The body of the poet, the body of the nation: corporeality in recent revolution poetry from Belarus

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes representations of the body in Belarusian poetry linked to the 2020 protests. The author argues that the remarkable poetic productivity regarding corporeality, comparable to literary texts inspired by other upheavals, such as the French, Russian, and the most recent Ukrainian revolutions, is directed towards the depiction of a new Belarusian identity shaped by the 2020 revolt against Aliaksandr Lukashenka’s latest electoral fraud. On the basis of poetic texts by Iulia Tsimafeeva, Tatstsiana Svetashova, Al′herd Bakharevich, Artur Kamaroŭski, Dmitrii Strotsev, Dmitrii Rubin, and Krystsina Banduryna, the author proposes a reading of the different ways in which living Belarusian poets have represented Belarus, its rethinking of its own identity, and its political struggle through images pertaining to corporeality, including decay, the juxtaposition of masculinity and femininity, violence, and pregnancy. He also argues that in contemporary Belarusian poetry the thematization of the body is related to an important, ongoing, metaliterary reflection on the limits and possibilities of poetry writing in times of change, in the context of revitalized poetry dissemination in the digital age.

RÉSUMÉ

L’article propose une analyse de la représentation du corps dans la poésie biélorusse portant sur les protestations de 2020. L’auteur avance que le foisonnement poétique sur le thème de la corporéité, qui rappelle à cet égard les œuvres littéraires inspirés des révolutions française, russe et la plus récente révolution en Ukraine, vise à l’expression d’une nouvelle identité biélorusse façonnée par les protestations de 2020 contre la fraude électorale d’Alâksandr Lukašenka. Il propose une étude de la manière dont plusieurs poètes biélorusses actuels (Ûliâ Cimafeeva, Taccâna Svetašova, Al’gerd Baharеvič, Artur Kamaroŭski, Dmitrij Strocev, Dmitrij Rubin et Kryscina Banduryna) représentent la Biélorussie, son identité en changement et ses luttes par des images corporelles comme la décomposition, la violence, la grossesse et la juxtaposition du masculin et du féminin. Finalement, il soutient que le thème du corps est lié dans la poésie contemporaine biélorusse à une réflexion métalittéraire quant aux limites et aux capacités de l’écriture poétique à changer le monde alors que sa circulation se voit facilitée par les médias numériques.

KEYWORDS:

• Belarus
• Belarusian literature
• corporeality
• body
• revolution

Acknowledgments

Preliminary research for this article was carried out while I was a research fellow at Trier University, Germany, in the framework of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft Centre for Advanced Studies. I also acknowledge the contribution of Monash University by granting me adjunct research fellow status in 2020, thus enabling me to access crucial bibliographical items.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Nancy, Corpus, 150.

2. While the upheavals linked to the repressions against presidential candidates and the election fraud of August 2020 are generally referred to as protests, some scholars and commentators see the more fraught term “revolution” as appropriate. See for example, the article cluster on Belarus in Ab imperio 21, no. 3 (2020). For an introduction to the meaning of the word “revolution” in the East European context and its theoretical implications, see Krapfl, Revolution, 2–3, 11–34, 105–110, 217–220.

3. See, for example, the 2021 anthology Vot oni, a vot my: Belorusskaia poeziia i stikhi solidarnosti, edited by the Russian poet Vladimir Korkunov (b. 1984). In Ukraine, one of the most significant results of the Ukrainian literary community’s interest in and solidarity with Belarusian intellectuals is the Ukrainian-language volume of interviews and translations, My prokynemos′ inshymy: Rozmovy z suchasnymy bilorus′kymy pys′mennykamy pro mynule, teperishnie i maibutnie Bilorusi, edited by the Ukrainian poet Iia Kiva (b. 1984). Outside the East Slavic space, significant examples of continuous attention to recent Belarusian literature and culture can be found in the German-speaking area, as shown by several volumes produced by the Berlin-based publisher edition.fotoTAPETA, such as 1) Belarus! Das weibliche Gesicht der Revolution, one of the first collections of materials on contemporary Belarus put together shortly after the summer 2020 events (Rostek et al., Belarus!); 2) Iulia Tsimafeeva’s 2020 journal (Cimafeeva, Minsk: Tagebuch); and 3) a collection of essays by Al′herd Bakharevich (Bacharevič, Sie haben schon verloren).

4. See, among others, the US-based Belarusian poet Valzhyna Mort’s “My Country,” and Tsimafeeva, “Belarus Diary.”

5. Lewis, “‘Tear Down’,” 26.

6. Verina, “‘Poet – chelovek z chuvstvom’,” 292.

7. Bekus, “Echo of 1989?” 5.

8. See, for example, Rudling, Rise and Fall, 32.

9. Oushakine, “How to Grow Out,” 437. For a critique of Oushakine’s approach and a discussion of contrasting post-colonial perspectives on Belarus, see Lewis, “‘Partisan Republic’,” 374.

10. Oushakine, “How to Grow Out,” 474.

11. Hervouet, “Dignity, Arbitrary Rule,” 297–298.

12. With the digital revolution having provided new and diverse opportunities for access to and reception of texts, measuring the success of genres, authors, and single works has become more complicated than in the print media era. As far as poetry is concerned, see, for example, Dana Gioia’s thoughts on the ambiguous condition of American poetry in the twenty-first century, between declining numbers of readers of traditional print and the popularity of mass media and social media poetic venues – a condition that he defines as “a tale of poetry’s two overlapping cities – print versus performance.” Gioia, “State of Poetry.” Kathleen Fitzpatrick stresses how, in the digital age, “the field of the literary continues to expand, even if its forms are changing in ways that might make it harder to recognize and to understand.” Fitzpatrick, “Reading (and Writing) Online,” 168.

13. See the volumes edited by Lesia Voroniuk, Nebesna sotnia, with a combination of professional and amateur writing, and by Hryhorii Semenchuk, Lysty z Ukrainy, containing only poems by acclaimed writers and presenting additional materials and translations by such renowned writers and scholars as Iurii Andrukhovych and Vitaly Chernetsky.

14. Bulkina, “‘Nikogda my ne budem’,” 400.

15. See for example, a poem by Vol′ha Hronskaia (b. 1978), published, like several other texts discussed in this article, on the Belarusian literary site “wir.by” and included in a poetic cycle entitled “Halasy zhniunia” (“August Voices”): “Голас – / парваны ў пыл разам з тонкай паперай, / сарваны болем і немым крыкам, / вырваны з горла дубінкай кáта, / ператвораны ў галашэнне, / у сіні роспіс на голай спіне – / можа вярнуцца.” (A voice / torn into dust together with thin paper / torn off with pain and a mute cry / ripped off from your throat with the baton of the hangman, / turned into a lament, / into a blue sign on a naked back – / it can come back.”) Although not excluding the realm of corporeality, Hronskaia’s poem focuses on the life of the voice when it has been forced to leave the body, its natural home, while also anticipating the voice’s return to the body. Hronskaia, “Holas.” Unless otherwise noted, all interlinear translations from Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian are mine.

16. For Zubkova’s text and Lewis’s comment, see Lewis, “‘Tear Down’,” 24.

17. Ghilarducci, “‘Lo scrittore bielorusso’,” 209.

18. See Noa Shakargy’s literature review on poetry distribution in the digital age: “The internet encourages the poets to communicate with their readers via social networks, email, and chats, which makes contemporary poetry interactive and shared.” Shakargy, “Internetica,” 327.

19. Glaser, “There’s No There There.”

20. Hillman and Maude, “Introduction,” 4.

21. Bennett, “Language and the Body,” 80.

22. De Baecque, The Body Politic, 4.

23. Ibid., 5–6.

24. Maiakovskii, Sobranie sochinenii, 16–17.

25. Ibid., 16. Maiakovskii later developed this theme in such poems as “150 000 000.”

26. This topos has been the object of frequent ironical treatments in recent Russophone literature by poets such as Valerii Nugatov (b. 1972, originally from Ukraine, then in Russia from 2002), Linor Goralik (b. 1975, originally from Ukraine, then in Israel from 1989), and Vlad Gagin (b. 1993):

Nugatov: “возможна ли поэзия после аdobe®photoshop® и аdobe®illustrator® / поэзия после аdobe®flash® / […] / поэзия не во время / а после // у нас еще никогда не было такой уверенности / что дa / конечно / разумеется возможна // и это даже настораживает” (is poetry possible after adobe®photoshop® and adobe®illustrator® / poetry after adobe®flash® / […] / poetry not during / but after // we were never sure / about that / of course / it’s obviously possible // and this is even unsettling). Nugatov, “Poeziia posle adobe®photoshop®.”

Goralik: “После 6 февраля 43-го? После 11 марта 1952-го? / Как можно писать стихи после 22 июня 1917-го? / […]. / Кто-то наверняка упал с передвижной лестницы в библиотеке, / сломал позвоночник, никогда не сможет двигаться. / […] / Написал одно-единственное стихотворение, очень плохое.” (After 6 February 1943? After 11 March 1952? / How can one write poetry after 22 June 1917? / […] / Someone maybe fell from the portable stair in the library / and broke his spine, he won’t be able to move again / […] / He wrote one single poem, and a very bad one.) Goralik, “Kak mozhno pisat′ stikhi.”

Gagin: “Возможна ли поэзия после / комментария в фейсбуке, требующего / подлинности? / Ага, и она пишется в эту секунду, мудак.” (Is poetry possible after / a comment on facebook, requiring / authenticity? / Yeah, and it’s being written now, stupid.) Gagin, “Vozmozhna li poeziia posle.”

27. Semenchuk, Lysty z Ukrainy, 28.

28. English translation from the Russian by Kevin Vaughn and Maria Khotimsky. Maksymchuk and Rosochinsky, Words for War, 17.

29. Iakymchuk, Abrykosy Donbasu, 76–77.

30. English translation from the Ukrainian by Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky. Maksymchuk and Rosochinsky, Words for War, 152–153. In the original the toponym De-bal′tsevo is split into two words, de and bal′tsevo, de meaning “where” in Ukrainian. Thus the line “De moie bal′tsevo” literally means “Where is my bal′tsevo?”

31. For a chronology of the events of 2020 in Belarus, see Marples, “Changing Belarus,” 292–294.

32. Svetashova, “Horаd – Pul′suiuchae tsela.”

33. Before February 2022, Galina Rymbu (b. 1990), one of the founders and most active members of “F-pis′mo,” could be said to be actively promoting cultural dialogue between the Russian and Ukrainian feminist movements, having moved to Lviv from Russia in 2018. The “F-pis′mo” collective publishes its work mostly on the Sygma platform, which hosts literary and non-literary texts, discussions, and translations with a focus on queer and feminist writing: https://syg.ma/f-writing.

34. On the feminine and feminist element in the Belarusian protests, Natallia Paulovich has stressed how the strong patriarchal element in many women’s perceptions of their traditional role during the protests clashes with strictly feminist points of view, suggesting that this patriarchal attitude should be read through the prism of the “female moral advantage” inherited from Soviet times. Paulovich, “How Feminist,” 44.

35. Tsimafeeva, “Urok tsiarplivastsi.”

36. See how the image of the subject’s back in connection with frail paper is also to be encountered in Vol′ha Hronskaia’s previously mentioned poem. While for Hronskaia the subject is not explicitly represented as a poet, in Tsimafeeva’s text the poet is at the core of lyrical representation.

37. See Derrida’s identification of paper with the body in Derrida, “Paper or Myself,” 2. On Derrida’s possible sources, see Irwin, Derrida and the Writing, 46.

38. Paulovich observes in the idea and image of “total motherhood” a weapon of Belarusian female participation in the protests. Paulovich, “How Feminist,” 44. I am grateful to Iia Kiva for drawing my attention to maternity and pregnancy images in recent Belarusian poetry.

39. Kamaroŭski, “tvaia samaia chakanaia tsiazharnasts′.”

40. The European theme – including accusations of Europe’s hypocrisy and indifference – is central in recent Belarusian and Ukrainian poetry.

41. Strotsev, “Khor moego naroda.”

42. English translation on the platform The Russian Reader. Strotsev, “Murder of Roman Bondarenko.”

43. Bakharevich, “Hety horad niby khirurhichny.”

44. See the opening poem, “To Antigone, a Dispatch,” from Mort’s latest English-language poetry collection, with the telling title Music for the Dead and Resurrected: “Antigone, dead siblings / are set. / As for the living – / pick me for a sister. / […] / Once we settle your brother, / I’ll show you forests / of the unburied dead.” Mort, Music for the Dead, 4.

From Shevchenko: “І забудеться срамотня / Давняя година, / І оживе добра слава, / Слава України, / І світ ясний, невечерній / Тихо засіяє … / Обніміться ж, брати мої. / Молю вас, благаю!” (“Then all the shame of days of old / Forgotten, shall no more be told; / Then shall our day of hope arrive / Ukrainian glory shall revive. / No twilight but the dawn shall render / And break forth into novel splendour … / Brother, embrace! Your hopes possess / I beg you in all earnestness!”) Shevchenko, Zibrannia tvoriv, 354. English translation in Shevchenko, Poetical Works, 249.

45. Komarovskii, “parad, kotoryi ia odobriaiu.”

46. Nikolai Berdiaev, for example, wrote: “Но не случайно Россия так огромна. Эта огромность – провиденциальна, […]. Великая русская духовная культура может быть свойственна только огромной стране, огромному народу.” (But it was not by chance that Russia was so enormous. This immensity was providential, […]. The great Russian spiritual culture can only belong to an enormous country and an immense people.) Berdiaev, Russkaia ideia, 262. English translation in Berdyaev, Russian Idea, 217. The myth of the enormous country is also part of the Soviet narrative of the Great Patriotic War, as expressed in popular musical culture.

47. Tsimafeeva, ROT: Vershy, 48–49.

48. For a recent poetic representation of national stagnation through the image of the body in neighbouring Russian literature, see the first lines of a poem by Egana Dzhabbarova (b. 1992), for which among other poems Dzhabbarova became a finalist for the 2019 edition of the Arkadii Dragomoshchenko prize for poetry by young authors: “Соблазнительное белое тело России беспомощно лежит, / глажу его по хребту / обнимаю со спины / как ты не замерзаешь тут посреди зимы / и почему лицо твоё прикрыто целлофановым пакетом?” (Russia’s tempting white body lies helpless, / I caress it on the spine / I hug it from the back. / Don’t you freeze in the winter / why is your face covered in a plastic bag?) Dzhabbarova, “Soblaznitel′noe beloe telo Rossii.”

49. Tsimafeeva, Voŭchyia iahady, 54.

50. English translation by Valzhyna Mort in Tsimafeeva, “Tsela paetki.” A more literal translation of the last stanza would read: “You don’t need the body of a poetess / And I take it for myself.”

51. See Cixous on the roots of feminist criticism: “A feminine text cannot fail to be more than subversive. It is volcanic; as it is written it brings about an upheaval of the old property crust, carrier of masculine investments; there’s no other way. There’s no room for her if she’s not a he. If she’s a her-she, it’s in order to smash everything, to shatter the framework of institutions, to blow up the law, to break up the ‘truth’ with laughter.” Cixous, “Laughter of Medusa,” 888.

52. Rubin, “Radzima.” This poem is available to Rubin’s Facebook friends only. I have obtained written authorization from Rubin to include fragments of the poem in this article.

53. Banduryna, “Khatsela b ia skazats′, chto vy – stsiarviatniki.” This poem is available to Banduryna’s Facebook friends only. I have obtained written authorization from Banduryna to include fragments of the poem in this article.

54. Nancy, Corpus, 5.

55. Ibid., 5.

56. “In Belarus, the mythologized self-image as the ‘Partisan Republic’ that had played a key role in defending the Soviet Union and enabling the Victory became the defining feature of the post-war polity.” Fedor, Lewis, and Zhurzhenko, “Introduction,” 9. In the same volume, Lewis writes about “the creation of a monolithic image of Soviet Belarusianness based on the memory of the war, that is the construct of the Partisan Republic, as a form of colonial discourse – a means of imposing hegemonic identity norms on a dominated population.” Lewis also analyzes forms of reinterpretations of the myth of the Partisan Republic by oppositional intellectuals. Lewis, “‘Partisan Republic’,” 373–374.

57. Marples, “Changing Belarus,” 291.

58. Verina, “Kollektivnoe nastoiashchee i budushchee,” 124–125.

59. Puleri, “Oltre l’‘anomalia bielorussa’,” 98.

60. Andrei Moskwin points out the difficult situation of non-independent Belarusian culture, with the state paradoxically requiring artists not to express their civic positions as an official duty, while a significant number of employees of state-supported cultural institutions expressed or intended to express their sympathy with the protests. Moskwin, “Cultural Protest in Belarus,” 366.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for the project “Russian language poetry in transition” (FOR 2603).

Notes on contributors

Alessandro Achilli

Alessandro Achilli is a senior assistant professor of Slavic languages and literatures at the University of Cagliari, Italy. His research interests include modern and contemporary literature from Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, and Poland, with special attention to poetry. He is the author of a monograph on Vasyl′ Stus. He is also an adjunct research fellow at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.