Strong winds are battering Ukraine. With wind speeds up to 20 meters per second, wires just snap apart, and you can expect power outages. No electricity usually means no communication with the outside world – no Wi-Fi or TV and you can’t charge your mobile phone either. At times like this, all you have left is a candle and a book, like 200 years ago. Interestingly, like 200 years ago, a candle is still more important than a book – and cheaper!
When hundreds of villages were left without electricity because of the latest inclement weather, tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians dived into their kitchen drawers and sideboards in search of candles. And each household’s world was reduced to a space that can be illuminated by a lit candle. An involuntary romanticism took over from the usual reality of our high-tech civilization.
The darkness brought by the wind found me visiting friends 65 km from Kyiv, in the Obukhovsky district, in the historical village of Hermanivka – first mentioned in 11th-century texts. We were just sitting around the table, drinking wine, and talking about books. It seems to me that increasingly books exist not to be read, but to be talked about. Of course, television series are talked about more often than books, but books are more agreeable as a conversation topic! Books are more soulful than TV shows. And, again, you can read without electricity. Unless you only have an e-book.
This time the conversation was about a book that people born in the USSR were required to read at school as part of the “Russian literature” programme, and those born in independent Ukraine continue to read at school as part of “foreign literature” – a novel in verse called “Eugene Onegin” by Russia’s main poet and writer, Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837).
At the table with burning candles sat two lady refugees from Donetsk, my wife, the charming and hospitable Ukrainian mistress of the house and her husband – a citizen of the Netherlands and well-known Slavist, publisher, and translator Arie van der Ent, who moved to Ukraine a couple of years ago.
Andriy Kurkov and Arie van der Ent
It was he, the translator of many Russian and Ukrainian poets – including the works of the most famous grand dame of Ukrainian literature, Lina Kostenko – who first brought up the subject of Eugene Onegin and Pushkin.
The fact is, Ari recently received a Russian grant through a Dutch publishing house for a new Dutch translation of this work. Russia still spares no expense to promote its classical culture. They must consider that a powerful cultural image is the best defense against an extremely negative and aggressive political image. In the Netherlands, Russia’s image is much worse than in neighboring Germany or France. After several years of investigation, March 2020 saw the start of a court case around the destruction of flight MH17 by a Russian Buk missile over the Donbas.
By the way, all of Alexander Pushkin’s poetry has already been translated into Dutch. The latest translations of “Eugene Onegin”, “The Bronze Horseman” and other works were made by one of the most famous Slavists in Holland, Hans Boland. He spent years preparing an almost complete collection of Alexander Pushkin’s poetic works in Dutch. At the presentation of Hans Boland’s translations in 2013, Dutch Foreign Minister, Frans Timmermans, said: “This is a huge gift for the Dutch reader and a huge gift for the Dutch language.” However, in August 2014, Hans Boland refused to accept the Russian state “Pushkin Medal” award for his efforts to popularize Russian literature, commenting on his refusal with the words: “I would have accepted this honor with great gratitude, if not for your president, his behavior and his way of thinking which I despise. He poses a great threat to the freedom and peace of our planet. God grant that his ‘ideals’ will be completely destroyed in the near future. Any connection between him and me, any connection between his name and the name of Pushkin is to me disgusting and unbearable.”
During his lifetime, Alexander Pushkin – like the most famous Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko – was, in today’s terms, a dissident and a political prisoner. For his satirical anti-monarchist poems, the Tsar sent him into exile in Odesa and Chisinau to fight locusts (From 1820 the area saw several terrible plagues of locusts.). It was in Chisinau that Pushkin began work on the novel “Eugene Onegin”, and in Odesa, he continued this work. So, Ukraine seems quite a logical place to work on the new Dutch translation of this novel!
And therefore, in the ancient village of Hermanivka, in a cozy house on Taras Shevchenko Street, work is in full swing on a new translation of “Eugene Onegin” into Dutch. Work also continues on translations of Ukrainian poetry into Dutch – work which Arie van der Ent does without grants or support from the Ukrainian state. These are works of sheer enthusiasm.
I like this paradoxical situation in which Alexander Pushkin could be said to be 'supporting' the popularization of Ukrainian poetry in the Netherlands and in Europe.
Our conversation about books at the table continued even when the electricity was restored and the lights in the house came on again. Just in case, we did not extinguish the candles, so that later we would not have to look for matches again.
Lately, the Ukrainian mass media seems afraid to discuss books. On the TSN website (TV channel 1 + 1), in an article on New Year’s gifts, readers were advised not to give books to their relatives and friends. The article even scared readers with the terrible consequences of such gifts: “If you do not want quarrels and misunderstandings in the family, it is better not to give such a thing (a book) to your husband. And a book as a New Year’s gift to your wife could lead to her marital infidelity!”
Of course, I have to add that after some noisy discussions on Facebook about these ‘tips’, the paragraph about the perils of giving books was cut from the article. Now, in the list of suggestions for New Year’s presents, there is no mention of books at all.
And finally, I want to draw your attention to the village of Hermanivka, located near the town of Obukhov, a 40-minute drive from Kyiv. The village boasts some interesting examples of 19th-century architecture, an art gallery, a historical museum with a fascinating collection of exhibits. Until 1919, the village was home to a bіg Jewish community whose history ended most tragically with two bloody pogroms. The border between Poland and the Russian Empire once passed next tо the village. In the 11th century, there was a protected settlement nearby which was discovered by Ukrainian archaeologists in the late 1990s. It was there in 1663 that the “Black Council” took place: an event which was an attempt at negotiations between the two opposing Cossack clans – Hetman Ivan Vyhovsky’s clan on the one hand and Hetman Yuri Khmelnitsky’s clan on the other. Ivan Vyhovsky was considered a pro-Polish politician, and Yuri Khmelnitsky was considered pro-Russian. The meeting ended in bloodshed and ushered in a period of Ukrainian history which is officially called “The Ruins” in school history textbooks. This is the era of internecine wars, which only strengthened the political influence of Moscow on the territory of today’s Ukraine.
