“Weaver that forms national memory”

Literary and artistic event “Kartohrafia” based on the essays from the book Z Mapy Knyh ta Liudei (From the Map of Books and People) took place at cultural and educational center “Master Class” on February 9 in Kyiv.

 The hall, where the presentation is about to begin, is crowded and noisy: almost all seats are taken, most people are holding books with white-blue-and-red cover. They discuss what they’ve read: some share impressions with people they know and others talk with strangers sitting next to them. Suddenly, someone noticed Viacheslav Kyrylenko in the hall. Man, sitting to the left of me, says out loud: “Some people read and others only come to presentations.” He explained: “Have you seen the list of books Yurii Lutsenko read in prison? Even literary critics acknowledged that among the current politicians he has good reader’s taste…”

 Meanwhile, the band Sestry Telniuk performs on stage the poems by the author set to music.

 And then Oksana Zabuzhko enters, energetically gesticulating and talking to Vira Aheieva. She reluctantly lets herself be photographed, and the event begins.

 The book itself is a collection of essays written and published in 2000-12 and united by the topic of cultural space. In her Map, the author writes about personalities, places, books and films which have had an impact on her in particular and that are important to Ukrainians in general. The collection consists of four chapters: Reading, Writing, Seeing and Living. Zabuzhko has essays on Kateryna Bilokur, Oleksandr Dovzhenko, Andrei Tarkovski, Lars von Trier, Leonid Pliushch, Igor Pomerantsev, Yurko Pokalchuk, Solomiia Pavlychko and others.

 The event itself is not really a traditional book presentation. Zabuzhko says there is a lack of public discussions of books in the mass media (such as book talk show in European countries) and when authors meet their readers – people come to presentations without any knowledge of the text. Her Map was presented back in September 2012 at the Lviv Book Fair, so readers had ample time to read the book.

 This is precisely the reason why “Cartography” was a social polylogue between writer and literary critic Vira Aheieva, art historian Vadym Skurativsky, philosopher Volodymyr Yermolenko, public activists Yevhen Sverstiuk and Oles Donii and readers, all of whom talked about the most interesting or most difficult essays from the collection.

 The event was interactive, because an open vote in social media was used to select the names and topics that readers would like to be discussed. The audience communicated with the author using notes sent to Yurii Makarov, the moderator of the event and of the figures mentioned in the book – as the host of the Document TV program.

 A special highlight of the event was a Skype address from Leonid Pliushch (Zabuzhko calls him an intellectual we have missed and now he lives in France) and Igor Pomerantsev, who called Zabuzhko “a weaver who weaves national memory.” Also presented were archival videos with Pokalchuk and Pavlychko. It took great efforts to obtain them, because the tapes mysteriously disappeared from TV archives. Zabuzhko is outraged that the Ukrainian television has not made a single film about Pavlychko, unlike Canadians: “In 1998, when Solomiia and I attended presentations and conferences, the Canadian TV people immediately recorded a video. But Solomiia only speaks English in it.”

 Zabuzhko believes that “society is scattered across various nooks” which causes a lack of a cultural environment and results in disjointedness of generations.

 To questions from the audience about whether this generation can restore historical memory, Zabuzhko shared a kind of “recipe” for saving the world, above all the Ukrainian world: “You know, Aldous Huxley wrote about it in his Brave New World: I don’t know what the world will be like in 10-20 years. It is not up to me to make forecasts. Let us simply give gifts and share what we love, and in this way we will change someone’s life and hence will save the world”

 It is interesting how the age of the people at the presentation mixed in the audience: there were people over 50 and those who are not even 20 yet. Fans of Zabuzhko’s writing are quite enduring: they can easily digest text from the hand of the author, can tolerate an hour delay of presentation and then can gladly listen to the author for three hours. After the presentation they also lined up for an autograph session. This means only one thing: literature in Ukraine is in demand, no matter what they say.