to understand the processes taking place in ukraine and the world. vitaly portnikov, khrystyna yatskiv and invited experts based on facts give their assessment and forecast of the development of events. if you want to understand how our today will affect our tomorrow, watch the saturday politics club, every saturday on espresso. greetings, good evening, my name is myroslava barchuk, this is a self -titled program, a joint project of ukrainian foam and the espresso tv channel. today we will talk about literature during the war, about what we read, about how war actualizes ukrainian classics, about who will write about this historical time in which we live, and we will talk a little about translation and literature. awards, we will

talk about all this with rostislav semkiv, my guest, rostislav semkiv is a literary critic, a teacher at the kyiv-molyan academy and the director of the smoloskip publishing house. greetings rostyslav, thank you for coming to us. so, i have to start not with the good, but with the bad. a few days ago, literally in ukrainian social networks , a scandal about the award broke out. maxim rylsky for 2023, we learned that that a few days ago the laureates were determined, and i will remind you that this is the oldest ukrainian translation award, and here you can see a post by the state committee of television and radio, which informs us that the laureates of the rylsky award for the 23rd year have been determined, and the winners of this award , in particular... became dmytro drozdovskyi

and andrew shepard for the translation from ukrainian into english of the collection of works of irpin my home, the authors of which are children. everything would be fine, but the public debate is that dmytro drozdovsky is a person who several times was caught for plagiarism, it happened more than once, the academic community knows about it. and now dmytro drozdovsky is receiving the rylsky prize. moreover, bohdan stasiuk, another translator, wrote on facebook about who andrew shepard is, who, together with drozdovsky, receives the rylsky prize. and it turned out that, among other things, the translator andrew shepard is the editor of east western view, a magazine of the british-russian, british-russian society. on coated on the first

of last year of this edition, and yes, you can to see a portrait of nikolai vtorov with children on a fabberge egg and a lily of the valley, so this is it, this is what you see, these lily of the valley, actually, this is the collection of the sanctioned russian oligarch vekselberg, and i don’t want to moralize, we are actually talking about literature and about awards and... my first question, rossislav, is how should we react to such a story with this award, should we somehow react to it, or simply wait for such state awards to go away together with the generation of people who received them represent, well, that a bad story, especially since these are such unpleasant connections, and of course there are a lot of structures that... under the guise of, let's say,

slavic studies in the world actually promoted russian studies, actually promoted this myth about great russian literature, they are still working in the world and even in leading universities, but the majority of specialists in philology are actually russians, this is a consequence of the imperial policy, it is clear that... you have to fight, well, this is already an effect, yes, of course, it is easier for them to get somewhere and to bonuses, and to resources in general, that is the story itself is bad, it is very good that there is this resonance, it is clear that the question should be asked in a broader sense, why is the ukrainian community, especially a community that is in a state of war, have to pay for it, yes, if it is a state award . there are, of course

, radical views that there should be no state bonuses at all, but, in any case, it should be limited, all the more so. that, well , she can stay there, let's say shevchenkivska , and that's enough, especially since, well, many of them are compromised where they compromise, where is compromised, and it is very easy to determine whether the award is compromised or not, whether anyone has seen this book, whether it had any resonance, in general, what do we pay for, here it makes sense to ask questions mercantilely, these are taxes, everyone pays taxes, everyone asks questions, there was a response from the film community, with an appeal that there should not be these discussions about what the state cinema finances, which films it finances, because very often these are films that many people do not

perceive, so there are some comedy series in the middle of war and tragedy, and they offered this appeal proposes that the state budget , the budget of the state cinema be transferred to the needs of the armed forces, and this is reasonable, well, even more so, i say, if the award has compromised itself, then the question needs to be asked, i think there should be some kind of general investigation, in what way was it determined such laureates, especially if there is a connection, well, with such a russian policy, because it is so accurate. and the oligarch appears somewhere, it is definitely one of the means of promotion of this magazine, means of promotion of the russian interest, now it turns out that we, it turns out that we are for it somehow, in some way, we also pay tangents to it, that is, we legitimize it, in fact, it

contradicts our general, with our general setting for the cancellation of russian culture to deny oblivion. there's a moratorium, i don't know, it can be discussed in different ways, but it's not necessary, so there should be a reaction and it's good that there is a resonance, there's also a story about reputation as such, yes, because it's not only about this man, who is andrew shepard, who heads this journal of the british-russian russian society, but also about dmytro drozdovskyi, about whom there was also a lot of discussion, is bohdan tyholok. the director of the frank house accused him of plagiarism, the institute of literature admitted that 64% of drozdovsky's work was plagiarized, and in parallel with this, the person continues to receive awards, that is

, it turns out that there are some different parts of the community, both cultural, ukrainian, and , people, people of no repute and people of repute, and these communities, these worlds. as if they do not intersect, but you said about the state cinema, so many people criticize marina kuderchuk there, more or less, but equally this parallel reality continues to exist, and here too, people with a reputation, people without a reputation, and these are two worlds that cannot, that cannot, it is clear that they can come to an agreement, but they cannot overcome the one, when it comes to the institution of reputation, i begin to think about it... the lingering romanticism of the ukrainian community, because, well, if there are institutions of reputation, something like that exists, but it is something very amorphous and uncertain, that is, there must be clear structural solutions, yes, that is, someone has to sue, so there is a discussion

about plagiarism, it is necessary to take it to court, that is, there is a law according to which it should work, so there are mechanisms. well, now there is yet another struggle for the introduction of suitable candidates, candidates who are actually responsible for the ukrainian cultural fund, yes, that is, there are structures, it is necessary to use these provisions that have been approved, as a rule, the provisions are good, just pay attention , try to take some steps to change it, because it will not change on its own, that is, the reputation can be is spoiled, but people forget that in the end people don't have exactly the same problems, there should be organizational conclusions, yes, people from disrepute, they are so skillful mainly that it is very difficult for them to be purely formal, they are very

bureaucratized people, by the way, i want to quote andriy bonder, another great translator writer posted on facebook about this one. this, and you know why everything happened like this, is meant with the award for this andrew shepard, because where there is no honor and conscience, where there is a bureaucracy detached from reality. and floral nihilism under the russian world comes with the mask of a shovel official, and i'm sorry that i 'm talking about this for so long, i promised you to start talking about what we read and how we perceive literature, but this also applies, yes, because everything is very aggravates during the war, and i, starting to talk about literature, i will start a little with history, on january 22 in... sobornost, i noticed that we congratulate each other on the networks with the day of sobornost, and we

write in our bubble that this is the day sobrnosti, it is dedicated to that, because that happened 105 years ago, zuner united, the fourth station wagon and so on, i saw that i thought it was a symptom of what it means that the nation was deprived of this knowledge, if we tell each other about it, yes, because americans do not wish each other good day . .. but you know that on july 4 , 1776, something happened and it is just as certain in literature and it is just as certain in what we what we are now re-reading the classics and i say oh yes it was this it was about this very thing there were some authors besides the obvious ones, let 's say the tiger hunters of the crimson or barka. with the yellow prince, which for you personally

opened up in a new way during this war? well , actually , the authors opened up, in fact, they started to open up a long time ago, yes, in the 90s, but they did not have that resonance, yes, that is , now they are reaching a wider resonance, what the academic community had, what was accessible to them , somewhere, the educational community. er, it was somewhere in such a shadow for a long time, i remember very well what attitude there was to bagryany back there 10 years ago, er, that is, there were quite a few skeptics who said that well he is so journalistic, and he is all the time about politics and about politics, and that is, it may not be and not so well written there, the garden of hetsimansky, so these are political works, and now they are timely, they are emphasized, because... they actually about such a rather direct confrontation there with the empire with

the russian russian world, and it is good that these texts get a certain momentum, but an important text that returned somewhere now was a text, well, it is beyond the bounds of the pain of romanian, he wrote it in in the 21st year, 1621, he was just... a combatant, he survived the war, the first world war, captivity, then the return from captivity, and this is one of the earliest such texts about the first world war in general in european literature, one of the first, but for a long time, well, they knew, experts there knew that there was such a work, but it was long the time remained so unknown, because there are a number of reasons, after all , he fought as part of the austrian army, he wanted to go against the legion of sich riflemen, but he did not get in, he fought as part of the austrian army, but against the russian

army, respectively in the union he was also not perceived, but he is so very serious an anti-war work, that is, against the war , against those who start the war, everything is very clearly laid out there, now it is back, it was republished by vikhola, and here it is, it is one of those texts that... it is very complex , you need to prepare for reading it, but you must read it at school , well, if not read textually , then at least remember, but in the end read, it is not very big, and it is a very important text, of course it is covered differently now, the authors of the shot revival are perceived in a completely different way, yes, that is, now due to the fact that the tragedy has become, unfortunately, now close. and we actually see that they are dying , that is, authors are dying, writers are dying, and

again and again, and many people have, yes , friends, relatives who have died, that is, death has become, unfortunately, closer, eh, and that is why this tragedy, because this is a tragedy, and i don't know if there is any other literature where so many writers would be shot in one day, who would be shot, as november 3rd was the day there. after 37 years, this is a tragedy, but it was perceived somehow so slightly abstractly, it is somewhere so far away, it happened a long time ago, now this is happening reassessment and everyone... begins to realize that on the one hand, well, when pidmohylyny was shot, he was 34 or so years old there, that is, it is very little, on the other hand, during these 34 years, he managed to write some short prose and two very good novels, that is, it happened in such a short time as possible, there was also a wave and others

among whom were simply brilliant, such as , for example, mykola kulich, a playwright. yes. that we had such cool authors, and then they were forced to shut up, or for example, zinoida tulup, this is the first such big one, because before her, too, several women wrote on historical topics, but she has the first known, serious historical novel, ludolovy, and she will publish it. there in 1936-1937, she was immediately arrested and sent away, she spent something like 10 or 15 years in exile, in siberia, and she returned, and she no longer wrote, that is, even at the time when in in europe , a decade before, a norwegian woman writer was awarded the nobel prize for a historical novel, they sent to us,

so, on kolyma, that is, that is, well, as we have in the union, it is not our state, that is, it is... the feeling, on the one hand, of tragedy, on the other hand, the feeling of a lost entire area of ​​literature, but this results in a strong desire to get acquainted with by the fact that this was done, because after all, a lot was done, and this applies to the whole literature in general, but also to individual personnel, here we can talk about each and every one separately. and it's really a lot of names that didn't make much, but made something, and this results in such a very serious interest in the classics, reassessment, here it is also imposed that the school for a long time moved according to such post-soviet inertia, well

, some topic, these typical topics, were emphasized there, until the school became monotonous, but for a long time this continued in the ukrainian school, yes, that is, listen to levytskyi, now it remains there , the kaidash family, and this is a story about, so, quarrels in the village, let's say so, now it has been emphasized by the series, it is good for this text, but it is necessary to show that they were not heard. there are other works, well, clouds first of all, on the one hand very clearly, well, the text shows this very clearly the difference, here is ukrainian culture , here is russian culture, that is, he then saw this civilizational divide that we have now, which we are beginning to realize, many are beginning to realize only now, it is in the clouds, and on the other hand it is the kyiv text,

it's about the city, it's about city habits, daily life, lifestyle, that is, it's important to... say that literature was not as dull and monotonous as it was shown in soviet times, it's clear why, well, with a certain inertia much later, so did the earth they read kobylyanska for a long time, again the village , the conflict over the land, now it is good, the program has changed a little, they are now reading waltz melancholic, the text is emancipatory, the text is again urban, urbanistic, where there is something to think about, although there is also something in the land. what to think about it, it’s also a good text, it’s just that it was simplified a lot, everything was always simplified to such a bare social relationship of some kind, so it needs to be rethought, it ’s being rethought , and now that’s why there’s such an interest in the classics, do you think that what you said was a new national one is being created

a myth is formed in this way, well, in fact already. the national myth of ukraine was formulated, what kind of myth is it, and is a new canon of literature being created in the same way, or will it affect literature in the same way, is it, or are these things unrelated? here, first of all, it should be noted that a myth, again there was such a soviet statement, a myth as a distortion of reality, as something that opposes science, there are some dark ideas, a myth, a myth. a logy is a sacred sacred story about heroes, and since we now have heroes, we have a new mythology and... of course, its the result will be the emergence of an epic, that is, an epic layer will appear in ukrainian literature, next to the novel, it does not mean

that novels will stop being written, but it is already being created, there you can quote songs, here is poetry, er, a song, they react faster, and from them, accordingly, an epic is composed, such an epic of the sich shooters, again there are many songs, these and... such epic ballads and marches and requiems and humorous songs, that is, it is such a rather wide layer, but some of them are epic about shooters fighting for freedom of ukraine, and we now have completely mythological figures, yes, a mythological figure, i say positively, it is like there and hercules, theseus, so too... there are already figures that are acquiring signs of such legend, maybe if someone the word myth does not fit, we can talk about legend, so there are legendary figures, there are cyborgs, yes, there is a heavenly

hundred, cyborgs, there is a ghost of kyiv, yes, of course, there are even some legendary figures that have a somewhat humorous, comical appearance, but they still work as legendary figures, for example, pespatron, but everything is fine, it's legendary. a creature and, well, a hero, but somewhere it causes a smile, but there are also quite serious ones, whether there is an azovstal, that is, yes, that is , it is very important that such a thing appears, because it means that the feat will not be leveled, it will not be forgotten. and you wrote in your wonderful book the adventures of ukrainian literature, which i will ask you about separately, but you wrote. about, about the age of the titans, you have this whole section called the age of the titans, about this great shift, this great energy in literature after the first world

war, when these great novelists appeared, yes, starting with joyce and thomas mann and kawka and all the rest, and how do you, how do you imagine our literature, our culture, after the kind of extinction that we... have now, or do we have, do we have a chance for a time titans? i think so, i think it's sad, but a regularity, after great upheavals, it's time for great literature, it's not because, well, it actually is. the problem is that this happens, but this happens in principle always, because literature is about experience, and war is very extreme and very powerful

experience, and now there is a lot of military experience related to war, this is the first, of course, the experience of those who are in direct confrontation, the experience of soldiers, the experience of the trenches, the trenches there, but this experience of volunteers, this experience of ... refugees, migration, it's the experience of the occupation, it's, that is, it's a lot, it's the experience of being in the vaults, so many different points that will be talked about, well, and on the other hand, actually, a lot of people are starting to write, there are a few there, writing courses, there are courses, by the way, specifically for veterans, the voice of war. the whole a number of writing courses, and they now have a lot of listeners, that is, people want to pass on this experience, they want to write out,

it is also therapeutic, on the one hand, you can say that the collection, voice of war, the first anthology can be found online, people want to write out, splash out this experience, that's why there are new writers and writers who are already writing about them, and there are those who, having gone to the front, were already quite good or not bad writers, poets, and even quite titled , that's how for example, dmytro lazutkin, he is now on the short list of the shevchenko prize, by the way, there are prizes that you adequately define. but it's just a question of trust or distrust of those who get there, yes, that is, oleksandr mehet is there in the pub.

well, they wrote even before that, and yaryna chornogus, and lazutkini, artem cheh, there was markiyan kamysh, chapai, well, there was a whole series of pavlomats, you can list them, here is elizaveta zharikova the poetess, she literally published her first collection before the war, there ihor mitrov , but there are also those who started. time actually under the influence military impressions, about which before that, well, less heard or not heard, here, like valery puzik, there, let’s say, or martin brest, or oleksiy paikin, that is, they, or there vitaliy zapeka, they started writing already after, after the beginning, but well, after the 14th, yes, that is , the war was already going on, and they began to appear, there is tsutsyk, by the way, a view of the war, through the eyes

of a dog, here... vitaly zapeky, he appeared somewhere else the 16th or 15th year and he already has several books, that is, in fact , there are many new authors, even if they are all intact returned unscathed from the war, and they will write, eh, and it will be such an outbreak, as after the first or the second world war, of course, we also want unpleasant things, the next question is this. it will be simple , it will probably be to write about the moral right, i will now ask the editor to show me the screenshot of the article, the actual interview, which was taken by hanna ulyura, with natalka bilotserkivets, a beautiful poetess, and here natalka bilotserkivets says something like this, here is such an opinion, i am interested to hear your, your analysis

of this. bilotserkits writes: i read it recently interesting idea that the best works about war will be written by those who did not fight directly. i even admit that the best works about our war, primarily cinema and prose, can be created even by non -ukrainians and not in ukraine. for those who have been on the battlefield, it can be excruciatingly difficult to move away from the inevitable perception of only black and white, absolute evil and unerring good on the battlefield, so maybe single ... short black and white works high-level works are possible, but not full-scale, not only in the sense of size, in the sense of the complexity of the plots and characters i was very impressed by this idea, it is very subtle, what do you think? well, i really like poetry, natalka belotserkivets, she is one of the best poets of ours at the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century,

but i disagree here. uh, even if we think about the same first world war, uh, and such iconic works that are known to everyone, there is remarque, hemingway, ivlinvo, okay, hashik, in a different key, uh, ernstunger, well, that is a whole set of these texts, which are known more, are all combatants, that is, obviously someone wrote about the war from afar, so these works appeared somewhere, but we know. about the war, the first works by combatants, of course, this does not mean that such works cannot appear, and we understand, well, for example, we understand that er , so the waveman did not shoot his mother, but he wrote it imagining, yes, that is, experience in literature happens like that, experience can be imagined, and it will be a strong text, we also

know that... kotsyubynskyi came to kryvusravna for a week, had a look and wrote the best text about the carpathians so far, well many carpathian authors may not agree, but okay, it turned out like this, that is, he did not have much experience in the carpathians, he got there twice there or three times there several times and wrote the best text about the carpathians, so it is quite possible, but without ... average experience is still important, and that is why i think that the strongest books will be written by those who have direct experience, but i say that there are very different experiences, there are experiences, for example, of emigration, and those who are currently in emigration , they will write about it, there is an experience of children in a bomb shelter, and those who experienced it, they it will be written, yes, that is, it is again...