Another parent in the park who I talk to every once in a while, when she is not working as a nurse, is from Ukraine. Her husband understands English but has more trouble speaking it. They send their son to Ukrainian school to help him learn the language and it's really helped him in school because he hears the language at home, but he doesn't study it formally, until recently. He also has upgraded his preference for his name to go from Vollo to Volodymyr, because the heroic president has the same name. So the other day it occured to me to read a novel by a Ukrainian and I came up with Zabuzhko. Ordered it from the library and poof, it was ready for pickup at my local branch in no time.
There's a scene in the movie The Tin Drum, where one minute this woman is moaning in intercourse, and then the next she's moaning giving birth. A midget has impregnated her, and the whole story is about the identity of Germany, so that helps it make sense. I've always love the characters representing national identity, because they are just as incoherent and contradictory as a nation is. I occasionally flash out of the personal into national identity reading this book, the way you're meant to in The Tin Drum. I'm thinking that might be a book I'll read. I got a used copy quite a while ago because someone said it was their favorite book.
Info/Notes (1996 edition translated into English by Halyna Hryn)
P20 Antonovych prize
P23 Avvakum
P. 29: Yevtushenko (1933-2017) novelist, essayist, dramatist, screenwriter, publisher, actor, editor, university professor, and director of several films. Born in Russia, died in USA.
Tatiana Tolstaya (Born 1951) Essayist, writer of fiction, grandchild of Tolstoy.
Kennan Institute Studies Russia and it's former satellites.
P 31 Lypynsky (1882-1931) was a Ukrainian historian, social and political activist, an ideologue of Ukrainian conservatism.
Hrushevsky (1866-1934) was a Ukrainian academician, politician, historian and statesman who was one of the most important figures of the Ukrainian national revival of the early 20th century.
P36 Forest Song (English translation) Ukranian play
Alexander Archipenko (1887 – 1964) Ukrainian and American avant-garde artist, sculptor, and graphic artist.
p. 128 Alexander Kuprin Russian novelist
Volyhnia--Region in Ukraine.
Podillia--Region in Ukraine.
Volodymyr Vynnychenko (1880–1951) First Prime Minister of Ukraine.
Bruno Schulz (1892–1942) Polish writer.
Quotes:
“that the Ukrainian choice is a choice between nonexistence and an existence that kills you, and that all of our hapless literature is merely a cry of someone pinned down by a beam in a building after an earthquake—I’m here! I’m still alive!—but, unfortunately, the rescue teams are taking their time and on your own—how the hell are you supposed to get out?” (From Goodreads)
"...only in childhood is the truth, it is only by it that it is worth measuring your life, if you managed not to trample that girl (that boy - who was standing with a stick in the pasture, struck by a gossamer, because it was unstoppable, beyond human strength the majestic fire-colored symphony of the sunset), - it means that your life has not gone crazy, it has twisted, no matter how difficult and painful it may be, along its own course, it means that it has come true, with which I congratulate you, - and love, ladies and gentlemen, true love - it is always seeing a boy hidden in another (other) (and a girl: take me - then always: take me with my childhood..." (From Goodreads and through Google translate)
"…obviously her mother tongue was the most nutritious, most healing to the senses: velvety marigold, or no, cherry (juice on lips)? strawberry blond (smell of hair)? …it’s always like that, the minute you peer more closely the whole thing disintegrates into tiny pieces and there’s no putting it back together; she hungered for her language terribly, physically, like a thirsty man for water, just to hear it — living and full-bodied with that ringing intonation like a babbling brook at at distance…" (book review)
“… the Great American Depression from which it seems that about 70 percent of the population suffers, running to psychiatrists, gulping down Prozac, each nation goes crazy in its own way…”
Book Reviews:
Brianna Berbenuik "...Zabuzhko maintains it is anything but autobiography."
"The narrator’s abusive love affair reflects the abusive nature of historical cultural norms and imposed values in Ukraine. It symbolizes a generation’s struggle to free itself from the past, to forge its own identity, and yet hold onto the best parts of the former identity, the traditions and historical moments that made independence worth fighting for despite years of being suspended between wars, languages, identities, and hostile neighbours that would crush, assimilate or extinguish them."
"The longing for something loved and dangerous is at the book’s core. And yet are not all cultural identities like this? Do they not all have their destructive, oppressive and damaging histories that we must embrace and attempt to transform?"
I wrote the following poem inspired by the book:
Poem
The caverns of now
Sitting on a park bench
Minding my daughter
Unfolding dramas
Yelling and crying
Pleading parents
Careful, careful
Cuidado, ostrożny
સાવચેત
To the reckless
Pell mell careening
The book I read
Best selling Ukrainian
As if I could increase
The world’s respect
With my reading nets
Or the fried liver opening
Being mindful of
How much I hate
To lose
Victor’s plane
Stuck in a tree
I can’t climb tree
Like I did in my youth
Now that I’m a
Double nickel
I’m rickety, unfit
Closer to the grave
Comments
Post a Comment