Day one
‘You received’t mistake the sound of a missile flying overhead,’ Orysia mentioned, despite the fact that she had thought the primary explosions have been a peal of thunder; it typically rains in Lviv.
I hadn’t lengthy arrived in Ukraine. On the Lviv checkpoint manufactured from tyres, sandbags and metallic bars, I had been allowed to drive previous slowly. There hadn’t been a lot to point the nation was at warfare – simply as I had guessed. And I had met Orysia in entrance of the Victoria Gardens procuring centre, in orange night daylight, surrounded by large house buildings and the huge close by airfield.
Examine level into Lviv. Picture courtesy of writer.
Orysia had studied Estonian and been an adept younger translator however now works in software program advertising and marketing, from the place there’s in all probability no means again to the humanities. She lives together with her software program engineer boyfriend, Andriy, in a brand-new house. They’ve two cats from a Kramatorsk refugee: large, gray, British animals. Orysia mentioned they don’t care to go to the air raid shelter anymore, particularly as a result of these felines – Richard, the fats tomcat, specifically – have been so heavy to hold. Certainly, when the sirens go off at evening, they simply transfer to the kitchen and drink tea.
In Kharkiv oblast ‘individuals have learnt to discern between the whistles of various missiles. It sounds totally different whether or not it’s an Iskander M or an Iskander Okay,’ mentioned Andriy. Orysia instructed me, you’re supposed to remain between two partitions, like in a hall, with out home windows throughout an air raid; the kitchen has home windows, however they don’t face the airfield.
Each Orysia and Andriy are enthusiastic that Ukrainian nationwide healthcare now has an e-booking system and e-patient portal. They mentioned that the police reform of 2015 had had good outcomes as properly. At the very least low and medium-level corruption had been rooted out – properly, what may one do with such high-level corruption! I sensed lots of optimism within the youthful era about Ukraine’s future. They imagine that investments, grants and other forms of monetary assist will begin pouring in from the West.
Orysia and Andriy have a particularly digitalized existence with apps for every thing regarding life and the warfare. For starters, I’ve downloaded the one which wails like a siren when there’s an air raid. As every second passes, it turns into clearer that it’s Russia’s destiny that will probably be determined by this warfare. May the results of such suicide terrorism be better parliamentarianism, the shift of energy to a wider group of oligarchs or better independence of its areas, a sure break-up? Ah, the fantastic thing about Utopias! Russia’s menace of nuclear battle is childish; how lengthy are we speculated to take this shit?
I slept very deeply with the tomcat at my toes. My pyjamas, or moderately a T-shirt and leggings, stored on in readiness to run to the shelter, have been filled with cat hair by the morning.
Day two
Orysia made pancakes for breakfast. She instructed me how, even in her schooldays through the 2000s, hardly any fashionable Western classics might be present in Ukrainian. She and her schoolmates learn these authors in Russian translation: Remarque and Austen, for instance. The growth of translating literature into Ukrainian started solely after Maidan in 2014. Now most books on the native market are in Ukrainian: she guessed at over 80%, however the poets and students I spoke to later claimed the proportion was a lot greater.
Neither Orysia nor Andriy had been thrilled when Zelensky was elected president. I heard from a number of individuals afterwards that intellectuals didn’t vote for Zelensky: poet and professor of Ukrainian literature Halyna Kruk confessed that she knew nobody who had. Zelensky had been a candidate and not using a clear agenda, a clean slate and it wasn’t simple to inform whose sphere of affect he may be pulled into. There have been even those that feared he may be weak to a pro-Russian agenda. However everybody I spoke to agreed that he had gone by means of huge improvement and was now the proper consultant.
Ukrainians are nonetheless amused on the Zelensky cult outdoors their nation. If westerners relish his portrait on their pillowcases, then why not allow them to have it? The memento business had reacted quick: T-shirts and luggage went on sale sporting the president’s face, alongside the sinking Russian warship. With a show-biz president, Ukraine is receiving publicity it hasn’t seen earlier than. Some mentioned they weren’t fairly in a position to envision what Zelensky, nonetheless a younger man and now one thing of a film star, was going to do in peacetime. Folks usually agreed that it’s advantageous to have a younger president today, so the entire nation would appear recent and extra inspiring. Nonetheless, intellectuals appeared to place extra belief in Dmytro Kuleba, the Minister of International Affairs, who’s even youthful than Zelensky.
We met Orysia’s classmate Sofia, a poster designer and illustrator, on Virmenska Avenue. Sofia mentioned that about 10% of exhibition gross sales go to the military now. She was so bored with residing on the epicentre of stunning, drastic, pivotal occasions. If solely they might get again to a standard, on a regular basis routine! She took us to Zelena Kanapa (the Inexperienced Couch) on the final day of The Blue-Yellow Album, an exhibition by Lesya Babliak. The hue of the watercolours was certainly blue and yellow; she had painted her expressionist photographs both referencing sure wartime pictures or from reminiscence.
On Prospect Svobody (Freedom Prospect), previous males have been enjoying chess. Within the lengthy, inexperienced park space, musicians have been performing in not less than three totally different spots. For a number of days, a brass band had been enjoying variations on James Brown’s I Really feel Good. ‘So good, so good’ – Leopolitans have been involved about feeling good. Are they allowed to take action? They’re consuming espresso, whereas others are dying. However the authorities had introduced that it’s effective to really feel good. ‘If we don’t really feel good,’ Orysia mentioned with an ironic smile, ‘the Russians have already received.’
After I went out to eat, the air raid siren rang out. It rang from my cellphone as properly, the app working because it’s speculated to. Ukrainians smiled at my questioning look. They even chuckled quietly after I walked to the bar counter to ask in regards to the shelter. They shook their heads. Why run? The whole lot was OK. “Folks on the streets stored strolling with prams, nobody was going to surrender their tables within the outside cafés. Within the air raid app, you possibly can select whether or not you desire a feminine or male voice to announce the start and finish of the menace.
Writer and Orysia delivering medical help. Picture courtesy of writer.
Day three
This morning, I awoke within the metropolis centre, within the Opera Passage Lodge with a grand view of Prospekt Svobody, the municipality towers and the Latin Cathedral. In peacetimes, the Prospekt have to be roaring with life, even at evening, however the curfew at 11pm means full silence, aside from a number of ambulances or police automobiles.
Lviv is overcrowded and full of automobiles; town of 720,000 inhabitants has obtained 300,000 refugees. Folks from the East park their automobiles in lengthy rows. Drivers depart their cellular numbers on the dashboards; those that need to get transferring once more may need to make dozens of calls.
Orysia mentioned many individuals with youngsters had left Lviv, however a lot of youngsters may nonetheless be seen round, additionally in entrance of the opera home of their toy automobiles – in all probability refugee youngsters from the East.
Within the afternoon I met Ostap Slyvynsky, an enthralling colleague I’ve identified since 2014. We sat down in an out of doors café close to Les Kurbas Theatre, an space frequented by intellectuals and hipsters dressed stylishly: a bearded man with stylish, pink trousers, guys with cautious sock mixtures. Each every so often, someone mentioned ‘hi there’ to Ostap.
We weren’t allowed a glass of wine. Though the alcohol ban, imposed in pubs and retailers firstly of the warfare, had been lifted simply earlier than my arrival, the waitress mentioned we may solely drink espresso outdoors.
Ostap teaches Polish and translation on the Ivan Franko College, having himself translated Tokarczuk and Miłosz. He understands all Slavic languages, talking seven fluently. I’ve at all times spoken English with him. I requested whether or not Ostap was in a position to deal with a gun, and he mentioned he was: firstly of the warfare, he had taken particular programs; he now knew easy methods to use a Kalashnikov, having identified nothing about weapons earlier than. ‘I didn’t need to sit at dwelling like an fool,’ he mentioned. Nonetheless, they didn’t settle for him within the military, as there have been sufficient males already. They’ve begun specializing in extra specialised coaching. He had been requested whether or not he had obtained a conscription letter: ‘No? Then go dwelling.’
At first, we talked in regards to the disgraceful open letter German intellectuals had written to Olaf Scholz, printed in Emma journal a number of days earlier than: actually toothless blather about how Germany ought to ‘not provide, both straight or not directly, additional heavy weapons to Ukraine’ to keep away from additional ‘escalation’. They advocated for a compromise – with the aggressor. Among the many signatories have been Alexander Kluge, Martin Walser and Alice Schwarzer. I shared the hyperlink with a vomiting emoticon. Certain, a number of signatories have been very previous; Kluge and Walser have drifted away from present affairs. However one can develop bolder with age. I had met Schwarzer, Emma’s editor in chief and a lifelong feminist, at a ladies’s gathering in Vienna some years earlier than. She seemed to be a moderately extravagant pencil within the field, however again then I had thought something was good to assist the trigger.
However, sure, the painful ‘German query’ had exasperated Ostap for a very long time. One factor is Realpolitik, the opposite is the incapability or unwillingness to see or take discover of Russia’s imperialism and a number of crimes of aggression. Such an angle could have historic causes – ‘See, we’re not Nazis!’ – however it’s utterly irrelevant. Ostap had skilled such blindness at a number of literary occasions.
I used to be curious to know what Ostap considered Oksana Zabuzhko’s article, printed on 22 April 2022 within the Occasions Literary Complement. Zabuzhko, with whom I had loved a journey from Lutsk to Kyiv some years in the past, had mentioned: ‘In some ways, it was Russian literature that wove the camouflage web for Russia’s tanks.’ She believes that the assault on 24 February owes quite a bit to Dostoevskian pondering. I had thought-about it a extremely authentic however far-fetched interpretation.
Isn’t there consensus in artistic fields that no straight strains exist between issues depicted in an paintings and the spectator’s or reader’s consequent actions? Can we incriminate literary works written one and a half centuries in the past for being the fashions behind behavioural patterns inside Putin’s (or Stalin’s) Russia?
Within the 2008 essay ‘The Army-Poetic Advanced’, Žižek wrote how ‘ethnic cleaning in Bosnia was the continuation of (a type of) poetry by different means’. It was poets who early on ‘began to sow the seeds of aggressive nationalism’. Very properly, however the place can we go from there? Does writing a poem imply establishing a possible minefield? Ostap mentioned, nevertheless, that Zabuzhko had summarized what many Ukrainian intellectuals have been pondering and feeling.
As for Dostoevsky, we can’t say that each one these discussions in regards to the ‘particular mission of the Russian individuals’ have had no weight in any way. However take Raskolnikov and the want to perceive a prison thoughts – hasn’t this authors globally? What else, if not that? Ostap identified the query of whether or not social injustice could justify violence. Raskolnikov shouldn’t be a villain. Apart from, so many Russian literary works include traces of colonialist pondering, be it specific or implicit – Pushkin, for instance. That is one thing that have to be mentioned. Scrutinizing these components doesn’t imply cancelling authors. Even Gogol has now was a controversial determine for a lot of Ukrainians, Ostap mentioned. Books had been discovered within the luggage of Russian troopers, above all these of Gogol! It’s not simple to reinterpret Taras Bulba now.
I not too long ago discovered an appallingly chauvinistic remark about Gogol by Nabokov, whose work I’ve relished a lot: ‘We should thank destiny (and the writer’s thirst for common fame) for his not having turned to the Ukrainian dialect as a medium of expression, as a result of then he would have been misplaced. After I desire a good nightmare, I think about Gogol penning in Little Russian dialect quantity after quantity of Dikanka and Mirgorod stuff about ghosts haunting the banks of the Dniepr, burlesque Jews and dashing Cossacks’ – a remark as disagreeable because the antisemitism of T. S. Eliot.
Whereas callous and sceptical literati can separate a author’s stylistic expertise and their bigoted worldview, schoolkids needs to be instructed that no author, because of their expertise, is a priori, neither mechanically sensible nor good.
Coated signposts in Ukraine, 2022. Picture courtesy of writer.
I may properly think about how all this speak of Malorussia (Little Russia) has outraged Ukrainians for a while. The query arises: Why is Russia nonetheless granted delusions about its messianic mission and soul, whereas such concepts, if bred by different nations, appear at finest absurd, at worst expressions of Nazism? Sadly, concessions to Russian imperialism appear to have been a part of Western leftists’ angle package deal.
Russia’s conceitedness can also be revealed by figuring out Ukraine so poorly, Ostap mentioned. They’re ridiculously cussed to assert that Yanukovych remains to be the respectable president of Ukraine, so that they proposed this taxidermied man because the chief of the ‘denazified’ nation. ‘We laughed ourselves to tears,’ Ostap mentioned. The speak of taking Kyiv in three days was utterly ignorant, too. They didn’t pay correct consideration to the ‘smaller brother’, their data was defective and partial, and that is now hitting them arduous. Ukrainians applaud the corruption and decay within the Russian navy – how may it’s in any other case!
To my query about whether or not Ukrainians see any nation for instance to observe, Ostap fell silent for a second after which mentioned, ‘No, not likely, Ukraine is just too explicit, one in all a sort.’ After I requested whether or not Ukraine would come out of the warfare a special nation, he mentioned, ‘Actually. We’re not a part of the Russian narrative anymore. We’re not victims however have a powerful identification now, a characteristic that the world is aware of about: braveness.’ He smiled humorously. A level of mental irony was definitely there.
Translating into Ukrainian in Soviet instances, he mentioned, was an unique artwork, beautiful, rigorously finished. There was no state fee: no deadlines, simply private curiosity. Even after independence was re-established in 1991, Ukrainian translations didn’t prosper available on the market. Print runs of books in Russian have been greater, their costs decrease. And everybody was in a position to learn Russian anyway. If a Russian translation of some bestseller got here available on the market, the Ukrainian model typically not bought properly – that’s why the Ukrainian translation of Harry Potter was rushed by means of. Ostap confirmed Orysia’s declare that the interpretation growth began in 2014.
I used to be curious about whether or not some authors who previously wrote in Russian had switched to Ukrainian. Andrei Kurkov should write his crime novels in Russian, because of their distinctive type, however his youngsters’s books, fairytales and essays are actually written in Ukrainian. Volodymyr Rafeyenko, a local of Donetsk, who had received the Russian Prize as Vladimir, moved from Donbas to Kyiv and began to put in writing in Ukrainian. The change of language and different cultural transformations impressed him to put in writing Mondegreen in 2019, printed in English in 2022.
I had learn Timofei Havryliv’s literary survey printed by Eurozine in 2007 and requested Ostap what the ‘Lviv textual content’ was that Havryliv had talked about. Laughing, he mentioned he wasn’t fairly positive, however it was one thing they have been looking for again then. Apparently, he and his colleagues had some advanced textual content in thoughts that would come with the totally different strata of Lviv’s tradition: Ukrainian, Polish, Jewish, Austrian and Armenian. And what, I requested, in regards to the Ukrainian Baroque? Ostap mentioned that these have been fascinating texts from the seventeenth century, when Ukrainian was a mix of Church Slavonic, Polish and the native spoken language.
I learnt that psychoanalysis had been very a lot in vogue in Nineties Ukraine as properly; Lacanians had been principally energetic in Kyiv. In 2006 Nila Zborowska had printed The Code of Ukrainian Literature: The Mission of Psychohistory of Trendy Ukrainian Literature, a monograph with the ambition of deciphering all fashionable anti-colonial literature, making use of psychoanalytic ideas corresponding to these of Melanie Klein. Northrop Frye had been fashionable within the Nineties, when literary students ardently tried to suit Ukrainian literature into Jungian archetypes.
After I requested which Ukrainian works needs to be translated into Estonian, Ostap urged Yuri Andrukhovych’s newest novel, Pадіо Ніч (Radio Night time), as a result of it comprises all of the writer’s finest qualities and literary units. Andrukhovych’s daughter Sofia can also be a effective author; her novel Felix Austria, a love story in regards to the starting of the 20th century when Western Ukraine was underneath the Austro-Hungarian Empire, has been made into an arthouse film. However, given the possibility, Ostap would translate Ukrainian literature from the Nineteen Twenties, a golden age rediscovered within the Nineties. Now a sequence known as Наші 20-тi (Our 20s) can also be accessible. ‘Ukrainian literature may have was one thing utterly totally different,’ mentioned Ostap. Again then, for example, Apollinaire was extra of an instance for Ukrainian poets than Mayakovsky.
He famous that there had by no means been such solidarity in Ukraine as there’s now – neither through the Maidan nor the Orange Revolution. As for Zelensky, Ostap and his acquaintances had questioned how anybody may elect a man like that, however nobody criticizes the president now. Orysia, too, had mentioned that if somebody began to chastize the federal government on social media for what that they had finished prior to now, they might be silenced with a ‘shhh, we’ll discuss that later!’ If in Maidan instances there had nonetheless been some ‘gray areas’, then not now. The picture of Zelensky as a film hero made Ostap smile: he had been provided to translate Zelensky’s biography from Polish to Ukrainian. The biography business is certainly agile!
After I urged that Poroshenko would hardly have made a horny wartime chief, Ostap shocked me, saying that it was arduous to inform. In 2014, when Ukraine was something however ready for an assault, Poroshenko nonetheless behaved like a troublesome man, managing to cease additional aggression.
A BBC journalist had known as Ostap and requested why the Ukrainians use such coarse language in regards to the warfare. He had replied that possibly it’s not so good, however that’s how one speaks now. To the query of why the Ukrainians name the Russians orcs, he had mentioned that it’s a euphemism, which the BBC man was comfortable about.
We sat within the café for a really very long time, nearly 4 hours, and it didn’t get chilly. Regardless of the matters, I had utterly misplaced my sense of place. We may have been in any central Europe café underneath shiny inexperienced, spring bushes. Once we lastly acquired as much as depart, I made a decision I’d go and purchase some items. I had already purchased a number of pairs of Bayraktar socks: ‘Bayraktar, in fact,’ Ostap mentioned, ‘it’s even turning into trendy to call your pet after a drone.’
Writer with Ostap Slyvynsky. Picture courtesy of writer.
Day 4
Within the afternoon I met the poet Halyna Kruk for the primary time. I had introduced her a duplicate of Looming, the Estonian journal, the place her poem had been printed. We met in entrance of Ivan Franko College; Halyna works there as a professor of Ukrainian literature, specializing in the Ukrainian Baroque period. Lectures are at the moment held on-line, which is the way it has been for the reason that pandemic. Just for a brief interval within the autumn have been the scholars within the classroom once more. These 5 minutes after the top of pandemic restrictions and earlier than the beginning of the warfare have been lovely, Ukrainians say.
Halyna has translated Szymborska and Miłosz. She had learnt Polish on her personal as a toddler from Polish TV. It was an essential supply of knowledge for Western Ukrainians, not fairly the identical as Western European channels however nonetheless rather more open than Soviet Ukrainian tv – with cooler music and extra thrilling cartoons.
I handed her the reward bag, which contained some sweet along with the journal. Halyna mentioned, in instances of warfare, each good gesture tends to convey tears to her eyes, moderately than harsh information or a annoying state of affairs. I heard the identical from a number of different Ukrainians. They have been moved, for instance, after I mentioned that the ERSO, our nationwide symphony orchestra, now begins each live performance with the Ukrainian anthem.
I’d have normally hidden my emotions (when not anger), behaving like a hardened Jap European, however the extra time that handed, the extra effort it was taking to manage my feelings right here.
Halyna admitted that she’s a reasonably good shot. As a toddler, she had even gone to the capturing vary, because it was a part of a radio operators’ coaching. Her husband, a physicist by schooling and now a copyright specialist, had been on the entrance for the reason that second day of the warfare. Halyna had not seen him for 2 months. However they normally talked on the cellphone twice a day. He would name Halyna each time he had the possibility.
Halyna mentioned she may not learn fiction, as a result of it appeared so irrelevant and distant. She additionally didn’t take heed to music anymore – it simply didn’t work or made her cry. Though she by no means cried firstly of the warfare – her emotions simply frozen – there had even been instances when the anthem made her weep. She wasn’t writing poetry however stored a really life like diary, noting, for instance, her bodily reactions to the state of affairs. Ostap had additionally instructed me that he couldn’t write poetry – the phrases simply didn’t come.
I understood that very properly: as an alternative of writing or studying heartfelt poetry in some protected place, I had determined to drive to Ukraine with packing containers of tourniquets and Israeli bandages, purchased as donations from members of the Estonian Writers’ Union.
Halyna mentioned she does as a lot volunteer work as attainable to exhaust herself and sleep at evening. She had no intention of leaving Ukraine, despite the fact that she stored receiving invites to European writers’ retreats; she handed these contacts on to ladies with young children.
She agreed with Zabuzhko: Mumu had been a horror for her too. How can one discover compassion for somebody who doesn’t resist a merciless order? Who would kill his nearest being when commanded? Studying Mumu, Halyna had realized for the primary time that Russian literature, or the world it depicted, was alien to her. After all, Turgenev simply created and described a personality. However all these ‘little individuals’ of Russian literature, who don’t struggle the cruelty and stupidity of energy, who appear to depart every thing to destiny, does that not say quite a bit a few society, its tradition and mentality? You may’t construct civil society with fatalism.
Halyna discovered it fascinating that Ukrainians have been able to struggle, to sacrifice themselves. Earlier than Maidan, it had appeared that one thing like this solely existed in literature and movie. She had additionally protested and went later to Donbas to learn poetry to troopers. It was moderately tough to determine what sort of poetry you need to learn – definitely not items on warfare, as they know warfare higher than poets. Ultimately, Halyna had chosen household matters, which had confirmed to be emotionally transferring.
The extra I talked to Ukrainians, the clearer it turned that this was not the second to recite Pushkin with peace of thoughts. In wartime, the cultural and psychological components are so rattling essential that an argument à la ‘hey, they’re not responsible, these at odds with state energy’ appears bitter. Solely a tactless blockhead would determine to carry out Glinka’s A Life for the Tzar proper now. And it’s not Ukrainians who needs to be anticipated to indicate lenience.
Halyna hoped for Russia’s navy to weaken utterly, as did Ostap. Solely then would Russia be protected for its neighbours. The US Secretary of Protection, Lloyd Austin, had mentioned: ‘We need to see Russia weakened to the diploma it can’t do the sorts of issues that it has finished in invading Ukraine.’ There’s the hazard that any partial answer would enable the Russian state to begin increase its navy energy once more, and a ‘compromise’ about territory would maintain violent conflicts seething endlessly. And the query of demilitarization and denazification? What a psychological projection from the Russian regime, Ukrainians mentioned, when that’s precisely what the Russian state itself wants. A militarily dismantled Russia would enable the world to learn Pushkin and Dostoevsky calmly once more.
Ukraine 2022. Picture courtesy of writer.
After I requested Halyna about the way forward for Ukraine, she thought that the nation was too huge to make easy selections. Clearly, totally different areas want totally different methods.
Day 5
This was my final day in Ukraine. Brilliant gentle shone over Prospekt Svobody. I went out, on the lookout for the closest supply firm to ship a e book to Yuri Andrukhovych. A younger waitress couldn’t assist however surprise how a foreigner acquired to their workplace, stood in queues and why they needed to ship a e book from one Ukrainian metropolis to a different.
I met such amazement a number of instances: individuals requested me one thing in Ukrainian on the road (for instance, if Angelina Jolie had already left the city corridor), discovered to their shock that I wasn’t a neighborhood, and requested if I felt protected there. I shrugged and replied, in all probability as protected as they did. Safer, in reality, as a result of I needed to drive dwelling quickly. Their nation was at warfare and additional casualties weren’t dominated out in western Ukraine. Just a few weeks in the past, seven individuals had been killed in a automotive service station when it was hit by a Russian missile.
The reality was I by no means feared for my little life in Ukraine. Wanting from distance, issues appear totally different: in a cushty state of affairs, the concept of taking a threat appears so uncomfortable. I keep in mind a second within the Falcon Lodge in Rzeszów earlier than I began driving to the Ukrainian border: I had smeared cream on my face from a jar of l’intégral anti-âge. I believed, ‘properly, possibly a missile will hit my head quickly, and right here I’m coping with âge or anti-âge.’ I instantly realized how silly it appeared – selfish and insufficient. Who wants pre-agony? An excellent particular person won’t use such a cream out of solidarity with those that wouldn’t have the means to acquire it – what number of Ukrainians are at the moment utilizing anti-ageing lotions, or training the violin, for instance? Whoever can, goes on with their life, even with a petty-bourgeois life. If not, it will imply that the military of orcs had already received.
I met Ostap once more, who helped me discover salo (pork fats) available on the market, which my mom had ordered. We have been having our final espresso when he mentioned, ‘We haven’t heard a siren in Lviv for greater than two days now. It’s outstanding, it hasn’t been like this for a very long time!’ He had hardly completed his sentence when the sirens started to wail. ‘Увага! Повітряна тривога!’ – sounds literary, however so it was.
Undoubtedly, the sound of a siren in real-time is one thing essential to a civilian. It proclaims that each one the issues we’re used to could also be destroyed in a second, and the world could actually collapse. Espresso cups, beds, home partitions, worn sneakers, repaired automobiles – they’re right here however may quickly be gone. After a couple of minutes, the sirens sounded once more. The air raid was over.
I mentioned goodbye to Ostap in entrance of the Opera Passage Lodge. It began to drizzle a bit and I felt melancholic. It nearly appeared as if I shouldn’t depart Ukraine but. However I packed my baggage and took it to the automotive, picked up a effective from the windscreen wipers and began driving.
A message got here from Orysia. Lviv had been hit by 5 rockets. She despatched a photograph of a cloud of smoke seen from her home windows. She claimed to have heard the missile flying. I had left town, its explosions behind me.
I questioned if this journey had modified my perspective greater than I had anticipated. Possibly. With out assembly Ukrainians nose to nose, I in all probability wouldn’t have understood their sharp sensitivity, the notion of cultural injustice, which is so deep that it may lead, amongst different issues, to political criticism of Russian literary classics and to the want to freeze any efficiency or show of Russian cultural merchandise in the mean time. In the remainder of the world, maybe everybody understands that works like Pushkin’s Poltava will not be alright, however what about restrictions on works with no traces of colonial ideology? It’s phenomenal how brutally the Russian state can harm its personal tradition.
I spotted on the spot, rather more sharply than from any media sources, simply what number of points in historical past haven’t been satisfactorily resolved and are actually re-emerging in an intensified and extra painful means. The one strategy to clear up them and to allow Russia’s cultural rehabilitation can be Ukraine’s victory.
Maarja Kangro was in Ukraine from 29 April to three Could 2022. She wrote this weblog for Vikerkaar, which was printed sequentially on the journal’s web site.
