Oksana Zabzhko: The world is changing, crossing some fatal border, right here, now, immediately [FRAGMENT]

“We are so close and we don’t know much. Zabużko, who was shaped by the myth of Solidarity and Polish culture, has the feeling that no one listens and no one understands the voice from Ukraine. This fascinating collection of essays is an invitation to talk about literature and the entanglements of history. facts from an unknown side, such as when he tells about the importance of Chernobyl for Ukraine, and above all, he shows us some extraordinary characters: director Andrei Tarkovsky, who follows in the footsteps of the 18th century poet Skoworoda, Kateryna Biłokur, a genius artist who was not allowed by the Soviet system to spread its wings, or The writer and dissident Leonid Pluszcz – all these stories tell about what is most important: about freedom and its lack. Her essays are read with great commitment, because Zabużko writes with temperament, bluntly, and even fiery. you can hear Ukraine “- Justyna Sobolewska writes about” Planet Wormwood “.

The essayist wrote the fragment we are publishing (translated by Katarzyna Kotyńska) in Kiev on February 10, 2020. Oksana Zabużko, a recognized Ukrainian writer, came to Poland a few days ago to promote her latest book. During her stay in our country, Russian troops attacked Ukraine in several directions.

Oksana Zabużko “Planet Wormwood”, Agora Publishing House – excerpt:

On May 15, 2014, I was walking through the Warsaw Old Town and I was shivering as if from the cold. It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon, near the St. John’s Cathedral, street musicians were playing a pleasant melody, people in love laughed around, tourists were calling, teenagers with ice cream were slipping through on roller skates – and I was looking at this nice, cozy, endlessly home world of the capital downtown as through a wall of tears : in Donbas, Russian mercenaries were already chasing people in the streets and slitting their bellies for the Ukrainian flag, the first representatives of the European right to support the Russian annexation of Crimea, any moment were about to win the elections to the European Parliament, I myself came to Warsaw (in those weeks I went to call in a voice from all international stands!) to the international conference on the democratic opposition in Central and Eastern Europe during the Cold War and in the morning, having heard President Komorowski’s good-natured speech about the successes achieved by Poland following the path of democracy “and what a pity that Ukraine chose a different path “(verbatim), Fr. I almost cried over the childlike unshakeable faith of the Polish elite that the monster would not crawl out from under the bed if you closed your eyes tightly enough – and on a nearby square, where I went out to dissipate my oppression of my thoughts, photographs of van de Poll from Warsaw in 1934, where the same, only eighty years earlier, the lovers laughed, the tourists called, the kids were running – be it as shadows or as black and white X-ray images of today’s living – and suddenly stunned me, like a boxing hook in the jaw , a phrase from the annotation on the first board in a row: “It was the last such year”.

In other words, I suddenly, clearly and irrevocably understood that it is not about “then” but “now” – not 1934, but 2014. That the world is changing, crossing some fatal border, right here, now, immediately. And I shivered. And I was walking along the New World, and I was trembling because of this discovery: that all these people around me do not know anything yet.

This difference between me and them seemed tangible, tangible, physical, like between light electrons and a heavy, swollen neutrino: in me it was already alive, like an infection implanted in the blood, a new world war – and not in them, and even the president of their country did not he noticed. In front of some store, a well-dressed, completely unmindful babula girl unexpectedly asked me for “a few pennies”, I shook my head, remembering that I did not have Polish money – and my inability to respond to even this one request from a Warsaw street, the only sign that I was here “they see”, it finally depressed me – as if it had sealed my separateness from this street forever, separation by a wall of knowledge that cannot be passed on: in no speech at any, even the most important, summit, in no interview for anything but a popular weekly …

Unless – except in a book.

This is how the idea for this volume was born – in the first, timid glimmer -.

Here, a bit of private history will be necessary, because without it it is difficult to understand my need to find a Polish interlocutor. In August 1980, our family received their Polish subscription by post for the last time – the next issue of the “Twórczości” monthly. At that time, the citizens of the USSR could subscribe to foreign magazines only from the so-called countries of the socialist camp (of course, those that had not caused any problems for a long time and were ruled by Kremlin-friendly teams) – and my parents actively used this opportunity to slightly open the window. to Europe “, then dead for the Ukrainians.

(…)

It was like that, I repeat, until August 1980. In August, everyone, from “hostile propaganda” to the carabiners on the bench in the yard, was talking only about the strike of the Polish shipyard workers. Dad was as happy as a child and repeated that he had always believed in the workers movement (a few years later, after reading Orwell, I would recognize the origins of this belief, the last faith of post-war Eastern European boys in British socialism, and Churchill’s speech at Fulton at the same time: it was something that Western Ukrainian boys still connected – but only in Western countries – to the Ukraine of their mother, who had experienced the Great Famine, this worldview did not extend anymore! – with their Polish peers, the founders of Solidarity: they all read the same books …). Later, the “Prawda” newspaper spoke about Polish events with a menacing voice of the escort; later they “removed Gierek” and one of the Polish students from our year gave up and went home: Polishness was becoming dangerous, in the air, and without it poisoned by Afghanistan (which also could not be talked about aloud!), a sick feeling hung over the next tanks – “to Warsaw” – and one day by itself it became clear that the last issue of “Creativity” (a cover in the color of freshly brewed tea, not in Soviet style and a column with a headlines …) the last will remain: quietly, without a word of explanation (and of course, without any compensation: the totalitarian state never owes anything to anyone!) this news channel is closed and we will not get the “Polish subscription” – end of the ball. And that’s what happened.

Since then, I have remembered what it is like: here they are “closing” the whole country before your eyes. Like a detainee who disappears in the Gulag, or a sinking submarine – sealed gaps, closed valves, communication cut off, and what is going on inside, it will be possible to find out only after many, many days (months? Years?), When (if?) the submerged territory will see the light of day again. I, a Ukrainian, also grew up in such a territory – non-existent in the eyes of the rest of the world as a separate whole, with whole closed cities like Dnipropetrovsk, to which foreigners were forbidden to enter until the end of the USSR – and at the age of twenty, I already knew the price of such a life. Maybe that is why I have never loved Poland afterwards, as in the year preceding the introduction of martial law: animal, with painful tenderness towards everything that is Polish. Even in the face of the legion marches that my father drilled in the primary school of the Second Polish Republic in the 1930s (to this day I have tears in my eyes when I hear them!); even to Warszawianka in Russian, which I was drilled in the Soviet school (it’s a beautiful song, by the way!) … Then I read all the yellowed volumes of Sienkiewicz and Prus that stood at home, and on various occasions taught my friends to sing Agnieszka Osiecka, reveling in the harsh, sorrel sound of the accumulation of “sz” and “cz”: my Polish language (which had previously been hammered into my head for twenty years without any particular success at home) actually grows from here, from this love – from solidarity with the raped nation.

In 2014, we experienced similar feelings towards the Russian-occupied Crimea – a surge of equally unbearable (touch only, and tears will flow!) Love for the land that is drowning in front of the whole world, and you can do nothing but stand on the shore together with everyone and watch it drown, just love it with all your strength when it disappears (it’s gone – though no, there is something else there … – and then there will only be reports from human rights organizations, like air bubbles in the water … ) – as if your love could help her with something. But this first time, the first such feeling – the first time was with Poland: remotely, across the border, which in no way took away this feeling of strength.

And here, since 2015, I catch myself again and again this feeling. The same, unmistakably recognizable, sticky weight of regret and helplessness (because I can’t do anything again!) Gives me, no matter that in completely different historical decorations, the same signal: Poland is closing. Newspapers and magazines do not stop coming, but they do not explain anything to the “street man” – on the contrary, they confuse and confuse, multiplying unanswered questions. All my Polish friends are waving their arms around the water, and some of them are even planning to emigrate. I stand on the shore and my throat – as in a poem by Vasyl Stus – gushes out of love.