Individual, yet collective voices: polyphonic poetic memories in contemporary Ukrainian literature

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes polyphonic memory in recent works by Serhii Zhadan and Marianna Kiianovs'ka, two leading contemporary Ukrainian writers. Before focusing on Zhadan and Kiianovs'ka, the author analyzes some excerpts from poems by other contemporary writers in which memory is thematized at the crossroads of individual and collective remembering. In his latest collections, Zhadan has shown a tendency to shape his poetic world around a lyrical subject keen to collect human voices and memories with the aim of preserving them from oblivion. Kiianovs'ka’s 2017 collection Babyn Iar: Holosamy consists of memory fragments expressed by the various voices that constitute its collective subject, the victims of the 1941 Babyn Iar tragedy. In spite of the difference between these two models of poetic polyphony, the former conveyed through the mediation of a lyrical subject and the latter directly expressed by individual voices, the author here argues that Zhadan’s and Kiianovs'ka’s recent poetry successfully links the singularity of individual memory to the collective experience. He also argues that polyphonic poetic memory can be read as a strategy to overcome the opposition between the “populist” and “modernist” approaches to literature that has marked the self-perception of Ukrainian literature since the early twentieth century.

RÉSUMÉ

L’article examine la mémoire polyphonique dans les ouvrages récents de Serhiy Jadan et de Marianna Kiianovs'ka, deux écrivains ukrainiens contemporains. Avant de se concentrer sur Jadan et Kiianovs'ka, l’auteur analyse quelques extraits des poèmes écrits par d’autres écrivains contemporains dans lesquels la mémoire est thématisée au croisement du souvenir individuel et collectif. Dans ses collections les plus récentes, Jadan a tendance à formuler son monde poétique autour d’un sujet lyrique désireux de rassembler les voix et les souvenirs humains afin de les préserver de l’oubli. La collection de Kiianovs'ka, Babyn Iar: Holosamy, sortie en 2017, consiste en des morceaux de souvenirs exprimés par les voix diverses constituant son sujet collectif, les victimes de la tragédie de Babi Yar en 1941. Malgré la différence entre ces deux modèles de polyphonie poétique, le premier traduit par l’intermédiaire d’un sujet lyrique et le deuxième exprimé directement par des voix individuelles, l’auteur maintient que les poèmes récents de Jadan et de Kiianovs'ka réussissent à lier la singularité du souvenir individuel et le vécu collectif. Il soutient également que la mémoire poétique polyphonique peut se comprendre comme une stratégie pour surmonter l’opposition entre les approches « populistes » et « modernistes » de la littérature qui marque l’auto-perception de la littérature ukrainienne depuis le début du vingtième siècle.

KEYWORDS:

• Ukrainian literature
• contemporary Ukrainian poetry
• memory and literature
• polyphony

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Marko Pavlyshyn and Marco Puleri for their suggestions and inputs on the first draft of this article. I also acknowledge the valuable advice I received from the three anonymous reviewers. I am thankful to Anna Gavryliuk for her help with some of the translations into English.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The contemporary passion for memory might be viewed as a marker of the overcoming of postmodernism and of the establishment of a new dominant cultural trend, if we agree to consider the per se paradoxical postmodern project as belonging to history, which is, needless to say, highly debatable. See Doyle, “Changing Face,” 263: “The post-postmodern movement is a disparate one, encompassing a diversity of attempts to move away from postmodernism. Various subdivisions […] employ distinct methods to eschew irony and affirm sincerity and meaning, though not all are as capable of performing the opposite task of questioning sincerity.” Other scholars, most notably Jeffrey Nealon, have located their exploration of post-postmodernism at the crossroads of socio-economic history and cultural theory. See Nealon, Post-Postmodernism, 15: “So among the tasks of periodizing the present, a collective molecular project that we might call post-postmodernism, is to construct a vocabulary to talk about the new economies (post-Fordism, globalization, the centrality of market economics, the new surveillance techniques of the war on terrorism, etc.) and their complex relations to cultural production in the present moment, where capitalism seems nowhere near the point of its exhaustion.”

2. Assmann, Erinnerungsräume, 3–5.

3. As in Tress, Poetic Memory, for example.

4. According to a study conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts in the United States, the percentage of adults reading literature in the US has been steadily dropping since the 1980s. See “Reading at Risk.” In Ukraine, a poll published on Novoe vremia has shown that the number of respondents who regularly read books declined from 27% in 2010 to 22% in 2014. See “Chitaiushchikh ukraintsev.” More recent data on reading habits in Ukraine are available from the literary online resource Chytomo. According to a survey conducted in 2018, only approximately 10% of the interviewees “cannot imagine their life without reading,” while approximately 33% “love reading generally speaking.” See “Chytannia v Ukraini.”

5. Wertsch and Roediger, “Collective Memory,” 318.

6. Ibid., 319.

7. Olick, “Collective Memory,” 336.

8. Blacker and Etkind, “Introduction,” 5.

9. See Iaroslav Polishchuk’s 2015 monograph on the “reactivity” of Ukrainian literature: Polishchuk, Reaktyvnist' literatury. After explaining his conviction about the end of literature-centrism in Ukraine as a natural consequence of the collapse of the Soviet Union and of its cultural system, Polishchuk examines the various ways in which literature has responded to the Euromaidan Revolution and the outbreak of the war in the east of the country, thus indirectly reaffirming its embeddedness in contemporary Ukrainian society.

10. For a brief discussion of contemporary literature-centrism in Ukraine and Eastern Europe see Zaharchenko, “While the Ox is Still Alive,” 48–9.

11. See Traba, Przeszłość w teraźniejszości, 85–6.

12. Zaharchenko, “Polyphonic Dichotomies,” 242–52.

13. In 1984, on the basis of the Akmeists’ mythopoetic fascination for other cultures and periods, Renate Lachmann stressed the importance of the conscious incorporation of different voices in poetry, which results in the impossibility of excluding dialogism from any conception of the poetic language. Lachmann, “Bakhtins Dialogizität,” 492. More recently, other scholars have elaborated on Bakhtin’s approach to poetry. Michael Eskin has pointed to the complex character of Bakhtin’s alleged condemnation of poetry as a genre incapable of dialogism, or of its widespread reception as such. Stressing the “ambiguous status of poetry in Bakhtin’s writings,” Eskin has underlined the idea of the poet’s absolute responsibility towards his or her utterances that is implicit in Bakhtin’s conception, which may be seen as an indirect form of dialogism with their readers. Eskin, “Bakhtin on Poetry,” 387–8. Zoltán Kulcsar-Szabó has focused on Bakhtin’s attention to the choral aspects of poetry, which introduces some elements of dialogism in his conception of the poetic word. Kulcsár-Szabó, “Bakhtin and Lyric Poetry,” 48–9.

14. Caruth, Unclaimed Experience, 3.

15. Onega, del Río, and Escudero-Alías, “Introduction,” 8. Other scholars have stressed the role of literature and culture in both creating collective trauma as a shared experience and contributing to its healing. See Alexander, “Toward a Theory of Cultural Trauma,” 6; and Sztompka, “Trauma of Social Change,” 160–2.

16. Hundorova, Tranzytna kul'tura, 9–10.

17. On the nation-building role of poetry in Ukraine see Finnin, “Nationalism and the Lyric,” 30.

18. For a discussion of the nexus between trauma and polyphony in literature see Vaizer, “Traumatography of the Logos,” 182.

19. See Pavlychko, Dyskurs modernizmu, 27–39; and Hundorova, ProIAvlennia slova, 73–88.

20. Kalytko, Bunar, 26–7. Unless otherwise noted, all translations from the Ukrainian are mine.

21. Lazutkin, Arteriia, 42.

22. Lutsyshyna, Virshi Felitsyty, 35.

23. Ibid., 33.

24. Halych, Urbamistyka, 7.

25. Kiva, “s temnym barakhtan'em.”

26. “Цукровик – це книжка про ландшафти та пам'ять, а також про відмирання пам'яті разом з ландшафтами.” Mymruk, Tsukrovyk, copyright page.

27. Polyphonic poetry is not necessarily based on authentic historical documents, as in the case of documentary poetry. Examples of documentary strategies in contemporary Russian-language poetry are encountered in the work of authors such as Vitalii Lekhtsier (b. 1970) and Mariia Malinovskaia (b. 1994). A significant portion of Alexander Averbuch’s recent poetry is also definable as documentary.

28. Zhadan’s commendation of Babyn Iar: Holosamy as poetry able to “overcome its own boundaries” (“Найцікавіше з поезією відбувається тоді, коли вона виходить поза свої межі”) confirms the possibility of a parallel reading of Zhadan’s and Kiianovs'ka’s recent poetry through the prism of polyphony. Zhadan, “Mizh holosamy ta movchanniam.”

29. See “Iakykh suchasnykh ukrains'kykh pys'mennykiv znaiut' ukraintsi.”

30. Zhadan, Hospod' sympatyzuie autsaideram, 119.

31. Zhadan has been accused of idealizing Donbas. This can also be read as an indirect criticism of an alleged nostalgia for the Soviet past, visually more noticeable in the Donbas than in other areas of the country. In late 2014, writer Oleksandr Boichenko (b. 1970) wrote that “nobody in our literature elevates oligophrenics deprived of any historical perspectives so consequently and to such metaphorical heights as Zhadan does. In doing so, he clearly enriches Ukrainian literature and somehow humanizes our society. At the same time, however, he fools us a bit.” Boichenko, “Antropolohichnyi tupyk.”

32. Zhadan, Zhyttia Marii, 93.

33. Halbwachs, Collective Memory, 48.

34. Zhadan, Tampliiery, 7.

35. Ibid., 27.

36. Zhadan, Mesopotamiia, 326.

37. Zhadan, Antena, 27.

38. Ibid., 84.

39. Ibid., 38.

40. Ibid.

41. Ibid., 29.

42. Ibid., 283.

43. Ilchuk, “Hearing the Voice of Donbas,” 259.

44. Ibid., 269.

45. The most famous prose work dedicated to Babyn Iar is Anatolii Kuznetsov’s (1929–79) Russian-language novel Babii Iar (1966).

46. Kiianovs'ka, Babyn Iar: Holosamy, 31.

47. More recent studies have pointed out the ambiguity of Adorno’s often-quoted formulation of post-Holocaust poetry as “barbaric.” Adorno, “Cultural Criticism and Society,” 34. Antony Rowland has argued that Adorno’s definition, usually read as a condemnation of poetic language after Auschwitz, should be read as the description of “a new form of poetry which is stylistically and thematically awkward.” See Rowland, “Re-reading ‘Impossibility’ and ‘Barbarism’,” 58.

48. Kiianovs'ka, Babyn Iar: Holosamy, 34.

49. English translation for this excerpt taken from Maksymchuk and Rosochinsky, “Voices of Babyn Iar.”

50. Kiianovs'ka, Babyn Iar: Holosamy, 55.

51. Ibid., 63.

52. Ibid., 87.

53. Ibid., 96.

54. In her study of Holocaust remembrance, influenced by the work of Holocaust and Genocide scholars such as Dominick LaCapra and Robert Eaglestone and cultural historians such as Andreas Huyssen, Larissa Allwork has reflected on the problematic character of the “transnational potential of Holocaust symbolism,” which can result in both an augmented historical awareness of the Holocaust and a misrepresentation of its uniqueness. Allwork, “Holocaust Trauma,” 82–4. Kiianovs'ka herself has not denied the possibility of reading Babyn Iar: Holosamy as a tribute to all victims of history, not only those of the Babyn Iar massacre. Kiianovs'ka, “‘Vse pochynaet'sia z movy nasyllia’.”

55. Wang, “On the Cultural Constitution,” 310.

56. On the persistence of the heated discussions between the two opposite approaches (see note 19) in post-1991 Ukrainian literature see Hnatiuk, “Nativists vs. Westernizers,” 435.

57. Pavlyshyn, “‘Tranquil Lakes’,” 64.

58. For a reflection on the possibility of defining Ukraine’s many subjectivities as hybrid see Puleri, “Hybridity Reconsidered,” 285.

Additional information

Funding

Research for this article was made possible by funding from the Ukrainian Studies Support Fund of the Association of Ukrainians in Victoria, Australia, the Ukrainian Studies Foundation in Australia and Monash University.

Notes on contributors

Alessandro Achilli

Alessandro Achilli is Lecturer in Ukrainian Studies at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, and Director of the Mykola Zerov Centre for Ukrainian Studies. In his research he focuses on modern and contemporary Ukrainian literature, with special attention to poetry. In his current book project, he analyzes neomodernist trends in Ukrainian poetry of the late Soviet period. He has also published on Russian poetry and Slavic-German literary contacts.