Serhiy Zhadan to Yuri Andrukhovych: "My sense of who I'm writing about, whose voice I'm speaking in, has changed"

"I was given a standing ovation, and then I thought, ‘It’s great to be a Ukrainian writer’ "

Andrukhovych:
– Hello, I am Yuri Andrukhovych, and, if I'm not mistaken, for the first time in my life I have the opportunity to conduct an interview with Serhiy Zhadan.
Zhadan:
– Hello!
Andrukhovych:
– Serhiy, I am very grateful for your consent, and I am very grateful to those who brought us together. Now, without unnecessary and long prefaces, I will begin. Since I interview very rarely, I can look like a kind of amateur beginner…
Zhadan:
– You remind me of a border guard who thinks, "To allow the border crossing or turn me away?"

Andrukhovych:
Something like that. Although rather a customs officer. I have to start with the episode when I first saw you. It was quite revolutionary. Somewhere at the end of '93, you just showed up at my house. It was early Sunday morning. You came to my parents – I lived with my parents then. I was already an adult guy, already the author of two novels, and still lived with my parents. You were nineteen, right? I tried to get rid of you as soon as possible and to show you out. You intended to go to Lviv…
Zhadan:
– You behaved heroically, as far as I remember.
Andrukhovych:
– There were still some circumstances of the previous night, which was riveting. I didn't really like talking about literature with a young man from Kharkiv, but I was very happy when I learned that you will now go to the station and on to Lviv…
Zhadan:
– And I will not spend the night at the station ...
Andrukhovych:
– And you are going to visit Neborak in Lviv. Here is such a flash in my memory. Everything before that, for me, was shrouded in the mystery of ignorance. I read your works, and there is definitely your childhood, your older youth. When I look at the cover of your play Bread Truce, I see this children's football team. I'm pretty sure you're on this team. In the bottom row…
Zhadan:
– With a stupid hairstyle – it's me.
Andrukhovych:
I don't know if it's stupid. Then everyone had stupid hairstyles; schoolchildren were cut like that. So, you confirm it. It's you in this football team.
Zhadan:
– Undoubtedly, this is our football team.
Andrukhovych:
– How did it start for you? I mean literature and creativity. I quote you from List of Ships, "This habit has existed since childhood: to write about everything I see, about everything eye-catching.” And so it was? Isn't it you, after all, but it’s your hero who says so?
Zhadan:
– No, it was. I wrote poetry and prose. In the fourth grade, I remember, I did self-publishing [Ukrainian: samizdat]. I wrote a story about the lake flood. The heroes of that story were my friends. I illustrated all this with my drawings. All this was in one copy in a notebook. Thank God it disappeared somewhere. And then, in high school, I already had an understanding of what I was writing. I have an aunt, Oleksandra Kovalyova – I introduced you when you came to Kharkiv. She was and is such a guide for me. She was a member of the Writers' Union, that is, a real poet.
Andrukhovych:
– Did she come to Starobilsk?
Zhadan:
– Yes of course. She is ours; she’s from there. She just went to Kharkiv and finished graduate school in Dnepropetrovsk. She is a Germanist and very cool. She translates from German into Ukrainian and from Ukrainian into German. She was a student of Vasyl Mysyk. Young poets rallied around him, – not those from the eighties, but rather the seventies.
Andrukhovych:
– I guess he was already an old man then.
Zhadan:
– Yes, he was older, calm and enlightened. He was kind of Skovoroda, and they were around him. He directed and managed them, and my aunt ruled over me. It helped me a lot. It gave the impression that you were not doing something that no one needed, and that you shouldn't be ashamed of it. On the contrary, it is normal.
Andrukhovych:
– Did you show anyone those stories?
Zhadan:
– I showed her. She said, "It's bad, but keep writing." In fact, it was a very warm and good reaction. And the main thing is not even that. The main thing is that in ’87 and ‘’88, when Perestroika was already in a serious stage, I came to her in Kharkiv. She headed the cultural community "Heritage", something like Prosvity. Artists and writers gathered there. I saw it all and it all immediately became my environment: writers, musicians, and artists...
Andrukhovych:
– Did you read them anything?
Zhadan:
– I still had nothing to read. I listened to them.

"I get up in the morning and hear that the guys from The Ukrainian Youth Union [UYU] are listening to music nearby"
 

Andrukhovych:
– Did your aunt bring you deliberately?
Zhadan:
– Yes, of course. I remember very well in ’90, the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Zaporozhian Sich. About a million Ukrainians arrived. Ivan Drach with a saber, Pavlychko with a mace, and Volodymyr Yavorivsky was lifted in someone's arms. We spent the night in tents somewhere near Khortytsia. There was the brightest flash: I got up in the morning and heard that the guys from UYU were listening to music nearby. And it's not just music; it's the voices of angels. This is what I want to listen to, what I want to sing, what I want to live. I approach them and ask, "What are these strange voices?" And they said, "These are The Gadyukin Brothers." It turned my life upside down.
Andrukhovych:
– This is after their first release, Chervona Ruta [Ukrainian]
Zhadan:
– Yes, their first album. This was a terrible record. It sounds very strange, but terribly honest. Then, in the mid-90s, they rewrote it – it sounds much better, but that's not it. In those days, I accepted that I would write - that literature is mine. There were several literary generations that inspired me. This is, of course, the ’20s, which were then actively republished ...
Andrukhovych:
– Just Semenko was published in the "Poet's Library" ...
Zhadan:
– It came out in 1985, but I read it only in 1991. 5,000 copies circulated; it could not be obtained anywhere. My aunt let me read Stus in self-publishing (samizdat) when there were no reprints of it.
And yet – it's you, your generation. I'm not talking about this because we're sitting together now. But really - my table reading was the books of Gerasimyuk, Rymaruk, Zabuzhko, Natalka Bilotserkivets, Malkovych, you, Irvanets, Neborak…. These were something that were immediately read. Yes, we had Stus, but Stus is gone. But these poets are alive, and they do amazing things. My first poems began to be written in such a field.
Andrukhovych:
– Was your first poem written in Starobilsk or were you already in Kharkiv?
Zhadan:
– The first one was published in Starobilsk. Do you know where it was published? In the city of Dubno. There was a children's magazine there called Sunflower.
Andrukhovych:
– Dubno, Rivne region. Barvinok [Magazine] was still Soviet, and Sunflower was already considered progressive.
Zhadan:
– For me, a "significant event" was participation in the Republican Olympiad in Ukrainian Literature in Rivne. It was spring of 1991– the Soviet Union times. There was a very interesting circle, some members of which I know to this day. For example, Nazar Fedorak, he was from Lviv. We had a meeting with writers from the Rivne region. The poet Irvanets was supposed to come, and he, damn it, did not come. Mykola Pshenichny, the editor of this magazine Sunflower, came and published my poem. I had about four poems at that time, which I considered poems. There was this huge hall, where 500 of my peers of my generation are sitting. Here we are all children of the Soviet Union, but we love the Ukrainian language and literature. We are Olympians. There are real writers sitting and reading something to us. We are interested, of course. One of them gets up and says a bit of annihilation: “Well, you are probably writing something here too. Read to us." And my friends already knew what I was writing. They just took me on stage – and I read. Of course, I read poorly and the poems were bad. But I was their guy, I was given a standing ovation. And I thought: it's great to be a Ukrainian writer. 500 beautiful people applaud you. This is an important incentive.
Andrukhovych:
Are you realizing their dream now?
Zhadan:
– I make my dream come true because I want them to like me.
Andrukhovych:
– Everyone also sees themselves on this stage.
Zhadan:
– You see, "Bu-Ba-Bu" for me then became something so insatiable – Irvanets never came.
Andrukhovych:
– Did you mention that to him later?
Zhadan:
– One hundred times. He was the only writer I knew who was there. I read your selection in the magazine then called Prapor.
Andrukhovych:
– In the summer of 1990.
Zhadan:
– Yes. A selection of "Bu-Ba-Bu", "LuGoSad" and "Propala Gramota". At that time, the editor of Prapor and Berezol was Ivan Stepanovich Maslov, a Russian-speaking novelist from Kharkiv. Then he became my supervisor. I wrote my dissertation on Semenko under his supervision.

 "You can't force the whole trolleybus to switch to Ukrainian"

Andrukhovych:
– It's time to get out of the past. But another moment, very briefly ... I never went to read articles about us on Wikipedia. And so I decided to see what there was about you. It turns out that during your teenage years, when Prosvita was established, the People's Movement actively spread activist symbols and press in your small home region. Tell us a little about this political activity. It was the choice of a young – a very young man. I have no doubt that it was conscious. But how do you explain where it came from?
Zhadan:
– It is natural because there was resistance to the Soviet system in general. Listen, I'm from the Ukrainian region – North of the Luhansk region, historical Slobozhanshchyna. Many of my friends then sided with Ukraine. For some, it was more of an impulsive choice – a resistance to the system. But for many: we are Ukrainians, this is ours. Every time I came back from Kharkiv, I took with me a pack of self-publishing (samizdat) printed in Lithuania.
Andrukhovych:
– "We are Ukrainians, this is ours…" But did they join the consciousness to the point that it was necessary to separate and leave the USSR?
Zhadan:
– Undoubtedly, a lot of people thought so. This stereotype: the Luhansk and Donetsk regions have always been, as they say now, "wadded" [pro-Russian, Soviet-oriented] – well, it’s not like that at all. A huge number of people acted subconsciously in the pro-Ukrainian direction.
Andrukhovych:
– Was there some lost potential?
Zhadan:
– Muffled. By The Communist Party, the political situation, and Kuchma.
Andrukhovych:
– Well, out of politics. Let's speak about your language choice. Of course, it was quite conscious and uniquely organic. It wasn’t really a choice for you, was it?
Zhadan:
– There was no choice. There was, rather, a transition. Because Kharkiv in 1991, 1992… Did you come to us for the first time in 1995?
Andrukhovych:
– ‘94.
Zhadan:
– It was still that Kharkiv, where Ukrainian was often perceived as hostile.
Andrukhovych:
– They resented Neborak and me for speaking Ukrainian aloud during an evening at the Architect's House. Some "guardian" went there and ...
Zhadan:
– It was something strange, incomprehensible. And if you do not understand something, it is perceived as hostile. I remember there was, as Professor Yuri Shevchuk calls it, language schizophrenia. In some environments you speak Ukrainian, in some – Russian. In fact, it was terribly disturbing: you get on the trolleybus, and it's not that embarrassing – it's awkward. You could get a hit on the head for speaking Ukrainian. But at some point you think, “Well, damn! This is also wrong”. You make that choice, and you live with that choice. Then, at some point, it becomes very comfortable.
Andrukhovych:
– And what is this moment? Is this your inner moment?
Zhadan:
– Yes. I refuse to switch to Russian with the controller. Let me speak Ukrainian, even if she looks at me askance. There was a thing that Professor Yuri Shevchuk and many do not understand when talking about Russian-speakers and the Russian language among Ukrainians in the East because you can't switch the whole trolleybus to Ukrainian. Everyone does it personally.
Andrukhovych:
– And this is a good phrase! Terrible, but true. I am also an adapter. If I had spent most of my life in one of these cities, I probably would have behaved like that. Until a certain point, when you gain your own weight. Then you don't need it anymore. It even becomes part of your image – that you no longer have to adapt.
Zhadan:
– This choice is terribly specific. There are certain stereotypes about the East and South of Ukraine, as if they are Russian-speaking regions. No, they are rather bilingual. There is Ukrainian for everyone. If you say you don't know Ukrainian, you're actually pretending you don't know it. Now the law requiring the use of Ukrainian in the public sphere has come into force, and I like it so much. I see with what passion all these people speak Ukrainian. These are all women and men in shops, in restaurants, and on the streets…
Andrukhovych:
– It added spirit.
Zhadan:
– Yes, it is normal for them to speak Ukrainian. It is clear that this is not annoying, and the country has changed, listen.

 "German obscene vocabulary is fundamentally soft, as is Ukrainian's"

Andrukhovych:

– The country was changing, and you were changing. A certain logic of your writing formation leads you to prose. If I'm not mistaken, it was the early 2000s, right? Your first prose book, Big Mac. It's a mature and masterful book. I mean, you can already feel the experience and the skill from these texts. Were you writing something in prose? Or did you suddenly decide in Vienna that you had something to say in prose, too?
Zhadan:
– There was a great desire to write prose. I even remember very clearly that I was going to Vienna on this scholarship from the University, for which you recommended me, in order to write a novel.
Andrukhovych:
– I think I was in America, and you were sending me emails saying, "I'm writing a novel. I still can't figure out if I like it or not".
Zhadan:
– Moreover, I told you then that I was writing a novel with poems. And you wrote me back, "Yeah, so Dr. Zhivago!" At some point, I realized that it does not work out at all. I have nothing to write about it: it is a completely different narrative, a different writing, and it doesn't add up. It is better to give it up altogether because it will be bad. Instead, I started to write this prose - a very simple, biographical prose. When Big Mac was out, we talked to Oksana Zabuzhko. She scolded me like a mother, "It's all good, but you can't base your prose only on Zabuzhko and Andrukhovych". I told her, "Yes, Oksana Stefanivna, I absolutely agree with you". At the same time, I wrote a book of poems, A Cultural History of the Beginning of the Century. That is, this novel split into two books.
Andrukhovych:
– Now I would like to return to language choice because you can also write poems in Swahili while living in Kharkiv. Poetry is so profound, isn't it? But here you are writing prose, and you already have to reproduce the linguistic reality. Your prose, of course, is rooted here in this region, in this small home region. Kharkiv, to put it mildly, is predominantly Russian-speaking. You have to reproduce the images of the people who live here. Their dialogues. 
I myself have faced this problem twice – first, in army stories. All dialogues are still in Ukrainian, except where I inserted a Russism, where a piece of a Russian phrase was italicized. Or, for example, I reworked individual words. It was supposed to be "fucked up" – I wrote "screwed
up". Then in The Moscowiad understandably, I had to render the dialogues as they were spoken in Moscow. Sometimes I solved this simply by so-called transliteration... You don't seem to use transliteration at all. All of your dialogues are in Ukrainian. 
Zhadan:
– They are in Ukrainian, but there is a lot of surzhyk, Russisms, and words from the Russian-language discourse. But yes, in general, I think this is the most problematic point of Ukrainian prose.
Andrukhovych:
– And Ukrainian cinema! Let's remember Professor Shevchuk again ...
Zhadan:
– It's a completely different approach and energy in cinema. Accordingly, there is a completely different language field. You understand conventionality: you look at the screen, there is a certain theatricality, if the style contributes to this. It's another thing when you convey it really as direct language – when it's some kind of social film. Here I have a novel The Boarding School. There, the coexistence of at least three language streams – Ukrainian, Surzhik and Russian – is solved in such a simple way: I indicate who speaks which language. In the Ukrainian version it is interesting. When you translate it, even into Russian, it takes on other connotations. There is immediately a new meaning. The dialogues are in Russian, but it is emphasized: "speaks Russian", "speaks the local language" or something else. These are other pain points. We had a problem with the film adaptation of The Boarding School: we decided that it could not be presented the way the book is presented because it will be like a Tarantino film starring Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio in Ukrainian voice acting. This terribly important thing of plausibility and psychological accuracy is disappearing.
Andrukhovych:
– If you were writing any kind of fantasy, everything would be convention.
Zhadan:
Absolutely! Or a historical movie, a costume cinema, a love story – it would not be that important. And when the "Cossacks from Rostov" come to Debaltseve and suddenly speak the language of Oles Honchar… At least there is a feeling of falsity. 
Andrukhovych:
– Although, if they were from Kuban, you could make them speak the language of Les Poderwianski…
Zhadan:
– Most likely, those from Kuban would fight on our side. Many do not agree with this position. They believe that everything should be Ukrainianized, and then it will somehow work out. Maybe that's right if we talk about strategy. But tactically it's a loss. Returning to your question – yes, it's a very interesting game every time.
Andrukhovych:
– When building a dialogue, you must make it as organic as possible, preserving its peculiarities of the Ukrainian language. 
Zhadan:
– Undoubtedly. This is such a construction of words – a somewhat artificial language. The phrase should sound like Ukrainian, but be natural for a person who is primarily a native Russian speaker.
Andrukhovych:
– Such a preliminary translation.
Zhadan:
– Yes, the author's translation, designed for people who know that they are between two languages. This is something that disappears in translation. That is, it does not matter how they will sound in Polish or German.
Andrukhovych:
– But you have a large readership both in Poland and in German-speaking countries. Apparently, translators somehow bring this aspect to them.
Zhadan:
– I don't think it's so important. Michał Petryk, who translates all my prose into Polish, has good reviews. It seems to me that Michał has a very subtle feeling and conveys the speech of the characters, but the German translations have different reviews. 
Andrukhovych:
– Does Durkot often take part in them?
Zhadan:
– The translators are Yuri Durkot and Sabine Shter. I have heard several times that they do very polite translations. I'm not sure if that's true. This was usually said by native Russian and Ukrainian speakers, who read the text in the original; that is, they compare German profanity with Russian. I agree that Russian profanity or, say, English – British or American version – they sound much sharper than German. German obscene vocabulary is fundamentally soft, as is Ukrainian. If you use the certain filthy language in Russian, it provides a different energy. When Sabine uses German vocabulary to avoid giving solid "fucks", it lowers the degree. That is, I suppose that for the German reader it is ok, but for those who have read these texts in the original, the translation may seem more "baroque", lusher and softer.
Andrukhovych:
– She makes verfickt [fucking] from the German infinitive ficken. I suspect, in fact, in colloquial German instead of “fucking” they use verfickt – it's very soft. Especially when some gangsters communicate with each other. It's like saying "shit" instead of "fucked it up".
Zhadan:
– Brecht, when describing American realities in his plays or the London reality in The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper), might have used songs in English. He just wrote in English, not German because he had to submit the most simple and colloquial street language.

 "After  ‘2014 there was a sense of a lyrical hero"

Andrukhovych:
– We need to take a leap into poetry. In recent years, you have published three or four new compilations. Each with its own character, integrally sustained around a certain concept or idea. At least these three are: Templars, Antenna, and List of Ships. Wait, what came before that?
Zhadan:
– Maria's Life.
Andrukhovych:
– Yes. This is poetry of an extremely high standard. At the same time, it is during these years, when it's born, you lead an extremely full public life. You're both there and here participating in many projects on your own, invited by someone and so on. Is it good to write poems in such serious quantities in such conditions? Do they come by themselves or do you create any pre-conditions?
Zhadan:
– They are written even in larger quantities than they come out. I've had files like "List of Ships – flaw" on my computer since 2014, and I put away there everything that is not included in List of Ships. I have a new book coming out with Meridian in May, and I don't print about a third of my poems either. Why not? I have already written about it. I'm not interested in printing variations. I have nothing against self-repetition. It is normal for a writer to keep coming back to one topic or another and to make different versions of what has already been said. I want to move on to something I haven't tried before, but there is a lot of writing going on. In the nineties and the naughts, I wrote much less. I don't know whether it's good that I started writing much more.
Andrukhovych:
– It is very good for all of us. Apparently, it's good for you, too.
Zhadan:
– You see by yourself, there is a part of readers and critics who say, “He wrote better twenty years ago. What I grew up with is the best”.
Andrukhovych:
– Because people found their first love for you with those verses. They don't want to let anything better come along now.
Zhadan: 
– Beginning from 2014, because of those events and my approach to them, my writing style has basically changed. The perception and understanding of the protagonist, of whom I write, in whose voice I speak, of the lyrical hero, has changed. It has changed because the perception of him has changed. Before 2014, very often they were abstract personalities. It was interesting for me to write about exotic, quirky heroes, Yura Zoifer or Nestor Makhno. And suddenly I saw my hero very intimately. I'm communicating with him. At some point, it became important for me to talk about him. It facilitated a lot of moments.
Andrukhovych:
– The abstract of List of Ships states that this is probably the most intimate of the author's collections. There is also the motive of his father's death ...
Zhadan:
– That’s right. In this prose text that comes as an afterword, I wrote about their whole generations. It's a slice of my life. I wrote a lot about my father. In Anarchy in the UKR these were, I thought, pretty revealing things. It's only today that I realize that these things were still written about my father as a literary character. I didn't yet have a sense and understanding of how you can write about people you love, but do it naturally. So that it's not literature... It should take some time to say what you really think about them.
Going back to your question: It's basically about the lecture that came out of 2014. I have written a great deal since then. Moreover, I continue to write a lot. I wouldn't be surprised if people have stopped navigating when a new book is out, when an old one is out, and what it all means. You like to write, it's important to write, and you write. You should fit it into something? But into what? There's no market as such, no criticism. Okay, I'm going to release the book now, and it's going to get on some shortlist – so what? it's not serious. 

"Living the lives of created characters is so vulgar."

Andrukhovych:

–You're having your opera premiere in the fall. How did you write the libretto? This is largely a purely technical assignment.
Zhadan:
– Undoubtedly.
Andrukhovych:
– Did you already have the music ready?
Zhadan:
– No, Alla Zagaykevych wrote the music based on lyrics, but I had an understanding that it would be sung. This left a mark. That is, I had to write stylistically complete sentences. This is a completely different construction – a very different syntax. Of course, I have experience working with musicians ...
Andrukhovych:
– With musicians of different kinds... 
Zhadan:
– Well… I actually worked with very different musicians. And with the jazz musicians, with Mark Tokar, we recorded an album.
Andrukhovych:
– But today everyone knows "Dogs" and "Line" the most.
Zhadan:
– You can take it in different ways, you can like it or not like it. But I remember how I started working with “Dogs”. When I'm working with them now, it's a completely different narrative.
Andrukhovych:
– So you're writing the lyrics separately? You know it won't be in the poetry collection? 
Zhadan:
– Yes. They're not in the collections. There must be a certain rarefaction – lexical, intonational, and phonetic. It's not indicative of some kind of primitivization, rather it speaks of transparency. I find it interesting to work with the Kozak System, for example. I send the lyrics to Vanya Leno, and he says, "There must be an 'e' or an 'a' in the song, especially in the chorus. And there should be a lot of them." I said, "Vanya, I sent you a poem. It makes sense, there is a character, there is intonation. And you're telling me about the letter 'a'." And he said, "Yes, because they won't sing your character, they will sing the letter 'a.'" He's right in his own way. That's why this libretto was written this way.

Andrukhovych:
– Well, they published a book with Meridian…
Zhadan:
– Anyway, this is not a book of poetry. It's a libretto to take to the opera, to listen to.
Andrukhovych:
– I want to ask, will there be more novels?
Zhadan:
– I'm not interested in writing novels. In 2013, I interviewed the late Limonov. And he said such a thing, which was obvious and banal, but it touched me, "Sergei, writing novels, living the life of fictional characters – it's so vulgar." That is, he wrote a post in the morning about the need to dump Putin, and by the evening this post had already gained 10,000 likes. This is much more interesting. This is life.

Andrukhovych:
– The result so far is deplorable, because he didn’t overthrow Putin. Maybe if he wrote novels...
Zhadan:
– He was not a novelist, as for my opinion. He was a master of short-form and diary records. There will be some novels. Speaking of something new, I wrote another libretto. Next year will be the Munich Biennale of Contemporary Music. One Berlin composer and I are preparing an opera for it. It will be as political and social as possible. It’s about refugees, about migrants, about two people who are in prison in a certain country… This country is not named, just like in Radio Night. And these two people will be deported. One will be deported because he fought for this country, and another – because he was involved in crime. Such a conflict. I wrote in Ukrainian, realizing that it would be translated into German and sung in German. This is also a very interesting experience because it was necessary to write consciously – so that the translator could adequately translate it.
Andrukhovych:
– But in this case, were you already working with ready-made music?
Zhadan:
– Also no, the text was first. If everything works out, there will be a premiere next May in Munich.
Andrukhovych:
– I wish you successful premieres, in every sense. It was very interesting for me.
Zhadan:
– Yeah, it was very interesting for me, too.

Translated by Kateryna Kazimirova