of cars, we (would) see one another and everything (would) become clear. And you (would) smile at me and I (would) have difficulty trying to cross the busy street to present you with a broken rose.]

A page and a half later we are presented with the point of view of another character, a woman, who negates the man’s list of imagined actions with what is often just the simple substitution of the word ‘didn’t’ for his ‘would.’ Ми (не) зустрілися просто на людній вулиці. Розділені потоком автомобілів, ми (не) побачили одне одного, і все відразу (не) стало зрозумілим. І я (не) посміхнулась до нього, а він довго не міг перетнути запруджену автомобілями дорогу, а коли все ж (не) прийшов, (не) подарував мені троянду, котра відразу (не) зламалася в моїх руках.

Deconstructive Revelry  43 [We (didn’t) meet right in the middle of a crowded street. Separated by a stream of cars, we (didn’t) see one another and everything (didn’t) become clear. And I (didn’t) smile at him and he had difficulty trying to cross the busy street, and when he (didn’t) come, he (didn’t) give me a rose, which (didn’t) immediately break in my hands.]

This effect is even more dramatic in the Ukrainian language in which the words for ‘would’ and ‘didn’t’ are even shorter (‘б /би’ and ‘не,’ respectively). In Votstsek, Izdryk repeatedly has the narrator comment on the text; throughout this prose work, there is a sense of the novel breaking down and starting over again. After That One delivers a rant on society in a chapter entitled ‘Pro Mudakiv’ (On morons) we are told that ‘This lecture on morons was actually delivered by That One on a completely different occasion’ and ‘Truth to tell, it was not exactly this lecture and the words were not exactly those that we have just savored.’13 It is evident that shifting the line separating ‘dreams’ and ‘reality’ in a text is a favourite literary activity of Izdryk and is central to his general exploration of the relationship between mind and body and its implications for identity. Both Podviinyi Leon and (especially) Votstsek unfold in scenes that seem to increasingly delve into deeper and deeper strata of the mind; a dream about a dream is dreamt. By maintaining this dreamlike existence in his prose, Izdryk opens the door for much experimentation with the concept of reality in literature: ‘Dreams dispensed with the need for the customary collusion of dimension.’14 And Izdryk openly conducts this experimentation, continually informing the reader of his motivations and ambitions within this text. Отож сни давали ще одне звільнення: відтепер характер подій не мусів відповідати настроєві …, такі всі твої переживання, незалежно від їх гостроти і забарвлення, могли з’витися де завгодно і коли завгодно, без очевидного зв’язку з сюжетом.15 [So dreams bestowed yet another liberty: from now on events did not have to match your mood …, so all your feelings, whatever their intensity or key, could arise anywhere and at any time, without any obvious connection to a plot.]16

Towards the end of Votstsek, a short, rather linear plot suddenly appears; it seems to be ‘tossed in’ by the author to satisfy the demands of a traditional storyline in prose writing. Izdryk then deconstructs the novel

44 Euphoria

that has just been read, directly revealing his intentions for writing the novel and his reasons for structuring it the way that he did. Izdryk also openly discusses, with the reader, the rules that govern prose: Того літа йому несподівано спало на думку написати книгу. Це трапилося тоді, коли він усвідомив себе чиїмось персонажем – та хай навіть і своїм власним! – бо це знімало з нього необхідність дотримуватися якихось загальноприйнятих законів і приписів, нехтувати композицією, сюжетом, лексикою, думати про читача, про цілість. Адже творчість персонажів, як правило, подається авторами фрагментарно, деколи вистачає кількох натяків, штрихів. Найчастіше замість того, щоб писати щось насправді, автор просто переповідає свій задум, даруючи персонажеві всі можливі й неможливі копірайти.17 [That summer he suddenly had the idea of writing a book. It happened when he became aware of himself as a character in somebody’s text – even if it was his own. This awareness would excuse him from abiding by generally accepted laws and rules, attending to structure, plot or vocabulary, worrying about the reader or thinking about the unity of a work. After all, authors usually present works created by their characters in a fragmented way, sometimes contenting themselves with a few brushstrokes. Most often, instead of having the character really write something, the author simply presents a summary of his own ideas, assigning to the character all possible and impossible copyrights.]18

In his own works, the writer Izdryk makes the most of the freedoms allotted to him by this newfound awareness. Like many of his fellow Eighties Writers, Izdryk directly attacks the forced clarity and accessibility of both the immediately preceding socialist-realist literature and the traditional Ukrainian patriotic realism and disputes their assertion of presenting the truth in literature. Izdryk actually utilizes the text itself to show how a text manoeuvres its authority in establishing truth. By doing so he frees the text to declare its inherent subjectivity. The play with an author’s hegemony over the concept of truth in a literary work constitutes a substantial element in all three of Iurii Andrukhovych’s novels. This extends to the author’s naming of his characters. Moskoviada contains a scene in which Otto von F. is traversing the catacombs of Moscow. He chases a stranger who has stolen his wallet – a man to whom Otto, in his thoughts, refers to as a ‘gypsy

Deconstructive Revelry  45

baron.’19 Thus, at this point, the reader is not told that character’s ‘real’ name, but is given only Otto’s nickname for him. Later, Otto is told that that stranger (who is really a KGB agent) is known as the Gypsy Baron. Andrukhovych does this to underscore the mysteriousness of the ‘secret agent’ world. It is also, however, an example of Andrukhovych’s penchant for reminding the reader that the ‘reality’ of what we read in the text completely depends on the author’s volition. A few pages later, Otto, pretending to be one of the agents, is shot and killed because he uttered a phrase that reveals his identity. At this point, Andrukhovych (or Otto, whose mental conversations with himself, delivered in the second person, form the novel’s narrative backbone) determines that this ending will not suffice; he rewinds the scene one paragraph and Otto utters a different phrase that allows him to proceed through the tunnels undiscovered. Of Andrukhovych’s three novels, Perverziia is the most active in adjusting the conventions of authorial and narrative roles in a novel. The structure of the novel itself exemplifies this. The novel begins with a ‘Foreword from the Publisher’ in which the young Ukrainian writer ‘Y.A.’ tells of receiving a series of documents that, in various formats (supplied by various people), provide information on Stanislav Perfets9kyi’s activities at the Venice seminar. The rest of the novel is a collection of these documents, which the reader is to interpret to determine why and in what fashion Perfets9kyi eventually disappeared from Venice and whether the rumour of his suicide is true. The documents are parodies of and excursions into the various, established characteristics of postmodern writing, each of which provides a version of the truth. The novel concludes with an ‘Afterword from the Publisher’ in which ‘Y.A.’ expresses his belief that Perfets9kyi is alive and well and that he sent ‘Y.A.’ these documents as part of the ultimate postmodern literary performance. So the reader is forced to question the authority of (1) the authors of the various documents, (2) ‘Y.A.’, and (3) Stanislav Perfets9kyi and determine who is the author of the novel’s contents. Iurii Andrukhovych even distances himself from the ‘publisher’ by assigning the latter the symbol ‘Y.A.’20 In this novel, more so than in his previous two, Andrukhovych plays with the freedoms supposedly allotted a postmodern text and, consequently, demonstrates how responsibility can be transferred from the author to language itself, in a Barthes-like murder of the author. Andrukhovych’s utilization of postmodern techniques takes on a meaning beyond stylistic play when it is looked at through a post-colo-

46 Euphoria

nial Ukrainian prism. His play with an author’s power and responsibility is a way for him to address the particular demands placed on a Ukrainian writer by the nation’s cultural history. Because the act of writing in the Ukrainian language was often a political statement in itself, Ukrainian literature is often associated with a patriotic call-toarms. Thus, when Ukraine suddenly achieved independence, and a new generation of writers had the opportunity to write and publish without political censorship, they were expected to fulfil their responsibilities as voices of the nation and deliver the ideas and beliefs that had been suspended in time. The unwillingness of some of these young authors to take on this responsibility became both a topic of controversy in discussions of contemporary Ukrainian literature and a subject that writers such as Andrukhovych explore in their works. The fact that such an imposed responsibility is an important issue for Andrukhovych can be seen in that issue’s underlying presence in his prose. In all three novels, Andrukhovych presents main characters who are writers, and through all of them, from Rekreatsii’s four poets, to Moskoviada’s Otto von F., to Stanislav Perfets9kyi, Andrukhovych addresses the Ukrainian writer’s role as the ‘voice of the nation.’ Shtundera, Khoms9kyi, Nemyrych, and especially Martofliak are branded as the hope of Ukrainian literature’s future. Andrukhovych presents them as rock stars who are narcissistic by nature and the envy of autographseeking Ukrainian girls. They are sidetracked from fulfilling such heroic expectations by their mundane attraction to sex and drink. They are far from being unpatriotic, but they are fallible human beings whose weaknesses Andrukhovych makes a point of exposing. Moskoviada’s Otto von F. delivers passionate speeches about his people and dreams of writing something that will be of benefit to his culture. He, however, is also distracted by alcohol and womanizing, and never arrives at a planned meeting to discuss the launching of a Ukrainian literary journal that would help establish a presence for Ukrainian literature in the Soviet Union’s capital. Finally, there is Perfets9kyi, who utilizes his lecture at the Venice seminar to deliver a history of his people and to draw attention to their presence in the world. But he concludes his speech by pointing out that the histories and legends that he had referenced in his talk were invented by him and that he is only presenting one version of the truth. And thus, when Andrukhovych blurs the designation of the author’s presence in that novel and stresses the need to realize the subjectivity of a writer’s narration, it is an attempt to shake off the enormous responsibilities with which he, the Ukrainian writer, has been vested.

Deconstructive Revelry  47

By revealing the mechanics of the creation of a novel, these writers are bringing the presence of the author closer to the actual text and thereby stripping him of his authority. By revealing the subjectivity of the author, these writers are reacting to the ‘willed truth’ of socialistrealist literature and exposing the author’s hegemony over truth. This is also their direct attempt at relieving themselves of the responsibilities vested upon them by the Ukrainian cultural tradition and its national myths. Deconstructing Myths Closely related to the deconstruction of narration and the role of the author examined above, the prose works of the Eighties Writers also issued a direct challenge to the authority of history and myth. Specifically, they attacked the Soviet narrative of the Ukrainian nation as it was cultivated and distributed in ‘official’ histories that reflected the colonizing ambitions and point of view of the political centre of power. The truth that it established often conflicted with what the colonized believed to be true; the version of the truth clung to by the marginalized Ukrainian culture was, in turn, chiefly nurtured by Ukrainian national myths. For a people experienced in rejecting ‘official’ truths, scepticism towards concepts rooted in the absolute emerged as a key issue in their post-colonial art, and postmodernism provide an attractive approach with which to perform deconstruction of the authoritative centre. But as Marko Pavlyshyn points out, a post-colonial culture not only rejects the colonial, but it fathoms the dangers of using colonial means for anti-colonial aims: It is useful to regard as here ‘colonial’ those cultural phenomena which may be interpreted as promoting or maintaining the structures and myths of colonial power relations, and as ‘anti-colonial’ those which directly challenge or seek to invert such relations. The attribute ‘post-colonial’ applies to those entities in culture which recognize the real and implicit violence of the colonial, on the one hand, and the reactive and limited quality of the anti-colonial, on the other. The post-colonial is that which, conscious of the simultaneous availability of the heritage of the colonial and the anti-colonial, identifies with neither; yet, in its efforts to go beyond the structures of domination left behind from the colonial age, it can (and indeed, often cannot but) invoke both.21

The post-Soviet Ukrainian writers under analysis here do teeter along this line in their deconstruction. As a safeguard against accusations of

48 Euphoria

simply ‘turning the tables’ on the former colonizer, these writers also attack the Ukrainian national myth that had fed and sustained the voice of the colonized. By doing so, they demonstrate not only their attempt to adhere to postmodern theoretics, but also their desire to free themselves of the limitations of this national myth, in which writers play a central role. As a result, the prose under analysis here attacks concepts of absolute truth as they are presented in official histories and in various myths, upending them, playing with them, and dethroning them of their authority; any history that they do present is one that ‘deliberately makes visible, within the very structure of its narrative forms, its own repressive strategies and practices.’22 It is in such a manner that they strive to resist erecting themselves the very types of myths that they consciously deconstruct. The deconstruction of myths and history is often conducted through the use of exaggeration and caricature. In fact, Volodymyr Dibrova does not so much deconstruct the concept of truth as he ridicules the source of ‘truth’ and the acceptance of this ‘truth’ by most citizens in the Soviet world. Spanning a time from approximately the 1950s to the late 1980s, Dibrova’s Burdyk offers a witty critique of the final forty or so years of the Soviet world’s existence. At various stages in his life Burdyk encounters ambitious Komsomol enthusiasts, unleashed sovok prototypes and entrenched zombie-bureaucrats; Dibrova shows these people to be living in a system that is illogical and intellectually numbing. Dibrova has turned to depicting the Soviet world many times in his previous prose (Peltse, Pantameron) and drama (Dvadtsiat takyi-to z’izd nashoi partii [Our party’s twentysomething congress]); his absurdist humour is particularly well matched for commenting on life in that world. Dibrova paints the characters Zaremba, Hurs9kyi, and Borovadianka as opportunists who shed and exchange their principles with ease in order to keep up with changing governing ideologies. The idealist Burdyk is an exception in a society in which blatant contradiction seems to bother no one. Burdyk provides fragments of Burdyk’s novel-in-progress Opudalo [The scarecrow], which is to be an epic about Lenin’s life and work. Lenin figures importantly in Burdyk’s development; as a young man believing in Soviet ideology, Burdyk’s life is forever changed when he has a dream in which Lenin defecates in the woods and then introduces Burdyk to the joys of sex. Burdyk’s stories of Lenin in the Opudalo fragments are absurd, subversive attacks on the Soviet demigod. The fact that Opudalo includes chapters with titles such as ‘Why Lenin Won’t

Deconstructive Revelry  49

Catch Up to the Turtle’ is indicative of Dibrova’s use of farce to undermine the authority of the Soviet Union’s centre. The Ukrainian national myth is also ridiculed in Burdyk. Both Burdyk and the narrator escape to the village in search of an epiphany. These social anomalies – Ukrainian urban intellectuals – are nonetheless drawn to the countryside in times of despair. The concept of the Ukrainian village as the ‘true Ukraine’ where the ‘true Ukrainian identity’ has been preserved through years of repression and attempted eradication is a major pillar of the Ukrainian national myth. When Burdyk and the narrator go to the village to research the famine-genocide of 1932–3, they are overwhelmed by the Ukrainian names of the villages they encounter (‘Every name here – it’s poetry!’). When, after Burdyk’s death, the narrator returns to the countryside to work on his book about Burdyk, he encounters a family of villagers with characters that are a parody of those found in Ivan Nechui-Levts9kyi’s Kaidasheva sim’ia (The Kaidasheva family). A classic of Ukrainian populist literature, Nechui-Levyts9kyi’s story depicts the shenanigans of a Ukrainian village family. The narrator is seemingly transported one hundred years back in time – the Ukrainian village, as dictated by myth, stubbornly refuses to change. But, in the end, rural Ukraine fails to rescue and uplift the spirit of the narrator; he chances upon a group of fugitives escaping from prison and runs away in fright, leaving behind all his material on Burdyk. Finally, in Burdyk – a novel about a generation, thinly disguised as the writing of the story of one man – Dibrova is showing us how Soviet society changed once glasnost cracked open the door to the West. Suddenly, in the postmodern age, no one cares about the history of a person or a generation. Maintaining ideals is not fashionable in these new times – no one is interested in unravelling ‘the mystery of being,’ to the pursuit of which Burdyk had dedicated his life. Absolutist Soviet ideologies, anti-Soviet ideologies, and the Ukrainian national myth have lost their sway in the indifferent postmodern age. Unlike Dibrova’s subtle attacks on the prominent function of the village in the Ukrainian national myth in Burdyk, Iurii Gudz9 generally propagates this myth in Ne-My. He does, however, challenge other aspects of this myth in his novel. In one scene, the narrator witnesses a bizarre and horrific ritual involving the exhumation of a body by some sort of cult. A speech delivered by the group’s leader at the start of the ritual resonates with the clichés of Ukrainian extreme nationalism. В тій промові було важко щось второпати, хоча найчастіше в ній

50 Euphoria лунали знайомі й рідні всім слова: п р е з е н т а ц і я, д у х о в н і с т ь, н а ш а в і р а, п р о с т и т у ц і я, з к а ц а п і з о в а н і м у т а н т и , а р і й с ь к і л и ц а р і, г е б р е й с ь к а н е б е з п е к а, в и р о д е ж е н н я і в і д р о д ж е н н я …23 [It was hard to really understand what he was saying but often there was a repetition of the same words, which are well known and dear to us: p r e s e n t a t i o n, s p i r i t u a l i t y, o u r f a i t h, p r o s t i t u t i o n, r u s s i f i e d m u t a n t s, A r y a n k n i g h t s, t h e H e b r a i c e n c r o a c h m e n t, d e g e n e r e c y, r e n a i s s a n c e …]

The participants in this ritual proceed to feast on the exhumed body until the narrator, in an act of condemnation, pushes one of them and they all fall, in a domino effect, back into the underworld. Kostiantyn Moskalets9 takes a more light-hearted jab at the Ukrainian national myth by exaggerating a characteristic common to many colonized nations – a belief that many well-regarded world figures come from a marginalized ethnic group but are associated with the colonizer’s ethnic identity, thereby unfairly transferring widespread glory to the colonizer. As the Soviet Union teeters towards collapse, Vechirnii med’s drunken Ukrainian bohemians, including Dem, Trots’kyi, Bielov, and Bumper, slur their way through a discussion about famous Ukrainians and how the time has finally arrived when everyone will notice Ukrainian contributions to world culture. The artist Dem has been acting strangely and has refused to speak for some time. His inebriated friend Bumper – repeating the word поспіль for no apparent reason but because he’s drunk and because it’s the popular phrase of the moment – tries to cheer him up: – Дем, не журись! – Вимахує руками Бампер. – Ти талановитий митець, тобі не можна багато поспіль смуріти. Твої картини висять у музеї українського мистецьтва у Ню-Йорку, шляк би його трафив, поруч із Далі і Пікассо, ти геній, Дем, ти не те, що якісь там троцькі, які вже два тижні поспіль обіцяють повалювати мені мікна, ти неймовірний талант, хочеш, я поспіль стану перед тобою на коліна, жеби ти тіко не смурів? Поспіль?  – Я мушу зауважити, що Пікассо і Далі поспіль не були українцями – втручається Бєлов.  – Як то поспіль: не були?-спантеличено питає Бампер. – То будуть!

Deconstructive Revelry  51 Усі поспіль будуть українцями, рано чи пізно, в тім числі й ти, москалю франсуватий, хоч ти того й не хочеш поспіль!  – І всі будуть поспіль висіти, – додає Троцький.24 [‘Don’t worry Dem!’ Bumper signals with his hands. ‘You’re a talented artist, you can’t in a row be zoned out so much. Your paintings hang in a museum of Ukrainian art in New York, for God’s sake, right next to Dali’s and Picasso’s, you’re a genius, Dem, it’s not like you’re just one of these trotskies who, for two weeks in a row, has been promising to paimt my vindows, you’re a rare talent. If you want, I’ll in a row get on my knees in front of you, if that’ll keep you from zoning out? In a row?’   ‘I would like to point out that Picasso and Dali in a row were not Ukrainians,’ interrupts Bielov.   ‘What do you mean in a row: they weren’t?’ Bumper asks disconcertedly. ‘Well, then they will be! Everyone in a row will be Ukrainian, sooner or later, you included, you damn muscovite, even if you don’t want this to happen in a row!’   ‘And everybody will hang in a row,’ adds Trots9kyi.]

Moskalets9 is exposing the ghettoization of Ukrainian culture. For a marginalized culture closed off from a well-developed and functioning critical process, its artists are susceptible to entering into ‘a mutual admiration society’ in which everyone is a genius. By showing these Ukrainian intellectuals in this pathetic light, Moskalets9 signals the need for Ukrainians to shed this characteristic in post-Soviet times. Like many of his colleagues in the Eighties Writers, Moskalets9 likes to dangle a postmodern understanding of text and reality over his prose. The best example of this is when we read an excerpt of a letter the narrator has written in which he shares his belief that if he, a writer, could only write well, then he would be able to affect reality and his lover would appear before him. When she does appear, seemingly out of nowhere, at the end of the novel’s second part, the narrator becomes amazed and the reader witnesses the power of a text to adjust ‘reality.’ Iurii Andrukhovych, in his prose, often plays with the various legends that are a part of his cultural tradition. For a colony that doesn’t have the ability to write its own ‘official history,’ it is, for the most part, in these legends that its history is contained. Andrukhovych, however, does not offer a direct history from the point of view of his people. Instead, he alternates between standard, accepted Ukrainian legends

52 Euphoria

and his own creations, which are often exaggerations and/or reconstructions of existing myths. In Perverziia, as the only representative of Ukraine attending the Venice seminar (although Andrukhovych hints at the fact that most of the characters have some semblance of a Ukrainian lineage, another favourite activity of a colonized people), Perfets9kyi is often forced to explain his homeland to other seminar participants who are mainly ignorant of Ukraine and its culture. One such occasion surfaces in the form of a speech delivered by him at the seminar. In it, he pastes together Ukraine’s history using various legends and mythical and semi-mythical characters. In this way, Kozak Mamai becomes Kozak Iamaika (Kozak Jamaica), and Iaroslav O9smomysl becomes Iaroslav O9smynih.25 What began as a sermon on Ukraine’s four major rivers and Viking roots turns into an account of Ukraine’s two-headed dogs and a story of how the country’s razed churches became black lakes. Elsewhere in Perverziia, Perfets9kyi begins explaining the particulars of Ukrainian Christmas traditions (which include rituals with vestiges of pagan roots that may seem exotic and intriguing to a Westerner not familiar with them) to an Italian priest with whom he is drinking in a graveyard. He begins by detailing the actual Ukrainian traditional Christmas Eve meal (which contains twelve meatless courses that are eaten only after the first star appears in the sky), but then provides a list that is an absurd concoction of several old Ukrainian superstitions and holiday traditions. As such, Andrukhovych pokes fun at the world’s ignorance of Ukraine’s history and culture and, simultaneously, plays with the country’s status in Europe as an exotic and mysterious land. In addition to taking advantage of and mocking ignorance, Andrukhovych’s restructuring of history is a reflection of living in a world where the history that was taught and treated by the government authorities as fact contradicted that which people sawwith their own eyes and knew to be true. He reacts to this in his writing by taking mythical characters and historical figures down from their untouchable positions of authority and placing them on a level even with himself and with the protagonists in his novel. In this manner, he is able to sidestep the ‘untouchability’ of these men and women and deconstruct their authority. Andrukhovych’s deconstruction of mythical figures is not, however, restricted to ridiculing former holders of authority (i.e., various Soviet leaders). He also takes on figures that one assumes he would respect and possibly adopt in the form of guiding myths. Quasi-mythical fig-

Deconstructive Revelry  53

ures from the Ukrainian nationalist perspective pantheon (many of them real people who were mythicized to unrealistic proportions) are subject to the same scepticism as are those presented by the colonizer’s myths. A good example of this can be seen in Moskoviada. Otto has a dream sequence in which he meets with King Olel9ko II.26 The young poet pleads with Olel9ko, promising that if the heir were to support him financially, he would be able to write a literary work that would finally gain recognition and respect for Ukrainian culture in the rest of the world. To this point, the scene is a typical romantic dream of a Ukrainian patriot searching for ties to a majestic past and expressing hopes for a European future. Andrukhovych adds a blind minstrel (a major symbol of Ukrainian culture) to the dream scene just to heighten the clichéd ‘Ukrainian-ness’ of the scene. However, Olel9ko listens indifferently to Otto’s passionate plea and at a point when he becomes bored with the poet’s ramblings, he interrupts him to ask: ‘Do you want to know the Spanish word for penis?’ This Ukrainian dream comes crashing down due to listlessness and flippancy – qualities that Otto and many of Andrukhovych’s characters themselves possess and with which they do battle on the pages of these novels. More importantly, Andrukhovych, like other Eighties Writers, shows us that it is important to realize that myths, both those with which you choose to identify and those that you reject, are equally subjective. Deconstructing Language As part of the general attack on the inherited norms of the Ukrainian literary canon initiated by this generation of writers, the visimdesiatnyky also applied a postmodern approach to the function of language in their prose works. Language held an especially vital position in the Ukrainian national myth. Thus, it is not surprising that language is what these post-Soviet writers most focused on. Supporting and propagating the cult of ‘the new’ that escorted Ukraine into independence, these writers targeted language because, as Tamara Hundorova writes, ‘The place of the New, as the experience of the twentieth century has demonstrated, is found in language.’27 Their deconstruction was aimed at unseating established notions of the Ukrainian language as it was presented by both the Soviet and the Ukrainian national myths. The contemporary scholar Oleksandr Hrytsenko points out that the altered, ‘official’ Ukrainian language taught in Soviet schools was a language that was created in order to control the myths and the potential

54 Euphoria

dangers of subversion inherent in that language.28 Oksana Zabuzhko designates this Soviet Ukrainian language as false29 and Hrytsenko adds that one of the driving forces of the creative work of the Sixties Writers was an attempt to rescue the Ukrainian language from its depoeticized and utilitarian Soviet version and to restore it to its status as the chief mythological medium of the Ukrainian people.30 The Soviet need to codify the Ukrainian language in this manner, in an attempt to curtail an ‘inherent power,’ and the romantic drive by the Sixties Writers to counter this process point to a certain metaphysical understanding of the language. This mythological aspect of the Ukrainian language is one that the Eighties Writers tried to deconstruct in their prose works. In his essay ‘Mova’ (Language), Maksym Strikha traces the development of the Ukrainian language through the Romantic and populist eras according to its role in the construction and maintenance of the Ukrainian national myth. Its designation as ‘the most melodic and beautiful language in the world’ by Ukrainian intellectuals helped to buffer the inferior social status that it held in various imperial discourses.31 Accordingly, literature written in the Ukrainian language was an important contributor to the Ukrainian myth-making medium. Hrytsenko points out that for the ‘Ukrainian nation,’ such myths substituted for rational and pragmatic discourses conducted by more established nations.32 And this non-pragmatism of the language endows it with a metaphysical and sacral resonance; the marginalized status it held in the Soviet Union fed this myth despite the above-mentioned efforts to desanctify it with Soviet cultural policy. As the first new generation of writers in a free Ukraine, the Eighties Writers deliberately addressed the inherited metaphysical ‘baggage’ that is associated with the Ukrainian language in their works. In their writings, many of the Eighties Writers attempt to deconstruct the myth of language in general and of the Ukrainian language in particular. It is an attempt to free themselves, as artists creating in the Ukrainian language, of the restrictions on creativity that accompany the ‘sacred’ responsibilities of the language. This deconstruction is conducted through various postmodern word games challenging the authority of the written word and through a determined effort to ‘desacralize’ the Ukrainian language through the introduction of taboo topics and vulgarisms. In Burdyk, Volodymyr Dibrova employs a Ukrainian language that contains many slang terms of the underground cultural scene of the 1970s and 80s. Although Serhii Ivaniuk writes that Dibrova’s literary

Deconstructive Revelry  55

language is a ‘completely new construct’ (because the Ukrainian language was rarely spoken in Kyiv in those years), words such as faustpatron (a 750 ml bottle of high-proof alcohol) and zhlobnia (rednecks) do surface in his works. These terms are part of a street slang influenced by Russian, English, and other languages and spoken in Ukrainian cities from predominantly Ukrainian-language L9viv to mostly Russianlanguage Luhans9k. By weaving them into his Ukrainian prose, Dibrova toys with the ‘purity’ of that language. In an introductory essay to the first dictionary of late-Soviet and post-Soviet Ukrainian slang, the dictionary’s compiler, linguist Lesia Stavyts9ka, explains the use of jargon to subvert official Ukrainian culture, considering it to be consistent with the humorous culture of carnival.33 Slang is also effective in refreshing a language, restoring its vibrancy and relevance. Iurii Andrukhovych’s prose also features many words from Ukrainian street language including bukhlo (booze) and the ubiquitous kaif (awesome). By having his characters, most of whom are Ukrainian intellectuals, use such words, Andrukhovych is demonstrating that they are hip, in touch with ‘downtown,’ and not completely removed from society. Perhaps one of Iurii Izdryk’s most infamous literary moments is his chapter ‘Pro Mudakiv’ in Votstsek; his titling the chapter with this term grounds the novel’s philosophizing in the everyday, post-Soviet world. Podviinyi Leon features two pages of slang-laden jokes to reflect the significant presence of anecdotes in everyday communication in Ukraine. Such a mixing of high and low is also utilized by Andrukhovych and is used to great comic effect by Kostiantyn Moskalets9. Moskalets9’s Vechirnii med masterfully captures the combination of lofty existential musing with alcohol-inspired nonsense speak that circulates in Ukrainian bohemian circles. Because she is a woman, Oksana Zabuzhko’s use of contemporary vulgarisms in Pol9ovi doslidzhennia z ukrains9koho seksu was an even greater shock to the system. Her narrator is a Ukrainian intellectual woman who talks openly about wanting to have sex and uses vulgarisms to describe details of the act; such a character was unprecedented in Ukrainian literature and spawned a whole movement in Ukrainian female prose (Natalka Sniadanko, Irena Karpa, Svitlana Pyrkalo, Svitlana Povaliaieva). Zabuzhko infuses her novel with such language to complement one of the novel’s major themes – the general need to disturb and question the patriarchal Ukrainian national myth. Many of the prose works written by the Eighties Writers feature a

56 Euphoria

playfulness with language through various word games, dialogues composed of rhetorical, nonsense-speak, and even the visual deconstruction of words and letters. Tamara Hundorova points out such a trend in her assessment of Izdryk’s and Prokhas9ko’s prose: ‘Their narrative depends on the verbal deconstruction that is a part of the transgression strategy of literary communication.’34 Izdryk is, in fact, the leader of the Eighties Writers in the practice of wordplay. All three of Izdryk’s novels are filled with exhibitions of linguistic revelry. Izdryk’s focus on the role that text plays in defining existence and identity makes an inspection of language from a multitude of angles a crucial strategy in this exercise; in essence, such wordplay forms the crux of all his prose. Izdryk targets the written language because he feels that unlike spoken language, it is not genuine; because language was first spoken and then written, texts are but a reflection of the sound and essence of a language. The spoken word is auditory and thus unrepeatable, guaranteeing its authenticity. Texts, on the other hand, are a visual imitation of language that can be reread ad infinitum.35 A writer (who by definition propagates the written word) believing in such an assertion is certainly going to have a conflict with the writing he presents in his works. Izdryk goes so far as to proclaim the written language as his enemy: Ворогів у мене не так вже й багато. Принаймні їх можна перелічити на пальцях руки. Якщо мати так багато пальців і так багато рук. Отож ворогів у мене рівно 32. Пом’янемо їх поіменно: А., Б., В., Г, Д., Е., Є., Ж., З., И., І., Ї., Й., К., Л., М., Н., О., П., Р., С., Т., У., Ф., Х., Ц., Ч., Ш., Щ., Ю., Я., Ь. Або так: ‘а’, ‘б’, ‘в’, ‘ г’, ‘д’, ‘е’, ‘є’, ‘ж’, ‘ з’, ‘ и’, ‘і’, ‘ ї’, ‘й’, ‘к’, ‘л’, ‘м’, ‘н’, ‘о’, ‘п’, ‘р’, ‘с, ‘т’, ‘у’, ‘ф’, ‘х’, ‘ц’, ‘ч’, ‘ш’, ‘щ’, ‘ю’, ‘я’, ‘ь’. Навіть поодинці вони становлять грізну силу. А разом вони просто непереможні. Або так: ‘ Н., Е., П., Е., Р., Е., М., О., Ж., Н., І. ’ Або врешті так: ‘н’, ‘е’, ‘п’, ‘е’, ‘р’, ‘е’, ‘м’, ‘о’, ‘ж’, ‘н’, ‘і.’ 36 [I don’t have that many enemies. At least, you can count then on the fingers of your hands. If you have so many fingers and so many hands. They number exactly 26. Let us recall them by name: A., B., C., D., E., F., G., H., I., J., K., L., M., N., O., P., Q., R., S., T., U, V., W, X,. Y., Z. Or like this: ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’, ‘d’, ‘e’, ‘f’, ‘g’ ‘h’, ‘i’, ‘j’ ‘k’, ‘l’, ‘m’, ‘n’, ‘o’, ‘p’, ‘q’, ‘r’, ‘s’, ‘t’, ‘u’, ‘v’, ‘w’, ‘x’, ‘y’, ‘z’. Even individually they constitute a terrible force. And together they are simply invincible. Or like this: ‘I., N., V., I., N., C., I., B., L., E.’ Or, finally, like this: ‘i’, ‘n’, ‘v’, ‘i’, ‘n’, ‘c’, ‘i’, ‘b’, ‘l’, ‘e.’]37

Deconstructive Revelry  57

Thus, whether as separate letters adjusted slightly by various punctuation marks or gathered together to form a word unit, the building blocks of a text themselves are arbitrary and not rooted in the real world. Freed from the restrictions of direct correlation, each symbol and every fragment of a symbol becomes all-powerful in its independence. All that is left for the author is to try to combine them in various fluctuating fashions. This conflict is, in fact, at the essence of Izdryk’s approach to writing, and it dominates Votstsek. Marko Pavlyshyn sees the play with words in Votstsek as being ‘symptomatic of the fact that events in language reflect its own structure and rules and not those of the ‘“real” world, which is independent of it.’38 Alliteration, palindromes, visual poetry, and a redefinition of technical terminology permeate Izdryk’s narratives. The chapter Nacherk entomolohii (An entomological sketch) demonstrates Izdryk’s play with the title character’s name: В, о, к, подвійне ц, е. Вок, любитель на дівок. Цик, цикада, пак. Цикади на цикладах. Так-так.39 [W, o, c, k, double z, e. Double-you o sea kay, lover of girls today. Zeck, cicada, zack. Cicadas on the Cyclades. Yes-es.]40

Here, Izdryk disassembles his protagonists name, transforming it into a series of phrases that, when strung together, could easily be performed as a chant or sung as a jingle of sorts. Votstsek, in essence, has become a song. As part of Votstsek’s search for his self, he traces the boundaries that separate him from an other. He tries to form a relationship with the woman A. in order to help locate this boundary. However, Izdryk discloses that A. is just a symbol of this other whom he is attempting to define – a symbol that is completely dependent on the ‘I’ and can be manipulated by the subject at will: Певну кількість літ він присвятив боротьбі з А. Це була нелегка боротьба, що нагадувала двобій із гідрою. Живучість А. виявилася невірогідною. В один із сезонів посиленим лежанням на канапі та питтям горіхівки йому вдалося довести А. до розмірів А., під час іншого літа, особливо вдалого (бо дощового) – до A. Однак за осінь-зиму-весну злощасне А. знову відростало, деколи навіть перевищуючи початкові розміри. Тоді він спробував зайнятися вівісекцією. Розтинав, відрізав,

58 Euphoria кремсав на шмаття. Складав навіть, як справжній науковець таблиці результатів 22 червня..........................................А. ; 1 липня.............................................А. ; 17 липня...........................................А. ; 16 серпня..........................................А. ; 17 серпня..........................................А. ; 1 вересня...........................................-. ; 41 [He dedicated years to his struggle with A. It was hard work, like fighting a hydra. A’s vitality was unbelievable. In one of the seasons he succeeded, by dint of intensive lying on the couch and drinking almond vodka, in reducing A. to the dimension of A. and over another especially auspicious (because rainy) summer to A. But over autumn and winter the calamitous A. grew back, exceeding even its previous dimensions. Then he tried vivisection. He dissected, he cut away, he shredded. Like a true scientist he even tabulated his results: 22 June...............................................A.; 1 July..................................................A.; 17 July................................................A.; 16 August..........................................A.; 17 August..........................................A.; 1 September......................................-.;]42

Podviinyi Leon is even more experimental in its visual word games. Izdryk intersperses words and other visual symbols from Western popular consumer culture throughout the novel. In this novel, the play with language initiated and teased with in Votstsek has led to its theoretically correct conclusion – language has completely lost its function of communication and a text becomes just a catch-all of discarded and floating symbols that emerge, conglomerate. and then disband, recombining before once again fading out. While Izdryk lists the letters of the Ukrainian alphabet as his foes, Iurii Gudz9 dedicates his novel to them and utilizes them as chapter titles. But Gudz9 does this sporadically – certain letters appear while others are skipped before he abandons this structural system entirely. At the start of Ne-My these letters act as signposts to guide the novel, always reminding the reader that language is one of the novel’s key

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subjects. As the novel progresses, however, its plot becomes increasingly complicated by sudden juxtapositions into fragments of seemingly unrelated literary works. Correspondingly, the rhythm begun with the steady series Аа, Бб, Вв, (Aa, Bb, Cc) changes and then collapses. Gudz9 comments here on the failure of language as a means of communication; rules no longer govern literature written in this language. Kostiantyn Moskalets9’s novel also hints at the collapse of the power of language. In parts of Vechirnii med, the plot is disrupted by sentences and paragraphs in which a certain word or phrase is repeated. Then these phrases and words are turned inside out and appear spelled backwards. At times, numerical symbols appear instead of letters and numerical equations instead of words. Moskalets9 refers to the Ukrainian language as being dead and his characters sometimes slip into dialogues full of nonsense-speak. Moskalets9 intellectual bohemians seem incapable of voicing an original opinion. Their everyday conversations turn into an empty rhetoric of repeated clichés, which, it is implied, take place over and over again. In order to emphasize the loss of a language’s basic function of communication and highlight its arbitrariness, Moskalets9 proceeds to play with the language, switching the words of his characters without them even noticing that they are speaking nonsense. What begins as a play on words of the old Galician dialect of Ukrainian (the old Galician Ukrainian slang term for ‘hangover’ – katz – is borrowed from the German katzenjammer, and katze means ‘cat’ in German) turns into a dialogue in which nothing really is communicated: Але, окрім зливи, нікого. Тільки злива, Троцький і бодун. Аж ось іде Дем. – Під ‘Нектар’ ми не підем Бо там ходить п’яний Дем! – з надією в очах скандують бодун і Троцький. Але Дем тверезий, а замість бодуна у нього на плечах сидить кіт. – Це кіт? Чи Кац? – питає Троцький. – Так,-погоджується Дем. – Це кіт під дощем. – Дуже важливе уточнення. А в нього часом нема карбіванця? – дипломатично цікавиться Троцький. – Ні, в нього нема, а в мене є, але я тобі не дам. – Мені й не треба твого паршивого, задрипаного, вошивого, придуркуватого, а може й мокрого кота! – обурюєтсья Троцький. – Але тобі треба карбіванця,-уточнює Дем.

60 Euphoria – Треба, iнакше я здохну і здурію. Спочатку перше, потім друге. – Я йду купувати квіти для Іри, – виправдовується Дем. – Квіти?! Для Іри? Ні, це ти сьогодні здурів, Дем. На хріна Ірі Квіти, на ірa Хріні квіти? – Бо в неї день народження, – вагається Дем. – Іди, – благословляє Троцький Дема. – Iди, і не просто іди, а іди ти к … купувати іри для Квіти! Дем усе ще вагається, роблячи відтак фатальну помилку. Бо цієї миті до них підходить Бєлов зі своїм бодуном, не гіршим, ніж у Троцького, а може й гіршим. Усі шестеро мляво вітаються поміж собою. Бодун Бєлова мляво вітається з бодуном Троцького, бодун Троцького мляво вітається з бодуном Бєлова, Бєлов вітається з Демом, Дем мляво вітається з Бєловим, Троцький вітається з Бєловим, Бєлов мляво вітається з Троцьким, бодун Бєлова мляво вітається з Демом, Дем мляво вітається з бодуном Бєлова, Бєлов мляво вітається з котом на Демових раменах, Демів кіт мляво вітається з Бєловим, бодун Бєлова мляво вітається з котом Дема, кіт Дема мляво вітається з бодуном Бєлова, і коли всі отак чемно привіталися, Бєлов каже, що в ‘Українських справах’ є пиво.43 [But, aside from the downpour, there is no one. Only the downpour, Trots9kyi and his hangover. And then, Dem appears. ‘Down to “The Nectar” we won’t sink, ’cause that’s where drunk Dem likes to drink!’ Trots9kyi and his hangover chant, with hope in their eyes. But Dem is sober, and instead of having a hangover, he has a cat sitting on his shoulder. ‘Is that a cat or a katzenjammer?’ asks Trots9kyi. ‘Yes,’ agrees Dem, ‘it’s a cat in the rain.’ ‘A very important discernment. Do you think he’s got a dollar to spare?’ enquires Trots9kyi diplomatically. ‘No, he doesn’t have one, but I do, and I won’t give it to you.’ ‘Well I don’t need your mangy, tattered, lousy, stupid – and possibly even wet – cat!’ Says Trots9kyi, getting upset. ‘But you do need a dollar,’ discerns Dem. ‘I do. Otherwise I’ll die and go insane. First the former, and then the latter.’

Deconstructive Revelry  61 ‘I’m going to go buy flowers for Ira,’ says Dem, justifying himself. ‘Flowers?! For Ira? Looks like you’re the one who’s gone nuts, Dem. Why the hell does Ira need flowers, why does Flowa need iras?’ ‘Because it’s her birthday,’ hesitates Dem. ‘Go,’ says Trots9kyi to Dem with a blessing. ‘Go, and don’t just go but go fuc … buy iras for Flowa!’ Dem continues to hesitate, which proves to be a fatal mistake. Because, just then, Bielov shows up with a hangover no worse than Trots9kyi’s, but then again, maybe it is worse than Trots9kyi’s. All six of them lazily greet one another. Bielov’s hangover lazily greets Trots9kyi’s hangover, Trots9kyi’s hangover lazily greets Bielov’s hangover, Bielov greets Dem, Dem lazily greets Bielov, Trots9kyi greets Bielov, Bielov lazily greets Trots9kyi, Bielov’s hangover lazily greets Dem, Dem lazily greets Bielov’s hangover, Bielov lazily greets the cat on Dem’s shoulder, Dem’s cat lazily greets Bielov, Bielov’s hangover lazily greets Dem’s cat, Dem’s cat lazily greets Bielov’s hangover, and after everyone has so civilly greeted one another, Bielov says that the ‘Ukrainian Affairs’ store has beer.]

Thus, Moskalets9’s well-read bohemians, who are generally prone to discussing art and philosophy, are incapable of using language to conduct a basic conversation or to present an idea. Iurii Andrukhovych’s novels also contain many scenes in which dialogue strays into and out of nonsense phrases. Posed questions are often responded to with completely unrelated answers. Much of the conversation between the characters in Rekreatsii is just empty babble. As pointed out above, Moskoviada’s King Ole9lko, who is looked at as a potential saviour of the Ukrainian people, seems to be more interested in sharing his knowledge of scatological words in Spanish than in the fate of the Ukrainian written word. Andrukhovych’s numerous language games are marked by playfulness and wit. An entire chapter of Perverziia features the speech of John-Paul Oshchyrko, a sort of Rastaman and bohemian, in what is essentially a loop of several phrases with words exchanged and substituted for others.44 It begins with the following paragraph: Слухати реґґей, вмирати під небом, вдихати запах трави. Слухати небо, вмирати під реґґей, вдихати листя трави. Вдихати реґґей, слухати в небі, вмирати під запах трави. Слухати трави, вдихати

62 Euphoria реґґей, вмирати під небом запахів. Вмирати з небом, слухати і вдихати: реґґей, траву, запах. Слухати і вдихати, вмирати і слухати: запах реґґей, небо трави.45 [To listen to reggae, to die beneath the sky, to breath in the scent of the grass, mon. To listen to the sky, to die to reggae, to breath in the leaves of the grass, mon. To breath in reggae, to listen in the sky, to die to the scent of the grass, mon. To listen to the grass, to breath in reggae, to die beneath the sky of scents, mon. To die with the sky, to listen and breath in: reggae, grass, the scent, mon. To listen and breath in, to die and listen: the scent of reggae, the sky of the grass.]46

The chapter continues in a similar fashion, calling on everyone to submit to and lose themselves in nature in what is an attempt to simulate a marijuana-smoking ritual. In order to highlight the playfulness of this particular language game, readers are informed at the beginning of the chapter by a footnote that they may skip this section if they ‘are not inclined towards lingual-cabalistic exercises.’ The numerous lists that dot Andrukhovych’s prose often serve as sites for wordplay. An example of this is found in Perverziia in a list of Perfets9kyi’s pseudonyms: Його звали Стах Перфецький і Карп Любанський і Сом Рахманський і П’єр Долинський і Птах Кайфецький. Але його також звали Глюк, Блюм, Врубль, Штрудль і Шнобль. До того ж він був Йона Риб і Жора Кур і Шура Птиць і Сюра Яйць і Слава Днів. Проте він був також Сильний Перець, Хуан Перес, Друже Перче, Перчило і Ерц-ГерцПерц. Дехто знав його як Персидського, Парфянського, Парсунського, Профанського і Перфаворського. Найближчі друзі любили його за те, що був він Камаль Манхмаль, Йоган Коган, Будда Юдда, Юхан Бухан і Пу Фу. Однак усі без винятку кликали його Бімбер Бібамус, Аґнус Маґнус, Авіс Пеніс, Штахус Бахус і Кактус Еректус. Тож ніхто навіть не здогадувався, що насправді він Анти-Ной і Зорро Вавель і Гамбз/м/бург/х/ер і Спас Орфейський і P.S. А всього імен його було сорок і жодне з них не було справжнім, бо справжнього не знав ніхто, навіть він сам.47 [They called him Stakh Perfetsky and Carp Loverboysky and Sheatfish Saintlymansky and Pierre Fukinsky and High-as-a-Kite Birdsky. But they also called him Gluck, Bloom, Vrubl, Strudl and Schnabl. In addition he

Deconstructive Revelry  63 was Jonah of the Fish and George of the Fowl and Shura of the Fish and Siura of the Balls and Glory of the Days. But he was also Sergeant Pepper, Juan Perez, Petey Peppa, Pepperonimon, and Ertz-Hertz-Pertz. Some knew him as Persiansky, Parthiansky, Personsky, Profansky, and Perfavorsky. His closest friends loved him for the fact that he was Kamal Manchmal, Johann Cohan, Buddah Judas, Yukhan Bukhan, and Pu Fu. But all without exception called him Bimber Bibamus, Agnus Magnus, Avis Penis, Shtakhus Bacchus, and Cactus Erectus. Therefore no one could even guess that he really was Antinoah and Zorro Vavel and Hams/m/bur/g/ er and Savior Orpheusky and P.S. All together he had forty names, and not one of them was real, for no one knew his real name, not even he himself.]48

This is an exercise in wordplay, after which truth becomes blurred and ultimately unobtainable. Andrukhovych’s novels feature many direct references to the Ukrainian language and attacks on the myths that surround it. One of the lasting myths surrounding the Ukrainian language concerns its unusually pleasant euphonic quality.49 In Moskoviada, it is mentioned that the Ukrainian language, as determined by a panel of experts at a contest in Geneva, is the second most beautiful-sounding language in the world. This, however, is revealed among other lists whose arbitrariness are well known to the average person.50 In Perverziia, Perfets9kyi sees the Ukrainian language not as something that will ‘save us’ but as something that can offer guidance.51 In another comment on language in the novel, the invitation to the Venice festival is written in a Ukrainian language that is full of mistakes; because it often confuses Russia for Ukraine in its contents, instead of being a considerate gesture of respect made by the festival organizers towards the Ukrainian poet Perfets9kyi and his language, it actually ends up utilizing the Ukrainian language, albeit unintentionally, as a tool of condescension against Ukrainians.52 Volodymyr Dibrova’s deconstruction of the Ukrainian language myth in Burdyk is centred mostly on the diasporic character Brynchak; as was the case with most national myths, it is in the politicized émigré community that the Ukrainian language myth developed a more intense shading. The raising of the Ukrainian language to metaphysical status appears in scenes in which people equate it with religion; such an emphasis on language, when it is made by Mr and Mrs Brynchak, is portrayed as being comical. Upon meeting the narrator, Mrs Brynchak immediately asks him which language (Russian or Ukrainian) he spoke at home and

64 Euphoria

whether he goes to church; she then says that she heard that people who spoke ‘the native word or God’s word’ were sent to Siberia. When the narrator and Mr Brynchak start comparing their past personal experiences of repression for publicly speaking the Ukrainian language, the conversation eventually becomes a contest of who was more repressed, and neither man actually listens to what the other is saying – in the heat of their competition they cease communicating in the very language that they fought so hard to preserve.53 The extreme emphasis placed on the Ukrainian language by the Ukrainian national myth is seen as ridiculous (albeit not without sympathy) by the new Ukrainian intellectual presented in these novels. The humorous depiction of such a serious issue is an attempt at freeing the language from what it represents in this myth. As part of the euphoric movement in the works of the Eighties Writers, the Ukrainian language is retrieved from its metaphysical heights and deconstructed through wordplay, intermixing with profanities, and becoming the building blocks of nonsense-speak. The euphoric movement of post-Soviet Ukrainian prose writing witnessed a marked transformation in Ukrainian literature and culture. Energy radiating from the era-defining celebrations of the new and of change fuelled the shattering of inherited ideologies and fixed structures. A conscious effort was made to deconstruct any semblance of authority or the absolute while play was applied with abandon in order to undermine the power of established frameworks. The Eighties Writers experimented with narrative in order to reveal its subjectivity. The Ukrainian national myth was also exposed as being but ‘one version of the truth.’ In an attempt to alleviate the Ukrainian language of its metaphysical obligations, language was gradually stripped of correlation to the point where it almost ceased to communicate. Any truth was exposed as being dependent on a point of view and identity was shown to be relative and in a constant state of flux. The new Ukrainian intellectual and post-Soviet Ukrainian art were at the centre of a transition from the colonial to the post-colonial, from a regulated existence to the freedom of exploration, from prohibitive frameworks to structureless chaos.

PART II: Chaos

In an introduction to the anthology Two Lands, New Visions: Stories from Canada and Ukraine, Solomea Pavlychko noticed a trend in the prose of the Eighties Writers: ‘Writers have largely lost interest in social issues, which were their age-old concern, and instead delve into self-reflection, cue in narcissistically on their bodies, and explore their sexuality.’1 This ‘age-old concern’ had been virtually inseparable from Ukrainian literature for most of its modern history and, as we have seen in part 1 of this book, the Eighties Writers consciously set off to explore thematic and stylistic territories that had previously been uncharted (or had been derailed) as part of an escape from the duties that had been assigned, by various myths, to those writing in the Ukrainian language. The Eighties Writers did assume a particular social function as part of the euphoric movement of the late 1980s and early 1990s in Ukraine – they were ‘stewards of change’ who strove to introduce a philosophy of open investigation into the Ukrainian identity. They wanted to allow various approaches to the Ukrainian self, including versions that they themselves propagated, to be expressed, free of imposed restrictions. But, in general, they were able to sever those ties with society and government that they had inherited; the freedom from ideological responsibility that Ukrainian literature had obtained during the ‘era of festivals’ left it with a substantially reduced public function and scant government support once that era had concluded. The euphoric wave of postmodern deconstruction that swept through Ukrainian literature in the early 1990s left a residue of collapsed foundations, usurped canons, and severed social frameworks in its wake. Having instigated, nurtured, and centred Ukraine’s rebirth and captured the spirit of this time in art, Ukrainian literature soon found itself disoriented and abandoned

66 Chaos

as the decade moved on and Ukrainian society progressed in its transformation from centralized socialism to quasi-democratic capitalism. The social role of the Ukrainian intellectual as a stage-dwelling symbol of change and a mover of the masses faded as Ukrainian independence became entrenched. The intellectual’s function as an ‘ambassador to the West’ also lessened as access to the West increasingly grew for many in society. Wary of being a tool of political change and having promoted social disengagement and championed creative freedom and individuality, the Eighties Writers now found themselves essentially divested of any political significance. The postmodern idea of the inconsistent and unstable self dominated the prose of the Eighties Writers; their disavowal of the idea of a single truth and, in its place, an emphasis on play and difference promoted re-description and instability. In a sense, the Eighties Writers had achieved what they had, theoretically, set out to do – the already fragile Ukrainian identity was now open to various constructs and found itself in a state of perpetual flux. Just as it had captured the postmodern deconstruction of the early years of Ukrainian independence, Ukrainian prose of the 1990s also expresses its subsequent rootlessness and disarray. The Ukrainian intellectual that appears on the pages of this prose is one who is often disillusioned, depressed, and abandoned. The general sense of disorientation that emerged from this development in post-Soviet prose – a development that can be termed as ‘chaos’ – becomes evident when looking at how the relationships of these intellectual protagonists with society are treated on its pages. Also, the allusions made to the incompatibility of male and female Ukrainian intellectuals in these literary works are indicative of a generally fractured condition within this chaotic tendency, and there exists a recurring idea in the prose of the Eighties Writers of their status as a lost or wasted generation. Just as euphoria produced two new prototypes of the Ukrainian intellectual protagonist, chaos brings forth the dominance of a certain new type – the sick or abnormal intellectual. It is a prototype that contains within it reflections of several of the major issues that fed the development of chaos in post-Soviet Ukrainian literature.

4 New Prototypes of the Ukrainian Intellectual in Post-Soviet Ukrainian Prose – The Sick Soul

У дурдомі досі вже прасують мою гамівну сорочку. Вишиванку, бо ж дурдом – український. Рідний український національний дурдом. [They’ve been preparing my straightjacket at the nut-house for some time now. An embroidered straightjacket, because the nut-house is Ukrainian. A native, Ukrainian, national nut-house.] Kostiantyn Moskalets9, Vechirnii med

Many of the Ukrainian intellectual protagonists that appear in the prose of the Eighties Writers are shown to be suffering from some form of illness; repeated references to the physical and/or mental sickness of these intellectuals show them to be maladjusted, mad, and dysfunctional. As was the case with ‘the swashbuckler’ or ‘the ambassador to the West’ prototypes discussed previously, these portrayals have little in common with the intellectuals residing on the pages of socialist-realist prose. They instead hark back to a modernist portrayal of the artist as an alienated individual and a ‘mad creator.’ Such a representation of the Ukrainian intellectual by the Eighties Writers is often used to reflect the marginalized social status of these individuals in post-Soviet Ukraine. Their sickness is revealed throughout these prose works through direct and indirect references to illness and health institutions, by the omnipresence of alcohol and alcoholism in the characters’ lives, and through the depiction of these characters’ families as being broken or dysfunctional. Oksana Zabuzhko’s Pol9ovi doslidzhennia z ukrains9koho seksu (Field

68 Chaos

Work in Ukrainian Sex) examines the psyche of a Ukrainian woman before the dawn of the twenty-first century. Her protagonist shuffles through traits and experiences that she has inherited in an attempt to determine how she came to arrive at her current psychological state – a condition that Zabuzhko makes a point of portraying as being inflicted with sickness. She refers to elements of her malady several times throughout the novel, and, reading this work, one cannot help but sense that something is not quite right with its chief protagonist. This, in fact, is one of the main themes that Zabuzhko explores in this literary work – she want to impress upon the reader the damaged state of the post-colonial Ukrainian woman. The chaotic, stream-of-consciousness style employed by Zabuzhko dangles a corresponding sense of instability and fragmentation above the novel’s contents. Zabuzhko’s heroine attempts to alleviate the illness with which she believes Ukraine is afflicted by using her creative talents to locate the root of the sickness. On the novel’s final pages, Zabuzhko reveals her prognosis: Короткий курс психоаналізу, шлях до душевного здоров’я: знайти причину, і проблема зніметься сама собою. Чому досі нікому не спало на думку, що те саме можна б проробляти й з народами: пропсихоаналізував гарненько цілу національну історію – і попустить, як рукою зніме. Література як форма національної терапії. А що, not a bad idea. Шкода, що в нас, власне, немa літератури.1 [A short course in psychology, the road to mental health: find the reason and the problem goes away. Why hasn’t anyone thought of doing this with nations: you neatly psychoanalyze the whole national history, and poof, you’re cured. Literature as a form of national therapy. Hmm, not a bad idea. Too bad that we happen to have no literature.]2

She is inspired by this sickness – it is the driving force behind her writing. But such an approach ultimately will fail in any case because, by trying to create like God, a writer impedes fate. The only way to be original in the postmodern age is to recombine the existing in a new way: Хотіти бути автором – творити – зазіхнути на виключну прероґативу Бога. Бо ніхто з нас насправді не творить, пані й панове, … Все, що нам дано – як дітям на забавку, – то готові порізнені скалочки дійсності,

New Prototypes – The Sick Soul  69 фраґменти, подробиці, кольорові фішки якоїсь великої, неосяжної головоломки, по яких рачкуємо, не підводячи зору, обмацуємо, облизуємо, обнюхуємо собі в кайф, цілком безневинне й приємне заняття …3 [To want to be an author – to create – is to infringe upon a prerogative that belongs only to God. Because none of us truly create, ladies and gentlemen, … All that we are given – like a toy to a child – are ready-made, assorted, splinters of reality, fragments, trifles, colourful playing pieces of some kind of large, incomprehensible board game, upon which we crawl, without looking up, feeling it out, licking it, smelling it to our hearts’ content, a completely innocent and pleasurable activity …]

Extending her analysis of creativity and sickness, Zabuzhko’s heroine concludes that because art is gripped with fear it is weak, and fear is a sickness that can only be overcome with love. Zabuzhko finds the roots of this crippling fear in her family – a family that tried desperately to remain functional even while it suffered repression in the Soviet system. The protagonist of Pol9ovi doslidzhennia z ukrains9koho seksu suffers from the psychological repercussions of growing up with this fear. Maryna Romanets sees the novel as one that, through pain, functions as a form of catharsis.4 A Ukrainian intellectual, Zabuzhko’s protagonist is inflicted with the same ills as her fellow Ukrainians and tries to confront these ills head-on. Ultimately, she becomes damaged by the wounds resulting from such a confrontation. Lewis S. Feuer defines an intellectual as ‘a person whose consciousness determines his existence, who does not suffer the world passively but seeks a mode of existence more in accord with his philosophy, his ideas, and his feelings.’5 Because they are intellectuals, the protagonists in the novels under study here are prone to contemplate and philosophically analyse their surroundings; they see the problems of their people and internalize their ills, and, as a result, they develop a particularly damaged psyche that, in turn, impedes their functioning in society. In Volodymyr Dibrova’s Burdyk (Burdyk), Sashko, a recent émigré to the United States, points out to the novel’s narrator that it is specifically Ukrainian writers, and not Ukrainian people in general, that suffer from inferiority complexes.6 In the end, these intellectuals become alienated from the very people they are trying to help. In several of these novels, the Eighties Writers show intellectuals attempting to escape from these concerns, and dull the pains brought on by

70 Chaos

this suffering, by turning to alcohol. Dibrova’s hero, Burdyk, dies in an intoxicated state after downing half a litre of cognac. The protagonists in Iurii Andrukhovych’s novels often partake of various drinking rituals as participants in celebrations taking place during the ‘era of festivals’ in Ukraine. In such a capacity, they initially appear simply to be riding the crest of the wave of euphoria that accompanied the arrival of change in the Soviet Union. However, the fact that they are shown to be incapable of going about their daily business without being inebriated reveals their uncontrollable dependence on alcohol. On just the first pages of Rekreatsii (Recreations), we are told that the poet Martofliak has a penchant for getting ‘raving drunk’ when his wife is not around to control him. She states that Навіть ультиматум висунув – якщо я не їду, він смертельно напивається в тому Чортополі, до всрачки, до білочки, денно і нощно, питиме все нараз, блюватиме і знову питиме, аж доки його не привезуть додому майже мертвим.7 [He gave me an ultimatum: if I didn’t go, he’d get dead drunk in Chortopil, shit drunk, raving drunk, drunk day and night, he would drink all he could get, throw up, and drink again until they brought him home all but dead.]8

In Martofliak, Andrukhovych is presenting a character who obviously has more than a casual relationship with alcohol. Within seconds of arriving in Chortopil9, Martofliak’s colleagues, Nemyrych and Shtundera, set off on a drinking binge that consumes a large part of the novel. The fact that the men are, after all, attending a festival contributes an aura of playfulness and ritual to these drinking sprees. However (and as is the case in all of Andrukhovych’s novels), alcohol also functions as a major weapon from the arsenal of male bravado that is turned to by his characters in order to conceal an inner pain. In Rekreatsii Martofliak uses alcohol to distance himself from a crumbling marriage, Nemyrych from a fatal illness, Shtundera from an unhappy childhood, and Khoms9kyi from his own latent homosexuality. Throughout most of Moskoviada (The Moscovind), the novel’s protagonist, Otto von F., is shown to be drinking and getting drunk. In this novel, Andrukhovych paints the Soviet capital as a hellish megapolis that, although the centre of the Soviet empire, is marked by decay and provincialism. His odyssey through Moscow is marked with stops at

New Prototypes – The Sick Soul  71

shabby spaces that are not so much pubs as designated areas at which the sovok is to become intoxicated; the city strategically features such drinking spots to help maintain Soviet citizens in a zombie-like condition. One such place is the beer hall on Fonvizin Street: пивбар на Фонвізіна, якась незбагненна конструкція, збірна-розбірна піраміда, щось наче ангар посеред великого азійського пустиря, зарослого першою травневою лободою. Ангар для пияків. Звідси вони вилітають на бойові чергування. І поміститися їх тут може кілька тисяч. Ціла пияцька дивізія зі своїми генералами, полковниками, лейтенантами і, як ти, салабонами.9 [the beer hall on Fonvizin Street, an incomprehensible construct, a Lego pyramid, something like a hangar in the middle of a great Asiatic wasteland overgrown with the first May weeds. A hangar for the drunks. From here they fly out on patrol missions. And it can fit a few thousand of them. An entire drunken division with its own generals, colonels, lieutenants, and newbies, just like you.]10

Otto tries to rise above this enforced zombie status and dreams up various grand projects for Ukrainian culture. In the end, however, he is unable to survive in the absurd Soviet world without inebriation; he is dependent on alcohol to keep him from developing a sober view of this world, which might lead him to insanity. Of the many overtones of Venedikt Erofeev’s Moskva-Petushki (Moscow-Petushki) found in Moskoviada, the notion of an intellectual using alcohol to escape the Soviet world in order to prevent the onset of madness is perhaps the most significant. This was a form of escape chosen by many intellectuals in the post-Thaw Soviet Union. Also echoing Erofeev in Moskoviada is the idea of the protagonist’s stratification of different ‘layers’ of alcohol in his body as the novel progresses: Тим часом подумки робиш поздовжній розтин себе самого. Так, вочевидь, легше зосередитися й дійти до суті. Отже, на самому споді маємо пиво. Літрів так із три-чотири жовтого каламутного напою, звареного спеціально для пролетаріату. Поверх нього теплий і червоний шар вина. Там зароджуються горотворчі процеси, це вулканні глибини. Далі йде порівняно вузький, зупинений десь на рівні середини стравоходу, шар горілки. Це дуже активний проміжок у сенсі біологічному. В певний момент він може виявитися каталізатором

72 Chaos великих оновлювальних тенденцій. Це, власне кажучи, вибухівка. Понад горлікою, ближче до горлянки, залягає кавеен – ’крєпкій віноградний напіток.’ У разі виверження ти фонтануватимеш найперше ним. Він смердючий і бурий, як нафта.  Отака, в найзагальніших рисах, ця схема твоєї внутрішньої порожнечі. Про кров та все інше поки що мовчимо.11 [Meanwhile, you mentally conduct a lengthwise autopsy of yourself. This, it seems, will make it easier to concentrate and get to the essence. So then, at the very bottom we have beer – about three or four litres of a yellow, murky drink, brewed especially for the proletariat. Above it is a warm and red layer of wine. There, tectonic processes are initiated; these are volcanic depths. Next, there is a relatively narrow layer of vodka rising about halfway up the oesophagus. This is a very active layer, in a biological sense. At a certain moment it can become a catalyst for great innovative tendencies. It is, in other words, gunpowder. Above the vodka, closer to the throat, lies KVN – ’fortified grape drink.’12 In the event of an eruption, this is the first thing you spew out, like a fountain. It’s smelly and brown, like petroleum.  And this, in general, is the blueprint of your inner emptiness. We won’t mention blood and everything else, for now.]

Otto’s list of various alcoholic drinks serves as a review of the novel’s actions to that point and reveals alcohol’s function in suppressing serious thought; it also hints at the danger in alcohol’s potential to total engulfing an individual. Like Zabuzhko, Kostiantyn Moskalets9 believes that his people are psychologically sick. And like Andrukhovych’s protagonists, Moskalets’ intellectuals attempt to escape the depressing reality of everyday life in Ukraine through alcohol. The paralyzing state of alcoholism into which the Ukrainian intellectual is often driven forms a major theme in Moskalets9’s novel Vechirnii med (Evening Mead). The intellectual bohemians presented in this novel’s first part hail from the 1980s L9viv underground cultural scene and are unable to adjust to, and function in, post-Soviet Ukraine. Moskalets9 portrays them as vagrants who steer all of their collective brain power into determining how to get yet another bottle of alcohol. Drinking appears early on the pages of Vechirnii med; a flashback to Soviet times contains a scene in which the narrator is celebrating his seventeenth birthday by sharing a bottle of wine with his childhood friend Vovchyk. At this young age, alcohol offers a seemingly harmless conduit for the world gradual opening up to a teenager:

New Prototypes – The Sick Soul  73 Я зробив кілька ковтків, віддав пляшку Вовчикові і теж закурив. Дим був дуже синій. Світ був дуже гарний. Світові виповнювалося сімнадцять років і він охоче виявляв усі ознаки досконалості. Вино цьому сприяло. Мороз на ніч кріпшав.13 [I took down a couple of gulps, passed the bottle to Vovchyk and also lit up a cigarette. The smoke was very blue. The world was very beautiful. The world was turning seventeen years old and it eagerly revealed all signs of its perfection. Wine served to help this process. The frost was hardening for the night.]

They jokingly drink to an implausible future when their friend from the Ukrainian underground cultural scene will be the editor of a journal in whose pages their poems will be published. When their celebration is joined by another colleague and they proceed to a bar, the narrator is revolted by the noisy barflies and the recurring drinking rituals that he encounters there and chooses to vacate the bar on his own. Moskalets9 provides this flashback to innocence and hope in order to contrast it with scenes set in post-Soviet Ukraine, such as the following one, in which the narrator and his friends, now themselves stuck in the middle of a perpetual drinking cycle, meet on a L9viv street: – Прив’єт, бухарі! – життєрадісно кричить готовий Бампер. – Троцький, ти коли прийдеш вікна малювати? – Пішли вже! – спалахує готовністю готовий Троцький. – Нє, не вже. Хочеш бухнути? Я ставлю. Ще не вечір. Ще не вже. Завтра зранку. – Ти здурів, Бампер, – скрушно хитає головою Троцький. – Скільки разів я тобі казав: не пий так багато. І ось ти здурів. – Чого це раптом я здурів? – замислюється Бампер. – А того, що завтра зранку ми будемо лікуватися в лікарні, яка називається ‘Українські справи’. Там стоятимуть крапельниці з пивом і ампули з п о р т ю ш е ю. [‘Howdy fellow alkies! A loaded Bumper shouts elatedly. ‘Trots9kyi, when are you going to come over to paint the windows?’ ‘Let’s get out of here – now!’ says a loaded Trots9kyi, his load all ablaze. ‘No, not now.’ ‘Let’s have a drink? I’m buying.’ ‘There’s still time, it’s not evening yet.’ ‘It’s not now yet.’ ‘How about tomorrow morning?’

74 Chaos ‘You’ve gone nuts, Bumper,’ Trots9kyi shakes his head in disappointment. ‘How many times have I told you: do not drink so much. And you see, now you’ve gone nuts.’ ‘Why is it that all of a sudden I have gone nuts?’ Bumper ponders. ‘Because tomorrow morning we’ll be undergoing medical treatment at the hospital that has the name ‘Ukrainian Affairs.’ They have IVs filled with beer and ampoules filled with s w e e t s w e e t p o r t.’]

Here, what initially seems to be a scene in which friends are simply arranging to go have a drink together slowly transforms into something far more serious. Periodic allusions to the medical world demonstrate Moskalets9’s acknowledgment that these men are all ill. As the scene progresses, their damaged mental state becomes increasingly evident: І тут перед ними зненацька виникає або ж утворюється ‘Нектар’, під яким сидять дуже блідий Дем і дуже червоний Бєлов. – Дем, здорів! – кричить Бампер. – Хочеш бухнути? Я ставлю. Дем мовчить. – Йому необхідно бухнути, – спокійно пояснює Бєлов. – Йому п е р е м к н у л о і він уже три години поспіль мовчить. – Хто поспіль піде в гастронім?! – кричить Бампер. – Ми будемо поспіль рятувати Дема чи ні, поспіль я вас? – Бaмпер, не кричи, – тихо каже Господь Крішна. – Я сходжу, хіба не кричи. – Малчать, я вас поспіль спрашиваю! – несамовитіє Бампер. – Давай б а б к и, – зітхає Крішна. Бампер дістає б а б к и і починає рахувати. Б а б о к дуже багато, виходить по три фляшки п о р т ю ш і на писок. Бєлов і навіть Троцький перезираються – це занадто, але вже пізно.14 [And then out of nowhere ‘The Nectar’ bar rises up, or, maybe, is created, right in front of them; sitting by its entrance are a very pale Dem and a very red Bielov. ‘Wasssup Dem, you nut!’ yells Bumper. ‘You wanna have a drink? I’m buying.’ Dem doesn’t say anything. ‘He’s gotta have a drink,’ calmly explains Bielov. ‘He’s f l i p p e d o u t and hasn’t said a word for three hours in a row.’15 ‘Who in a row is gonna go to the store?!’ shouts Bumper. ‘Are we going to in a row save Dem or not, you in a row fuckers?’

New Prototypes – The Sick Soul  75 ‘Stop yelling, Bumper,’ Lord Krishna says quietly. ‘I’ll go, just stop yelling.’ ‘Shut up, I in a row command you!’ says Bumper, becoming frantic. ‘Give me t h e d o u g h,’ Krishna sighs. Bumper gets t h e d o u g h and starts counting it. There’s a lot of d o u g h, it’ll come out to three bottles of s w e e t s w e e t p o r t per kisser. Bielov and even Trots9kyi stop to think – maybe that’s too much, but it’s too late.]

Although this scene is quite humorous, Moskalets9 is now presenting his narrator and his bohemian colleagues as seriously addicted to alcohol. The Nectar, the favourite bar for these men, consistently appears throughout the novel both physically as well as in their conversations and thoughts. Here, Moskalets9 depicts the bar as having a life of its own and alludes to the fact that its presence is beyond the control of his characters. Later in the novel, Moskalets9 parallels the perpetual loop of alcoholism with the daily meandering of a man with no place in society. In that scene, one of the narrator’s fellow bohemians, Lord Krishna, desperately tries to break through a frontier in old L9viv that he has constructed in his own mind but that he blames on an imagined demon: Господь Крішна заблукав; це була дуже хитра пастка, змайстрована демоном Ватсасурою у просторі між Галицьким ринком, вулицею Сербською і Ринком. Господь Крішна змучився, і охляв, його нутрощі випалювала лісова пожежа, його вірні і незрадливі друзі Дем, Троцький та Бампер розчинилися в сяйливому океані під назвою ‘па-пa’, він ушосте виходив до зупинки тридцять шостої маршрутки, …16 [Lord Krishna got lost; he was stuck in a very clever snare, which had been fashioned by the demon Vatsasura, and stretched between the Galician Market, Serbian Street and Rynok Square. Lord Krishna became tired and weak, his insides were burning up in a forest fire, his trustworthy and loyal friends Dem, Trots’kyi and Bumper melted away into that lustrous ocean known as ‘bye-bye,’ for the sixth time now he walked to the spot where bus #36 stops, …]

Unable to extricate himself from this loop, Lord Krishna mistakes a statue for his friend Stefko and begs him for help in escaping his addiction. Another bohemian from this group, Trots9kyi, is even more ill. His alcoholism has advanced to a stage where he has serious hallucinations. He, too, tries to escape his sickness, which he imagines to be a squirrel

76 Chaos

following him around L9viv.17 He believes that he is also being chased by Smetana, a recently deceased friend and fellow alcoholic: єдиною, кого побоювався і сердечно шанував Троцький, була білочка; білочка мала пухнастого хвостика і чотири лапки, метке доброзичливе звіря з кришталевою чарочкою на срібній таці; він приручив її років зо п’ять тому, але досі не міг навтішатися з надзвичайного розуму білочки та її дружелюбності. Вона часто навідувала Троцького в найнесподіваніших місцях – у кльозеті, в підземному переході, в трамваї, в ліжку; інколи вона вискакувала на столик у ‘Нектарі’, часом пробігала по прилавку в підвалі ‘Під Вежею’ … Троцький їхав, дрімав і мляво думав про кохання білочки до бодуна, коли хтось енергійно постукав у трамвайну шибку; Троцький розплющив одне око і побачив, що то Сметана; Сметана помер два роки тому, отруївшись антифризом і Троцький чудово про це знав, але йому стало якось ледь-ледь трохи не по собі.18 [the only thing Trots9kyi feared and truly respected was the white squirrel; the white squirrel had a puffy tail and four paws, a jittery, well-intentioned animal carrying a crystal shot glass on a silver tray. He tamed it about five years ago but still hadn’t gotten his fill of its extraordinary wisdom and companionship. It would often visit Trots9kyi in the most unexpected places – in the bathroom, in underground passages, in the streetcar, in bed; sometimes it would jump up onto the table at The Nectar bar, sometimes it would run along the bar in the basement of ‘By the Tower’ … Trots9kyi kept riding, napping and sleepily pondering the white squirrel’s love for the hangover until someone vigorously knocked on the streetcar window; Trots9kyi opened one eye and saw that it was Smetana; Smetana died two years ago, having poisoned himself with antifreeze, and Trots9kyi was well-aware of this but, nonetheless, became uneasy.]

Both Lord Krishna and Trots9kyi are delusional men who respond to their marginalization by destructing themselves; this adds the sense of a vicious circle that Moskalets9 continually induces in this novel. The more these intellectuals fade from society’s respect, the more they act in a deviant and anti-social manner and, thus, end up themselves fleeing from society. Moskalets9 presents the reader with an entire group of self-destructive and damaged intellectuals. They are unable to function normally in society – they are abnormal. This abnormality, or sickness, is an invariant in the prose of the Eighties Writers, but the two writers

New Prototypes – The Sick Soul  77

who most directly explore the idea of sickness in their works are Iurii Gudz9 and Iurii Izdryk. Gudz9 considers his novel Ne-My (Not-us) to be an anamnesis and the history of the illness of a literary text that has swallowed up its author.19 One of the first things that a protagonist, the writer Oksentii Vava, does after being introduced in the novel is faint – upon waking he suffers from amnesia and is unable to recall his identity. Later, the story of Liuka, a sick young man who is being treated at a psychiatric hospital, unfolds. Liuka is an unusually creative individual who writes countless letters that he never sends, but instead tapes up on the walls of the asylum. In fact, it is implied that Liuka’s parents committed him to the mental institution because of these letters. The narrator ends up being Liuka’s neighbour; he comes to help the young man hang his letters (this time on the ceiling, so that Liuka can see them while lying in bed) and talks to him while they are both still committed. Eventually they both re-enter the ‘normal’ world: Десь за тиждень по нашій розмові хлопця виписали з лікарні. Після сеансів ЕКТ він нічим уже не відрізнявся від нормальних людей – ні своєю пам’яттю, ні своїм забуттям … На осінь вийшов і я. Давно очікувана свобода виявилася лише призабутою (і такою солодкою на перших порах) самотою …20 [About a week after our conversation the boy was released from the hospital. After several ECT21 procedures the boy was no different than normal people – with what he remembered and what he forgot … And that autumn I too was released. This long-awaited freedom turned out to be nothing but barely forgotten (and such a sweet, at first) loneliness …]

Vasyl9 Gabor believes that Ne-My concerns ‘the great and tragic love of an individual who is closed off from the world not only by the walls of the insane asylum but by the borders of his own text.’22 Illness is, in fact, at the core of this novel. Gudz9 connects text and body throughout the novel and demonstrates that the sick state of one represents the sick state of the other. Thus, mind, body, and text are found to be in a state of abnormality. Illness figures prominently in both of Izdryk’s novels Votstsek

78 Chaos

(Wozzeck) and Podviinyi Leon (Double Leon). As part of the general exploration of the self that is a central theme in Votstsek, pain is utilized as a means of attempting to locate and register the body, and thereby establish its connection with the mind. From the novel’s first lines it is clear that Izdryk’s protagonist is ill – the first two subchapters are entitled, respectively, ‘The Return of Pain’ and ‘Categories of Pain,’ and the novel begins with the sentence ‘The pain returned at night.’ For Votstsek, sleep provides a temporary respite from pain that concludes when one awakens: Однак повернення видавалося невідворотним. І повернення означало тільки біль. Тепер лише це. Біль тепер заміняв йому увесь світ. Цілий світ був болем, – він прислухався, – і це був не найкращий його різновид.23 [But return seemed inevitable. And return meant only pain. Only pain now. Pain now substituted for the whole world. The whole world was pain. He listened and found that this was not pain at its best.]24

In a further exploration of the relationship between mind and body, Votstsek tries to categorize pain (with his mind) and find a physical position (with his body) in order to minimize the aching: Потрібно було віднайти ту одну-єдину позу, той один-єдиний кут, те одне-єдине співвідношення нахилу тіла й голови та розміщення кінцівок, коли наставала хитка, майже нереальна рівновага земного тяжіння, артеріального тиску і млявої стійкості спиноталамного каната, і коли ненависне горішане ядро мозку застигало в короткочасній невагомості поміж раєм кураре і раєм вогню.25 [He had to find that single pose, that sole angle, that one-and-only relationship between the inclination of the body and the head and the placement of the limbs at which gravity, arterial pressure and the weak firmness of the spinothalmic cord achieved an unstable and almost unreal equilibrium, and the hateful kernel that was the brain frozen in short-lived weightlessness between the paradise of curare and the paradise of fire.]26

While his brain sifts through a melange of Ukrainian and Western popcultural artefacts and samples different existential philosophies, Votstsek’s body is barely able to move or act. When he finally does act on

New Prototypes – The Sick Soul  79

his plan – to lock up his wife and children in a basement in order to save them from the outside world before performing self-immolation in a downtown square – he is stopped by the police and taken in for psychiatric evaluation. In the protagonist Votstsek, Izdryk presents an individual existing almost exclusively on the intellectual level. His only physical actions are being evaluated by a doctor in order to determine whether he is mentally responsible for them. Without responsibility for his actions, this man lacks a key component of identity. Izdryk’s protagonist is a non-hero, an intellectual game, a combination of marks on paper. He serves no function in society, is unable to establish relationships with others, and exists mostly in a hallucinatory dreamworld inhabited by the thinly disguised grotesque forms of other intellectuals. Towards the end of the novel, Izdryk lists examples of the protagonist’s deteriorating health. It is disclosed that That One’s sight worsens to the point that he sees blind spots everywhere, rendering ‘absolutely, absolutely everything’ to be seen as flawed. The aging of his body is described in gruesome terms, and we are told that ‘alcohol had long ago began to take more than it gave.’ Once again, pain and sickness are used to recognize the body and try to link it to the self. While Izdryk’s Votstsek concentrates on pain, as one aspect of sickness, and the role that pain plays in defining the self, Podviinyi Leon focuses on sickness itself as a crucial component in defining an identity. Izdryk examines this state of being ‘not-normal’ or ‘not-the-same’ and how it contributes a sense of otherness to a person’s self-definition. That the novel is subtitled ‘The story of an illness’ is an early indicator that sickness will be one of its major themes; throughout the novel there are references to various ailments including epilepsy, mental illness, drug addiction, and alcoholism as well as such healing institutions and procedures as a sanatorium, a hospital, acupuncture, injections, and pharmaceuticals. Izdryk also dots the novel with the universal visual symbol for ‘handicapped’ and references Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. The particular illness that is key to this novel is schizophrenia, and Izdryk uses it to continue the exploration of the boundaries of the self conducted in Votstsek. The disease is also reflective of the fractured state of the Ukrainian identity, both before and after its postmodern deconstruction. As Leonid Kosovych writes, ‘it becomes increasingly evident that “double Leon” is, in essence, the monad that found itself in a temporally materialized reality, painfully suffering its imposed partition.’27

80 Chaos

The novel sees the impossibility of the absolute union of one self to another as a sickness that damages that self. In scenes of rehabilitation procedures undertaken by the protagonist there is an impending sense that the therapy provided is used to silence those who do not follow society’s norms. References to Kesey’s famous novel and to various brain-numbing drugs allude to a need by society to silence those it deems to be abnormal. Madness here is one that Michel Foucault would see as representing a minority status.28 With a need to question and analyse the norms that govern a society, the intellectual is prone to be considered abnormal. When asked by a psychiatrist why he abuses alcohol, among the reasons the protagonist offers are the following: По-друге, в моєму середовищі, – а це, якщо окреслити умовно, мистецька богема, – абстиненство – явище не тільки рідкісне а й, з дозволу сказати, – неприродне, штучне. Митець більш ніж будь-яка людина потребує іноді відійти від реальності, навіть якщо та створена ним самим. Все ж краще досягти цього з допомогою алкоголю, аніж, скажімо, наркотиків.29 [Secondly, in my social group – which is, figuratively speaking, the artbohemian scene – abstinence – is a phenomenon not only rare but, I must say, – unnatural, fake. An artist, more than any other person, sometimes needs to escape reality, even if he has created it himself. It is, nonetheless, better to achieve this with the help of alcohol than with narcotics.]

Here, Izdryk, in essence, implies that alcoholism is inevitable for the artist, as is the need to escape both real and fictional worlds. And, despite the presence of Izdryk’s characteristic wit, a gloomy decadence hangs over this book, and extends to its back cover where the author confesses that this book should never have been written. Adopting a gynaecological metaphor, he concludes that Шкода, звичайно, що немовля виявилося мертвонародженим. Ця книга жила, поки не виявилася записаною. Тепер – це чергова маленька стосторінкова труна, яку доведеться, мабуть, разом із іншим мотлохом таргати на спині аж до Судного Дня.30 [It’s a shame that this infant appeared stillborn. This book lived up to the point it was written. And now, it’s just another, little, one hundred page

New Prototypes – The Sick Soul  81 coffin, which, as it turns out, I’ll have to carry on my back, together with other rubbish, all the way to Judgment Day.]

Again, Izdryk discloses his contempt for the written word, clothing it with images of death. Concurrently, he conveys the futility of a writer in trying to escape from this torturous condition, once burdened with such a calling.There are numerous examples of the prevalence of the sick intellectual protagonist in the prose of the Eighties Writers. Whether driven by a need to harness this malady, like Zabuzhko, or allowing it to infect an individual’s every pore, like Izdryk, the great number of intellectuals in these prose works that are depicted as being sick, combined with the intensity applied by the authors in establishing their illness or abnormality to the reader, renders the ‘sick soul’ a new prototype of the Ukrainian intellectual in Ukrainian prose. What needs to be asked is: why do these writers feel the need to present the Ukrainian intellectual in such a way within a movement of euphoria and stimulating intellectual freedom? Again, it can partially be explained as a return to the modernist depiction of the tortured intellectual, which was forbidden during the era of socialist realism and was subsequently replaced by a positive intellectual role model; Ukrainian intellectuals of the 1960s, 70s, and most of the 80s could not officially write about the alienation and abnormal status they experienced at that time, but they were free to do so in post-Soviet Ukraine. It is also, however, symbolic of the general state of disorientation and chaos that engulfed Ukraine together with euphoria, which, in turn, had propagated the ideas of instability and flux as part of a general attack on the indentured structures and frameworks that had existed for decades. Additionally, a sense of disappointment was experienced by these intellectuals because the new, free Ukraine that was emerging was one with a society and government that once again actively marginalized them or, at best, ignored them.

5 A Return to the Margins

Сучасні діти потребують інших мам, здатних, якщо треба, лаштувати, якщо треба, заплатити, якщо треба, то й витягти з поганої історії. дже на сучасних татусів надії немає. [Today’s children need a new type of mother, one who is able to sort things out, if necessary, to pay somebody off, if necessary and, if necessary, to pull them out of a bad situation. Because one cannot depend on today’s daddies.] Ievheniia Kononenko, Imitatsiia

Disillusionment As the years of Ukrainian statehood advanced, the social position of Ukrainian intellectuals and the Ukrainian language shifted away from the centre, and the intellectual once again inhabited the margins. The ability to abandon one’s past proved to be a valuable skill in the new Ukraine. In a list of comparisons, literary critic Oleksandr Boichenko contrasts the ‘era of festivals’ in Ukraine with the one that followed it: держава встигла здійснити перехід від рекреації до перверзії, від червоної рути до червоної ностальгії, від карнавалу до посткарнавального безглуздя, від епохи джазу до великої депресії, від національної романтики до есенгешного цинізму …1 [the country was successful in carrying out the transition from recreations to perversion, from the red rue to red nostalgia, from carnival to post-car-

A Return to the Margins  83 nival absurdity, from the Jazz Age to the Great Depression, from national romanticism to Common Economic Space cynicism …]

Cleverly borrowing elements and artefacts from both the Ukrainian and world cultural arsenal, Boichenko pairs terms associated with energy, freedom, revelry, and performance (representing euphoria in Ukraine) with terms that elicit negative impressions of decay, doubt, and disarray (representing chaos in Ukraine). Particularly sharp is his comparison of the once very popular Chervona Ruta (Red rue) festival with the emergence of ‘red nostalgia.’ It touches on the brevity of the euphoric tendency. A longing for the stability of Soviet life came right on the heels of mass gatherings celebrating its demise. The government that gradually solidified its power in 1990s Ukraine ignored the vision of Ukraine held by its intellectuals. Instead of resisting continued Russification and supporting the Ukrainian language and culture, the Ukrainian government preferred to adopt a laissezfaire approach to cultural politics. Mykola Riabchuk points out that the individuals who had assumed power in post-Soviet Ukraine came, for the most part, from a segment of society whose identity can be termed ‘Soviet.’ Products of the Soviet strategy of creating a populace ambivalent towards national identity (yet heavily Russophilic) possessing a rootlessness that led them to be easily manipulated and controlled, these individuals had difficulty identifying with the version of Ukraine propagated by its nationally minded intellectuals.2 And this type of post-Soviet Ukrainian self-identity describes a large part of Ukraine’s inhabitants. The emergence of a Ukrainian national consciousness in many such ‘Soviet’ Ukrainians as part of the euphoric movement was soon smothered by ill-advised, half-hearted, and generally superficial official strategies of so-called Ukrainization. The average Ukrainian that emerged in the post-Soviet period continued to see himself as a Soviet citizen, albeit in a modified, geographically defined post-Communist ‘Ukrainian’ version. Halyna Pahutiak, who belongs to the Eighties Writers, doles out blame for the sad state of affairs in post-Soviet Ukraine and, not surprisingly, finds the status of the Ukrainian language at the root of the problem: Усі щаблі влади окупувла мафія недержавної та нерідної мови, що опирається на занепад культурно-освітнього середовища, який спричинила корумпованість у сфері політики й економіки. Насамперед

84 Chaos вона компрометує небажану мову, вилущуючи з неї благородні зерна високого стилю, у чому їй допоміг певною мірою ‘пофігізм’ інтелектуалів постмодернізму. Вона присилає своїх васалів (які зрадили не лише рідну мову) на львівські сцени, робить ‘неформатними’ україномовних митців, а неосвічену публіку щедро пригощає вульгарними коміками, яким платять шалені гроші за суржик.3 [All rungs of government were occupied by the non-national and nonnative language mafia, which is founded upon the demise of the culturaleducational environment; this was caused by corruption in the political and economic sphere. Firstly, it imperils the undesired language and husks the noble seeds of its elevated style, assisted, to a certain extent, by the ‘apathy’ of the intellectuals of postmodernism. It sends its vassals (who betrayed more than just the native language) onto L9viv stages, makes Ukrainian-language artists ‘incompatible for broadcast formats,’ serves the uneducated public vulgar comedians who are paid enormous amounts of money for their surzhyk.]

In this excerpt, Pahutiak equates surzhyk (a mix of the Ukrainian and Russian languages spoken throughout Ukraine) with the government, wealth, and organized crime, while the Ukrainian language is associated with eminence, high culture, and decency. According to her, the Ukrainian language, though it possesses estimable metaphysical qualities, is once again absent in the centres of power in Ukraine. It is also important to note that she assigns culpability for this sorry state to the promoters of Ukrainian postmodernism. In her view, by theoretically attacking the idea of structure, postmodernism impeded any attempts at Ukrainization in post-Soviet Ukraine – a process that finally had the chance to be implemented. Interestingly, Pahutiak also points out that the public stage that was ‘owned’ by Ukrainian culture in the euphoric movement now features the non-Ukrainian and even the anti-Ukrainian. Interviewed in 2001, poet and aspiring political figure Volodymyr Tsybul9ko placed much of the blame for the bad political-cultural situation squarely on the shoulders of his generation of intellectuals, the Eighties Writers: Біда в тому, що це покоління поза літературою не реалізувалося повноцінно майже ніде … в українській політичній системі, в системі визнаних державою цінностей це покоління ніяк не фігурує, не кажучи вже про вплив на прийняття державних рішень. Ось що є справжнь-

A Return to the Margins  85 ою втратою.4 [The real misfortune is that this generation did not really establish itself anywhere except in literature … in the Ukrainian political system, in the system of values recognized by the government, this generation has no say, without having to mention any influence on government policy. This is the real loss.]

Tsybul9ko touches on an important point – the fact that the intellectuals and the government do not share a set of values. Without a common set of principles and ideals, intellectuals cannot expect those in power to respond to their concerns; different values render intellectuals with a view of the Ukrainian identity that is different from that of the centre, which only contributes to their marginality. Kostiantyn Rodyk, an analyst of the book publishing industry in Ukraine, believes that a public for early 1990s anti-establishment literature never did properly develop. In his opinion, Ukrainian literature was unable to resist the flood of Russian literature, and the publishing of Ukrainian literature was consequently stalled. Rodyk writes: ‘In this manner, new Ukrainian literature, after several years of existing in a publication vacuum, obtained the status of an exotic literature from the “third world” in its own country.’5 He correlates this with the birth of the ‘period of the anthology’ in Ukrainian literature. In the mid- to late 1990s, anthologies of Ukrainian literature formed the lion’s share of publications of contemporary Ukrainian literature. Very few authors could claim to have had their works published exclusively in a book, and anthologies acted as a transitional medium for the literature of the Eighties Writers from literary journals to eventual, single-author publications. In his seminal The Treason of the Intellectuals, which examines the role of the intellectual in society, Julien Benda warned about small European nations publishing anthologies of poetry that are largely works of nationalist propaganda and only very rarely products of actual thought.6 But in Ukraine, this was the only manner in which this literature could be published; the Ukrainian government did very little to support the publication of the country’s literature and its distribution. The literature of the Eighties Writers did not reflect the ‘nationalist’ agenda that the government wanted to propagate; as Rodyk correctly points out, this literature was introduced to society as something unusual and strange. Benda had also predicted that as the twentieth century progressed, intellectuals would gradually become absorbed by the power structures

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of a country, thereby jeapordizing their important role as free, open critics of the government. In post-Soviet Ukraine, the Eighties Writers did indeed fade from the public eye. This, however, transpired not because they became subservient to the government, but because their views on Ukrainian identity were incompatible with the views of those who had rapidly accumulated political power. With Ukrainian intellectuals once again marginalized (this time in post-Soviet Ukraine), who now formed the new status quo? Who, for the Homo sovieticus of the past, were the heroes of everyday post-Soviet Ukraine? A new stratum of society to emerge in the country was composed of semi-legal businessmen. These were often individuals who were well placed in the Party-controlled Soviet world and had taken advantage of their influence in the chaos that ensued after the Soviet Union’s collapse. As the 1990s progressed, this social class expanded in Ukraine into several substrata, and its members came to affect most aspects of daily life in Ukraine. This expansion and a general movement towards legitimacy by these individuals led to the emergence of a sort of middle class in post-Soviet Ukraine. Society now had new role models who had undergone a seemingly effortless transition from loyal, aspiring Komsomol leaders into materialistic businessmen championing capitalism; in post-Soviet Ukraine, the average sovok is often impressed with the high standards of living and power achieved by such individuals, justifying the dubious means by which they obtained their success as a reward for knowing how to exploit a system that is geared against its own subjects. Such individuals flourish in this new society and exert substantial influence on the identity and cultural milieu of the country. As an expression of their disappointment with the way Ukrainian society developed, the Eighties Writers have often portrayed this society negatively, deploring what they see as a hyper-materialistic, pop culture-consuming, and nationalistically ambivalent people. Their ability to discard personal convictions that they had professed earlier and to assume new ideals easily is presented as a weakness in character. The preponderance of change that formed the world around them, and which the Eighties Writers had themselves championed and helped facilitate, led some of these writers to explore change as a topic in their writing. Volodymyr Dibrova’s Burdyk features several secondary characters who adjust their principles according to the particular ideologies dominant at a given time. The writer describes such characters at different stages of their various transformations in considerable depth. In an ear-

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lier sketch, entitled ‘Autobiography,’ Dibrova reveals that he has always been intrigued by the idea of change and its effect on identity: Але одного разу за певних обставин мені відкрилося все: що Бог є, що не слід їсти м’яса, що я, немов Будда, завжди є і буду у вічному нині, і що моє «Я» не обмежується даним тілом службовця та мешканця вулиці Імені Роковин Вихідного Дня, а міцно сидить у моїх нащадках та предках, в той час, як вони, відповідно, сидять у мені. Відтоді я переродився і став новою людиною. Втім стара людина зовсім не зникла, а лиш причаїлася, бо боротьба між новим та старим – це і є джерело мого розвитку. Кожного ранку у своїх тисячах перевтілень, які ланцюгом обіп’яли, ми прокидаємося. Якщо все гаразд і нічого не муляє, то нова людина каже: мамо! Якщо ж навпаки, то стара каже: бля!7 [But one day, something must have happened – I saw the light: that God exists, that one shouldn’t eat meat, that I, like Buddha, always am and will be in the eternal now, and that my ‘I’ is not restricted to this particular body – that of a worker and dweller of the Beloved Red Flag Day Street – but, instead, sits firmly in my descendents and ancestors, while they, in turn, sit in me. From that time on I experienced a rebirth and became a new person. The old person, however, did not disappear but lurked on because the battle between the old and the new – this is the source of my development. We wake up every morning bound chain-like by all of our thousands of incarnations. If everything is okay and nothing bugs me then the new person says: mommy! Otherwise, that old one says: fuck!]

Change is something that also concerns Dibrova’s Ukrainian intellectual protagonist Burdyk throughout the novel. Towards the end of the novel, while Burdyk remains in his self-imposed exile on a hill above the Dnieper River, he ponders, ‘If I am eventually successful in disposing of that which is an inseparable part of my “I,” then what’s going to happen to me?’8 When Burdyk finally does descend and once more enters society, he notices that, while he was gone, the world has markedly changed. For the intellectuals in the prose of the Eighties Writers, a sense of disappointment with post-Soviet Ukrainian society also stems from the fact that many Ukrainians chose to leave Ukraine at the earliest opportunity. With Ukraine becoming an increasingly open society during glasnost and with the ultimate achievement of independence in 1991, these emigrants (among them other intellectuals) fled Ukraine at a time when the Ukrainian intellectual and Ukraine finally had emerged from a margin-

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alized existence. Thus, in a sense, they flee because they do not identify with the euphoric movement in Ukraine, which was largely led by these intellectuals. In the works of Dibrova, Zabuzhko, Kononenko, and Moskalets9 we often encounter characters or allusions to characters that emigrate from Ukraine. The fact that such emigration is often described by a term such as vyrvavsia (escaped) demonstrates the motivation and energy imbued into such relocation and also comments on the locale left behind. And like changing ideals, emigration as change is seen as a betrayal of any roots in, or concern for, one’s homeland; it is symptomatic of the lack of a stable Ukrainian identity. This notion of betrayal serves to widen the gap between these intellectuals and society, activating in the former a sense of ‘not belonging.’ This sense is further propagated when one looks at the status held by the Ukrainian language in postSoviet Ukraine. With Ukraine’s achievement of independence, it seemed that the country finally had the opportunity to halt the centuries-long period of Russification and begin moving the Ukrainian language away from its peripheral social status. The secondary status of the Ukrainian language in Soviet society had marginalized anyone who actively and publicly used this language in most urban centres in Ukraine; any bond with the Ukrainian language had to be shed in order to advance in Soviet society. Those who persisted in using Ukrainian in urban centres were often treated as hicks, nationalists, or oddities. In Burdyk, Volodymyr Dibrova provides several scenes demonstrating how both Burdyk and the narrator (both Ukrainian intellectuals) were accepted by the average Soviet citizen in the Ukrainian SSR’s capital. In the wake of a divorce from his wife, Burdyk sets out to save the Ukrainian language from continued Russification. While he’s running errands in Kyiv, he conscientiously (at times to comic extremes) uses older Ukrainian words in place of those from contemporary Soviet Ukrainian. Overheard asking a fellow subway passenger for directions in Ukrainian, Burdyk is approached by two men who, speaking surzhyk and trying to resolve a bet, ask him: ‘Are you a Baptist or a nationalist?’9 Upon being informed that the winner gets to beat him up, Burdyk decides that from then on he would be better off serving the Ukrainian language not on the street but ‘on paper.’ A similar attitude is encountered by the novel’s narrator, who states that, ‘To remain a Ukrainian in the city is impossible. Because everything that surrounds you is in a different language.’10 Oksana Zabuzhko describes the Eighties Writers as a generation of Ukrainian intellectuals that didn’t experience a natural, native linguistic

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environment.11 In most of Ukraine, speaking in Ukrainian made you different, uncultured, and unintelligent in the eyes of society. To choose to send your child to a Ukrainian-language school in Soviet Ukraine was considered impractical and even foolish. Mykola Riabchuk recalls an incident in Kyiv in 1985 when a Ukrainian woman, who had become Russified after moving to the city, overheard him and his wife speaking to their child in Ukrainian and commented, with concern, ‘Why are you ruining that child’s life?’12 During the movement of euphoria in the late 1980s and early 1990s the Ukrainian language was associated with change and at the centre of celebrations marking the end of the Soviet Union. However, as the din of the celebrations faded, so did the presence of the Ukrainian language in the construction of the new country known as Ukraine. Although the status of the Ukrainian language had risen somewhat in independent Ukraine, it was still branded with negative, Soviet-era stereotypes by a majority of the population. In the social hierarchy of post-colonial Ukraine, Ukrainian-language speakers continue to represent an eccentric other. It is this otherness, as seen by the centre, that forms a crucial element in the Ukrainian intellectual’s identity. And a specific form of discord, one existing between male and female Ukrainian intellectuals, serves to alienate these Ukrainians from one another as well. ‘Nevyliublena Zhinka’ – The Incompatibility of Ukrainian Female and Male Intellectuals The relationships between female Ukrainian intellectuals and their male counterparts is a prevailing topic in the works of Oksana Zabuzhko and Ievheniia Kononenko, and it is precisely the incompatibility of the Ukrainian intellectual female and the Ukrainian intellectual male that constitutes their specific focus. Although such an incompatibility is also present to a degree in the works of the male Eighties Writers, it hardly figures as prominently as it does in the prose of Zabuzhko and Kononenko. This issue points the way towards two important concepts contributing to the identity of the Ukrainian intellectual and of Ukraine itself – femininity and fragmentation. The female protagonists in Pol9ovi doslidzhennia z ukrains9koho seksu, ‘Special Woman,’ and Imitatsiia (Imitation) are all intelligent and ambitious individuals who are connected to the world’s latest intellectual currents and who apply their talents and energies to improving the state of things in their native land; they are all post-Soviet intellectuals (writ-

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ers, scholars) surrounded by an atmosphere of political and cultural liberation coupled with the difficulties of adjusting to a changing personal world. At some point in these prose works, the women attempt to find a male Ukrainian intellectual who could serve as a compatible other, through which they could help form their own self and the identity of their shared nationality. The onset of euphoria promulgated an atmosphere of newness; it witnessed the emergence of a new generation of intellectuals and newfound intellectual opportunities. A swirl of revelry energized mass gatherings centred on Ukraine’s young creative talents, who purposefully and publicly flaunted sexuality and sexual themes that had been officially suppressed for years; a new phase of Ukraine’s history was to arise from this rapture, and it was to be initiated by these men and women for the good of future generations. In Pol9ovi doslidzhennia z ukrains9koho seksu, Zabuzhko’s protagonist sees children who were born into the Soviet system as being deformed. She then contrasts them with pre-Soviet Ukrainians (‘let me assure you, ladies and gentlemen, we were different’), describing the latter in a rather sentimental (‘formed by years of heavy work and God’s chisel’) list of Ukrainian physical attributes.13 She blames Ukraine’s tragic history for wiping out this elite and believes that if an ‘elite’ Ukrainian couple were to form today, and its partners were to mate, they would create an ‘elite breed’ of children. Writer and critic Nila Zborovs9ka recognizes this desire as a longing for a ‘noble maternity.’14 Zabuzhko’s generation of Ukrainian intellectuals was to have been the last one to suffer the indignities and frustrations of generations past: йолки-палки, та скільки нас узагалі є, тої нещасної, через силу, впоперек історії затриманої інтеліґенції вкраїнської, – горсточка, й та розпорошена: вмираючий вид, повигиблі клани, нам би розмножуватись шалено й повсякчас, кохаючись де лиш можна, з орґіастичною ненатлістю зливаючись в єдине, зойкаюче-стогнуче щастям кублище рук і ніг, встеляючи собою, заселяючи наново цю радіоактивну землю! – син, от він-то нарешті звільнений буде від того спадку, за який цілу молодість розплачувалися ми – так тяжко, що вже наче й сповна …15 [for Pete’s sake, how many of us really are there, that pitiful, fightingagainst-the-grain-of-history, inhibited, Ukrainian intelligentsia, – a handful, and even that is scattered, an endangered species, a clan that has vanished, we should be reproducing, passionately and incessantly, making love wherever it is possible with an orgiastic insatiability, flowing into one,

A Return to the Margins  91 screaming-moaning from happiness, nest of arms and legs, coating and populating anew this radioactive land, a son – he would finally be spared that inheritance, for which we paid for in our youth – so much so that it seems that we’ve paid it off …]

The idea of sex, of mating, is central to Zabuzhko’s novel. It provides an insatiable, frenetic, at times haphazard driving energy to its pace. More importantly, it is directly related to the author’s treatment of Ukrainians as a sick people in a sick nation. Zabuzhko’s people are damaged because their prospect of harmony and community has been violated by external forces. It is up to Ukrainians themselves, now given the opportunity to do so, to come to terms with their illness and set out righting their nation’s course. As an intellectual from this first ‘free generation,’ Zabuzhko’s protagonist travels to the West to collect possible antidotes to commence this healing process. Having paved the way to the West and been intellectually stimulated by her experiences there, she wants her lover, a painter from Ukraine, to come to the United States and join her in a voyage of discovery. As a Ukrainian absorbing a fascinating yet nonetheless strange West, she feels the need to share her interpretations of that world with someone who possesses the same complexes and concerns that she does; she wants Mykola, a male Ukrainian intellectual, to join her in developing the Ukrainian identity of the future. Like Zabuzhko’s protagonist, the heroine in Kononenko’s Imitatsiia, Mar’iana Khrypovych – a woman who, it is stated, ‘came into this world in order to deconstruct traditions and rituals’ – is an aggressive, passionate Ukrainian intellectual woman of the 1990s. A literary scholar and a poet, she nonetheless spends her days trying to pull her country out of backwardness and steer it onto a more progressive path. And like Zabuzhko’s heroine, Mar’iana also projects much of her energy towards the future – she works for a Western foundation based in Kyiv that helps support future generations of Ukrainian artists. Mar’iana’s circle of Kyiv intellectuals is a tight but not entirely loyal group of men and women who also form a twisted set of ex-lovers; Kononenko presents them as parts of one living organism – a sort of ghetto of Ukrainian intellectuals subsisting on Western funds in the country’s capital. Mar’iana is engaged to her boss at the Kyiv foundation, the American Jerry Bist, but is having an affair with Anatolii Sumtsov, a street violinist and music school teacher from Donets9k. Having grown up in Ukraine, Anatolii has much more in common with Mar’iana than Jerry does, and his

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work with children aligns him with other intellectuals of his generation who see themselves as pathfinders of Ukraine’s liberated future. At first, she courts Anatolii because of his access to potential musical prodigies outside the capital; she later crawls into bed with him and, in a letter to Anatolii, explains her interest in him: Ти питаєш, що я в тобі знайшла? Мені подобається, що в тебе, незважаючи на твоє бездарне життя, збереглися слух і смак. Ти не відбувся, так, але ти разом з тим нічого з себе не корчиш, нічого не імітуєш, і це також досить рідкий дар … А ще мені подобається урвище, над яким стоїть твій будиночок. І на вершині пагорбу Монмартр я не відчула того, що відчула біля гнилого паркана в твоєму садочку …16 [You’re asking what it is that I see in you? I like the fact that even though your life has been a failure, you maintained a good ear and good taste. You haven’t realized yourself, true, but you don’t show off, you don’t imitate anything, and this is a rather rare gift … And I also like the precipice by which your building stands. And on the peak of Montmarte I didn’t feel that which I felt standing next to the rotting fence in your orchard …]

A major theme in Imitatsiia, as the title hints, is the attempt to distinguish what is genuine and what is false – to expose what is an imitation. The provincial Anatolii is a breath of fresh air for the Kyivite Mar’iana, who has come to look with scorn at the circle to which she belongs. Anatolii represents a true intellectual, not yet bastardized by Western influences and the pretentiousness and faux elitism of the capital. These are characteristics that she has noticed in herself; although she claims to value money above all else and states that the only way to salvage a talent is to move to the West, she also realizes that there is a pureness in that which has not been affected by its influences. She tells Anatolii that music sounds better in his shabby apartment than in her flashy Kyiv flat. In Anatolii she sees a part of herself that she has allowed to gradually slip away in post-Soviet Ukraine. Despite their attempts, these fictional Ukrainian female intellectuals ultimately fail to form an idealistic union with their male counterparts. Whether the women become disappointed with these men (as is the case with Zabuzhko’s protagonist) or these women, themselves, are unwilling to commit (as is the case with Mar’iana), these couplings fail to come to fruition. Even in a post-Soviet Ukraine, where a Ukrainian elite would conceivably have the opportunity to develop freely, this does not

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occur. These men are not compatible with these women. The depictions of Ukrainian intellectual men, of both primary and secondary characters, in both Zabuzhko’s and Kononenko’s writings, declare the impossibility of such unions. Several times throughout her novel Zabuzhko refers to certain negative characteristics that she considers to be inherent in Ukrainian males. She describes post-Soviet Ukraine as a country composed of losers: але вдома, в твоїй бідній забембаній країні – країнi урядовців в обвислих штанях і всіяних лупою піджаках, оплилих письменників, зугарних читати лише однією мовою, та й з того вміння нестак-то вжиткуючих, і бистрооких, жучкуватих бізнесовців із навичками колишніх комсомольських секретарів …17 [but back home, in your poor, screwed up country – a country of public servants wearing baggy pants and with dandruff-sown suit jackets, corpulent writers who are only able to read in one language, and even that skill doesn’t get them much, and underhanded business types possessing the habits of former Komsomol secretaries …]

Later, she tells the story of her Kyiv friend Darka, and of the men in her life. Darka’s first husband had only married her in order to establish residency in the capital and then promptly abandoned her after graduating from university, her relationship with a second husband led to an abortion and resultant gynaecological problems, and her third husband was a timorous louse. Similar to Kononenko’s heroines, Darka was an intellectual having difficulty making ends meet before obtaining a position at an American-Ukrainian foundation. However, she died in an automobile accident just three months into her new job. The artist Mykola was to be an exception to this nation of male losers. Zabuzhko’s protagonist does not have to teach him Ukrainian, and he is ‘a winner’ – the first man whose initiative she respects. However, as a Ukrainian male, Mykola is endowed with those traditional negative traits that have developed over years of colonial existence, and he is unable to respect the narrator at a level even with himself. As Maryna Romanets correctly points out, ‘The author sees the roots of women’s subjugation not only in her society’s misogyny but also in men’s subservience under colonial and totalitarian rule, which emasculates them and thus subsumes the colonized into already existing gender relations. Under these conditions the authoritarian oppressive practices are

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re-directed against women exactly mimicking the colonial scenario of mastery and submission.’18 In addition, Mykola is apathetic and wary of drastic change. He does not trust the protagonist’s instincts and is afraid to commit to the plans that she has imagined for them. Ultimately, the relationship between these two ‘elite’ Ukrainians collapses; a new generation of free Ukrainians is never conceived. Zabuzhko’s heroine is unable to find a compatible male among her countrymen. The intellectual women in Kononenko’s Imitatsiia also fail to find men whom they respect and love and who value them and their intellectual ambitions. The Ukrainian intellectual men in her novel share the flaws of other Ukrainian males; one such characteristic – provincialism – is accented in this novel. Its female protagonists are capital-dwelling movers- and shakers with a disdain for ‘backward’ village values and traditions. Sashko Chekanchuk is a writer and former geologist who once dated Mar’iana Khrypovych, the novel’s chief protagonist. Their relationship falls apart because she, a native member of the Kyivan elite, was unwilling to lower herself to the traditional Ukrainian village ritual of having to be introduced formally to a fiancé’s parents before getting married. Mar’iana tells Sashko that he is a somewhat talented writer and a adequate lover, but that ‘in life and work you are banal, like raspberry jam in a copper bowl’ – a put-down of his provincial roots. Earlier, Sashko had been engaged to Larysa Lavrynenko, only to be dismissed by her mother’s Kyiv-based snobbism. Larysa was equally unimpressed with Sashko and ‘only slept with him for love but never in order to probe the depths of her female essence.’ Another male intellectual, Sashko Ryzhenko, is less developed as a character in this novel, but the fact that he is also named ‘Sashko’ (albeit one with a established Kyivan elite lineage) and that he is also a former lover of Mar’iana’s demonstrates that for Mar’iana, the male intellectuals that surround her in the ghetto of Kyivan elites, are in essence, interchangeable and equally incompatible. Kononenko’s presentation of the males as generally rural, and the women as urban, accentuates the role of the female intellectual as a leader who will drag Ukraine kicking and screaming out of patriarchal backwardness and into progress; it also, however, serves to criticize the pseudo-elitism rampant in the capital. Several times throughout the novel, Kononenko discloses that Ukrainians who are not from Kyiv emulate the capital of Ukraine in the same manner that Kyivans look to the West. It is the insecurity that these Kyiv intellectuals feel as being inferior to the West (or Moscow) that they transfer onto those provin-

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cial Ukrainians who are trying to blend into Kyiv society. Although Mar’iana finds Chekanchuk intellectually and physically attractive, she sees too much of herself (and her subordinate status as a Ukrainian in the world) in him and thus must reject him in an attempt to distance herself from that component of her identity. After meeting Anatolii, Mar’iana realizes that much of this elitism (including her own) is a facade for the provincial complex that inhabits infects a post-colonial society, and she partially admits to a fondness for things bereft of elitism, for things that are genuine. However, her relationship with Anatolii never does come to fruition because she is murdered in the village, the victim of a senseless crime. Anatolii is also brutally murdered – axed to death by a local man who believes that Anatolii has been unfairly distributing the foundation’s money. Mar’iana and Anatolii were to have formed an ideal couple – a savvy, intelligent, and charismatic Ukrainian woman with connections to the West and a talented, honest Ukrainian man rooted in the values of his land; and both of them worked for the good of Ukraine’s future. By having both of these characters die in her novel, Kononenko demonstrates that postSoviet Ukrainian society is unprepared for this kind of union – to step into the future. Western materialism corrupts this damaged society and provides the impetus for such a horrific turn of events but it is, in fact, Ukrainian society that destroys this couple and, unknowingly, retards its own progress. The generally strong presence of the West in the prose of the Eighties Writers takes on a particular purpose in Zabuzhko’s and Kononenko’s works. It plays the role of a possible influence on their literary heroines as they form their new identities by acting as a potential source of progressive ideas; it also serves as a model that these protagonists may or may not choose to follow. It is utilized as a kind of antipode with which to counter the regressive Ukrainian male orientation often emphasized in these works. Concerning relationships, it provides an option to the local Ukrainian male as a conceivable partner. The possibility of marrying a Westerner and ‘escaping’ Ukraine surfaces as an issue several times in these literary works. However, as was the case with their Ukrainian counterparts, the Western male characters in the prose of Zabuzhko and Kononenko prove to be equally incompatible with the novels’ heroines. Both of Kononenko’s prose works analysed here offer several examples of this incompatibility. In ‘Special Woman’ Nelia Tymchenko, who is financially abandoned and publicly embarrassed by her husband, agrees to meet with Juren, a Danish man seeking to embark on a rela-

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tionship with a well-educated East European woman. After visiting him in Denmark, she is repelled by his simple-mindedness, his pedantic practically, and the more mundane fact that he doesn’t take her to an expensive restaurant on their first date. His interest in Ukraine is reduced to pointing to Nelia’s body parts and asking for their equivalent terminology in Russian and Ukrainian. Imitatsiia’s Mar’iana was engaged to Jerry Bist, an American who was also her superior at Gifted Child International and who is intrigued by Mar’iana’s circle of ‘third world intellectuals.’ Bist plans to return to the United States eventually, and it is clear that Mar’iana was only with him for financial and employment security. Several times Kononenko shows the Kyivan intellectuals that work for Bist to be appalled by his preoccupation with money. His ability to separate his private and public lives seems strange and soulless. Although the Ukrainians in Kononenko’s novel are dismayed by such Western values, most believe that Ukraine’s talented children must leave Ukraine to study and live in the West; Mar’iana and Larysa are both able to do this with their sons. Mar’iana’s son George (Iurii) remains in England and rejects his Ukrainian roots and values. Larysa’s son Iaroslav lives in France, where he becomes obsessed with money but eventually does return to live in Ukraine; according to the narrator, it leaves this young Ukrainian man with one of three fates – to become a criminal, to live off of his mother, or to be a soldier in the ‘mighty’ Ukrainian army. Zabuzhko’s female intellectual also considers and subsequently rejects Western men as possible partners. A younger man she meets in Cambridge is too casual about their proposed romance and lacks the tragic world view native to her countrymen. A well-groomed Dutch man who buys her beautiful clothes proposes marriage to her, but she declines because their relationship makes her feel like a prostitute. For Zabuzhko’s heroine, it is her ‘Ukrainian-ness’ that serves as the chief obstacle in connecting with a Westerner. In all these works, women who do marry Westerners for reasons other than love (usually secondary characters such as Imitatsiia’s Halia) are derided by the intellectual heroines and portrayed rather negatively. The ultimate rejection of the Westerner as a compatible mate reveals an acknowledgment in these heroines of an important component of their identities that stems from their native land. By seeing in these men a stranger, an other, they are better able to define their own ‘I.’ Those characters that retain their ties to Ukraine are depicted as being positive in comparison to those who abandon their roots. This allegiance

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to Ukraine, which hovers within the self of the Ukrainian intellectual woman, leads her to search for a compromise between implementing new, progressive, and liberating, but also strange, Western values and remaining devoted to her forefathers and fulfilling a lingering need to ‘serve Ukraine.’ This failure of the female Ukrainian intellectual to find a compatible male mate has been examined by Nila Zborovs9ka. In her somewhat bizarre eulogy-essay on the late Solomea Pavlychko, Zborovs9ka passionately delivers her contention that Ukraine, at its essence, is a feminine land. She implies several times that the reign of males on this land is coming to an end; all men in Ukraine will die out and only women will remain, finally offering the country a way out of its perpetual misery.19 Zborovs9ka’s essay serves as an afterword to her monograph on the fin de siècle Ukrainian writer Lesia Ukrainka, where Zborovs’ka clearly attempts to draw parallels between the feminism of early Ukrainian modernism (driven in literature by Ukrainka and Ol9ha Kobylians9ka) and its rebirth in contemporary Ukraine, materialized in a group of literary specialists once headed by Pavlychko at the Institute of Literature. Like many of Zborovs9ka’s writings, this essay is an attempt at cultivating a Ukrainian feminist myth and viewing Ukrainian history and culture through its prism. Related to the aforementioned idea, but of more merit, is Zborovs9ka’s essay ‘Feminnyi kharakter ukrains9koi mental9nosty’ (The feminine character of the Ukrainian mentality). In it, she utilizes examples from literature to put forth the idea that Ukraine possesses an inherent feminine character and that this explains its historical powerless and subservient position in the world – a world which is controlled by the patriarchal myth. But the male Ukrainian intellectual has historically been denied power and because of that, as Zborovs9ka writes, this myth takes on another shade of colour in Ukraine: Незважаючи на космополітичний характер світового патріархального міфу, в українській культурі патріархальний дискурс значно деформується і доволі специфічно в ній побутує. Мені здається, що саме фемінний характер української нації є головною причиною її неспроможности структуруватися державно і загалом визначає її специфічне буття у світі.20 [Regardless of the cosmopolitan character of the patriarchal myth in the world, in Ukrainian culture patriarchal discourse becomes markedly

98 Chaos deformed and exists rather peculiarly within it. I believe that it is the feminine character of the Ukrainian nation that is the main reason for its inability to structure itself as a state and that, in general, determines its particular existence in the world.]

Thus, while scholar Maryna Romanets sees the subjugation of the Ukrainian male throughout Ukraine’s colonized history as a reason as to why he cannot come to respect the Ukrainian female, Zborovs9ka feels that a feminine character is intrinsic to the Ukrainian lands (which she traces back to the matriarchal Trypilian culture that existed there from 4500 to 2000 BC), and it is the secondary status of the feminine in a masculine world that leads to Ukraine’s continued powerlessness. Zborovs9ka believes that Ukraine’s fate could improve by recognizing this characteristic, by seeing it as a positive quality (and one that is unique to Ukraine), and by accepting it as an integral part of the Ukrainian identity; Zborovs9ka feels that Zabuzhko – ‘the most sexual feminist-phallocentrist’21 – had the potential of making a first step in such a direction with her novel but ultimately failed because she nonetheless was unable to break with the hermetic male world.22 Thus, as she is presented in the prose of Zabuzhko and Kononenko, the Ukrainian female intellectual ultimately finds herself alone, searching and failing to find a suitable romantic partner either in the West or at home. In fact, it is disclosed that Imitatsiia’s Mar’iana once became infamous for flooding the Ukrainian media with her theory that true love can only stem from misery and that any love that comes from happiness is only an imitation of love.23 Mar’iana is shown as being caught between the detached, pragmatic contentment of the West and the emotional, disordered privation of the post-Soviet world. Like her country, Mar’iana is disoriented in this transition period, which creates an emotional state in which happiness is unattainable. In such a fractured condition, she cannot fully commit to another individual; even when it seems that she is ready to at least attempt such a step, the consequences are catastrophic. Zabuzhko presents the inability of her heroine in finding true acceptance and love as an extended allegory for the general ignorance of the Ukrainian identity and Ukraine’s culture that exists throughout the world, inlcluding in Ukraine itself. Her heroine claims that [писати по-українськи] найяловіше на сьогодні заняття під сонцем, бо навіть якби ти, якимось дивом, устругнула в цій мові що-небудь

A Return to the Margins  99 «посильнее Фауста’ Гете», як висловлювався один знаний в історії літературний критик, то воно просто провакувалось би по бібліотеках нечитане, мов невилюблена жінка, скількись там десятків років, аж доки почало б вихолодати, …24 [[to write in Ukrainian] is, probably, the most sterile activity in the world because even if you were to, by some miracle, pull off something ‘better than Goethe’s Faust,’ as one well-known literary critic had worded it, in this language, then it would sit around in libraries, unread, like a sexually unsatisfied woman, for several decades, until it became frigid, …]

The ‘sexually unsatisfied woman’ (невилюблена жінка; nevyliublena zhinka) is a powerful image in Zabuzhko’s novel; although ‘she’ has experienced the euphoria that accompanies the fall of the Soviet Union, this ‘woman’s’ brimming insatiability, ‘her’ disoriented, obsessive searching captures the chaos and disappointment that post-Soviet Ukraine becomes for Ukrainian intellectuals. Even in post-Soviet times, they remain marginalized. Finally, the idea of a need to provide for future generations, which is often referred to in both Zabuzhko’s and Kononenko’s novels, represents a common and lingering concern in the prose of the Eighties Writers that their generation will not live to see the Ukraine they had envisioned and tried to mould. The works of the Eighties Writers often refer to the notion that Ukrainian intellectuals are useless in today’s Ukraine. Having grown up in the Soviet Ukraine and emerged in the years surrounding its collapse, they allude to the idea of being a lost generation in post-Soviet Ukraine. A Lost Generation Towards the beginning of the novel Burdyk, the narrator interprets the proposal to compile a book on Burdyk as a sign that his time has come. He believes that, although his was the last generation to have suffered the indignities associated with living in the Soviet Union as adults, with the situation gradually improving, there is still a chance to salvage a place for himself and his generation in his country’s history Недарма ж ці пуцвірки знайшли мене. Може, це – знак? Сиґнал того, що і мій час настав? Треба лишень зібрати весь його доробок, напру-

100 Chaos житися і за тиждень видати нарис життя та творчості представника Задушеного Покоління … Довести, на прикладі Бурдика, що ми не є гній історії! Тому що йорш твою мідь! Ми вижили! А кумачі та пердкоми позгинули! Хай вже за це нам подякують. За те, що ми захистили їх. Ціною власного каліцтва. За те, що ми й досі є. І розкриються пори! Й розправляться зморшки! І вийдуть із задуп'я окремі чудом збережені постаті. Щоб розпочати, нарешті, гідне людини життя. 25 [There’s a reason that these punks found me. Maybe it’s a sign? A signal that my time has come? I just need to gather all of his writings, push myself and, in a week, publish the story of the life and work of a representative of the Suffocated Generation … To prove, using Burdyk as an example, that we are not the dung of history! Because, fricken-eh! We survived! While the red banners and foul officials faded! We should be thanked for that reason alone. For the fact that we protected them. Paying for it with the price of our own crippling. For that fact that we still do exist. And the pores will become unblocked! And the skin will be reinvigorated! And a few immortals, that have somehow managed to preserve themselves, will emerge from the backwardness. To begin, finally, a life worthy of a human.]

As is the case with this novel in general, in this fragment Dibrova accurately shares the understanding the Eighties Writers had of the role they would play during the years surrounding Ukraine’s achievement of independence. However, as the novel unfolds and Ukraine progresses towards independence, the rapidly changing new Ukrainian society has no place for his generation – a generation that has ‘suffered a blow’ in the past.26 The new generation works to eradicate anything that still has ‘a Soviet scent.’27 Thus, the narrator fears that the youths at the publishing firm will ultimately dismiss the project: А чи не скажуть вони мені: ми – видання комерційне, залежимо від попиту, а на вас зараз моди немає. Бо все ваше покоління для нас – не указ. Ви за своїх сорок з гаком для нас не лишили ні гори, ні копанки, тому без зайвого виску мусите десь розчинитися.28 [But won’t they say to me: we are a commercial publishing firm that is

A Return to the Margins  101 dependent on consumer demand, and you are not hip these days. Because for us, your whole generation has no authority. In your forty-odd years you have not conquered any mountains or probed the depths of any oceans, and that is why you must dissolve somewhere, without so much as a peep.]

Claiming that he himself came up with the ‘mountains’ and ‘oceans’ metaphors, the narrator expresses the uselessness felt by his circle in the new Ukraine. As it turns out, he correctly predicts that the book on Burdyk will never be published. The narrator recalls all the people of his generation who had survived in the underground during the repressive Soviet years – the people that were willing to suffer for (what they believed was) the good of a higher goal – but is unable to locate them in the present. This leaves him to ponder where they have all disappeared to and to proclaim: ‘It’s not a generation but some kind of manure!’29 Burdyk features many additional allusions to the sense of a lost generation. For example, at the end of the novel the narrator refers to ‘the tragedy of our generation,’30 and earlier it is stated that, in a new Ukraine, Burdyk remains a ‘Superfluous Person’ (Zaiva Liudyna)31 and that his generation constitutes a ‘Suffocated Generation’ (Zadushenne Pokolinnia). Ihor Bondar-Tereshchenko believes that contemporary Ukrainian writers are obsessed with a lost past: ‘Just like all normal people, they create in their writings their own phantom – that of a lost past (AustroHungarian, Cossack, independent, Soviet) – a cathedral one, a mighty one, a national one.’32 It is true that such sentiments inform all of these works, but a key issue in these writings is, in fact, a lament over the lost present – the years immediately following Ukraine’s achievement of independence in 1991. It is in this period that the Eighties Writers emerged, and it is a period that they continue to refer to in their works. In an essay in which he analyses Burdyk and other prose written by the Eighties Writers, Kostiantyn Moskalets9 mentions the ‘infantilism and fatal alienation of this generation’ and notices ‘their romantic stature, which is so out of place in history and in the surrounding, everyday world.’33 For Moskalets9, this generation’s creativity was severely damaged by years of non-productivity and a lack of social engagement that stemmed from its hermetic, underground existence. They were tied to the Soviet system and their opposition to it concealed their inability to focus their talents.34 In his review of Burdyk, Maskym Strikha echoes this idea by writing that Dibrova’s generation was unable to establish itself once censorship ceased to be an adversary in their lives.

102 Chaos Помер не лише Бурдик, а й, у літературному розумінні, пішло в небуття чимало інших яскравих авторів, сенс життя яких полягав у непохитній опозиції, – вони так і не зрозуміли, кому ж слід непохитно опонувати сьогодні, а ‘крутитися’ в нових умовах, шукаючи спонсорів і вибиваючи гранти, так і не навчилися. 35 [It wasn’t only Burdyk that had died, because, regarding literature, more than a few other bright authors, whose meaning of life was defined by their unwavering opposition, had faded into non-existence – they could not figure out whom it was that they should oppose unwaveringly today and they never learned how to ‘operate’ in the new situation, how to search for sponsors and extract funds from grants.]

Although the lack of a normal, functioning intellectual environment, including a critical system in which underground intellectuals could have developed their work, undoubtedly damaged their productivity in the future, post-Soviet Ukraine, the underground movements that had been made to compensate for this lack proved to be quite successful in developing unofficial Soviet art and endowing it with characteristics that would become integral in defining post-Soviet Ukrainian culture. At the same time, the oppositional function of this art (i.e., its rejection of the official Soviet world as an other) was an integral component of the identity of these intellectuals, and when this function became no longer necessary, a certain sense of this identity was lost and disorientation ensued. In an essay that analyses the ways that Zabuzhko and Andrukhovych place their characters outside of Ukraine in order to provide insight on their identity, Vitaly Chernetsky writes that ‘Literary works organized around the trope of displacement can be effective critiques of the legacies of imperialism and studies of the dimensions for the post-colonial condition.’36 Here, Chernetsky discusses geographic displacement, but in Burdyk Dibrova utilizes a temporal displacement for this very same purpose; the novel itself is, essentially, a vehicle in which Dibrova transports his own ‘Suffocated Generation’ into the near future, which provides a vantage point from which to comment on that cohort and evaluate its place in a new Ukraine. As an older member of the Eighties Writers, who wrote about the years surrounding Ukrainian independence, Dibrova described his generation as being a ‘lost’ one. Works by other Eighties Writers blame the lack of a common, functional language as a reason for such disorientation.

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In the novel Ne-My, Iurii Gudz9 suggests that both memory and language suffered severe damage in the decades of Soviet hegemony. The Ukrainian literary language is strange and obsolete in today’s Ukraine, and Gudz9’s protagonist aims to write a book that will bridge the gap between the everyday Ukrainian language and the canonical literary language: Спроба хоча б ненадовго позбутися відчуження між власне літературною мовою і повсякденним живим промовлянням. Бо для загалу, заскоченого тим очевидним розмежуванням, стає чужим і непотрібним в с е , що написане на рівні давно змертвілого канонізованого жаргону … який відібрав у більшости слів силу їхнього суттєвого значення … Заяложені брехливими й масними устами всі оті ‘духовності’, ‘пошанівки’, ‘славні’ звучать для нормального вуха не менш брутально й нестерпно, аніж ненормативні означення жіночих і чоловічих геніталій …37 [An attempt to discard, at least for a short time, the alienation between the literary language and the living language spoken everyday. Because for the general public, which has been gobsmacked by this obvious boundary, strange and useless has become e v e r y t h i n g written in this long-since deceased and canonized jargon … one that removed from most words the power of their meaning … Stained by lying and greasy lips, all of these ‘spirituality-s,’ ‘lauding-s,’ ‘glorifying-s’ sound no less brutal and unbearable, to a normal ear, than vulgar descriptions of female and male genitalia …]

Thus, there is no audience today for this language – it sounds crass and is offensive to people. The protagonist searches for the ‘true’ Ukrainian language but is unable to recall it. He continues to write in a language that is strange and useless for most people. His inability to remember words symbolizes a general, shattered state of memory in Ukraine resulting from decades of Soviet totalitarian rule. Gudz9 regards memory to be a higher state of existence and believes that writing allows for renewing, in memory, a lost space where one was different than one is today. But his protagonist constantly struggles to find a language in which to write and even admits that he will never write his planned book. There exists a general sense, in this novel, of the need to escape the horrible present – a time in which people fail to remember that life can be better. He announces the need for a new beginning. Oleh SydorHibelinda designates ‘silence’ and ‘snow’ as being among the major

104 Chaos

themes revolving around Ne-My. For him, silence is a reaction to the distrust of insincere words and snow represents an affirmation of a new world.38 Like many other Eighties Writers, Gudz9 is disillusioned with the chaotic present and looks to the future for a new world. Even when his protagonists look towards the past and their memories of childhood, it is in an author’s attempt to envision a future that would be different than the present. Kostiantyn Moskalets9’s Vechirnii med shares the concerns of fellow Eighties Writers regarding the Ukrainian language. His protagonist, like Zabuzhko’s, deduces that even if he were to write a brilliant novel, no one would read it because the average Ukrainian has no need for it.39 Like Gudz9, he refers to the language as being ‘dead’ (mertva ukain’ska ridna mova) [the dead Ukrainian native language] and awaits a snowfall that will wipe away the dirt of the present and allow for a new beginning. His protagonist describes the present as ‘horrible, absurd times’ during which people are still trying to save themselves from the ‘total lunacy and deathly depression that surrounds our colonial life in the empire of the foul and evil hangover which, like Lenin, is always living.’40 Moskalets9 utilizes a hangover as a metaphor to describe the after-effects of a colonial existence throughout the work; just as his protagonists are unable to resist alcohol, even though they comprehend its damaging affects on their future health, Ukraine continues to fall into the traps and rituals that keep it from leaving behind its past of suppression. The novel exudes a lingering sense of disappointment that comes after a lost opportunity. For Moskalets9 this opportunity comes during the years surrounding Ukrainian independence and fades quickly in post-Soviet Ukraine. In a sense, the first part of Vechirnii med – ’Zyma u L9vovi’ (Winter in L9viv) – predicts this impending disillusionment. ‘Zyma u L9vovi’ is set in L9viv, the western Ukrainian city that, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, was at the centre of Ukraine’s push towards independence. It also effectively served as the Ukrainian cultural capital in these years, during which time intellectuals from all parts of Ukraine would routinely gather in L9viv to participate in various cultural events. Moskalets’ protagonist is one such intellectual, and his gradual disillusionment with L9viv foresees the city’s eventual decline in influence on post-Soviet Ukraine and in its contribution to the post-Soviet Ukrainian identity. Coming from northeastern Ukraine, the protagonist finds L9viv to be uncommon in many ways and full of quirky Galician particularities of language and manners, which Moskalets’ makes a point of singling these out. Also catching the protagonist’s attention is L9viv’s architecture, which is infused with its specific multicultural Central

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European history and is quite different from the architecture in most other Ukrainian cities. Thus, L9viv is depicted as possessing a certain sense of otherness, but, as the world’s largest Ukrainian-speaking city, it attracts the Ukrainian intellectual participating in the revival of his native culture – the western Ukrainian city is to lead Ukraine away from its isolated Soviet past and provide a link to its European identity. As the novel progresses, however, L9viv turns out to be a snare of sorts. Its idiosyncrasies are now presented as strange and as elements that constrict rather than inspire. Moskalets9’s comical crew of intellectuals (Dem, Trots9kyi, Lord Krishna) develop into pathetic alcoholics unable to muster the energy to sidestep the drinking rituals that have consumed their existence. They are outcasts who are of no value to society. Their intellectual pursuits, which at one time inspired people, are now not only ignored but seen as odd and even dangerous. In one of the novel’s key scenes, Dem finally agrees to speak after a lengthy, self-imposed silence and immediately tells the story of another of L9viv’s bohemian intellectuals – Mis9ko, the Mystic-Lunatic Mis9ko (who, it is hinted at, is an alter ego of the chief protagonist and narrator) is a man who ‘read and wrote, wrote and read’ for days, while being locked up in his own attic. He speaks several languages and spends all his time immersed in them. Dem has tried to convince him to give up these pursuits, afraid that Mis9ko will lose his mind: життєвий світ там, де життя, а не вічність у пожовклих від часу фоліантах, написаних такими ж, як ми, засранцями, котрі пили-їли, грали коханок, а потім здихали; жоден з них не довідався більше того, про що дійсно знає кожен із нас, бо людське пізнання якраз тому й обмежене, що воно людське; Міську, холєра, погодься, що ти кінчена істота, що ти паморозь на траві, сонце зійшло – і ось, нема тебе; погодься не зі мною, не на словах, а з собою, в душі твоїй книжній, безживній, шелестючій; погодься і ти врятуєшся.41 [the living world is a place where there is life, and not the eternity of yellowed volumes written by those who are like us, nobodies, who drank and ate, fucked their lovers, and then croaked; none of them found out any more about that which we truly know about, because human knowledge is limited for just that reason, because it is human; Mis9ko, damn it, admit it, you’re a useless creature, hoar-frost is on the grass, the sun has set – and now, you’re gone; admit it not to me, not in words, but to yourself, to your bookish, lifeless, rustling soul; admit it and you’ll save yourself.]

106 Chaos

It is revealed that, in the end, Mis9ko did end up losing his mind and was committed to a mental home; he was eventually released and now wanders aimlessly along the streets of L9viv. The idea of intellectuals being ‘nobodies’ who are ‘useless’ is indicative of the view Moskalets9 holds concerning their position in post-Soviet Ukraine. Moskalets9 often uses the word – nikomunezalezhni42 – to describes the status of his generation of intellectuals in post-Soviet Ukraine. This leads the narrator to wonder: ‘Where are our hands and our noble refinement, where is our blue blood and where are our purple roses?’43 At the end of ‘Zyma u L9vovi’ the protagonist finally escapes L9viv, leaving behind a city that has failed to meet the expectations of many that it would become the cultural Mecca for Ukraine. The buzz of Ukrainian independence that had placed Ukrainian intellectuals at the centre of mass celebrations of change also faded as Ukraine’s post-Soviet existence advanced. This dream of the Eighties Writers was shattered by reality as they once again found themselves on the fringes of society – a crew of outsiders, unable to keep up with the changes surrounding them and not needed by those who were able to follow and benefit from these developments. The sense of the Eighties Writers being a lost generation also comes from allusions in these prose works to the protagonists’ inability to adjust to the sudden influx of the West and capitalist values. The very same West so longed for and pursued by these intellectuals as part of the euphoric movement serves to alienate them in their own country. Oksana Zabuzhko believes that, unlike Russia, Ukraine has been ‘infected’ with the Western European idea of individual will throughout its history, but that it always lacked the structure to support and develop this will.44 Consequently, those who had contact with the West and identified with some of its values became further damaged when these ideas ultimately failed to take hold in Ukraine in contrast to those who where initially ignorant of such possibilities. As a result, the West is criticized in various ways by the Eighties Writers. By placing a Ukrainian (one of his protagonists, Stanislav Perfets9kyi) in the West, Andrukhovych sets up an opportunity to monitor the view of the West concerning its relationship with Ukraine and vice versa. Andrukhovych shows us, time and again, that even after Ukraine emerges as an independent country, the West continues to be ignorant of Ukraine. When Perfets9kyi meets other conference participants in Venice they refer to him as a ‘Russian.’ Throughout Perverziia (Perverzion), Andrukhovych also refers to the colonizing consumer practices of the West and often passes along to the reader Western views of Ukraine;

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the country is seen as being an exotic land located at the periphery of Europe and not accepted as part of the West. Zabuzhko’s and Kononenko’s heroines were sceptical towards their Western romantic partners. A better social status for women, a more progressive society, and a higher standard of living appealed to these Ukrainian intellectual women, but their authors show them to be very critical of the West and unwilling to accept Western values as their own. Having spent most of their lives closed off from the West, members of this generation are unable to adjust to it at middle age and in such a short span of time. Dibrova shows people from the narrator’s and Burdyk’s generation succeeding as businessmen or cult leaders in postSoviet Ukraine and abroad, while the two aforementioned protagonists are unable to adjust. As intellectuals and idealists, they have difficulty submitting to these times of flashing changes. In the second part of Vechirnii med – ‘Uprodovzh Snihopadu’ (Throughout the snowfall) – Moskalets9’s narrator travels to Germany; his lover Andrusia now lives in the West, occasionally returning to Ukraine to scold the narrator and his colleagues for their lack of initiative. Dispirited by the uselessness of the intellectual in Ukraine, the narrator wants to see how the Western intellectual, about whom he had read so much in the past, lives. Andrusia’s lover, Heisbrecht, is a typical Western intellectual who works for an avant-garde theatre company but who also pays his taxes, votes, and follows traffic rules; he appears strange and even comical in the eyes of the narrator, a Ukrainian intellectual scarred by his Soviet past. He sees that the West is not as compatible for him as he had imagined during the years when travel there had been banned. During the time it functioned as a counterpoint to Soviet existence, it proved to be an attractive component of the self-identity of the Eighties Writers. Now that it had become accessible, these intellectuals realize that the West is strange and that they themselves are also different from it. Young enough to have courted and then experienced the West somewhat in their lives, they nonetheless prove unable to accept it fully. Also unable to identify with the developments in post-Soviet Ukraine, the Eighties Writers remain stuck between these various orientations, lost and searching for their bearings. The major themes in the prose of the Eighties Writers that are representative of a chaotic tendency – the disappointment of the intellectual with post-Soviet Ukrainian society, the incompatibility of the male and female Ukrainian intellectual, and the self-perception of the Eighties Writers as belonging a lost generation – together with the preponder-

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ance of the depiction of the Ukrainian intellectual as being sick, all emerged along with the euphoria of the early 1990s. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, new approaches to the Ukrainian identity became possible and new components of this identity could now be introduced – the Ukrainian identity was freed into a state of flux. The incompatibility of the Ukrainian intellectuals is symptomatic of this instability – these intellectual protagonists fail to find individuals compatible with them because their own identities had shifted so much that they themselves have difficulty defining who they are. Society’s interest in, and the euphoric celebration of, Ukrainian culture had quickly settled into general indifference. Iurii Izdryk described the Eighties Writers as follows: І ось ми, купка ‘розгублених інтеліґентників’ озираємося довкола із страхом, зневірою та відчаєм. Нас ятрить невдоволене честолюбство і гнітить відсутність орієнтирів: ми боїмося черні, що вирує довкола, і з неменшим острахом помічаєм ознаки черні всередині себе; ми зневажаємо всіх, хто не ‘ми’, і не знаємо, ким є самі.’45 [And here we are, a handful of ‘lost intelligent-niks’ looking at our surroundings with fear, disbelief, and despair. We are aggravated by unsatisfied ambitions and are oppressed by a lack of guidelines: we fear the plebeians that swirl around us and with no less fear recognize the traits of plebeians within us; we despise anyone that is not ‘us’ and we ourselves don’t know who we are.]

These intellectuals wanted to be free from social responsibility, yet they became depressed when their art lost its widespread resonance. They desired openness and flexibility in the Ukrainian identity, but then themselves became ill from the resulting disorientation. Much of this confusion can be attributed to the disillusionment they felt regarding what independent Ukraine was becoming. They realized that their version of the Ukrainian identity was perhaps too fragile, at the start, for total postmodern deconstruction. In a state of chaos, the Eighties Writers are a damaged group in need of a new kind of framework that could combine freedom from oppression while providing the support granted by stability. It is such a framework that they would attempt to construct in their art in their movement towards community.

PART III: Community

As I mentioned in the introduction, the three tendencies in post-Soviet Ukrainian literature – euphoria, chaos, and community – should not be interpreted as being wholly distinct and separate developments. Instead, they should be seen as movements that intertwine and coexist, often within one particular literary work. In the euphoric movement of the early 1990s, the Eighties Writers were successful in shifting Ukrainian culture away from the social responsibility and metaphysical character that had traditionally been required of it by the Ukrainian national myth; this new-found freedom, however, also brought on a general disorientation and rootlessness for the post-Soviet intellectual protagonists that inhabited their prose. Once again relegated to the margins of society, this Ukrainian intellectual was often depicted as being unwell and an outsider in her own country. The chaotic movement revealed the identity of the Ukrainian intellectual to be too fragile for the ensuing instability brought on by postmodern deconstruction. As a result, in the movement towards community, the Ukrainian intellectual (re)turns to metaphysical and structural concerns – the very preoccupations they had attacked as part of the euphoric movement – in a search for stability. Thus, the prose of the Eighties Writers also contains within it a shift back towards embracing the concept of the absolute, which is integral to the Ukrainian national myth that they had inherited. The component of the Ukrainian national myth that proved to be most significant for the Eighties Writers in this regard was the myth associated with the Ukrainian language. The continuing subordinate position of the Ukrainian language in post-Soviet Ukraine described in chapter 5 invests the language today with the traditional metaphysical resonance that it had developed in

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its marginalized past. Although the Eighties Writers undertook a conscious deconstruction of such an aspect of the Ukrainian language in their prose, as part of the liberation of Ukrainian culture within the euphoric movement, they renewed an appeal to traditional characteristics of the language in their literary works in their movement towards community. For the Ukrainian intellectual protagonists that inhabit the prose of the Eighties Writers, the Ukrainian language is associated with a sense of morality, and choosing to identify with this language imparts a certain moral choice. As was the case with the Soviet-era Seventies Writers, the Ukrainian language forms a path along which post-Soviet Ukrainian intellectuals tread in order to distance themselves consciously from the life-course of the post-Soviet status quo – it endows them with a notion of otherness that provides them with a sense of being connected to something morally correct or good. That sense, together with the fact that a conscious choice is being made towards the good, contributes important constituents to the identity of these intellectuals. Inspired by the hermetic survival experiences of the Seventies Writers, the Eighties Writers attempt to create a structure that could provide them with the support that they lack in chaotic post-Soviet Ukrainian society. This structure would replace previous cultural paradigms that had designated duties and assigned restrictive creative slots for Ukrainian intellectuals, but would provide them with a sense of support in their resistance to isolation. Their attempt to find a balance between freedom and structure has led them to develop a framework that would allow for both. The first attempts at creating such a framework are evident in some of the prose works of the Eighties Writers. In their prose, the writers weave an intertextual network uniting their various texts within a loose framework. In this manner, they form a community that can help them survive through their continuing marginalization. Having experienced the rigidity of the structures assigned to Ukrainian culture by various myths in the past, these post-Soviet Ukrainian intellectuals attempt to build a community that is non-totalitarian and instead respects otherness and champions flexibility. Such a model reflects the general approach by the Eighties Writers to the postSoviet Ukrainian identity.

6 Agents of the Metaphysical

Він завжди шанував рідне слово, а після розлучення, нарешті, зміг зосередитися на спасінні шляхетної мови. [He had always respected the native word and, after the divorce, he was finally able to apply himself to the salvation of the noble language.] Volodymyr Dibrova, Burdyk

A significant constituent of the identity of post-Soviet intellectuals that deserves deeper analysis is morality. In Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity Charles Taylor traces the evolution of modern identity and designates inwardness, nature (as an internal wellspring of morality), and the affirmation of ordinary life as three key facets in this development. According to Taylor’s thesis, an individual’s relationship with morality contributes to the formation of self. He writes that ‘In order to make minimal sense of our lives, in order to have an identity, we need an orientation to the good, which means some sense of qualitative discrimination, of the incomparably higher,’1 and also that it is one’s identity that provides the framework to determine what is good.2 In Oneself as Another Paul Ricœur presents his theory on the development of a self that includes the important stage of a person’s realization that it is possible to affect the world through one’s actions; this revelation that I can act progresses to the understanding that I am obliged to act. One’s life is seen as being part of an evolving narrative. Ricœur deduces that ‘The certainty of being the author of one’s own discourse and of one’s own acts becomes the conviction of judging well and acting well in a momentary and provisional approximation of living well.’3

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Taylor’s contention that a person needs to be connected to what they consider to be good in order to become a functioning human agent is consistent with Ricœur’s recognition of an action as what defines its agent. Thus, designating something as ‘good’ and the choice to strive towards that ‘good’ are essential to defining who we are. Such a movement towards the loftier helps to form the self. Taylor identifies a moral source as ‘something the contemplation, respect or love of which enables us to get closer to what is good.’4 For the post-Soviet Ukrainian intellectual, that ‘something’ is the Ukrainian language. A Moral Source and a Metaphysical Power In his review of Iurii Andrukhovych’s collection of essays Dezoriientatsiia na mistsevosti (Dis-orienteering on the spot), Serhii Hrabovs9kyi discusses Andrukhovych’s literary dance with postmodernism against the backdrop of a dysfunctional, post-Soviet Ukrainian publishing industry. Hrabovs9kyi describes Andrukhovych as an author who consciously strives to establish himself as a writer who is postmodern but that ‘He does this quite poorly, perhaps because, in the country known as Ukraine, just writing in Ukrainian is a significant gesture, a certain stance, for which one will have to pay for with no less than one’s own fate.’5 Here, Hrabovs9kyi touches on two important ideas – first, that Ukrainian literature’s inherent instability renders it ill-prepared for the freedom, frivolity, and flux of postmodernism; and second, that the Ukrainian language is loaded with ‘metaphysical baggage’ eliciting a profound (negative and/or positive) effect in people that exist in close contact with it. These are ideas that resonate in the prose of the Eighties Writers, no matter how ‘postmodern’ they endeavour to be. Notwithstanding the energy applied by the Eighties Writers towards escaping the social responsibilities inherent in Ukrainian culture and to challenging the metaphysical character of the Ukrainian language within this tradition, their prose concurrently demonstrates an appeal to, and acceptance of, these same qualities. These qualities are relied upon at a time of disorientation and marginalization. For the intellectuals that inhabit the pages of this prose, the Ukrainian language – and the choice to create in this language – assumes a significance beyond being just a practical medium of everyday communication. In Volodymyr Dibrova’s Burdyk (Burdyk) the eponymous protagonist decides to write in Ukrainian not because this is natural for him but because he wants to ‘right a wrong’ (i.e., counter the marginalization

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of the Ukrainian language). He refers to the language as being ‘noble’ and wants to increase its prestige in Ukrainian society. But his so-called ridna (native) Ukrainian literary language is just a collection of old, forgotten Ukrainian words and sentences patched together with the help of various dictionaries. Like an anthropologist on some sort of covert operation, Burdyk sets out to unearth traces of the repressed language. Бурдик збирав гарні слова як по книжках, так і з повітря, припадаючи вухом до кожного носія колись розлогої мови. У пошуках етнографічної сировини він блукав путівцями, заходив у села й просився під стріхи. Почувши мовну перлину, він крадькома заганяв її на папірець і ховав у кишеню, а вдома заносив у грубезний зошит, якого щодня прикрашав візерунками. 6 [Burdyk would dig up words from books and fetch them out of the air, pressing his ear up to every bearer of this once-vivid language. In his search for ethnographic raw material he would wander along dirt roads, enter villages and try to get invited into peasants’ thatched-roof homes. Upon hearing a linguistic jewel he would stealthily steer it onto a piece of paper and hide it in his pocket and, at home, he would lug it over into a massive notebook, which he would decorate every day with ornamentations.]

Dibrova presents this sense of a mission with his typical satirical wit, employing rustic imagery to describe Ukrainian intellectual work in a stereotypical folkloric depiction. Burdyk’s observation of the preponderance of nouns and adjectives, and the lack of verbs, in the Ukrainian language recalls Ukrainian literature at the time of Hryhorii KvitkaOsnovianenko’s folkloric-descriptive prose, which was written at the beginning of the nineteenth century and sought to prove that serious literary works could be written in the vernacular. As it was for Ukrainian intellectuals in the early years of modern Ukrainian literature, Burdyk’s use of the Ukrainian language is a choice driven by a desire to serve the language. Dibrova’s treatment of the metaphysical character of the Ukrainian language is done in a rather tongue-in-cheek manner. However, the fact that the author is compelled to point this out as an issue confronted by his chief protagonist points to the issue’s significance (and almost requisite presence) in the life of a Ukrainian intellectual. In Pol9ovi doslidzhennia z ukrains9koho seksu (Field Work in Ukrainian Sex), Oksana Zabuzhko implies that to be born Ukrainian is akin to being born under a bad sign or cursed with a certain fate. Through-

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out Ukraine’s modern history, its Ukrainian-language intellectual communities had consistently been subjected to a life at the margins, to a continuous battle for survival and, as Zabuzhko stated in an interview, ‘a traumatic, existential experience that the Russian-language public did not have.’7 Her novel is an attempt to intellectually challenge this legacy. Ultimately, however, her heroine is unable to abandon what she has inherited and experienced as a writer creating in the Ukrainian language; in the novel she refers to her inseparability from this language and, in the following fragment, points out the frustrations that are contained within this particular, trying destiny: от тоді-то було й втямити, що дім твій мова, яку до пуття хіба ще скількасот душ на цілім світі й знає, – завжди при тобі, як у равлика, й іншого, непересувного дому не судилось тобі, кобіто, хоч як не тріпайся, …8 [it was at that time that you should have understood that your home is a language that only a couple of hundred souls in this world know well – it’s always with you, the way an attached home is for a snail, and that’s the one you’re stuck with, girl, no matter what you do …]

Thus, it is as if she is forced to write in this language, no matter how unrewarding her efforts may be. It is a cross that, as a Ukrainian writer, she must bear. From this it follows that the Ukrainian language assumes a potency that is beyond the practical, everyday world. Zabuzhko’s protagonist describes her recital of her poems at a conference outside of Ukraine as a ‘public orgasm’; the language of her poetry is filled with pressurized bundles of experiences and codes that are unleashed in verse: мова, дарма що незрозуміла, на очах у публіки стягалася довкола тебе в прозору, мінливо-ряхтючу, немов із рідкого шкла виплавлювану кулю, всередині якої, це вони бачили, чинилась якась ворожба: щось жило, пульсувало, випростувалось, розверзалось провалами, набігало вогнями –.9 [the language, as witnessed by the public, regardless of the fact that no one understood it, drew itself around you into a translucent, glimmering sphere made of liquid glass, inside of which, they were able to see this, some kind of magic was happening: something lived, pulsated, stretched out, cracked open the earth, encroached in flames –.]

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But, on the other hand, identifying with the Ukrainian language does constitute a choice. As a marginalized language, Ukrainian is never the sole language known by any single adult in the modern world. And choosing the Ukrainian language becomes analogous to making a political or moral statement, no matter if one fully agrees with what that statement stereotypically represents. In Pol9ovi doslidzhennia z ukrains9koho seksu, Zabuzhko’s heroine realizes, and bemoans, the associations to which a Ukrainian-language speaker is automatically subjected. Боже, що у мене спільного з цими людьми? Мова. Нічого, крім мови. Мова як ознака партійності … Мова як релігія, конотація, партія. Це велика історична драма.10 [For God’s sake, what do I have in common with these people? Language. Nothing but language. Language as an indication of party affiliation … Language as a religion, a connotation, a party. It’s one big historical drama.]

Thus, it is as if a choice does exist but that this choice has been determined for you. In the aforementioned interview, Zabuzhko seems to accept her role as a Ukrainian intellectual in post-Soviet Ukraine, even though her destiny will probably mirror the distressing fate of her predecessors: Я завжди дуже жорстоко відчувала те, що називається літературним родоводом. Відчувала перед ним відповідальність … відповідальність перед небіжчиками, перед людьми, які вибрали цю літературу свідомо. Цю упосліджену колоніальну літературу, яка не дає жодних дивідендів … Це апріорно трагічний вибір.11 [I always felt very severely what is known as literary genealogy. I felt a responsibility to it … a responsibility to the deceased who had consciously chosen this literature. This damned, colonial literature, that never provides any dividends … This is an a priori tragic choice.]

Terms such as ‘choice,’ ‘attached,’ and ‘responsibility’ appear in Zabuzhko’s various apologia regarding her vocation and the Ukrainian language. The tense interaction between the often-conflicting concepts associated with these words provides a spark energizing the language. Akin to Zabuzhko’s metaphor of a glimmering sphere, Kostiantyn Moskalets9 also sees language as a source of power. Moskalets9 spends

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much of his novel Vechirnii med (Evening mead) both experimenting with language and lamenting its loss of meaning and power. The writer’s linguistic play is a flirtation with the idea that words have no meaning, and one of Moskalets9’s particular talents lies in his ability to coalesce everyday nonsense speak with highly symbolic and eloquent passages. However, linguistic play notwithstanding, Moskalets9’s prose demonstrates that he is a writer who deeply believes in the force of language; his repeated expressions of disappointment with the current state of the Ukrainian language attest to this, and his consistent juxtaposing of high and low language is intended to highlight its potential. Moskalets9 has faith in the powers of love and language to better the forsaken, everyday world and to provide ascension to the metaphysical. The novel’s title itself, ‘Evening mead,’ hints at the borrowings from the myth of Odin in its contents, specifically the idea of a poet-genius being the possessor of supernatural linguistic powers. It is the drinking of Odin’s mead that gives the poet access to the symbolic, magical language of poetry; such poetry helps one to escape reality and provides access to an other world.12 A key concept for Moskalets9 and his Vechirnii med is a belief in the existence of an exclusive group of poet geniuses whose talents provide access to the metaphysical; their language has the power to transform the world, but it must be free and flowing like ‘honey-milk.’ Several times throughout the novel, Moskalets’ mentions the need for a new language, a need for the rebirth of language in prayer. In one scene, the narrator is alone in Kyiv wishing that his lover Andrusia were there and thinking that if he could just write well, then she would appear before him: якою мовою ти пишеш свого романа якою ти пишеш свого вірша якою ти пишеш листа андрусі якої нема в київі ось тут у київі пишеш повіривши раптом у те що коли писатимеш добре то диво відбудеться і вона нарешті стане реальною і присутньою ось тут у київі …13 [the language in which you write your novel in which you write your poem in which you write your letter to andrusia who is not in kyiv right here in kyiv you write suddenly believing that if you write well then a miracle will occur and she will finally become real and present right here in kyiv …]

Moskalets9 utilizes the fact that both ‘language’ (mova) and ‘Andrusia’ are of the feminine gender in the Ukrainian language. As a result, in this

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fragment the narrator not only bemoans Andrusia’s absence in Kyiv but also laments the dearth of the Ukrainian language in Ukraine’s predominantly Russian-speaking capital. The most powerful and recurring symbol for language in Vechirnii med is snow. Snow here represents all good that art has offered; it forgives, evens out, and cleanses and whitens all of the world’s filth. Moskalets9 sees this potential new, perfect language as snowfall. As members of a kind of exclusive guild (‘night time shepherds of being,’ as Moskalets9 has referred to such a group in his poetry), the world’s poets must strive to achieve this purity of language in order to create a better world – they must craft a world of true poetry. Iurii Gudz9 shares Moskalets9’s disillusionment with the state of the Ukrainian language in post-Soviet Ukraine and often infers that the language is useless. He attacks the language, deconstructing it and reproaching it precisely because he values it so. The primary focus of his novel Ne-My (Not-us) is language. Although, as we have seen, Gudz9 is disenchanted with the decline of the Ukrainian language, he places all of his hope for the future on it. He believes that it is language, and only language, that can facilitate finding a past unity with others. For Gudz9, writing creates an other space – an other world that heals wounds and restores harmony. Despite their efforts and successes at stripping away the metaphysics of the Ukrainian language during the euphoric movement, post-Soviet Ukrainian intellectuals have a relationship with the language that remains similar to that of their predecessors. Vira Aheieva observes such a conscious return to the metaphysical in this prose. In her essay on Zabuzhko entitled ‘Zhinka-avtorka iak inoplanetianka’ (The womanauthor as an alien), Aheieva notices in the prose of the Eighties Writers an appeal to an other-worldly, higher source for creativity: ‘розрахунок з соцреалізмом і самостановлення літератури спричинювали наприкінці вісімдесятих це акцентування метафізичної сутності мистецтва’ [settling the score with socialist realism and the self-erection of literature resulted in an accentuation on the metaphysical essence of art towards the end of the 1980s].14 Although socialist realism was chiefly addressed by the Eighties Writers through the postmodernism of the euphoric movement, and not through the metaphysical, it is true that the latter nonetheless maintained a lingering presence throughout the deconstruction employed in the euphoric movement. This presence was simply too entrenched to have been completely eroded away by several years of literary experiments and play. The continued marginal-

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ization of the Ukrainian language disallows it from being substantially freed from its inherited sense of morality. In a 2001 article, critic Vadym Trinchii writes: Українською літературною мовою (ангельську звичайно сприймають за якусь мертву або екзотичну мову) нині розмовляють, наче б узяті Святим Духом – у нестямі, захоплено, не розуміючи самих себе, не намагаючись висловити думку, а тільки розмовляти – співати, і державне впровадження її у маси дедалі виразніше скидається на штучне моделювання кінця світу.15 [Those who converse today in the Ukrainian literary language (because, usually, an angelic one is accepted as a type of dead or exotic language) do so as if they have been seized by the Holy Spirit – in ecstasy, enraptured, not understanding themselves, not even attempting to articulate a thought, but instead, just to converse – to sing, and the government’s act of carrying it to the masses increasingly resembles a false modelling of the end of the world.]

While confirming the argument regarding the presence of the metaphysical in the Ukrainian language today, Trinchii also touches on an interesting point regarding the reaction to the government’s attempts at normalizing the Ukrainian language and shifting it (albeit superficially) from the margins towards the centre. How does the Ukrainian intellectual react to this disturbance of an important part of his or her identity? The sense of otherness branded on post-Soviet Ukrainian intellectuals led to their alienation from society. However, the sense of otherness stemming from the Ukrainian language contains an additional aspect integral to the self-identity of the post-Soviet Ukrainian intellectual. Many of the writers of the Eighties Writers generation were linked to the underground Ukrainian culture of the 1970s and early 1980s. Not only was this cultural scene excluded from, marginalized, and often repressed by official Soviet society, but this very underground itself rejected official Soviet society. Its adherents saw themselves as being different, other, and better than the ‘average Soviet person’ or sovok. The Ukrainian language differentiated them from the sovok; they used this language to claim the territory of protest against, and dissatisfaction with, the Soviet status quo. In prose works written by the Eighties Writers, a sovok character is

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often identified by speaking Russian or surzhyk; such a character is often ridiculed and/or portrayed in a negative light. By distancing themselves from the Russian language, the Ukrainian intellectuals are attempting to demonstrate their exclusion from the sovok. This is particularly evident when the Ukrainian intellectual leaves Ukraine and is subjected to the world’s ignorance towards things associated with Ukraine; such scenes appear in the works of many writers including Zabuzhko, Andrukhovych, Ievheniia Kononenko, and Iurii Izdryk. In Izdryk’s Podviinyi Leon (Double Leon), the protagonist arrives at a Warsaw train station on a visit to Poland for medical treatment; he is aware that there he will be subject to harassment by mafia goons if he is recognized as being a citizen of one of the countries that once formed the Soviet Union, and he knows that the chief indicator of this membership is the use of the Russian language. Thus, he tries to distance himself from the Russian language so as not to automatically be lumped into the group of vulnerable former Soviet citizens riding the black market railroad to the West. At the station, an extra-large thug in a tracksuit approaches the narrator and informs him, in Russian, ‘Hey compatriot, we gotta talk.’16 The narrator pretends that he doesn’t understand Russian and tries to get by with his limited knowledge of Polish. This is done not just for practical or safety reasons – it is also a manifestation of how he sees his identity. But speaking the Ukrainian language (or not speaking Russian) does not automatically include one in the ‘anti-sovok underground.’ In fact, among the villains who appear in Andrukhovych’s novels are characters who speak Ukrainian in order to deceive the novels’ protagonists. For example, in Rekreatsii (Recreations), the suspicious Komsomol youth Bilenkevych speaks in Ukrainian to the poets that have arrived for the Festival of the Resurrecting Spirit in Chortopil9, but when he accidentally slips into Russian, this increases suspicions that he is an agent of the Soviet system.17 In Moskoviada (The Moscoviad), the Ukrainian intellectual Otto von F. is accosted in a secret, government subway system by the Ukrainian-speaking ‘Sashko.’ Otto is suspicious of the overly cordial ‘Sashko’ (whose name is always written in quotes, a hint to the reader that it is a fake name), and when ‘Sashko’ asks him, ‘By the way, how’s my Ukrainian?’ Otto responds, ‘It should be worse’ and ‘It’s too good, and this automatically reveals your profession …’ Later, after ‘Sashko’ has read to Otto a Ukrainian language poem that he has written, the following exchange, narrated by Otto, takes place between the two men. It begins with ‘Sashko’s’ melodramatic declaration:

120 Community – О мово рідна, що без тебе я? – Гівно, – відповів ти йому. – Перепрошую? – не зрозумів ‘Сашко’. – Я мав на увазі, що без рідної мови жоден чекіст нікуди не годиться.18 [‘Oh native tongue, what am I without you?’ ‘A piece of shit,’ you answered to him. ‘I beg your pardon?’ ‘Sashko’ didn’t understand. ‘I meant that without his native tongue no secret service man is worth anything.’]19

The Eighties Writers often attach a quality of exclusivity to the Ukrainian language. Although they themselves often experiment with the language in their prose works, the Eighties Writers believe that they are the guardians of the ‘true’ Ukrainian language and generally denounce official attempts by the government at codifying the language for being ignorant, insincere, and ultimately dangerous for the language. Thus, in the prose of the Eighties Writers, the Ukrainian language performs a double otherness function; it marginalizes its speakers in the eyes of the Soviet and post-Soviet status quo while, from the point of view of Ukrainian-speaking intellectuals, it also distances them from a society with which they themselves do not want to identify – it psychologically heightens their self-image within that society. In both instances, a sense of otherness becomes a factor in the identity of the Ukrainian intellectual in these prose works.

7 A Community of Others

Під словом МИ просимо не розуміти якусь творчу спілку, чи просто групу людей. МИ – то навіть не духовна спільнота, то просто займенник, одне з багатьох слів. [Please do not consider the word WE to represent some kind of creative association or a group of people. WE – isn’t even a spiritual community, it’s just a pronoun, one of many words.] Iurii Izdryk, Manifesto of the journal Chetver

The inappropriateness of postmodernism for Ukrainian culture observed by Serhii Hrabovs’kyi has also been voiced by other critics of contemporary Ukrainian literature. The merit of such thoughts becomes clearer when one considers the disorientation that marked the chaotic movement in this literature. Rostyslav Semkiv echoes Hrabovs9kyi’s concerns in an essay on Iurii Izdryk’s prose entitled ‘Ironiia nepokirnoi struktury’ (The irony of a rebellious structure). In it, Semkiv lists postmodern ‘tricks’ found in Izdryk’s prose and tries to determine what it is in this prose that the reader probably enjoys most. Dividing the novel’s contents into what he feels is postmodern and what he deems to be representative of traditional prose, the critic makes an interesting point – that Izdryk’s readers may claim to be fond of the postmodern devices because, like postmodernism itself, they are humorous, trendy, and ‘cool,’ but that these readers still demand elements such as plot and character development. Semkiv believes that the reader of Ukrainian literature is not yet intellectually fully ready to comprehend and appreciate postmodernism and states, sarcastically:

122 Community Мовляв, ми знаємо, що ви стомилися від добротних традиційних романів, яких в Україні завжди було повно (?), ви вважатимете новий такий роман банальністю (?), але ми пропонуємо вам ось – нову, свіженьку постмодерну форму – читайте і тільки пікніть хтось, що вам вона не до вподоби! Вона мусить подобатися! Бо це прикольно, це класно, це стильно … Ні, не мусить! І не подобається. Напевне наша аудиторія ще страх яка незріла.1 [It’s as if we know that you are tired of good quality traditional novels, of which there were always so many in Ukraine (?), and that you consider a new such novel to be banal (?), and so here we offer you – the new, fresh postmodern form – go ahead and read it and just try saying that you don’t like it! You must like it! Because it’s cool, it’s awesome, it’s fashionable … No we mustn’t! And we don’t. I guess our audience is still so damn immature.]

Semkiv concludes the essay by stating that Izdryk is a writer who is stuck writing in a style that has no real audience and that the author would better be served applying his considerable talents to writing prose in a more traditional form. What Semkiv fails to discuss in his article is that postmodernism can be powerful means for a post-colonial culture to address its marginalized position vis-à-vis the colonizer’s culture. However, the critic’s contention that such a marginalized culture can be unfit for postmodern deconstruction does disclose an interesting attitude expressed in the prose of the Eighties Writers. As writers who belong to a marginalized culture that lacks a solid foundation upon which to unleash deconstruction, these writers often seek stability, which seemingly opposes the very ideas of postmodernism. The challenge for them is to feel a sense of structure and benefit from its support without slipping into the very same totalitarian tendencies of the systems that they were attacking and dismantling through much of the 1990s. Several Eighties Writers responded to this dilemma by trying to create a community that provides for this desired balance while allowing for the moral and the metaphysical – innate to the language with which they create – to exist in a form that is not absolutist. In an essay differentiating totality and totalitariansim, Jost Hermand writes that ‘an ideology is not automatically totalitarian because it favors totality, for only those outlooks are totalitarian which elevate a single discourse to

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the status of exclusive validity.’2 The prose of the Eighties Writers, in fact, reflects the post-Soviet Ukrainain intellectual’s attempt to create an ‘open society’ that adheres to a post-structuralist rejection of totalitarianism (unfreedom) but allows for the inclusion of totality (notions of the metaphysical). A Non-Totalitarian Community: Theoretical Considerations The Eighties Writers faced three key theoretical quandaries in the final decade of the twentieth century: how to encourage structure while allowing for difference, how to placate the inevitable tie to morality without falling into absolutism, and how to construct communities without excluding the other. Lyotard, whose writings (along with those of other postmodernist theorists) had been very influential on the Eighties Writers in the euphoric movement, had warned about the terror of limiting the unbound self and refuted the possibility of reaching stability. Post-structuralism had championed difference and questioned normalizing structures, warning of its dangers. Again, these theories are quite useful in describing post-Soviet Ukrainian culture in the euphoric movement and the attempt by the Eighties Writers to address their post-colonial position. However, out of the disorientation of the chaotic movement emerged a need for stability and structure – structure not as a definite pattern of organization or as an enforced arrangement (as it had been assigned by previous Soviet and Ukrainian cultural myths), but structure as inter-relation. In her Beyond Postmodern Politics: Lyotard, Rorty and Foucault, Honi Fern Haber investigates the possibility of the existence of a consensus that simultaneously respects multiplicity; she concludes that in its attacks on the universalization of totality, postmodernists and poststructuralists actually end up universalizing difference. She points out that not all the language games in Lyotard’s unbound play are equally empowered and that it is an injustice that the strongest voice in such games often wins.3 Utilizing the euphoric movement to announce their entry into postmodern language games, the Eighties Writers soon found themselves reeling from the consequent melees they encountered with the entrenched and powerful colonizing Soviet narratives; they entered these language games with a severe disadvantage and, as result, found their voice silenced. Thus, somewhat paradoxically, without a sense of structure or unity, the marginalized voice continues to meet such consequences and difference is not defended. But, as Todd May points out in Reconsidering Difference: Nancy, Derrida, Levinas, and Deleuze, unity and

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difference do not necessarily exist on different levels – both are needed in order to form a perspective.4 He proposes non-foundationalist philosophy as a theoretical approach that can provide an alternative to traditional philosophy without being deconstructive. May’s theoretical approach allows for both community and a moral view while respecting difference. Agata Bielik-Robson’s ‘Romantic Modernism’ represents a similar attempt at striking a balance between individual and community as well as between creative freedom and tradition.5 Haber’s thesis also allows for community, in fact emphasizing that a community must be afforded the opportunity to exist; it is essential in providing a voice for the marginalized. She writes, ‘We have vocabularies (though not only one vocabulary) only as a member of some community or other, and so it is only as a member of some community or other that we are empowered.’6 Communities are important in forming one’s self for they are intrinsically tied to the actions we perform. As May writes, ‘To be so constituted is to be constituted by the communities of which one is a member, since communities are themselves constituted by practices. In this way, then, communities are partly constitutive of individuality.’7 But community, he argues, cannot have unchanging borders: ‘there can be no foundationalism when it comes to articulating community, for the reason (among others) that the borders of community cannot be precisely fixed in a way that a foundationalism would require.’8 In addition, one must understand that an individual does not belong exclusively to one community – on the contrary, an individual belongs to several different communities at the same time. In order for them to remain distant from totalitarianism, May permits communal identities only if they are not the product of a transcendental operation or anchored in any deep foundations.9 This, then, surely is a potential danger for the Eighties Writers because they are tied so closely to the transcendental by way of the Ukrainian cultural tradition and, especially, through the Ukrainian language. Such an all-encompassing absolute could be the source of categorical, totalitarian significations that are enforced in the name of truth. May’s model, however, does allow for communal identities that have emerged in the unfolding of the history of practices that form communities – as long as they vanish as these practices change. And this is applicable to post-Soviet Ukrainian culture; the community formed by the Eighties Writers in their prose is a result of a past and present experience of marginalization; should Ukrainian culture gradually emerge from this eccentric status, this community would, conceivably, no longer be needed to serve its purpose and would eventually dissolve.

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Haber believes that ‘the recognition that each one of us is radically plural makes alternative discourses an open possibility.’10 Such an understanding facilitates the permeability of community walls and encourages multiple and different points of view by denying privilege to any one absolute position. For the Eighties Writers, such a community would address the need for structure that stems from their post-colonial position without undoing the progress in liberating the Ukrainian literary word that was achieved in the euphoric movement. What I am proposing is, in a sense, the converse of Svetlana Boym’s concept of ‘the emergence of different kinds of communities that would allow participation without belonging and community without “isms” (nationalism, communitarianism, or utopian communism).’11 Although I agree with her idea of a community with voluntary participation, I envision one that, rather than excluding the various ‘isms’ of Ukraine’s past and present, actually acknowledges them. It allows for the recognition of both the traditional, nationalist Ukrainian narrative and for the various other narratives, including those of the colonizers, in Ukraine’s past as significant factors in the development of the post-Soviet identity. Haber feels that ‘Community identification is motivated by the desire to get clear on one or some of my identities (and recognizing myself in the experience of another may help me to do this) or to get clear on the larger social context in which that identity was formed (and community identification may also help me to do this).’12 Thus, seeing yourself as belonging to a community allows you to understand that your identity is not closed and absolute but instead constantly fluctuates and remains open to reinterpretation. She also writes, ‘The recognition of similarity and the possibility of solidarity wakes us from the stupefaction of normalizing and disciplinary discourse.’13 And community not only offers such awareness but it is also instrumental in helping a self recognize an other. As Charles Taylor phrases it, ‘One is a self only among other selves. A self can never be described without reference to those who surround it.’14 Like a self, a community must allow for its deconstruction and re-description at any time, and members of that community must continually be aware of this. In this manner, the threat of a community becoming totalitarian is quelled and difference is respected – unity and difference are given the opportunity for coexistence. The theories discussed above also allow for the presence of morality without the onset of totalitarianism – this is an essential condition for the Eighties Writers because of morality’s close ties to the Ukrainian language, despite the postmodern deconstruction of the euphoric movement. In fact, May believes that a moral view not only does not

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interfere with respect for difference but encourages it: ‘It allows points of contact between various practices and thus reinforces the principle of respect for differences’ and ‘offers possibilities for self-reflection from a variety of vantage points.’15 Thus, the possession of a moral view can facilitate the appreciation of an other’s beliefs, which may be different than one’s own; an understanding of someone else’s sense of morals is only possible through having one’s own convictions. This is consistent with the role of morality in the creation of the self as it was presented by Paul Ricœur; he has shown us how justice makes others irreplaceable and how respect for the norm blossoms into respect for the other and for ‘oneself as an other.’16 But May allows for morality only if it is not justified on the basis of some foundation that needs no justification. Thus, it must be a morality that needs to constantly be challenged so that it is not allowed to become foundational. The attack on, and play with, the Ukrainian national tradition that occurs in the prose of the Eighties Writers is just such a challenge. Although they are still tied to its imposed morality, they consistently address this moral tie and deconstruct it in their works. The Post-Soviet Ukrainian Intertextual Community We have observed how morality, the metaphysical, and otherness, through the Ukrainian language, are invoked in the prose of the Eighties Writers; now we will see how these writers address their need for structure by building a community in their literary works. In his essay ‘Topohrafiia suchasnoi ukrains9koi prozy’ (The topography of contemporary Ukrainian prose), Tymofii Havryliv writes, ‘To say that contemporary Ukrainian prose is a collection of quotations would be incorrect. Even so, hidden and open quotations can be found in almost every text.’17 Intertextuality, in fact, constitutes a defining characteristic of post-Soviet Ukrainian prose. It is through this intertextuality that the Eighties Writers attempt to construct communities that provide the structure necessary to endure their marginalized position but that, in and of themselves, are not absolutist or totalitarian. It is a delicate balance that is approached in different ways and is realized at different levels by different writers. In my analysis, I will employ a very specific understanding of the term intertextuality; when using this term I refer only to the activity performed by these writers when they cross-reference one another in their texts. A character, a scene, or the author of a particular text may appear

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in a text written by another author. Sometimes an author will also reference herself or other texts written by her in a new text. As this activity is conducted by several different authors, a network forms, connecting these texts. It is through this intertwined referencing that the Eighties Writers form their various intertextual communities. In order to address their particular post-Soviet concerns, these communities must be loose, its members must be variable, and its borders must be constantly in flux – they must be continually flowing and changing. Three members of the Eighties Writers in particular – Kostiantyn Moskalets9, Iurii Andrukhovych, and Iurii Izdryk – have been most active in building such communities in their prose works. Looking at examples of the prose of these three writers will demonstrate the ways in which they use intertextuality to build these communities; the manner through which they attempt to maintain a delicate balance between freedom and structure in these communities and the degree to which they are successful in achieving this equilibrium will become apparent. Kostiantyn Moskalets9 extensively utilizes intertextuality in Vechirnii med and makes it an essential stylistic and conceptual element of this particular prose work. As we have seen, Moskalets9 depicts the depression and disappointment of post-Soviet Ukraine and pronounces the need for the creation of a new other world as the only means of survival. The author envisions a new world that is to be created by poets who posses the magical power of the word. Thus, by cross-referencing his work with that of other writers, Moskalets9 is able to connect his literary world with the worlds of other wordsmiths and, consequently, expand on the novel’s central idea of the need for a guild-like realm of meadpoetry in order to survive in today’s world. As is the case in Moskalets9’s novel itself, snow and snowfall comprise the main motifs in the two poetry collections quoted directly by Moskalets’ in Vechirnii med – Mykola Riabchuk’s Zyma u L9vovi (Winter in L9viv) and Ihor Rymaruk’s Uprodovzh snihopadu (Throughout the snowfall). Moskalets9 quotes entire poems and/or segments of poems from these two collections (presented in italics within the text) throughout his novel, splashing his prose with occasional drops of mead-poetry that provide jaunts into a world that, seemingly, exists separately from the world presented in the novel. These two worlds, however, are tightly intertwined in theme and plot and maintain a kind of parallel existence. Moskalets9 often uses these poetic fragments to supplement the novel’s story; they provide another dimension to the novel’s events. This serves to add to the general dreamy, hallucinatory feel of the novel and helps

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to create and maintain the lingering presence of an other (yet similar) metaphysical, poetic world that is essential to the novel’s theme. These poems were written by Ukrainian intellectuals who, like Moskalets9’s wandering protagonist, are searching for their place between East and West in today’s world. By including the poetry of Rymaruk and Riabchuk in his own creative work, Moskalets9 attempts to create a community, a home for contemporary Ukrainian intellectuals, for these ‘guardians of Being.’ In order to demonstrate the manner in which Moskalets9 utilizes intertextuality in his novel, I will first quote the poems that are referenced, and then I will offer the particular fragment of Moskalets9’s novel into which that poem has been woven. The first example utilizes a poem from Riabchuk’s collection Zyma u L9vovi, which features poems replete with images of snow and the power of poetry. One poem paints a world at the edge of autumn and winter: Зима все ближче. Все більше жовтого листя за вікнами, все тугіше стягують землю приморозки. Пора б уже вставити шибу в квартирці, заклеїти вікна – зима все ближче, все більше листя між рамами й на підлозі, у відрах з водою і навіть у чашці з тим чаєм, яким ти хотів зігрітись, зима все ближче, все більше дзвінкого повітря в твоїй велечезній квартирі, і листя голосно шелестить під ногами, коли ти переходиш з холодною чашкою  від одного вікна до іншого не вірячи, що вже падає перший сніг.18 [Winter is ever close. Ever more yellow leaves outside the windows, ever tighter the early frosts grip the ground. It’s high time to replace the broken windowpane, to tape over the cracks in the frame     – winter is ever closer, ever more leaves between the frames and on the floor, in buckets of water and even in the cup of tea which was to have warmed you, winter is ever closer, ever more sonorous is the air in your enormous apartment, and leaves

A Community of Others  129 rustle loudly beneath your feet, as you walk with the cold cup   from one window to another awestruck by the first snowfall.]

Moskalets9 quotes this poem in a chapter featuring a nightmare experienced by the novel’s narrator; in the dream he is chased by taunting children while walking on a frozen pond with a cup of hot tea until he is awakened, and thereby rescued, by his lover Andrusia: Такі маленькі, ніби колібрі – а зима все ближче, все більше дзвінкого повітря в твоїй велечезній квартирі – ти спрагло ковтаєш дуже міцний і дуже гидкий чай, який відгонить мастилом, зате дуже дешевий, ідеш по сеймовій кризі з горням у руках; діти з ковзанки прибігли подивитися на т е б е, подивитися на тебе, подивитися на тебе і на те, як парує чудернацькиий напій, а на те, як ти балансуєш на слизькому, остерігаючись підковзунтися і розхлюпати бодай краплю, яка пропече кригу, підпалить сніги, оберне на попіл увесь цей краєвид – або автопортрет Бройгеля – із поштової листівки, краєвид або автопортрет, у якому ти несміло посміхаєшся дітям, щосили притискаючи горня до серця. ‘Де твоя Андруся?’ – ‘де твоя Андруся?’ – насмішкувато питаються діти, підступаючи все ближче, підморгуючи одне одному, ховаючи за спинами руки з камінням. ‘Звідки вони знають про Андрусю? Хто їм розповів? Хто сповістив їх? – дивуюся я, задкуючи, і все ще посміхаючись жалюгідною посмішкою, і цієї миті одна з каменюк влучає мені в плече, а друга – просто у горня біля серця. ‘Ой-oй-oй-ой!’ – волаю я, падаючи на коліна, намагаючись долонями позбирати те, що розпливається темно-каштановою плямою по кришталевій поверхні твердого яблука, але вже пізно, марно, безповоротно, неминуче, – спалахують верболози і осокори, спалахує білий-білий-білий сніг, червоно-чорне полум’я лиже пагорб і церкву на ньому, листівка згортається, темніє, зникає – і листя голосно шелестить під ногами, коли ти переходиш з холодною чашкою від одного вікна до іншого не вірячи, що вже падає перший сніг. Настрашена Андруся щосили торсає мене за праве плече – ‘та прокинься ж ти нарешті, благаю тебе, прокинься, я коло тебе, тут, ось я!’ – розплющую очі, проводжу рукою по лиці, воно мокре.19 [They’re as small as hummingbirds – and winter is ever closer, ever more sonorous is the air in your enormous apartment – you thirstily gulp down very

130 Community strong and very repugnant tea, which reeks of motor oil, which is why it is so cheap, you walk along the frozen Seim River with a cup in your hands; the kids who were ice skating run up to look at y o u, to look at you, to look at you and at how that mysterious drink steams, and at how you attempt to keep your balance on the slippery surface, being careful not to slip and fall and, god-forbid, spill a drop that could melt the ice, ignite the snow and turn this entire landscape into ashes – or Bruegel’s self-portrait – as it is depicted on a postcard, a landscape or a postcard, in which you timidly smile at the kids, holding the cup to your heart with all your might. ‘Where’s your Andrusia?’ ‘O where, where’s your Andrusia?’ – the kids ask mockingly, coming closer and closer, signalling one another, holding fists full of rocks behind their backs. ‘How do they know about Andrusia? Who told them? Who informed them?’ – I wonder, moving backwards while continuing to smile timidly. At that moment one of the rocks nails me in my right shoulder, while another hits the cup that’s held up to my heart. ‘Oooouuuuch!’ I wail, falling to my knees, trying with my palms to gather what spills out in a dark, chestnut-colored blot on the crystalline surface of this firm apple, but it’s too late, it’s useless, irreparable, unavoidable – willow bushes and poplars flare up, the white-white-white snow flares up the red-black flame licks the hill and the church that sits on top of it, the postcard crumples, it blackens, disappears – and leaves rustle loudly beneath your feet, as you walk with the cold cup in your hand from one window to another, awestruck by the first snowfall. A startled Andrusia shakes my right shoulder with all her might, ‘Wake up already, I’m begging you, wake up, I’m right here next to you, right here, it’s me!’ I open my eyes and run my hand across my face – it’s wet.]

Moskalets’ uses fragments of Riabchuk’s poem both in commenting on the scene and in providing a certain deviation from a straight narrative. This allows for the introduction of an element of play into Moskalets9’s prose. In this fragment, Moskalets9 establishes a common bond between the experiences of his lost generation and those of Riabchuk’s generation – the Seventies Writers. His protagonist’s isolation from, and ridicule by, the world around him finds a reverse echo in the somnambulistic decay presented in Riabchuk’s poem. Besides the common seasonal motif, Moskalets’ also bases Vechirnii med’s first part on Zyma u L9vovi because its poems were written by Riabchuk and it has links to L9viv. Mykola Riabchuk was a member of the underground cultural scene in L9viv in the late 1960s and 1970s. Together with Hryhorii

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Chubai, Oleh Lysheha, Viktor Morozov and others, Riabchuk proved to be very influential on the creative movement that emerged from L9viv in the late 1980s and dominated the Ukrainian cultural scene in the country’s first years of independence; the Ne Zhurys9! (Don’t Worry!) cabaret group, in which Moskalets9 performed as a bard, emerged from this underground. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Riabchuk functioned as a Kulturträger for new Ukrainian culture, helping to unearth many of its talents; as literary editor of the journal Suchasnist9, the leading forum for new writers in the 1990s, he facilitated the debut of many important literary works and charted a Western European orientation for Ukraine’s new culture. He was considered to be a guru by many of the Eighties Writers, among them Moskalets9. Moskalets9’s intertextual connection with Riabchuk acknowledges the latter’s influence on his emergence as a writer. In that sense, he constructs a direct link between the Eighties Writers and the underground generation that preceded them – the Seventies Writers. This is an important aspect of the type of community built by the Eighties Writers in their prose – a community representing authentic Ukrainian culture in resistance to the officially sanctioned Ukrainian culture. The intertextual community constructed by Moskalets9 is rather rigid and closed with a sense of exclusiveness and, as such, dangerously approaches totalitarianism. However, membership in this community requires one’s marginalized status in Soviet and post-Soviet Ukraine – this is, in fact, what forms the bond with the linked literary text. This offers the community the potential for its dissolution, should that marginality eventually fade. The notion of community is not new to Ukrainian literature. In his book The Poet as Mythmaker, George G. Grabowicz traces the presence of community (communitas) in the poetry of Taras Shevchenko, the chief figure in modern Ukrainian literature. However, as Grabowicz explains, Shevchenko’s notion of community is that of an ideal state and also of ‘a powerful social force that may appear in a bloody reckoning.’20 The community proposed by the Eighties Writers does not share the Romantic vision of revenge or perfection expressed by their literary predecessor and refrains from heralding an eventual transformation and resolution. The Eighties Writers share Shevchenko’s appeal to community as both a rejection of governing structures and as a means of countervailing marginality. Their postmodern community, however, is designed to be fleeting and is often ironic in nature. Ihor Rymaruk’s Uprodovzh snihopadu also features snow-filled images and an aura of loneliness in addition to occasional allusions to Kyiv.

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Rymaruk was a well-respected Ukrainian poets and, incidentally, had also been the chief editor of Suchasnist9. A scene in Vechirnii med in which Moskalets9’s protagonist wanders alone around Munich becomes intertwined with a Rymaruk poem about a vision experienced at a subway stop. Below is a demonstration of how Moskalets9 utilizes one particular fragment. У підземному світлі, в скляному тремтінні раптом вилущить з мармуру око сова, закричить – і поляже юрба, мов трава, і в тунелі хитнуться розкошлані тіні.21 [In the underground light, in the glassy trembling suddenly a marble owl husks open its eye, it shrieks – and the crowd lies down like grass, and shaggy shadows sway in the tunnel.

As was the case with Riabchuk’s poem, Moskalets’ weaves Rymaruk’s poetic world into the one he himself has created in Vechirnii med: Допити пиво, розрахуватися і вийти в темну листопадову зливу, простувати до підземки, простоволосому, за хвилину мокрому до останнього рубця на останній сорочці, пильно дивитися вперед туди, де існує інший, справжній світ, спуститися сходами вниз і їхати, як завше, ‘на чорно’, відчуваючи, як стається те, що мусило статися, ‘у підземному світлі, в скляному тремтінні’, проїхати всі можливі потрібні, з їхньої точки зору, зупинки і пересадки, заблукати, задрімати на Остбангоф, але ‘раптом вилущить з мармуру око сова, закричить’ – і ти здригнешся, ніби від електричного струму, підхопишся, знову сядеш до першого-ліпшого вагона …22 [Finish your beer, pay the tab and walk into the dark November downpour, go directly to the subway, hatless, and soon soaked to the skin, diligently look ahead, to that place where the other, true world exists, take the stairs down and ride, as always, without paying, taking in how that which had to happen, is happening, ‘in the underground light, in the glassy trembling,’ miss all the necessary, in their opinion, stops and transfer stations, get lost, doze off at the Ostbahnhof, but ‘suddenly a marble owl husks open its eye, it shrieks’ – and you shudder, as if getting an electric shock, get up, and once again sit down in the nearest subway car …]

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Rymaruk’s poem paints a somewhat eerie scene that includes a moment of shock and its effect. The shock, however, has little effect on Moskalets9’s protagonist, who slides back into his repetitive, aimless wandering in Munich. As he had done with Riabchuk’s poetry, Moskalets9 here utilizes a poem (this time by a fellow member of the Eighties Writers) in order to demonstrate the importance of Rymaruk’s presence in the experiences of the protagonist, especially when he is traversing strange environs. Moskalets9 creates an intertextual bond with Rymaruk in order to acknowledge his colleague’s talent and world view; by combining their creative worlds, Moskalets9 makes them part of the same community. In analysing Moskalets9’s use of quotations in another fragment of Vechirnii med, Tymofii Havryliv interprets the intertextual reference as ‘a quote of a quote, which is part of a quote, where suddenly the private, even if just for a short moment, surmounts the image of a bustling world.’23 Occasionally in Vechirnii med, when the poetry of Riabchuk and Rymaruk is cited in a scene, the narrator becomes amazed that what he experiences in the novel’s story is quite similar to that expressed in these poems written by someone else. He expresses a sense of comfort in this – at least momentarily, he succeeds in lessening the alienation he experiences as an intellectual in post-Soviet Ukraine because he is joined by his fellow poets and their poetic worlds. Moskalets9 has created a community in Vechirnii med that is rather inflexible. However, it is important to note that he never directly informs the reader to whom these poems and fragments of poetry belong. Thus, he allows for an element of play to enter this community. This, coupled with its emergence as a result of a marginalized status, allows it to approach the type of non-totalitarian community proposed above. In the communities constructed by Andrukhovych and Izdryk, play enjoys a relatively increased presence, and, consequently, the intertextual communities constructed by these writers come closer than those of Moskalets9’s in maintaining flexibility and respecting difference. Andrukhovych’s Rekreatsii, Moskoviada, and Perverziia (Perverzion) are rife with quotations from and references to other Eighties Writers and their literary works as well as mentions of Andrukhovych’s own poetry and prose. Of the writers under scrutiny here, such self-referential quoting is perhaps the most widespread in his prose. For Andrukhovych, this cross-referencing is not only conducted in order to form a community – it is also consistent with the general spirit of his prose. The author often indirectly invites the reader to trace back characters, places, and dialogue that appear in his novel to their original sources. It is part

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of the postmodern play characteristic of Andrukhovych’s work and a source of the writer’s signature erudition and wit. A few examples will demonstrate his particular use of intertextuality. In Rekreatsii, we are told that the fictional characters Hryts9 Shtundera and Iurii Nemyrych are friends with ‘Malkovych.’ 24 The reference here is to Ivan Malkovych a Kyiv-based poet and a successful publisher of children’s books; he is one of the most high-profile of the Eighties Writers in today’s cultural scene in Ukraine. In Moskoviada, Otto Von F. woos a lady friend by reading to her the poems ‘Osinni psy Karpat’ (Autumn hounds of the Carpathians) and ‘Futbol na monastyrs9komu podviri’i’ (A soccer game in the monastery courtyard).25 Both poems actually do exist and were published in 1989. The former was written by Vasyl9 Herasym’iuk, who also belongs to the Eighties Writers. This is perhaps his best-known poem and has often been interpreted as a poetic anthem of sorts for the Eighties Writers.26 The latter poem is Andrukhovych’s own – it appeared in his second poetry collection Seredmistia (Downtown).27 Also in Moskoviada, Otto von F. quotes a line from a poem by fellow Bu-Ba-Bu member Viktor Neborak in describing a certain type of woman.28 But it is actually a misquote of a fragment from Neborak’s ‘Mis9kyi boh Eros’ (Eros a city god), a poem that provides an excellent example of the depiction of euphoria in Ukrainian literature; it was published in Neborak’s groundbreaking collection Litaiucha holova (The flying head).29 By deliberately misquoting his colleague, Andrukhovych takes a step towards weaving an intertextual community while, simultaneously, calling this network into question; the misquote softens the firmness of this bond, rendering it flexible and hinting at its potential unravelling. Such an act of misquoting is ironic. It is an act of self-defence for the marginalized, post-colonial subject that simultaneously marks off a distance from the rigid integrality of past cultural frameworks. The lengthiest and most extravagant of the three novels by Andrukhovych analysed here – Perverziia – provides the greatest number of references to the Eighties Writers. Contemporary Ivano-Frankivs9k poet Iaroslav Dovhan is referenced during Stanislav Perfets9kyi’s speech delivered at the Venice conference entitled ‘The Postcarnival Absurdity of the World.’ He drops his name in the midst of a narrative about Ukraine’s history and the genealogy of its inhabitants: Що поробиш? Стонадцять племен влаштувало собі довічний карнавал у наших генах. Та й чому тільки в генах? Невже ми не віримо в інші речі, менш

A Community of Others  135 намацальні? В ці енерґетичні протяги між віками, в це ненастанне розсіювання аури по всьому простору? Я звик поважати різність і непростоту. Ось тут, сьогодні, перед вами …, я змушений визнати в собі – меншою чи більшою мірою – тавра і невра, савдарата і тісамата, бастарна і вандала, андрофага і печеніга, можливо, ще когось, цигана, жида, поляка і цілком не виключено, що довгана.30 [What can you do? A hundred something tribes had arranged for a perpetual carnival in our genes. And why just in genes? Do we not believe in other things less palpable? In these energetic draughts between the centuries, in this uninterrupted sowing of auras through all of space? I have become used to regarding difference and complexity. Right here, today, before you … I am forced to recognize in myself – in more or less measure – a Taure and a Neurae, a Saudaratae and a Thismatae, a Bastarnae and a Vandal, an Androphagae and Pecheneg, and perhaps someone else, a Gypsy, a Jew, a Pole, and it’s entirely not out of the question, a Dovhan.]31

Besides providing an expression of respect for difference, this fragment offers another example of open-ended community building. In the text, Andrukhovych provides a footnote for the term ‘dovhan’ informingthe reader that it refers to a tribe that once inhabited Ukraine and that this fact has been ‘proven by science.’ Thus, once again Andrukhovych makes a veiled connection to a member of the Eighties Writers and then proceeds to further undermine this bond by adding a layer of distance with the use of a footnote. A line from a Dovhan poem is also quoted in Perverziia – this time with a footnote providing the first line of its source poem.32 Towards the end of Perfets9kyi’s speech, the protagonist quotes a line from a poem and a footnote informs the reader that it had been impossible to track down the source of the quote.33 In truth, the quote comes from a Neborak poem in the cycle (or ‘poetry show,’ as Neborak termed it) Den9 narodzhennia (Birthday Party).34 Again, a connection is woven and immediately compromised. Andrukhovych also quotes and misquotes himself in his prose. He references his own poetry and prose directly, as well as characters from, and titles of, other literary works written by him. In Moskoviada Otto considers the best path to get to a particular destination in Moscow and recalls a phrase that is attributed to ‘Andrukhovych’; he even comments on the phrase with ‘wow, such impressive lines!’35 The lines are from a

136 Community

poem in the cycle Lysty v Ukrainu (Letters to Ukraine), which loosely serves as a companion piece to Moskoviada; the cycle was published in its entirety – all twenty poems – only in the fourth issue of the journal Chetver (1993). Perverziia begins with a foreword by ‘Y.A.’36 that includes the article ‘Ciao Perfets9kyi’ – an obituary for Stanislav Perfets9kyi written by ‘I. Bilynkevych’; Bilynkevych was also the name of the wily Komsomol youth in Rekreatsii who attempts to tail the four poet protagonists during their participation in the Festival of the Resurrecting Spirit in Chortopil9. In Perverziia’s foreword, Y.A. adds another layer of mysterious correlation by letting it be known that he believes that ‘Bilynkevych’ is a pseudonym.37 An especially interesting example of Andrukhovych’s use of intertextuality centres on the surname Nemyrych. One of the four poets in Rekreatsii, Iurii Nemyrych, shares a surname with Samiilo Nemyrych, the main character in a poem written by Andrukhovych and published in his collection Ekzotychni ptakhy i roslyny (Exotic birds and plants) and also with the hero of Andrukhovych’s short story Samiilo z Nemyrova, prekrasnyi rozbyshaka (Samiilo of Nemyriv, the handsome bandit).38 By referencing himself and his own literary works, Andrukhovych succeeds in compromising the intertextual bonds he makes with other writers. This also serves to inject relativity into such activity. It provides for the desired sense of structure that results in the construction of such an intertextual community but also allows it to remain open to redescription. The correlations are not concrete and they are often veiled, allowing them to be interpreted in various ways. In a final example of Andrukhovych’s multilayered referencing, Perverziia includes a chapter featuring Liza Sheila Shalizer’s speech at the Venice conference in which several of the intertextual games I discussed above intersect. Speaking about the mystery of the relationship between man and woman, she mentions a certain ‘Sam’ Nemyrych. Увесь тодійшній світ облетіла жахна історія кавалера Сема Немирича, мешканця сарматської фортеці Леополіс і предка по чоловічій лінії Перфецького, який – не Перфецький, а Немирич – на початку XVII ст. зґвалтував дочку тамтешнього ката з поетичним іменем Неборака, за що був переданий до рук інквізиції, а потім справедливо розрубаний на шістдесять дев’ять кавалків батьком своєї жертви.39 [The awful story of the knight Sam Nemyrych circulated throughout the entire world of that time. He was an inhabitant of the Sarmatian fortress

A Community of Others  137 of Leopolis and an ancestor of Perfetsky, who is not present here, who – not Perfetsky, but Nemyrych – at the beginning of the seventeenth century raped the local executioner’s daughter with the poetic name of Neboraka, for which he was conveyed into the hands of an inquisition, and then justly chopped into sixty-nine pieces by the father of his victim.]40

So now we have a fictional character from Andrukhovych’s novel Perverziia (Liza) referencing a character from her author’s poem and earlier prose work (Sam [Samiilo] Nemyrych), relating him to Perverziia’s chief protagonist (Perfets9kyi) and mentioning Nemyrych’s rape victim (Amaliia Neboraka), an obvious allusion to the surname of Andrukhovych’s colleague in Bu-Ba-Bu (Neborak). Finally, we are given a footnote that explains that Liza is mistakenly confusing Perfets9kyi with ‘another well-known, contemporary poet,’ Iurii Nemyrych – the fictional character from Andrukhovych’s Rekreatsii.41 These many referenced characters criss-cross on various planes, freeing them from the boundaries of one particular community and, instead, rendering them with the ability to belong to several communities at once. Ievheniia Kononenko has taken a similar approach to building such a community. In a scene from her novel Imitatsiia (Imitation) she references a fellow writer and member of the Eighties Writers, Oksana Zabuzhko. The scene is a conversation during which Anatolii tells Mar’ianna that the only Ukrainian-language book sold at a book fair in his village was Pol9ovi doslidzhennia z ukrains9koho seksu and that all copies of this book were bought out by the village’s Ukrainian-language schoolteachers as a handbook for their lessons.42 Kononenko does not mention Zabuzhko by name, but instead weaves the title of one of the best-known novels in post-Soviet Ukrainian literature into the everyday existence of the fictional world she has created. In this way, Kononenko forms a bond with Zabuzhko and places her within her intertextual community. Intertextuality forms the fabric of Iurii Izdryk’s prose as well. It is so abundant in Izdryk’s Votstsek (Wozzeck) that the writer and critic Volodymyr Ieshkiliev published his own separate ‘guide’ to the numerous references that saturate the novel. Ieshkiliev’s Votstsekurhiia bet (Votstsekurhiia Bet) was conceived as a ‘commentary to the internal encyclopaedia of Izdryk’s Votstsek.’43 Ieshkiliev’s publication lists and explains both the obvious and the more obscure allusions Izdryk makes in his prose. With its guidance, the reader is shown that the majority of intertextual references in Votstsek are made to the poetry of Iurii Andrukho-

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vych, in particular to the ‘Lysty v Ukrainu’ cycle of poems (which Andrukhovych himself quoted in his own prose) and to the long poem ‘Indiia’ (India). Interestingly, one of the quotes of ‘Indiia’ is a reference not to the published version of the poem but, instead, to a version that was read by Andrukhovych to the accompaniment of live music at an evening celebrating the one-hundred-year anniversary of Bu-Ba-Bu.44 The fact that Izdryk chooses a particular, ‘private’ version of the poem serves to emphasis the intimate nature of the literary bond he makes when quoting it. In Votstsek Izdryk also quotes the poetry of Halyna Petrosaniak (twice), mentions his own literary journal Chetver, and refers to ‘Khoms9kyi,’ a surname that also appears in Andrukhovych’s and Ieshkiliev’s prose. The two chapters in Votstsek in which the greatest number of Eighties Writers are referenced are ‘Syndrom Liubans9koho’ (The Liubans9kyi syndrome) and ‘Prykhid heroiv’ (Here come the heroes). In the former, we have the first appearance of Karp Liubans9kyi. This name also appears in other Izdryk prose works and is generally understood to be a reference to Iurii Andrukhovych. In fact, Andrukhovych also mentions the name Karp Liubans9kyi in Perverziia as a pseudonym for that novel’s chief protagonist, Stanislav Perfets9kyi.45 As Ieshkiliev points out, in ‘Syndrom Liubans9koho’ characters appear that are veiled allusions to members of a post-Soviet Ivano-Frankivs9k artistic circle to which both he and Izdryk belong.46 In this particular example, Izdryk and Andrukhovych arrange a two-way path that links their prose; a bond is formed. But two different author’s making the same reference also provides for the expression of two diverse points of view. Tracing Ricœur’s approach to narrative identity, Kathleen Blamey points out that ‘The narrative identity of the self will also be enhanced by the recasting of a life history from a multiplicity of viewpoints and in a variety of rhetorical modes.’47 Providing different viewpoints of the same subject allows for various retellings of a narrative, all of which are key components in defining a self. Also, plurality is encouraged when different authors position the same character or name in two different creative worlds; various perspectives on the same subject are provided, and all approaches are equally empowered. ‘Prykhid Heroiv’ goes beyond ‘Syndrom Liubans’koho’ and references an all-Ukrainian circle of intellectuals made up mostly of Eighties Writers. Lying in bed, Votstsek (That one) hears voices from a neighbouring room and identifies them by their vocal particularities: А за-за дверей і справді лунали голоси. І деякі з них Той навіть зіден-

A Community of Others  139 тифікував. Ну, насамперед це, звичайно, був голос Карпа Любанського, з його патріаршими інтонаціями. А отой високий, з гиготливим сміхом – то, мабуть, Ірпінець. А той басок, з гнусавинкою – Густав (котрий із них?). А той зухвалий баритон безперечно належить Боракне. А шамкотіння – Камідяну. А істерична скоромовка – Забужко, а блаженне лопотіння – Лишезі, а розкотистий регіт – комбатанту Довгому …48 [But there really were voices in the next room. Some of them That One could even identify. To start with, of course, there was Karp Liubansky’s voice with its patriarchal intonations. And that high-pitched one with the giggly laugh was probably Irpinets. And that little nasal bass was Gustav (which of them?). And that arrogant baritone was undoubtedly Borakne. And the muttering was surely Kamidian’s. And the hysterical jabber of tongue-twisters surely belonged to Zabuzhko, the blithe patter to Lysheha, and the rolling laughter to combatant Dovhy …]49

Izdryk conducts word games with the names of his literary colleagues, veiling the person referenced just enough to inject an element of play into the prose but not enough that a reader, who is even casually familiar with contemporary Ukrainian literature, would be unable to make the connection to the actual Eighties Writers to whom the author alludes. Thus, ‘Irpinets’ is Bu-Ba-Bu member Oleksander Irvanets9 (who actually lives in the town of Irpin’), ‘Borakne’ is Bu-Ba-Bu member Viktor Neborak, ‘Kamidian’ is Transcarpathian poet Petro Midianka, and ‘Dovhy’ is the aforementioned and often-referenced Iaroslav Dovhan. The fact that Izdryk provides the names Zabuzhko and Lysheha directly, together with the other skewed allusions, is another example of an attempt to maintain a balance between structure and open-ended play in the building of this intertextual community. Later, the ‘voices’ barge into Votstsek’s room, bringing with them an entire crew of Eighties Writers from various parts of Ukraine: І тут же двері похчахнулись, і галаслива вся юрба ввалилася в кімнату – і Карп, і діти Карпа і дружина, і Ірпінець і Боракне і Камідян, і Ірпінцева Оксана, Процюк, Малкович, Андрусяк, Герасимюк, Забужко, Іздрик, Бригинець, Гриценко і Римарук і Лугосад і просто Сад, Лишега, Ципердюки (Іван і Діма), Фішбейн, Либонь, Авжеж і Позаяк.50 [And at that moment the door sprang open, and the whole garrulous crowd flooded into the room – Karp, Karp’s children and wife, Irpinets

140 Community and Borakne and Irpinets’s Oksana, Protsiuk, Malkovych, Andrusiak, Herasymiuk, Zabuzhko, Izdryk, Bryhynets, Hrytsenko and Rymaruk and Luhosad and just plain Sad, Lysheha, the Tsyperdiuks (Ivan and Dima), Fischbein, Lybon, Avzhezh and Pozaiak.]51

Among those who enter the novel Votstsek are the Kyiv poets Ihor Rymaruk (who had also been referenced by Moskalets9) and Vikhta Sad, members of both the Luhosad (L9viv) and Propala Hramota (Kyiv) poetry trios and the Zhytomyr literary journal Avzhezh. By also inserting himself (‘Izdryk’) into the novel, Izdryk once again disturbs any absolute formation of a community. Another Izdryk novel, Podviinyi Leon (Double Leon), already comes equipped with a commentary by Leonid Kosovych that helps to point out that novel’s plethora of intertextual references. In addition to several Andrukhovych quotes (again to ‘Lysty v Ukrainu’ and ‘Indiia’ as well as to Andrukhovych’s translation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet), this novel features a series of intertextual bridges to Votstsek and to Izdryk’s short story Ostriv Krk (The island of Krk). Izdryk also references Ieshkiliev’s short-lived literary journal Plieroma and the name of the chief protagonist from Taras Prokhas9ko’s short story ‘Nekropol9’ (Necropolis) – Markus Mlynars9kyi.52 The first publication of Ostriv Krk as an individual volume, in turn, features a commentary written by Izdryk himself.53 Again, here we have references to Prokhas9ko’s Mlynars9kyi, to Andrukhovych, and to the name Anna. The name Anna is a favourite of Prokhas’ko’s, which appears in his short stories ‘Essai de deconstruction’ and ‘Dovkola ozera’ (Around the lake) and figures in the title of his collection of short stories Inshi dni Anny (Anna’s other days). As Izdryk (whose Votstsek features the female character ‘A.’) himself explains, the name Anna has developed an almost ‘sacred’ status for writers from Ivano-Frankivs9k.54 Many Eighties Writers who live and work in Ivano-Frankivs9k have been associated with a grouping known as the Stanislavs9kyi Fenomen (The Stanislav phenomenon). It is a community that has been interpreted in various ways. The group includes both writers and visual artists who emerged during the collapse of the Soviet Union and who, according to Ieshkiliev, ‘conditioned the change of aesthetic standards and artistic coordinates’ from the then-dominant, traditional populist discourse to a discourse of postmodernism.55 Izdryk has stated that he sees the Stanislavs9kyi Fenomen emerging from the enthusiasm and creative energy that filled the air in Ivano-Frankivs9k in the early 1990s and that had

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coalesced around the journal Chetver.56 And Prokhas9ko believes that one of the major characteristics of the Stanislavs9kyi Fenomen was that it was made up of self-sufficient individuals, each of whom was capable of living and working outside of this grouping.57 One of the most enduring of cultural groupings in post-Soviet Ukraine, it nonetheless is a very loose assemblage that emerged partly as a result of its provincial existence; it provides a sense of stability that counters marginalization by the centre. The Stanislavs9kyi Fenomen is a weakly defined, eclectic community whose ‘members’ simultaneously belong to various other communities. As references to Zabuzhko and Lysheha have demonstrated, people and things associated with the Stanislavs9kyi Fenomen are often intertextually intersected with other phenomena and communities in the prose of the Eighties Writers. Examples of intertextuality in the prose of Moskalets9, Andrukhovych, and Izdryk serve as models of a way Eighties Writers build communities in their post-Soviet prose in order to address their post-colonial need for stability without sliding into the traps of totalitarianism and absolutism that informed the narratives against which they rebelled in the post-Soviet, euphoric movement of Ukrainian literature. As is the case with any communities, these intertextual communities are, at the outset, in danger of being restrictive. In constructing them, the writers are choosing whom they want to reference and, thus, whom they would like to include in them. They create communities composed of intellectuals whom they deem to be representative of a Ukrainian culture that is authentic and with whom they share a vision of the post-Soviet Ukrainian identity. This exclusiveness is a reflection of the sense of otherness that constitutes an important component of this identity. By creating such communities, they are able to buffer somewhat their marginalized status as intellectuals in post-Soviet Ukraine. Thus, it is not surprising that these intertextual webs stretch back to underground Ukrainian culture of the 1970s – a culture that successfully withstood repression in the face of enforced, absolutist socialist realism and created a free and diverse art. The Eighties Writers do this for themselves and for adherents of their vision of authentic Ukrainian culture because, regardless of the post-Soviet Ukrainian intellectual’s disoriented existence in the everyday world, in the fictional worlds of their prose works a community does exist.

Conclusion

The 1990s were an exciting and important period for Ukrainian literature – the Eighties Writers arrived on the Ukrainian cultural scene as the generation that would spearhead the creation of newly independent Ukraine’s new culture. In the early part of the decade, artists were able to organize and lead mass celebrations at which Ukrainian literature and culture were at the centre of events. Inspired by the social and political changes occurring in their country, the Eighties Writers approached Ukrainian culture with a vigour that demonstrated their comprehension of the uniqueness of their position in the history of that culture. With the achievement of independence, the Ukrainian culture and language finally seemed to have an opportunity for liberation from the duties they had traditionally been assigned which, consequently, had often curtailed their creative potential. The Eighties Writers were successful in initiating and making great strides in this movement, though they faced continued marginalization in post-Soviet Ukraine. The writers that have been the focus of this study are among the leading writers in Ukraine today – it is their works that are read, translated, and discussed by scholars of Ukrainian literature throughout the world. It is in their prose works that post-colonial Ukraine’s paramount issues were most fervently addressed. Coming at the heels of great upheaval, the 1990s were a period of uncertainty and contradiction. Consequently, the prose of this period is marked by a certain dialectic tension. Attempting to find a balance between constrictive yet stabilizing structure and liberating yet chaotic freedom, these prose works express a desire to simultaneously have things that are seemingly in opposition. This is, in fact, what drives the creative process of the

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Eighties Writers. In euphoric celebrations of change and freedom they had deconstructed inherited norms and the mechanisms assigned to them. Their works reflect the disorienting chaos, alienation, and disappointment that accompanied mass change. In their prose, the Eighties Writers wove intertextual communities in a search for support against alienation. It is the coexistence of the tendencies of euphoria, chaos, and community that define this period in Ukrainian literature. The prose works analysed in this book present a group of fascinating and complex fictional characters whose thoughts and actions explore issues such as identity, otherness, and morality that are important not just for Ukraine but are also of universal value. New prototypes of Ukrainian intellectual artists were introduced on these pages and existing prototypes reappeared in the post-Soviet Ukrainian setting. Taken together, these intellectual protagonists have travelled the world, been committed to mental health institutions, wowed audiences with their talents and wit, seduced an international assortment of lovers, been chased by demons, and discovered the meaning of life. We have witnessed how these protagonists act, been informed of their thoughts on language, and have seen where they locate their position between East and West; we have watched them emerge from the underground, climb onto the stage, and return to the margins. These intellectual protagonists have also revitalized Ukrainian prose with the insight they provide into questions of identity. The Eighties Writers chose to focus on the post-Soviet Ukrainian intellectual as the site where the Ukrainian identity would be explored and created. As post-Soviet Ukraine evolved, these writers, with their artist protagonists in tow, came gradually to inhabit the vaccum that had occupied the intellectuals’ niche in society during Soviet times. The difficulty and, sometimes, futility their characters experienced during this period of transition is reflective of the tribulations the Eighties Writers continue to endure in establishing and filling the intellectuals’ position in post-Soviet Ukraine. Boris Dubin writes that it is the intellectuals who create symbols of individual and collective identity, and who are also responsible for arranging, refining, transmitting, and recreating them.1 Throughout these prose works, these intellectual protagonists are shown to be juggling and manipulating a whole catalogue of components that contribute to Ukrainian identity. They have flipped through a storage bank of the traits that they acquired both from the narratives of colonizers and from Ukrainian national myths; they have also introduced new aspects to this identity. These intellectuals have sampled elements of the West,

144  The Intellectual as Hero in 1990s Ukrainian Fiction

accepting some while rejecting others. On the pages of their prose, the Eighties Writers have shown us how an intellectual protagonist combines symbols of Ukrainian identity and how this process is reflected in the character’s own creative process. The relationship of the intellectual with society, a central issue in defining an intellectual, has been treated in these prose works against the background of changing times. Regarding similarities to the ‘philosopher-king,’ ‘messianic-bohemian,’ ‘court jester,’ and ‘Robin Hood’ prototypes, the post-Soviet Ukrainian intellectual exhibits qualities of each type. This intellectual is an individual who, like a ‘philosopherking,’ feels a moral obligation to use his talents in serving truth, even if serving that truth involves freeing it by deconstructing it and revealing it to be relative and subjective. He is a ‘messianic bohemian’ whose decadent behaviour places him outside the stretch of society’s rules. This intellectual, as a ‘court jester,’ is free to question and deride government power structures because he is completely ignored by that government – one that doesn’t understand him and seemingly has no use for him. Finally, this intellectual performs as a witty ‘Robin Hood’ who uses his marginalized position to an advantage when criticizing the status quo. Compared to their predecessors, these post-Soviet Ukrainian intellectuals are generally unattached to both society and government. They do, however, resist complete isolation by entering into intertextual communities. The communities that are built by the Eighties Writers in these prose works are rather exclusive assemblages inspired by the survival and activity of the Ukrainian cultural underground of the 1970s. Members of these intertextual communities unite in their conviction that, surrounded by the general degradation of culture in post-Soviet Ukraine, they represent authentic Ukrainian culture. By introducing elements of postmodern play in the construction of these communities, the Eighties Writers strive to avoid repeating the inflexibility and absolutism of previous structures. Since independence, Ukrainian literature has slowly been moving away from the periphery. However, as Ukraine entered its second decade of independence, it remained a generally marginalized art form. Ukrainian cultural leaders have attempted to improve this situation by battling detrimental government cultural policy on various fronts. Concerted attempts at producing mass-oriented Ukrainian-language literature were made by several publishers at the beginning of the twenty-first century, but these efforts have proved to be largely in vain. Strategies such as these were designed to bring Ukrainian language and

Conclusion  145

culture into the everyday world of the average Ukrainian citizen. The art created by the writers analysed in this study, however, is not part of such a movement – their literature is not intended for mass appeal. It strives to be high art and wants to be free of any ideological and stylistic constraints. It does, however, desire a sense of support from its government and its people that would indicate a respect for the value of their creative work. Because of Ukraine’s colonized past, Ukrainian literature has traditionally been saddled with inferiority complexes such as provincialism and incompleteness. However, it is because of such a past that it is able to offer the point of view of the marginalized. Unrestricted from doing so in an independent Ukraine, Ukrainian literature can provide a perspective on concepts such as truth and the absolute that more stable cultures do not have. As this analysis of the Eighties Writers has demonstrated, these writers recognize Ukrainian literature’s strong ties to morality, and they seek a sense of structure even though they have experienced the dangerous consequences stemming from such absolutist concepts in their colonial past. Having experienced what it is to speak in a minority voice, the Ukrainian intellectual should be particularly prepared to respect other minority voices; should Ukrainian language and culture ever move away from the margins, the Ukrainian intellectual should be sympathetic to providing a forum for voices that continue to be marginalized. For a country with such a fractured and diverse history, difference is a strength and a source of cultural creativity. A literature that recognizes and respects difference will be enriched as a result. Post-Soviet Ukrainian literature has the potential to develop in this manner. In their prose works, the Eighties Writers acknowledge this notion. In an article on the relationship between art and communities, Marcia Muelder Eaton writes that ‘Art helps individuals to define themselves as insiders and to distinguish themselves as outsiders’ and ‘good art is more likely to contribute to sustaining communities than bad art.’2 The 1990s will be seen as an era of transition for Ukrainian prose writing. If the Ukrainian intellectual eventually does emerge from the margins in independent Ukraine, the intertextual communities woven in these prose works should unravel, for their function would no longer be necessary. The developments of euphoria, chaos, and community that define the 1990s prose of the Eighties Writers offer valuable lessons for the future of Ukrainian culture and for Ukraine itself. Reflecting the tumultuous times during which they were written, these prose

146  The Intellectual as Hero in 1990s Ukrainian Fiction

works are able to provide, simultaneously, several sometimes opposing perspectives on important issues. Representing many of the foremost achievements in post-Soviet Ukrainian culture, the 1990s prose of the Eighties Writers will endure as a repository of vibrant and stimulating depictions of Ukrainian intellectuals wandering through their authors’ fictional worlds and stumbling along their way towards the place where identity is made.

Notes

I ntroduction: Approaching the Post-Soviet Ukrainian Intellectual; or, the Word ‘Intellectual’ Pronounced with a Ukrainian Accent 1 J.P. Nettle, ‘Ideas, Intellectuals, and Structures of Dissent,’ in On Intellectuals, ed. Philip Reiff (Garden City: Doubleday, 1969), 87. See note 87. 2 Ray Nichols, Treason, Tradition and the Intellectual: Julien Benda and Political Discourse (Lawrence: Regent Press of Kansas, 1978), 12. 3 Bruce Robbins, introduction to Intellectuals: Aesthetics, Politics and Academics, ed. Bruce Robbins (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), xxiv. 4 Ahmad Sadri, Max Weber’s Sociology of Intellectuals (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 69. 5 Julien Benda, The Treason of the Intellectuals, trans. Richard Aldington (New York: Norton Library, 1969), 43. 6 See Albert Salomon, ‘The Messianic Bohemians,’ in The Intellectuals: A Controversial Portrait, ed. George B. de Huszar (Illinois: Free Press of Glencoe, 1960), 19–27. 7 Ralf Dahrenhof, ‘The Intellectual and Society: The Social Function of the “Fool” in the Twentieth Century,’ in On Intellectuals, ed. Philip Reiff (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969), 51–2. 8 Edward W. Said, Representations of the Intellectual: The Reith Lectures (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 11. 9 Sadri, Max Weber’s Sociology of Intellectuals, 73. 10 Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge, trans. Louis Wirth and Edward Shils (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd, 1936), 143. 11 Jean-François Lyotard, ‘Tombeau de l’intellectuel,’ in Tombeau de l’intellectuel et autres papiers (Paris: Editions Galilée, 1984), 11–22.

148 Notes to pages 5–10 1 2 Encyclopedia of Ukraine, s.v. ‘Intelligentsia.’ 13 Ivan Lysiak-Rudnyts9kyi, ‘Vyrodzhennia ta vidrodzhennia inteligentsii,’ in Istorychne ese, vol. 2 (Kyiv: Osnovy, 1994), 361. 14 Martha Bohachevsky-Chomiak, Sergei N. Trubetskoi: An Intellectual Among the Intelligentsia in Prerevolutionary Russia (Belmont, MA: Nordland, 1976), 12. 15 Martin Malia, ‘What is the Intelligentsia?’ in The Russian Intelligentsia, ed. Richard Pipes (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), 3. 16 See Bernard Barber, Intellectual Pursuits: Toward an Understanding of Culture (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), 2; and Said, Representations of the Intellectual: The Reith Lectures, 12–13. 17 Two noteworthy representatives of the first two categories are, respectively, Volodymyr Drozd and Valerii Shevchuk. An editor at the Radians9kyi pys9mennyk publishing house and an official in the Writers’ Union of Ukraine, Volodymyr Drozd examines the role of Soviet writer in his 1984 novel Spektakl9 (The show). Although the novel shows promise with the author’s attempts at experimental narration and in offering a criticism of the Soviet cultural system, ultimately, his novel is compromised by simplistic moralizing, a general adherence to socialist-realist norms, and a preponderance of the clichés of Ukrainian village prose. See Volodymyr Drozd, ‘Spektakl9,’ in Spektakl9 (Kyiv: Radians9kyi pys9mennyk, 1985), 209–399. The best prose writer to debut in the 1960s, Valerii Shevchuk was resigned to ‘writing for the drawer’ because of his rejection of these norms and because his older brother, the writer Anatolii Shevchuk, was a political prisoner. 18 Oleksa Semenchenko, ‘Al9ternatyva u Kyievi,’ Zustrichi no. 8 (1994): 207–23. 19 Viktor Kordun, ‘Kyivs9ka shkola poezii – shcho tse take?’ Svito-vyd nos. 26–7 (1997): 8. 20 All translations, unless otherwise noted, are mine. 21 Semenchenko, ‘Al’ternatyva u Kyievi,’ 208. 22 Vasyl9 Gabor, ‘Do istorii literaturno-mystets9koho samvydavnoho zhurnalu “Skrynia” (1971),’ in ‘Skrynia’ (1971): literaturno-mystets9kyi samvydavnyj zhurnal (L9viv: NANU, 2000), VI. 23 For a first-hand account of the hippie movement in L9viv, see Oleh Olisevych,’Iakshcho svitovi bude potribno, ia viddam svoie zhyttia ne zadumuiuchys9 – zarady svobody,’ interview by Iaryna Boren9ko, Iania Plakhotniuk, and Andrii Pavlyshyn, Ï no. 24 (2002): 135–53. 24 Oksana Zabuzhko, ‘Meni poshchastylo na starti …,’ interview by Liudmyla Taran, in Zhinka iak tekst, ed. Liudmyla Taran (Kyiv: Fakt, 2002), 185.

Notes to pages 11–18  149 5 Oleksander Hrytsenko, ‘Poety dovhoi zymy,’ Prapor no. 2 (1990): 160. 2 26 Solomea Pavlychko, ‘Facing Freedom: The New Ukrainian Literature,’ trans. Askold Melnyczuk, in From Three Worlds: New Writing from Ukraine, ed. Ed Hogan (Boston: Zephyr Press, 1996), 12. 27 Oksana Zabuzhko ‘Avtobiohrafiia,’ in Sestro, sestro (Kyiv: Fakt, 2003), 233. See the note at the bottom of the referenced page. 28 See, for example, the seminal anthology of poetry Visimdesiatnyky, comp. Ihor Rymaruk (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 1990), and the entry ‘Visimdesianyky’ in Povernennia demiurhiv: Mala ukrains9ka entsyklopedia aktual9noi literatury, ed. Iurii Andrukhovych and Volodymyr Ieshkiliev (Ivano-Frankivs9k: Lileia-NV, 1998), 39–40. Part I: Euphoria 1 See N.O. Starovoitova, ‘Khudozhnia tvorchist9 u systemi natsional9noi kul9tury,’ in Natsional9na kul9tura v suchasnii Ukraini, ed. I.F. Kuras (Kyiv: Asotsiatsiia ‘Ukraino’, 1995), 106–21. 2 See Volodymyr Drozd, Muzei zhyvoho pys9mennyka abo moia dovha doroha v rynok (Kyiv: Ukrains9kyi Pys9mennyk, 1994). In this book, the Soviet writer alternates between apologetically explaining why his generation of Ukrainian intellectuals kowtowed to Soviet cultural policy, on one hand, and defiantly ridiculing the inevitable intrusion of capitalism into Ukrainian culture, on the other. The author’s general approach to the changing times is evident in the title of the book, which translates as ‘Museum of a Living Writer or My Long Path to the Market.’ 3 Vadym Skurativs9kyi, ‘Nel9otna pohoda: zamist’ peredmovy ta zamist9 monohrafii,’ introduction to Sestro, sestro, by Oksana Zabuzhko (Kyiv: Fakt, 2003), 7. 1. New Prototypes of the Ukrainian Intellectual in Post-Soviet Ukrainian Prose – The Swashbuckling Performer 1 For my detailed analysis of various performances of Bu-Ba-Bu during the ‘era of festivals,’ see Mark Andryczyk, ‘Bu-Ba-Bu: Poetry and Performance,’ Journal of Ukrainian Studies vol. 27, nos. 1–2 (Summer–Winter 2002): 257–72. 2 Iurii Andrukhovych, ‘Rekreatsii,’ in Rekreatsii: romany (Kyiv: Chas, 1997), 37. 3 Yuri Andrukhovych, Recreations, trans. Marko Pavlyshyn (Edmonton and Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 1998), 20. Also the source for the translation of the epigraph above. 4 Andrukhovych, Recreations, 23.

150 Notes to pages 19–23 5 Andrukhovych, Recreations, 97. 6 Iurii Andrukhovych, ‘Moskoviada,’ in Rekreatsii: romany (Kyiv: Chas, 1997), 147. 7 Yuri Andrukhovych. The Moscoviad, trans. Vitaly Chernetsky (New York: Spyuten Duyvil, 2008), 50. 8 See Catherine Wanner’s application of Victor Turner’s approach to cultural performance to the ‘era of festivals’ in Ukraine, in Catherine Wanner, Burden of Dreams: History and Identity in Post-Soviet Ukraine (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), 121–40. 9 Sovok is a derogatory term for Homo sovieticus. It refers to an average person with a ‘Soviet’ mindset who has been created by that system and who fails to question that system. 10 Iurii Andrukhovych, ‘Orphei khronichnyi,’ Krytyka no. 9 (2003): 30. The title of the novel Moskoviada itself contains a reference to hell and hints at the forthcoming comparison of the Soviet capital with Hades: Ad is the Russian and Old Ukrainian word for ‘hell.’ As Roman Korohods9kyi explains in footnotes to Moskoviada, the title also recalls classical epic poems and Ivan Kotliarevs9kyi’s late eighteenth-century Eneida (a travesty of Virgil’s Aeneid), which is regarded as being the first work of modern Ukrainian literature. See note 1 on page 280 in Andrukhovych, Rekreatsii: romany. 11 The image of the writer as Orpheus also appears twice in Volodymyr Dibrova’s Burdyk. The eponymous protagonist Burdyk is described by the narrator as having looked like Orpheus in his youth. Later, while a student, Burdyk ponders his calling and imagines himself as being a ‘new Orpheus.’ He sees himself as someone who, as an artist, will lead people out of darkness. However, Dibrova’s conjuring up of the Orphic myth is done ironically – as part of his development of Burdyk as an anti-hero. See Volodymyr Dibrova, ‘Burdyk,’ in Vybhane (Kyiv: Krytyka, 2002), pages 292 and 349, respectively. 12 Iurii Andrukhovych, Perverziia (Ivano-Frankivs9k: Lileia-NV, 1997), 210. 13 Yuri Andrukhovych, Perverzion, trans. Michael M. Naydan (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2005), 206. 14 Tamara Hundorova, ‘The Canon Reversed: New Ukrainian Literature of the 1990s,’ Journal of Ukrainian Studies vol. 26, nos. 1–2 (Summer-Winter 2001): 263. The topic of the demythicization of the Ukrainian poet has engaged many Ukrainian literary critics in post-Soviet Ukraine. In par­ ticular, the life and work of Vasyl9 Stus (1938–85) – a poet and dissident who died in a Soviet prison – has served as a particularly rich case study on the subject. For two good articles on this topic, see Marko Pavlyshyn,

Notes to pages 23–35  151 ‘Kvadratova kruha: prolehomeny do otsinky Vasylia Stusa,’ in Kanon ta ikonostas (Kyiv: Chas, 1997), 157–74, and Kostiantyn Moskalets9, ‘Strasti po vitchyzni: lyst do mandrivnyka na Skhid,’ in Liudyna na kryzhyni (Kyiv: Krytyka, 1999), 209–54. 15 Volodymyr Ieshkiliev, ‘Lytsar popry Zhertsia,’ Plieroma nos. 1–2 (1996): 51. 2. New Prototypes of the Ukrainian Intellectual in Post-Soviet Ukrainian Prose – The Ambassador to the West 1 Iurii Izdryk, ‘Stanislav: tuha za nespravzhnim,’ Plieroma nos. 1–2 (1996): 26. 2 Ievheniia Kononenko, ‘Special Woman,’ in Kolosal9nyi siuzhet (Kyiv: Zadruha, 1998), 88. 3 Iurii Izdryk, Votstsek (Ivano-Frankivs9k: Lileia-NV, 1997), 66. 4 Izdryk, Wozzeck, trans. Marko Pavlyshyn (Edmonton and Toronto: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies Press, 2006), 73. 5 Volodymyr Vitkovs9kyi, ‘Do postintelektual9noho suspil9stva,’ Universum nos. 3–4 (1999): 10. 6 Unfortunately, these writers sometimes make mistakes in passing along this information to the Ukrainian reader. For example, Zabuzhko’s use of the term ‘stud-woman,’ and Kononenko’s lauding of ‘Paul Mason’ as a wine that is highly respected in the West. Izdryk misspells ‘Arsche’ as ‘Arch.’ 7 Dibrova, ‘Burdyk,’ 417. 8 Dibrova, ‘Burdyk,’ 434. 9 For good source on the Ukrainian diaspora in the West, see Ann Lencyk Pawliczko, ed., Ukraine and Ukrainians Throughout the World (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994). 10 See chapter 1, note 10, of this study for an explanation of the Ukrainian root ‘ad.’ The name may also be an allusion to Vladimir Nabokov’s 1969 novel Ada. 3. Deconstructive Revelry 1 Matei Calinescu, Five Faces of Modernity: Modernism, Avant-Garde, Decadence, Kitsch, Postmodernism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1987), 312. 2 Ivan Luhcuk, ‘Druhe vydannia vademekumu,’ Postup, 23 April 2004. The reference for this publication is Mariia Zubryts9ka, ed., Slovo, znak, dyskurs: antolohiia svitovoi literaturno-krytychnoi dumky XX st. (L9viv: Litopys, 1996). 3 Iurii Sherekh, ‘Zdobutky i vtraty ukrains9koi literatury,’ in Druha cherha (n.p.: Suchasnist9, 1978), 174.

152 Notes to pages 35–51 4 Tymofii Havryliv, ‘Karnaval, postmodern i literature,’ in Znaky chasu: sproby prochytannia (Ivano-Frankivs9k: Lileia-NV, 2001), 172. 5 Katerina Clark, ‘Changing Historical Paradigms in Soviet Culture,’ in Late Soviet Culture: From Perestroika to Novostroika, ed. Thomas Lahusen with Gene Kuperman (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 1993), 289. 6 Oksana Zabuzhko, Pol9ovi doslidzhennia z ukrains9koho seksu (Kyiv: Zhoda, 1996), 131. 7 Here I am referencing an excerpt of Oksana Zabuzhko’s Pol9ovi doslidzhennia z ukrains9koho seksu that was translated by Halyna Hryn. See Oksana Zabuzhko, ‘Field Work in Ukrainian Sex,’ trans. Halyna Hryn, AGNI no. 53 (2001): 8. 8 Maksym Strikha, ‘Proshchannia z anderhraundom,’ Krytyka no. 1 (1997): 37. 9 Dibrova, ‘Burdyk,’ 443–4. 10 Nikola King, Memory, Narrative, Identity: Remembering the Self (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), 175. 11 Iurii Gudz9, ‘Ne-My,’ Kur’ier kryvbasu no. 102 (1998): 41. 12 Iurii Izdyk, Podviinyi Leon (Ivano-Frankivs9k: Lilea-NV, 2000), 26–30. The effect does not translate precisely into English. My translation does, however, provide a sense of Izdryk’s play. 13 Izdryk, Wozzeck, 50. 14 Izdryk, Wozzeck, 19. 15 Izdryk, Votstsek, 19. 16 Izdryk, Wozzeck, 14. 17 Izdryk, Votstsek, 93–4. 18 Izdryk, Wozzeck, 104. 19 Andrukhovych, ‘Moskoviada,’ 186–207. 20 Throughout this study I am transliterating the Ukrainian letter ‘Ю’ as ‘Iu,’ However, it could also be transliterated as ‘Yu,’ as is the case in many of the English translations I am quoting. Thus, Iu=Yu, Yu A = Iu A, and Y.A.=I.A. This is an obvious (but not definitive) reference to Iurii (Yuri) Andrukhovych. 21 Marko Pavlyshyn, ‘Demystifying High Culture?’ in Perspectives on Modern Central and Eastern European Literature: Quest for Identity, ed. Todd Patrick Armstrong (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave, 2001), 11–12. 22 Dipesh Chakrabarty, ‘Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for “Indian” Pasts?’ Representations 37 (Winter 1992): 23. 23 Iurii Gudz9, ‘Ne-My,’ Kur’ier kryvbasu no. 102 (1999): 48. 24 Kostiantyn Moskalets9, ‘Vechirnii med,’ in Rannia osin9 (L9viv: Klasyka, 2000), 21. The Ukrainian term ‘поспіль’ (pospil9) has several meanings,

Notes to pages 51–6  153 including (1) ‘in a row,’ (2) ‘together,’ and (3) ‘fully.’ Moskalets’ has these men repeat the word often for comic effect – a word emerges that will be repeated by various drunk people participating in a particular conversation – and to highlight the high/low contrast of intellectuals discussing lofty topics such as art and philosophy despite being inebriated to the extent that they can barely speak. A rather bookish Ukrainian word is used (and misused) alongside the slang-laden language of alcoholics. I translate it as ‘in a row’ throughout the excerpt in an attempt to reproduce the humorous effect of senseless repetition that is contained in the original. 25 Andrukhovych, Perverziia, 224–42. Kozak Mamai is the subject of paintings created by mostly anonymous authors in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and a quasi-mythical figure in Ukrainian culture. Andrukhovych plays with his name and ‘makes’ him Jamaican. As is typical for many of the characters found in Andrukhovych’s prose writings, Kozak Iamaika also appeared in a poem found in Iurii Andrukhovych, Ekzotychni ptakhy i roslyny (Ivano-Frankivs9k: Lileia-NV, 1997), 63–4. Iaroslav Os’momysl was an actual historical figure – he was a prince in the Principality of GaliciaVolhynia – whose name translates as Iaroslav ‘of eight thoughts’ or ‘of eight senses.’ In Andrukhovych’s variation he is ‘Iaroslav of eight legs’ or ‘Iaroslav the octopus.’ 26 Olel9ko was a Spanish man who, in the late 1980s, claimed to be the heir to the Galician throne and aspired to become king of Ukraine. 27 Tamara Hundorova, ‘Literatura i pys9mo, abo mistse novoho v ukrains9kii literaturi,’ Svito-vyd no. 28 (1997): 112. 28 Oleksandr Hrytsenko, ‘Mify,’ in Narysy ukrains9koi populiarnoi kul9tury, ed. Oleksandr Hrytsenko (Kyiv: UTsKD, 1999), 370. 29 Oksana Zabuzhko, ‘Mova i vlada,’ in Khroniky vid Fortinbrasa (Kyiv: Fakt, 1999), 119–24. 30 Hrytsenko, ‘Mify,’ 372. 31 Maksym Strikha, ‘Mova,’ in Narysy ukrains9koi populiarnoi kul9tury, ed. Oleksandr Hrytsenko (Kyiv: UTsKD, 1999), 403. 32 Hrytsenko, ‘Mify,’ 336. 33 Lesia Stavyts9ka, ‘Ukrains9ka mova bez prykras,’ in Ukrains9kyi zhargon: Slovnyk (Kyiv: Krytyka, 2005), 9–18. See also Lesia Stavyts9ka, Argo, zhargon, sleng: sotsial9na dyferentsiiatsiia ukrains9koi movy (Kyiv: Krytyka, 2005), in which the author traces the history of argot, jargon, and slang in the Ukrainian language and analyses their social function, especially in contemporary Ukraine’s urban centers. 34 Hundorova, ‘The Canon Reversed: New Ukrainian Literature of the 1990s,’ 265. 35 Izdryk, ‘Stanislav: tuha za nespravzhnim,’ 21.

154 Notes to pages 56–68 3 6 Izdryk, Votstsek, 92. 37 Izdryk, Wozzeck, 103. 38 Marko Pavlyshyn, ‘“Votstsek” Izdryka,’ Suchasnist9 no. 9 (1998): 111. 39 Izdryk, Votstsek, 20. 40 Izdryk, Wozzeck, 20. 41 Izdryk, Votstsek, 90. Izdryk performs a visual trick in this section of the novel that I was unable to repeat here. The letter (the character) ‘A’ is shown in increasingly graphically deconstructed forms as the dates in this list progress chronologically. It is missing parts of the letter and looks as if it has been partially erased. 42 Izdryk, Wozzeck, 100. 43 Moskalets9, ‘Vechirnii med,’ 12. 44 For a discussion of Andrukhovych’s word games in Perverziia and the complexities of translating them into English, see Michael M. Naydan, ‘Translating a Novel’s Novelty: Yuri Andrukhovych’s Perverzion in English,’ Yale Journal of Criticism 16, no. 2 (October 2003): 455–64. 45 Andrukhovych, Perverziia, 132. 46 Andrukhovych, Perverzion, 128. 47 Andrukhovych, Perverziia, 157. 48 Andrukhovych, Perverzion, 154. 49 For example, this quote from Ivan Ohiienko’s 1918 short history of Ukrainian culture: ‘Our language is Ukrainian, our enchanting language, recognized in the world as being one of the most sonorous and melodic of languages.’ See the reprint of this book: Ivan Ohiienko, Ukrains9ka kul9tura (Kyiv: Abrys, 1991), 22. 50 Andrukhovych, Perverziia, 170. 51 Andrukhovych, Perverziia, 26. 52 Andrukhovych, Perverziia, 35–7. 53 Dibrova, ‘Burdyk,’ 422. Part II: Chaos 1 Solomea Pavlychko, introduction to Two Lands New Visions: Stories from Canada and Ukraine, trans. Marco Carynnyk and Marta Horban (Regina: Coteau Books, 1999), I. 4. New Prototypes of the Ukrainian Intellectual in Post-Soviet Ukrainian Prose – The Sick Soul 1 Zabuzhko, Pol9ovi doslidzhennia z ukrains9koho seksu, 139–40.

Notes to pages 68–77  155 2 Zabuzhko, ‘Field Work in Ukrainian Sex,’ 14. 3 Zabuzhko, Pol9ovi doslidzhennia z ukrains9koho seksu, 122. 4 Maryna Romanets, ‘Erotic Assemblages: Field Research, Palimpsests, and What Lies Beneath,’ Journal of Ukrainian Studies vol. 27, nos 1–2 (Summer– Winter 2002): 278. 5 Lewis S. Feuer, The Scientific Intellectual: The Psychological & Sociological Origins of Modern Science (New York and London: Basic Books, 1963), ix. 6 Dibrova, ‘Burdyk,’ 437–8. 7 Andrukhovych, ‘Rekreatsii,’ 38. 8 Andrukhovych, Recreations, 21. 9 Andrukhovych, ‘Moskoviada,’ 136. 10 Andrukhovych, The Moscoviad, 34–5. 11 Andrukhovych, ‘Moskoviada,’ 183–4. 12 This is a play on words and abbreviations. KVN is an abbreviation for klub veselykh i nakhodchyvykh, a Soviet student activities club where creative skills were developed. In this excerpt, Andrukhovych uses it as an abbreviation for kriepkii vinohradnyi napitok – which translates as ‘fortified grape drink,’ a put-down of the low quality of the wine. He does this as part of the superimposition of alcohol and creativity that is a theme in this fragment. 13 Moskalets9, ‘Vechirnii med,’ 7. 14 Moskalets9, ‘Vechirnii med,’ 20–1. 15 The Ukrainian term ‘поспіль’ (pospil9) has several meanings, including (1) ‘in a row,’ (2) ‘together,’ and (3) ‘fully.’ See note 24, chapter 3, for an explanation of Moskalets’ use, and my translation, of the term. Later in this conversation, when Bumper says ‘Shut up, I in a row command you!’ he says it in Russian, heightening the humorous effect of the use of the bookish Ukrainian term pospil9. 16 Moskalets9, ‘Vechirnii med,’ 25. 17 The Ukrainian term ‘білка’ (bilka) is a word that translates as ‘squirrel.’ It is also a shortened form for the slang term ‘біла гарячка’ (bila hariachka), which translates, literally, as ‘white fever’ but figuratively means a hallucination brought on by alcohol abuse (a distant cousin in English would be a ‘pink elephant’). Thus, in the novel, Trots9kyi’s being chased by a white squirrel is actually indicative of a sickness. I translated it as ‘white squirrel’ in order to better portray the realness of the ‘physical action’ that is taking place in Trots9kyi’s hallucination. 18 Moskalets9, ‘Vechirnii med,’ 27. 19 Iurii Gudz9, ‘Ne-My,’ Kur’ier kryvbasu no. 103 (1999): 23. 20 Iurii Gudz9, ‘Ne-My,’ Kur’ier kryvbasu no. 102 (1999): 33.

156 Notes to pages 77–96 21 Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is used to treat depression. It is commonly known as electroshock therapy. 22 See Vasyl9 Gabor, introduction to Pryvatna kolektsiia: Vybrana ukrains9ka proza ta eseistyka kintsia XX stolittia, ed. Vasyl9 Gabor (L9viv: Piramida, 2002), 103. 23 Izdryk, Votstsek, 7–8. 24 Izdryk, Wozzeck, 6. 25 Izdryk, Votstsek, 9. 26 Izdryk, Wozzeck, 7. 27 Leonid Kosovych, ‘Postskrypt,’ in Podviinyi Leon, by Iurii Izdryk (IvanoFrankivs9k: Lileia-NV, 2000), 177. 28 Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Pantheon Books, 1965), 252. 29 Izdryk, Podviinyi Leon, 95. 30 Podviinyi Leon. See the back cover of the referenced publication. 5. A Return to the Margins 1 Oleksandr Boichenko, ‘Zamist9 vtrachenoho,’ Postup, 10 September 2004. 2 Mykola Riabchuk, ‘By Way of Summary: Ambivalence to Ambiguity,’ Dvi ukrainy: real9ni mezhi, virtual9ni viiny (Kyiv: Krytyka, 2003), 301–15. 3 Halyna Pahutiak, ‘Mafiia movy,’ L9vivs9ka hazeta, 26 April 2004. 4 Volodymyr Tsybul9ko, ‘Interv’iu z Volodymyrom Tsybul9kom,’ Ï no. 24 (2002): 69. 5 Kostiantyn Rodyk, Nevyvcheni uroky Synina (L9viv: Kal9variia, 2000), 52. 6 Benda, The Treason of the Intellectuals, 83 n.2. 7 Volodymyr Dibrova, ‘Avtobiohrafiia,’ Chetver no. 14 (2002): 4. 8 Dibrova, ‘Burdyk,’ 399. 9 Dibrova, ‘Burdyk,’ 370–1. 10 Dibrova, ‘Burdyk,’ 385. 11 Oksana Zabuzhko, ‘Mova i vlada,’ in Khroniky vid Fotrinbrasa (Kyiv: Fakt, 1999), 101. 12 Riabchuk, Dvi ukrainy: real9ni mezhi, virtual9ni viiny, 92. 13 Zabuzhko, Pol9ovi doslidzhennia z ukrains9koho seksu, 81–2. 14 Nila Zborovs9ka, Feministychni rozdumy na karnavali mertvykh potsilunkiv (L9viv: Litopys, 1999), 114. 15 Zabuzhko, Pol9ovi doslidzhennia z ukrains9koho seksu, 72. 16 Ievheniia Kononenko, ‘Imitatsiia,’ Suchasnist9 no. 5 (2001): 51. 17 Zabuzhko, Pol9ovi doslidzhennia z ukrains9koho seksu, 35. 18 Romanets, ‘Erotic Assemblages: Field Research, Palimpsests, and What Lies Beneath,’ 276.

Notes to pages 97–108  157 1 9 Nila Zborovs9ka, Pryshestia vichnosti (Kyiv: Fakt, 2000), 210. 20 Nila Zborovs9ka, ‘Feminnyi kharakter ukrains9koi mental9nosty,’ Suchasnist9 nos. 7–8 (2001): 146. 21 Zborovs’ka, Feministychni rozdumy na karnavali mertvykh potsilunkiv, 194. 22 Zborovs9ka, Feministychni rozdumy na karnavali mertvykh potsilunkiv, 118. 23 Kononenko, ‘Imitatsiia,’ Suchasnist9 no. 5 (2001): 36. 24 Zabuzhko, Pol9ovi doslidzhennia z ukrains9koho seksu, 37. 25 Dibrova, ‘Burdyk,’ 294. 26 Dibrova, ‘Burdyk,’ 286. 27 Dibrova, ‘Burdyk,’ 443. 28 Dibrova, ‘Burdyk,’ 289. 29 Dibrova, ‘Burdyk,’ 290. 30 Dibrova, ‘Burdyk,’ 441. 31 Dibrova, ‘Burdyk,’ 287. 32 Ihor Bondar-Tereshchenko, Tekst 90–x: heroi ta personazhi (Ternopil9: Dzhura, 2003), 25. 33 Kostiantyn Moskalets9 ‘Zapytaniia bez vidpovidi?’ in Liudyna na kryzhyni (Kyiv: Krytyka, 1999), 138. 34 Moskalets9, ‘Zapytaniia bez vidpovidi?’ 138. 35 Strikha, ‘Proshchannia z anderhraundom,’ 38. 36 Vitaly Chernetsky, ‘The Trope of Displacement and Identity Construction in Post-Colonial Ukrainian Fiction,’ Journal of Ukrainian Studies vol. 27, nos. 1–2 (Summer–Winter 2002): 231. 37 Gudz9, ‘Ne-My,’ Kur’ier kryvbasu no. 102 (1999): 39–40. 38 Oleh Sydor-Hibelinda, ‘Ne-My: rozmova pro tyshu,’ Kur’ier kryvbasu no. 102 (1999): 16–19. 39 Moskalets9, ‘Vechirnii med,’ 57. 40 Moskalets9, ‘Vechirnii med,’ 25. 41 Moskalets9, ‘Vechirnii med,’ 25. 42 This neologism performs several functions for Moskalets9. It is essentially a double negative play of the concept of nikomuzalezhni or ‘not dependent on anybody.’ By negating it he is expressing that it is not independent (i.e., is dependent). Nezalezhni meaning ‘independent’ also refers to a specific time period – independent Ukraine (post-Soviet Ukraine) – and Moskalets9 is demonstrating that we so-called free Ukrainians are not truly free regarding our relationships with others (i.e., were are still suffering the effects of our colonial past). Finally, the use of a double negative to describe his generation laces the Eighties Writers with an enhanced pessimistic tone. 43 Moskalets, ‘Vechirnii med,’ 64. 44 Zabuzhko, Pol9ovi doslidzhennia z ukrains9koho seksu, 25. 45 Iurii Izdryk, ‘Chetverhovyi manifest,’ Chetver no. 8 (1999): 18.

158 Notes to pages 109–23 Part III: Community 6. Agents of the Metaphysical 1 Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 47. 2 Taylor, Sources of the Self, 27. 3 Paul Ricœur, Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen Blamey (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 180. 4 Taylor, Sources of the Self, 95. 5 Serehii Hrabovs9kyi, ‘Na grunti: nova knyha Iuriia Andrukhovycha – Dezoriientatsiia na mistsevosti,’ Pik no. 8 (2000): 42. 6 Dibrova, ‘Burdyk,’ 370. 7 Oksana Zabuzhko, interview by Taras Prokhas9ko, Inshyi format no. 4 (Ivano-Frankivs9k: Lileia-NV, 2003), 19. 8 Zabuzhko, Pol9ovi doslidzheniia z ukrains9koho seksu, 16. 9 Zabuzhko, Pol9ovi doslidzheniia z ukrains9koho seksu, 16. 10 Oksana Zabuhzko, Inshyi format, 17. 11 Zabuzhko, Inshyi format, 26. 12 The idea that alcohol could be the magical drink on which Ukraine’s creative minds are dependent is played with throughout the novel. 13 Moskalets9, ‘Vechirnii med,’ 60. 14 Vira Aheieva, ‘Zhinka-avtorka iak inoplanetianka,’ in Zhinka iak tekst: Emma Andiievs9ka, Solomiia Pavlychko, Oksana Zabuzhko – fragmenty tvorchosti i konteksty, ed. Liudmyla Taran (Kyiv: Fakt, 2002), 202. 15 Vadym Trinchii, ‘Ruka Apollona – ruka Dionisa,’ Krytyka, no. 50 (2001): 22–3. 16 Izdryk, Podviinyi Leon, 69–70. 17 Andrukhovych, ‘Rekreatsii,’ 47. 18 Andrukhovych, ‘Moskoviada,’ 204. 19 Andrukhovych, The Moscoviad, 129. 7. A Community of Others 1 Rostyslav Semkiv, ‘Ironiia nepokirnoi struktury,’ Krytyka no. 5 (2001): 29. 2 Jost Hermand, ‘Beyond the Parameters of the Cold War: the Greening of a New Social Identity,’ in Postmodern Pluralism: The Twenty-fourth Wisconsin Workshop, ed. Jost Hermand, trans. James Young (New York: Peter Lang, 1993), 74–5.

Notes to pages 123–34  159 3 Honi Fern Haber, Beyond Postmodern Politics: Lyotard, Rorty Foucault (New York and London: Routledge, 1994), 32. 4 Todd May, Reconsidering Difference: Nancy, Derrida, Levinas, and Deleuze (University Park: Pennsylvania University Press, 1997), 180–1. 5 See Agata Bielik-Robson, Inna Nowoczesność: Pytania o Wspóĺczesnóą Formułę Duchowości (Kraków: Universitas, 2000). 6 Haber, Beyond Postmodern Politics, 121. Italics are Haber’s. 7 May, Reconsidering Difference, 60. 8 May, Reconsidering Difference, 58. 9 May, Reconsidering Difference, 75. 10 Haber, Beyond Postmodern Politics, 121. 11 Svetlana Boym, Common Places: Mythologies of Everyday Life in Russia (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 290. 12 Haber, Beyond Postmodern Politics, 127. 13 Haber, Beyond Postmodern Politics, 133. Italics are Haber’s. 14 Taylor, Sources of the Self, 35. 15 May, Reconsidering Difference, 161. 16 Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 202–3. 17 Tymofii Havryliv, ‘Topohrafiia suchasnoi ukrains9koi prozy,’ in Znaky chasu: sproby prochytannia (Ivano-Frankivs9k: Lileia-NV, 2001), 179. 18 Mykola Riabchuk, Zyma u L9vovi (Kyiv: Molod9, 1989), 18. 19 Moskalets9, ‘Vechirnii med,’ 19. 20 George G. Grabowicz, The Poet as Mythmaker: A Study of Symbolic Meaning in Taras Shevchenko (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1982), 81. 21 Ihor Rymaruk, Uprodovzh snihopadu (Kyiv: Molod9, 1988), 22. 22 Moskalets9, ‘Vechirnii med,’ 47. 23 Havryliv, ‘Topohrafiia suchasnoi ukrains9koi prozy,’ 181. 24 Andrukhovych, ‘Rekreatsii,’ 55. 25 Andrukhovych, ‘Moskoviada,’ 154. 26 The poem was published in Vasyl9 Herasym’iuk, Kosmats9kyi uzir (Kyiv: Radians9kyi pys9mennyk, 1989), 6. 27 See Iurii Andrukhovych, Seredmistia (Kyiv: Radians9kyi pys9mennyk, 1989), 94. 28 Andrukhovych, ‘Moskoviada,’ 220. 29 See Viktor Neborak, Litaiucha holova (Kyiv: Molod9, 1990), 37–9. For an English-language translation of the poem see Viktor Neborak, The Flying Head and Other Poems, trans. Michael. M. Naydan (L9viv: Sribne Slovo, 2005), 120–7.

160 Notes to pages 135–9 3 0 Andrukhovych, Perverziia, 232. 31 Andrukhovych, Perverzion, 228. 32 See footnote number 49 in Andrukhovych, Perverziia, 156. The original Dovhan poem was published in Iaroslav Dovhan, 1999 (Ivano-Frankivs9k: Lileia-NV, 1997), 8. 33 See footnote number 68 in Andrukhovych, Perverziia, 241. 34 The poem originally appeared in the publication Viktor Neborak, Rozmova zi sluhoiu (Ivano-Frankivs9k: Pereval, 1993), which does not provide page numbers. It was republished in Viktor Neborak, Litostroton (L9viv: Vydavnytstvo L9vivs9koi politekhniky, 2001), 285. 35 Andrukhovych, ‘Moskoviada,’ 152. Also see Iurii Andrukhovych, ‘Lysty v Ukrainu,’ Chetver no. 4 (1993): 55–75. The poem quoted is found on page 73. 36 See note 20, chapter 3, of this book. 37 Andrukhovych, Perverziia, 7–10. 38 See Andrukhovych, Ekzotychni ptakhy i roslyny, 65. Also see Iurii Andrukhovych, ‘Samiilo z Nemyrova, prekrasnyi rozbyshaka,’ in BU-BABU T.v.o./…/ry (L9viv: Kameniar, 1995), 29–38. 39 Andrukhovych, Perverziia, 152. 40 Andrukhovych, Perverzion, 148. I have modified the original translation. In it, Неборака is translated as ‘Neborak.’ It should read ‘Neboraka,’ although, as I point out, the allusion to Bu-Ba-Bu poet Viktor Neborak is rather direct. 41 Andrukhovych, Perverziia, 152. See 152n47. 42 Ievheniia Kononenko, ‘Imitatsiia,’ Suchasnist9 5 (2001): 42. 43 Volodymyr Ieshkiliev, Votstsekurhiia bet (Ivano-Frankivs9k: Unikornus, 1998). 44 Bu-Ba-Bu celebrated their ‘one hundred year anniversary’ in L9viv on 9 May 1994. It was on this day that its member Viktor Neborak turned thirty-three and the ages of all three Bu-Ba-Bu members added up to one hundred. The celebration lasted two days; on the first day L9viv rock groups that had written songs based on Bu-Ba-Bu poems performed and on the second day the poets themselves read their poems to the audience. This is the source of the particular version of Andrukhovych’s ‘Indiia.’ 45 Andrukhovych, Perverziia, 13. 46 Ieshkiliev, Votstsekurhiia bet, 13. 47 Kathleen Blamey, ‘From the Ego to the Self: A Philosophical Itinerary,’ in The Philosophy of Paul Ricœur, ed. Lewis Edwin Hahn (Chicago: Open Court, 1996), 599. 48 Izdryk, Votstsek, 60. 49 Izdryk, Wozzeck, 65.

Notes to pages 139–46  161 5 0 Izdryk, Votstsek, 60. 51 Izdryk, Wozzeck, 66. 52 See Izdryk, Podviinyi Leon, 53. See also Taras Prokhas9ko, ‘Nekropol9,’ in Inshi dni Anny (Kyiv, Smoloskyp, 1998), 49–70. 53 See Iurii Izdryk, ‘Avtokomentar,’ in Ostriv Krk ta inshi istorii (IvanoFrankivs9k: Lileia-NV, 2000), 79–116. 54 Iurii Izdryk, interview by Taras Prokhas9ko, in Inshyi format no. 2 (IvanoFrankivs9k: Lileia-NV, 2003), 41. 55 Volodymyr Ieshkiliev, ‘Stanislavs9kyi fenomen,’ in Mala ukrains9ka entsyklopediia aktual9noi literatury, ed. Volodymyr Ieshkiliev and Iurii Andrukhovych (Ivano-Frankivs9k: Lileia-NV, 1998), 102–3. 56 Izdryk, Inshyi format, 39. 57 Taras Prokhas9ko, interview by Pavlo Krupa, San Rideau no. 2 (2004): 49. Conclusion 1 Boris Dubin, ‘Evropa – ‘virtual9na’ ta ‘insha’,’ Krytyka no. 60 (2002): 11. 2 Marcia Muelder Eaton ‘The Role of Art in Sustaining Communities,’ in Diversity and Community, ed. Philp Anderson (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2002). The quoted fragments are found, respectively, on pages 259 and 255.

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Index

abnormality, 79–80, 81 absolutes/absolutism: art and, 16; community and, 141; deconstruction of, 34–5, 41, 48, 64; postcolonialism and, 47; Ukrainian national myth and, 109 Aheieva, Vira, ‘Zhinka-avtorka iak inoplanetianka’ (The womanauthor as an alien), 117 alcohol dependence, 67, 69–76, 79, 80, 105 alienation: of intellectuals, 5, 67, 69, 81, 101; and intertextual communities, 143 ‘Al9ternatyva u Kyievi’ (Being alternative in Kyiv) (Semenchenko), 9, 10 amnesia, 77 Andrukhovych, Iurii, 12; and Bu-BaBu, 16; characters outside Ukraine, 102; deconstruction of myths, 52–3; Dezoriientatsiia na mistsevosti (Dis-orienteering on the spot), 112; dialogue, 61; and drinking rituals, 70; Ekzotychni ptakhy i roslyny (Exotic birds and plants), 136; Ieshkiliev on, 23; ‘Indiia,’ 138, 140;

and intellectual as performer, 17; and intertextuality, 127, 133–7; language games, 61–3; and legends, 51–2; ‘Lysty v Ukrainu’ (Letters to Ukraine), 136, 138, 140; Moskoviada (see Moskoviada [The Moscoviad] [Andrukhovych]); ‘Orphei khronichnyi’ (The chronic Orpheus), 22; Perverziia (see Perverziia [Perverzion] [Andrukhovych]); poetry in Votstsek, 137–8; and post-colonialism, 45–6; and postmodernism, 34, 45–6, 112; Rekreatsii (see Rekreatsii [Recreations] [Andrukhovych]); and Russian language, 119; Samiilo z Nemyrova, prekrasnyi rozbyshaka (Samiilo of Nemyriv, the handsome bandit), 136; Seredmistia (Downtown), 134; and street language, 55; Western references, 25–6, 29 authority: of author/narrative, 35, 41, 45, 47; deconstruction of, 52, 64; of history/myth, 47, 48, 52; postmodernism and, 33; questioning of, 5; in Soviet Ukraine, 8 Avzhezh (journal), 140

172  Index Barber, Bernard, 6 Benda, Julien, Treason of the Intellectuals, The, 5, 85 Beyond Postmodern Politics (Haber), 123 Bielik-Robson, Agata, ‘Romantic Modernism,’ 124 Blamey, Kathleen, 138 Bohachevsky-Chomiak, Martha, 6 Boichenko, Oleksandr, 82–3 Bondar-Tereshchenko, Ihor, 101 Borges, Juan Luis, 34 Boym, Svetlana, 125 Brezhnev, Leonid, 11 Bu-Ba-Bu, 16, 17, 23, 134, 137, 138, 139 Burdyk (Dibrova), 12; alcohol in, 69–70; deconstruction in, 37; ideological adjustment in, 86–7; ‘lost’ generation in, 99–102; narrative process in, 38–40, 48–9; post-Soviet Ukraine in, 107; Ukrainian diaspora in, 30, 63–4; Ukrainian language in, 54, 63–4, 88, 111, 112–13; West in, 26, 29–30 Calinescu, Matei, 33 capitalism, 15, 66, 86, 106 change/transformation, 18; alcohol and, 70; Eighties Writers and, 65, 66, 86–7; emigration as, 88; euphoria and, 16, 18; and identity, 34; language and, 89; performance and, 21; in Ukrainian culture, 16, 64; in Ukrainian literature, 64; of Ukrainian society, 66 chaos/chaotic movement: about, 65–6, 109; and disorientation, 123; Eighties Writers’ themes and, 107; euphoria and, 107–8; Gudz9 and,

104; and sick/abnormal intellectual, 66; sickness and, 81 Chernetsky, Vitaly, 102 Chetver (journal), 121, 136, 138, 141 Chubai, Hryhorii, 9–10, 130–1; translation of Funny Old Man (Różewicz), 10 Clark, Katerina, 35 Clemenceau, Georges, 4 colonialism: anti-, 47; and deconstruction, 35, 41; and gender relations, 93–4; and lineage of figures/ characters, 50, 52; and myths, 53; and narration, 37; postmodernism and, 34; and qualities of Ukrainian literature, 145; and truth, 41; and Ukrainian national myth, 47, 48. See also post-colonialism Communist Party, 8 community: and difference, 124–5; Eighties Writers and, 108; and identity, 125; and individual, 124; intertextuality and, 126–41; marginalization and, 110, 124, 131, 141; and otherness, 110; post-colonialism and, 141; Shevchenko and, 131; and totalitarianism, 124, 125; and Ukrainian culture, 141 countercultural movements, 10, 18 court jesters, intellectuals as, 5, 144 creation, 68–9 culture: Ukrainian contributions to, 50–1. See also Ukrainian culture Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood, 7 Dahrenhof, Ralf, 5 Danylenko, Volodymyr, 34 deconstruction: of absolute(s), 34–5, 41, 48, 64; of authority, 52, 64; and author’s role, 34, 35; and colonial

Index  173 past, 35, 41; euphoria and, 34, 143; of history, 48, 52–3; and identity, 34; of language, 35, 53–64; and metaphysics, 117; and myths, 34, 35, 47–53; and narrative, 34, 35–47; postmodernism and, 34; protagonists and, 35; results of, 65; and truth, 34, 42, 48; of Ukrainian language, 110 Den9 narodzhennia (Birthday Party) (Neborak), 135 Dezoriientatsiia na mistsevosti (Dis-orienteering on the spot) (Andrukhovych), 112 diaspora, Ukrainian, 30–2, 63–4. See also emigration Dibrova, Volodymyr: about, 12; Burdyk (see Burdyk [Dibrova]); in cultural underground in Kyiv, 9; Dvadtsiat takyi-to z’izd nashoi partii (Our party’s twentysomething congress), 48; and emigration from Ukraine, 88; literary language of, 54–5; Pantameron, 48; Peltse, 48; and Soviet world, 48; and truth, 48 difference: Eighties Writers and, 123–4; intertextuality and, 133; literature and, 145; morality and, 126; postmodernism and, 66; poststructuralism and, 123; significance of, in Ukraine, 145; structure vs, 123; unity vs, 123–4, 125. See also otherness disorientation: and alienation/ abnormality, 81; of Eighties Writers, 112; freedom and, 109; and illness, 108; and stability/structure, 123; of Ukrainian literature, 65–6 dissidents, 8, 15 Dovhan, Iaroslav, 134–5, 139

‘Dovkola ozera’ (Around the lake) (Prokhas9ko), 140 dreams, 43–4 Dreyfus, Alfred, 4 Drozd, Volodymyr, 148n17 Dubin, Boris, 143 Dvadtsiat takyi-to z’izd nashoi partii (Our party’s twentysomething congress) (Dibrova), 48 Eaton, Marcia Muelder, 145 eccentricity, 10, 21 Eco, Umberto, 34 Eighties Writers (visimdesiatnyky), 11–12; censorship and, 101–2; and change, 86–7; and community, 108; and deconstruction, 34–5; disorientation of, 112; groupings within, 16; and identity, 35, 86; Izdryk on, 108; marginalization of, 106, 112; and modernism, 35; and post-colonialism, 123; and postmodernism, 34, 123; and post-Soviet society, 86, 87–8; Seventies Writers and, 15–16, 131; and socialist realism, 35; and structure, 110, 123, 145; and Ukrainian culture, 142; and Ukrainian government, 85–6; and Ukrainian independence, 100, 101; and Ukrainian political-cultural situation, 84–5; underground culture and, 101–2, 118, 144; and West, 15, 95 Ekzotychni ptakhy i roslyny (Exotic birds and plants) (Andrukhovych), 136 emigration: as change, 88; from postSoviet Ukraine, 87–8, 91; to Western Europe, 7–8. See also diaspora, Ukrainian

174  Index Erofeev, Venedikt, Moskva-Petushki, 71 ‘Essai de deconstruction’ (Prokhas9ko), 140 euphoria/euphoric movement: about, 109; alcohol and, 70; Andrukhovych and, 18; and chaos, 82–3, 107–8; and culture, 110; and deconstruction, 34, 143; and disorientation, 109; and female-male relations, 90; and language, 64, 89; results of, 65; and sickness, 80; and Ukrainian language, 64 families: broken/dysfunctional, 67; fear and, 69 ‘Feminnyi kharakter ukrains9koi mental9nosty’ (The feminine character of the Ukrainian mentality) (Zborovs9ka), 97–8 festivals, era of, 15, 17, 32, 34, 65, 70 Feuer, Lewis S., 69 Foucault, Michel, 80 Franko, Ivan, 7 Funny Old Man (Różewicz), 10 Gabor, Vasyl9, 10, 77 Galician school, 34 gender relations, 89–99; colonialism and, 93–4; with Westerners, 95–7 glasnost, 24, 30, 49, 87 government. See Ukrainian government Grabowicz, George G., Poet as Mythmaker, The, 131 Gudz9, Iurii, 12; Ne-My (see Ne-My [Not-us] [Gudz9]); and post-Soviet Ukrainian language, 117; Western references, 26

Haber, Honi Fern, 124, 125; Beyond Postmodern Politics, 123 hallucinations, 75–6, 79 Hamlet (Shakespeare), 140 Havryliv, Tymofii, 35, 133; ‘Topohrafiia suchasnoi ukrains9koi prozy’ (The topography of contemporary Ukrainian prose), 126 Herasym’iuk, Vasyl9, 134 Hermand, Jost, 122–3 history, deconstruction of, 48, 52–3 Holoborod9ko, Vasyl9, 9 Hrabovs9kyi, Serhii, 112, 121 Hryhoriv, Mykhailo, 9 Hrytsenko, Oleksander, 11, 53–4 Hundorova, Tamara, 23, 53, 56 identity/-ies: art and, 16; change and, 34; community and, 125; evolution of modern, 111; of intellectual protagonists, 108, 109; intellectuals and, 143–4, 146; and morality, 111–12; narrative and construction of, 16; nature of, 125; in Ne-My, 40–1; otherness and, 141; postmodernism and, 66; schizophrenia and, 79–80; shifting narration and, 41; travel to West and, 32; of women, 90. See also Ukrainian identity Ieshkiliev, Volodymyr: on Andrukhovych and Moskoviada (The Moscoviad), 23; and postmodernism, 34; and Stanislavs9kyi Fenomen, 34, 140; Votstsekurhiia bet, 137–8 illness. See sickness Imitatsiia (Imitation) (Kononenko), 12; falsity vs genuineness in, 92; female protagonists in, 89–90,

Index  175 91–2, 93; and future of Ukraine, 99; gender relations in, 94–5; intertextuality in, 137; on parents, 82; Pol9ovi doslidzhennia z ukrains9koho seksu (Field work in Ukrainian sex) in, 137; West in, 27, 29, 91–2, 96, 98, 107 ‘Indiia’ (Andrukhovych), 138, 140 individualism, 8 Inshi dni Anny (Anna’s other days) (Prokhas9ko), 140 intellectual: defined, 69; origin of term, 4 intellectual protagonists, 3–4, 16; about, 12, 16, 69, 143–4; and absolutes, 16; and chaos, 66; and deconstruction, 35; euphoria and, 66; and identity, 16, 108, 109, 143; male-female incompatibility of, 66; and postmodernism, 16; and post-Soviet Ukrainian identity, 13; and sickness, 67–81; and Ukrainian language, 110; and West, 25. See also protagonists intellectuals, 7–8; alienation of, 5, 67, 69, 81, 101; as ambassadors to West, 66; and colonial past, 34; and Communist Party, 8; as court jesters, 5, 144; defined, 5–6; disorientation of, 66; as dissidents, 8; emigration to Western Europe, 7–8; female-male incompatibility, 89–99; history of, 6–7; and identity, 85, 143–4, 146; images of, 7; intelligentsia vs, 5–6; as lost generation in post-Soviet Ukraine, 99–108; and L9viv, 105; marginalization of, 8, 10, 67, 81, 82, 86, 109; as messianic bohemians, 5, 144; older, 15, 34; as performers, 17–23; as

philosopher-kings, 5, 144; and postmodernism, 34; post-Soviet Ukrainian, 12, 17, 99–108; and post-Stalin Soviet era, 8; prototypes of, 4, 144; relationship with public, 21–2; revolutionary socialist, 7–8; as Robin Hoods, 5, 144; roles, 4–5, 8, 16, 34, 35, 65–6, 115; sickness of, 108, 109; social position of, 4–5; and society, 144; in Soviet Ukraine, 7–8; Stalinism and, 8; travelling to West, 29–30; and Ukrainian government, 85–6; and Ukrainian language, 112–15; and West, 23, 25, 106–7; Western, 107. See also Eighties Writers intelligent, defined, 6 intelligentsia, 5–6, 7 intertextuality, 133–40; about, 126–7; alienation and, 143; Andrukhovych and, 133–7; and community, 110, 126–41; isolation and, 144; Izdryk and, 137–40; Kononenko and, 137; marginalization and, 145; Moskalets9 and, 126–7, 132–3; in post-Soviet Ukrainian prose, 126 ‘Ironiia nepokirnoi struktury’ (The irony of a rebellious structure) (Semkiv), 121–2 Irvanets9, Oleksandr, 16, 139 Ivaniuk, Serhii, 54–5 Ivano-Frankvs9k, 24–5, 140 Izdryk, Iurii, 12; Chetver manifesto, 121; intertextuality in work, 137– 40; Ostriv Krk (The island of Krk), 140; Podviinyi Leon: istoriia khvoroby (see Podviinyi Leon: istoriia khvoroby [Double Leon] [Izdryk]); and postmodernism, 34, 121–2; and Russian language, 119; ‘Stanislav:

176  Index tuha za nespravzhnim’ (Stanislav: nostalgia for the unreal), 24–5; on Stanislavs9kyi Fenomen, 140–1; and Ukrainian language, 127; on visimdesiatnyky, 108; Votstsek (see Votstsek (Wozzeck) (Izdryk)); Western language used by, 29; wordplay of, 56–8 journals, postmodernism in, 33–4 Kaidasheva sim’ia (The Kaidasheva family) (Nechui-Levyts9kyi), 49 Karpa, Irena, 55 Kesey, Ken, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 79 Khvyl9ovyi, Mykola, 7 King, Nicola, 40 Kis9, Roman, 9–10 Kobylians9ka, Ol9ha, 7, 97 Kononenko, Ievheniia, 12; and emigration from Ukraine, 88; and gender relations, 89; Imitatsiia (see Imitatsiia [Imitation] [Kononenko]); intertextuality in work, 137; and Russian language, 119; ‘Special Woman,’ 26–7, 95–6 Kordun, Viktor, 9 Kosovych, Leonid, 79 Krushchev, Nikita, 8, 11 Kryms9kyi, Ahatanhel, 7 Kvit, Serhii, 34 Kvitka-Osnovianenko, Hryhorii, 113 Kyiv: Seventies Writers in, 8–9; Ukrainian language in, 117 Kyivs9ka Shkola (The Kyiv School), 9 Kyiv-Zhytomyr school, 34 language(s): deconstruction of, 35, 53–64; games, 59–63; jargon/

slang, 55; power of, 59–61, 115–17; spoken vs written, 56–7; Western, 29; and wordplay, 56–8, 63. See also Ukrainian language Litaiucha holova (The flying head) (Neborak), 134 literature: and difference, 145; Russian, 85. See also Ukrainian literature Luchuk, Ivan, 34 Luhosad, 16, 34 L9viv: architecture, 104; decline of, 104; Moskalets9 and, 104–6; Seventies Writers in, 9–10 Lyotard, Jean-François, 5, 21, 28, 41, 123 Lysheha, Oleh, 9–10, 131, 141 Lysiak-Rudnyts9kyi, Ivan L., 5–6 ‘Lysty v Ukrainu’ (Letters to Ukraine) (Andrukhovych), 136, 138, 140 madness, 80 Maister korablia (The master of the ship) (Yanovs9kyi), 7 Malia, Martin, 6 Malkovych, Ivan, 134 Mannheim, Karl, 5 marginalization: community and, 110, 124, 131, 141; of Eighties Writers, 106, 112; of intellectuals, 8, 10, 67, 81, 82, 86, 109; of literature, 144; post-colonialism and, 122; in postSoviet Ukraine, 142; Ukrainian intellectuals and victims of, 145; of Ukrainian language, 82, 110, 112–13, 114, 115, 117–18; of Ukrainian literature, 145 May, Todd, 125–6; Reconsidering Difference, 123–4

Index  177 Medvid9, Viacheslav, 34 men, 92–4, 98 messianic bohemians, intellectuals as, 5, 144 metaphysics: deconstruction and, 117; poetry and, 116; return to, 109; Ukrainian culture and, 109; Ukrainian language and, 63–4, 109–10, 112, 113, 118, 122 Midianka, Petro, 139 ‘Mis9kyi boh Eros’ (Neborak), 134 modernism/modernity: Eighties Writers and, 35; introduction to Ukraine, 7; postmodernism and, 33; and tortured intellectual, 81 morality: foundationalism and, 126–41; post-Soviet intellectuals and, 111–12; totalitarianism and, 125–6; Ukrainian language and, 110, 112, 118, 122, 125; Ukrainian literature and, 145 Morozov, Viktor, 9–10, 131 Moscow, 70–1 Moskalets9, Kostiantyn: about, 12; on Burdyk, 101; and emigration from Ukraine, 88; and intertextuality, 127; and Riabchuk, 127, 128–9, 131, 133; and Ukrainian language, 115–17; Vechirnii med (see Vechirnii med [Evening mead] [Moskalets9]) Moskoviada (The Moscoviad) (Andrukhovych): alcohol in, 70–2; dialogue in, 61; intellectual as performer in, 19–21; intertextuality in, 133, 134, 135–6; naming of characters in, 44–5; Ukrainian culture/traditions in, 53; Ukrainian language in, 63, 119–20; Western references in, 26; writer’s role in, 46 Moskva-Petushki (Erofeev), 71

‘Mova’ (Language) (Strikha), 54 myths: authorial responsibility and, 48; deconstruction of, 34–5, 47–53. See also Ukrainian national myth(s) names/naming, 40, 41, 44–5 narrative: and colonial past, 37; deconstruction and, 34, 35–47; and identity, 16; subjectivity in, 35 nationalism: euphoria and, 83; literature and, 85; and myths, 52–3; and poetry anthologies, 85. See also Ukrainization nationalist realism, 44 Ne Zhurys9! (Don’t Worry!) (cabaret group), 131 Neborak, Viktor: in Bu-Ba-Bu, 16; Den9 narodzhennia (Birthday Party), 135; Litaiucha holova (The flying head), 134; ‘Mis9kyi boh Eros’ (Eros a city god), 134; Perverziia (Perverzion) and, 137; quoted in Moskoviada (The Moscoviad), 134; in Votstsek, 139 Nechui-Levyts9kyi, Ivan, 7; Kaidasheva sim’ia (The Kaidasheva family), 49 ‘Nekropol’ (Necropolis) (Prokhas9ko), 37–8, 140 Ne-My (Not-us) (Gudz9), 12; alphabet letters in, 58–9; deconstruction in, 33, 37, 40–1; identity in, 40–1; illness in, 77; Ukrainian language in, 103–4, 117; Ukrainian national myths in, 49–50 Odin myth, 116 Oles9 Ulianenko, 34 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Kesey), 79, 80

178  Index Oneself as Another (Ricœur), 111–12 ‘Orphei khronichnyi’ (The chronic Orpheus) (Andrukhovych), 22 Orpheus legend, 22–3 Ostriv Krk (The island of Krk) (Izdryk), 140 otherness: abnormality and, 79; community and, 110; and identity, 141; language and, 110; L9viv and, 105; Ukrainian language and, 89, 118. See also difference Pahutiak, Halyna, 83–4 pain, 78–9 Pantameron (Dibrova), 48 Pashkovs9kyi, Ievhen, 34 Pavlychko, Solomea, 97; Two Lands, New Visions, 65 Pavlyshyn, Marko, 47, 57 Peltse (Dibrova), 48 performers: intellectuals as, 17–23; as protagonists, 32 Perverziia (Perverzion) (Andrukhovych): deconstruction in, 46; diasporic Ukrainians in, 30; intellectual as swashbuckler in, 21–3; intertextuality in, 133, 134–5, 136, 137, 138; language games in, 61–3; Ukrainian culture/traditions in, 52; Ukrainian language in, 63; West in, 26, 29, 106–7; writer’s role/responsibility in, 45 Petrosaniak, Halyna, 138 philosopher-kings, intellectuals as, 5 Plieroma (journal), 140 Podervians9kyi, Les9, 9 Podviinyi Leon: istoriia khvoroby (Double Leon) (Izdryk), 12; alcohol in, 80; death in, 80–1; deconstruction in, 42–3; illness in, 78, 79–81; inter-

textuality in, 140; Russian language in, 119; Ukrainian language in, 55; word games in, 58 Poet as Mythmaker, The (Grabowicz), 131 poetry, 116, 127–33 political change. See change/ transformation Pol9ovi doslidzhennia z ukrains9koho seksu (Field work in Ukrainian sex) (Zabuzhko), 12; deconstruction in, 35–7; diasporic intellectuals in, 31– 2; female protagonist in, 55, 89–91, 92–4, 96, 98–9; gender relations in, 92–4, 96, 98–9; illness in, 67–9; in Imitatsiia (Imitation) (Kononenko), 137; intertextuality in, 137; Ukrainian language in, 55, 113–15; West in, 24, 25, 27, 29, 31–2, 96, 107 populist era, 7, 35, 49 post-colonialism: and absolutism, 47; and community, 141; defined, 47; and displacement of characters, 102; Eighties Writers and, 123; and marginalization, 122; postmodernism and, 45–6, 122; and stability, 140, 141; and structure, 125 postmodernism: Andrukhovych and, 21, 112; and colonial past, 34; and creation, 68–9; and deconstruction, 34; Eighties Writers and, 34, 123; euphoria and, 65; in intellectual journals, 33–4; and intertextual communities, 144; Izdryk and, 121–2; and modernity, 33; and post-colonialism, 45–6, 122; and self, 66; and socialist realism, 117; and stability, 122; and subjectivity, 35; and Ukrainian culture, 121; and Ukrainian identity, 16;

Index  179 Ukrainian independence and, 33; and Ukrainian language, 84; and Ukrainian literature, 34, 112; in the West, 33 post-Soviet Ukraine: emigration from, 87–8, 91; government policies, 83–4; intellectual protagonists, 12; intellectuals as performers, 17; language in, 88–9, 109–10; lost generation in, 99–108; marginalization of intellectuals in, 67, 142; men in, 92–4; middle class in, 86; and national identity, 83–4; role models in, 86; role of L9viv in, 105, 106; roles of intellectuals in, 115; society in, 86, 87–8; status quo, 86, 110, 120, 144; West and, 25, 92, 95. See also Ukraine post-structuralism, 123 Povaliaieva, Svitlana, 55 Prokhas9ko, Taras: deconstruction in, 56; ‘Dovkola ozera’ (Around the lake), 140; ‘Essai de deconstruction,’ 140; Inshi dni Anny (Anna’s other days), 140; ‘Nekropol’ (Necropolis), 37–8, 140; and postmodernism, 34; on Stanislavs9kyi Fenomen, 141 Propala Hramota, 16, 140 protagonists: Andrukokhovych and, 21–2; as conduit to West, 27, 32; and deconstruction, 35; female, 89–90, 94, 95; performers as, 32; post-Soviet Ukrainian intellectuals as, 16; and West, 106. See also intellectual protagonists Publishers’ Forum, 3 Pyrkalo, Svitlana, 55

Rekreatsii (Recreations) (Andrukhovych): alcohol in, 70; dialogue in, 61; diasporic Ukrainians in, 30–1; intertextuality in, 133–4, 136, 137; Orpheus legend in, 22; swashbuckling intellectual in, 17–19, 21; Ukrainian language in, 119; Western references in, 26; writer’s role/responsibility in, 46 responsibility: culture and, 109; freedom from, 65, 108, 112; myth and, 48; subjectivity and, 47; Ukrainian independence and, 46 Riabchuk, Mykola: about, 130–1; poetry in Moskalets9, 127, 128–9, 133; on power-holders in postSoviet Ukraine, 83; significance in Ukrainian culture, 131; and Ukrainian language, 89; in underground culture, 9–10, 130–1; Zyma u L9vovi (Winter in L9viv), 127, 128–9, 130 Ricœur, Paul: and morality, 126; and narrative identity, 138; Oneself as Another, 111–12 Rilke, Rainer Maria, 25 Robin Hoods, 5 Rodyk, Kostiantyn, 85 Romanets, Maryna, 69, 93, 98 ‘Romantic Modernism’ (Bielik-Robson), 124 Różewicz, Tadeusz, Funny Old Man, 10 Russian language, 55, 63–4, 84, 114, 119 Russians, Ukrainians vs, 19–21, 106 Rymaruk, Ihor, 140; Uprodovzh snihopadu (Throughout the snowfall), 127, 131–3

Reconsidering Difference (May), 123–4

Sad, Vikhta, 140

180  Index Sadri, Ahmad, 5 Said, Edward, 5, 6 Salomon, Albert, 5 Samiilo z Nemyrova, prekrasnyi rozbysh­ aka (Samiilo of Nemyriv, the handsome bandit) (Andrukhovych), 136 schizophrenia, 79 Semenchenko, Oleksa, ‘Al9ternatyva u Kyievi’ (Being alternative in Kyiv), 9, 10 Semkiv, Rostyslav, ‘Ironiia nepokirnoi struktury’ (The irony of a rebellious structure), 121–2 Seredmistia (Downtown) (Andrukhovych), 134 Seventies Writers (simdesiatnyky), 8–11; Eighties Writers and, 15–16, 131; Moskalets9 and, 130; and Ukrainian language, 110; and West, 24 sexuality, 90–1 Shakespeare, William, Hamlet, 140 Sherekh, Iurii, 35 Shevchenko, Taras, 131 Shevchuk, Valerii, 148n17 shistdesiatnyky. See Sixties Writers (shistdesiatnyky) sickness, 66, 67–81, 91, 108, 109 simdesiatnyky. See Seventies Writers (simdesiatnyky) Sixties Writers (shistdesiatnyky), 8, 11, 54 Skrynia (The Chest), 10 Skurativs9kyi, Vadym, 15–16 Slovo, znak, dyskurs (Word, symbol, discourse) (Zubryts9ka), 33–4 Sniadanko, Natalka, 55 snow, 117, 127 social change. See change/ transformation

socialist realism: and ‘de-intelligentsiazation’ of literature, 35; and depictions of intellectuals, 81; and intellectuals, 67; Izdryk and, 44; postmodernism and, 117; and Seventies Writers, 11; and Soviet Ukrainian culture, 8; and subjectivity, 47; and underground culture, 141 Sources of the Self (Taylor), 111–12 Soviet Ukraine: children of, compared with pre-Soviet Ukrainians, 90–1; intellectuals in, 7–8; and language, 103; and memory, 103; stability of life in, 83; status quo, 118; and Ukrainian language, 53–4; and underground culture, 101–2, 118 Soviet Union: alcohol and, 71; Eighties writers and, 11; and euphoria, 16; in Moskoviada, 70–1; and Ukrainian identity, 108 sovok, 22, 48, 70, 86, 118–19 ‘Special Woman’ (Kononenko), 26–7, 95–6 Stalinism, 8 ‘Stanislav: tuha za nespravzhnim’ (Stanislav: nostalgia for the unreal) (Izdryk), 24–5 Stanislavs9kyi Fenomen, 34, 140–1 Stavyts9ka, Lesia, 55 stream-of-consciousness style, 68 Strikha, Maksym, 38, 101–2; ‘Mova’ (Language), 54 subjectivity: and authorial responsibility, 47; of myths, 53; in narrative, 35; postmodernism and, 35; socialist realism and, 47; truth and, 35, 47; in Votstsek, 41–2 Suchasnist9 (journal), 17, 131, 132

Index  181 surzhyk, 84, 88, 119 Sydor-Hibelinda, Oleh, 103–4 Taylor, Charles, 125; Sources of the Self, 111–12 ‘Topohrafiia suchasnoi ukrains9koi prozy’ (The topography of contemporary Ukrainian prose) (Havryliv), 126 totalitarianism, 122–3, 124, 125–6, 131, 141 transformation. See change/ transformation Treason of the Intellectuals, The (Benda), 5, 85 Trinchii, Vadym, 118 truth: deconstruction and, 34, 42, 48; national myth and, 64; and postcolonial writers, 41; and subjectivity, 35, 47. See also absolutes/ absolutism Trypilian culture, 98 Tsybul9ko, Volodymyr, 84–5 Two Lands, New Visions (Pavlychko), 65 Ukraine: Eighties Writers and, 11; feminine character of, 97–8; independence of, 32; prose writers and, 12; West and, 106–7. See also post-Soviet Ukraine Ukrainian culture: authentic vs officially sanctioned, 131; community and, 141; and demands on writer, 46; Eighties Writers and, 142; euphoric movement and, 110; ghettoization of, 51; independence and, 142; legends and, 51–2; metaphysical character of, 109; postmodernism and, 121; and social

responsibility, 109, 112; Western orientation for, 131 Ukrainian government: Eighties Writers and, 84–6; and identity, 85; and language, 83–4; and literature, 85; in post-Soviet Ukraine, 83–4 Ukrainian identity: chaos and, 66; collapse of Soviet Union and, 108; construction of, 19; deconstruction and, 34, 35; diaspora and, 30; Eighties Writers and, 65, 86; government and, 85; independence and, 34; intellectual protagonists and, 13, 143; intellectuals and, 85, 143–4; in post-Soviet Ukraine, 83–4; in state of flux, 108; Ukrainian village and, 49. See also identity/-ies Ukrainian independence: and authorial responsibility, 46; and culture, 142; and disillusionment, 108; Eighties Writers and, 100, 101; and emigration, 87; and era of festivals, 15; and identity, 34; and language, 88, 142; older intellectuals and, 15; and postmodernism, 33 Ukrainian language: and change, 89; characteristics of, 84; deconstruction of, 54–64, 110; Eighties Writers and, 54; euphoric movement and, 64, 89; everyday vs literary, 103; exclusivity of, 121; games, 59–61; government and, 83–4, 118; history of, 88–9; independence and, 88, 142; intellectuals and, 112–15; jargon/slang, 55; in Kyiv, 117; lack of common functional, 102–4; letters of alphabet, 58–9; and literary language, 103; marginalization of, 82, 110, 112–13, 114, 115, 117–18;

182  Index and metaphysics, 63–4, 109–10, 112, 113, 118, 122; and morality, 110, 112, 118, 122, 125; and national myth, 53–4, 63, 64, 109–10; normalization of, 118; and otherness, 110, 118; in post-Soviet Ukraine, 88–9, 109–10; Seventies Writers and, 110; Sixties Writers and, 54; snow in, 117; Soviet Ukraine and, 53–4; and sovok, 118–19; and subversion, 54 Ukrainian literature: anthologies of, 85; colonialism and, 145; disorientation of, 65–6; government and, 85; marginalization of, 144, 145; mass-oriented, 144–5; and morality, 145; and nationalism, 85; postmodernism and, 34, 112; Russian literature and, 85; socialist realism and, 35 Ukrainian national myth(s): and absolute, 109; colonialism and, 47, 48, 53; and language, 109–10; language and, 53–4, 63, 64; and metaphysical character of culture, 109; nationalism and, 52–3; subjectivity of, 53; and truth, 64 Ukrainian National Republic, 8 Ukrainians: illness of, 91; Russians vs, 19–21 Ukrainization, 83, 84 Ukrainka, Lesia, 97 underground culture: about, 8–10; effects on Eighties Writers, 101–2, 118, 144; and intertextuality, 141; in Kyiv, 8–9; in L9viv, 9–10, 72–3, 130–1; mirror society in, 11; postSoviet Ukraine and, 72; Riabchuk in, 130–1; Soviet society and, 101–2, 118; Ukrainian independence and, 15

Uprodovzh snihopadu (Throughout the snowfall) (Rymaruk), 127, 131–3 vagrancy, 72, 75 Vechirnii med (Evening mead) (Moskalets9), 12; alcohol in, 55, 72–6, 105; existentialism in, 55; illness in, 67, 72–7; intertextuality in, 127–30, 132–3; linguistic play in, 116–17; L9viv in, 104–5; post-Soviet Ukraine in, 104–6; Ukrainian culture in, 50–1; Ukrainian language in, 59–61, 104; vagrancy in, 72, 75, 76; West in, 26, 29, 107 visimdesiatnyky. See Eighties Writers (visimdesiatnyky) Vitkovs9kyi, Volodymyr, 28–9 Vorobiov, Mykola, 9 Votstsekurhiia bet (Ieshkiliev), 137–8 Votstsek (Wozzeck) (Izdryk), 12; about protagonist in, 79; deconstruction in, 41–2, 43–4; dreams in, 43–4; intertextuality in, 137–40; language in, 55; pain in, 77–9; postmodernism in, 41–2; West in, 27–8; wordplay in, 57–8 Vynnychenko, Volodymyr, 7 Vynnychuk, Iurii, 34 West: access to, 66; artefacts of, 25–9; clichés regarding, 26–7; commercial culture of, 15; Eighties Writers and, 95; influences on post-Soviet Ukraine, 92, 95; intellectuals and, 23, 25, 66, 106–7; intellectuals of, 107; languages in post-Soviet Ukrainian prose, 29; names of, 25–6; postmodernism in, 33; in post-Soviet Ukrainian prose, 25;

Index  183 quotations from culture of, 27–9; Soviet citizens and, 24; travels to, 29–32, 91; and Ukraine, 106–7; Ukrainian culture in, 30–2; Ukrainian diaspora in, 7–8, 30–2; Ukrainian women and, 27, 107; Ukrainian women and Western men, 95–7 women: identity, 90; and West, 27, 107; and Western men, 89–99 Yanovs9kyi, Iurii, Maister korablia (The master of the ship), 7 Yavors9kyi, Orest, 9–10 Zabuzhko, Oksana, 12; characters outside Ukraine, 102; and Dante’s nine circles, 10; and Eighties Writers, 11, 88–9; and emigration from Ukraine, 88; English-language phrases/words, 29; and gender relations, 89; and intertextuality, 141; Pol9ovi doslidzhennia z ukrain-

s9koho seksu (see Pol9ovi doslidzhennia z ukrains9koho seksu [Field work in Ukrainian sex] [Zabuzhko]); and Russian language, 119; and sickness, 81; on Ukrainian language, 54; and Western European individual will, 106; Zborovs9ka on, 98 Zborovs9ka, Nila, 90, 97; ‘Feminnyi kharakter ukrains9koi mental9nosty’ (The feminine character of the Ukrainian mentality), 97–8 ‘Zhinka-avtorka iak inoplanetianka’ (The woman-author as an alien) (Aheieva), 117 Zholdak, Bohdan, 9 Zubryts9ka, Mariia, Slovo, znak, dyskurs (Word, symbol, discourse), 33–4 Zyma u L9vovi (Winter in L9viv) (Riab­chuk), 127, 128–9, 130