by Stefano Caprio

The poet and translator Irina Jurčuk, a native of the city of Kharkov on the border between the two countries, the epicentre of the ongoing conflict, has published her book ‘The Overpass’ in Kiev, an anthology in which she combines texts by contemporary Russian and Ukrainian authors with translations and her own bilingual rhymes. It is a way to rediscover one's true identity, without being destroyed by abuse and claims.

The underlying issue in the eternal conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which has been going on for four years on the ground and four centuries in people's minds (one could say for over a millennium since the founding of Kievan Rus'), is the clash between two worldviews, two visions of human relations and relations between peoples: that of the collectivist East and that of the personalist West, in the many variations in which they can be defined.

The conflict concerns the territories on both sides of the river of European history, represented by the Danube, the Dnieper and the Volga, and is heightened by the confrontation between the different interpretations of Latin and Byzantine Christianity, Russian Orthodox and Ukrainian Orthodox Christianity, Christianity and Islam, and the many linguistic and cultural differences.

The Russians do not consider Ukrainian to be a real language, but the comparison extends to Polish, Czech, Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian and other variants of the Slavic languages, each of which considers itself to be the “mother tongue” to which all others must refer. All Orthodox Slavs use the sacred dimension of Church Slavonic, which recalls the common roots of Old Slavonic, even managing to argue over the variable pronunciation of formulas that are now barely comprehensible to the faithful during liturgies, which remain the prerogative of the clergy as a means of asserting the “institutional” superiority of the Church over the State.

The great Russian culture of past centuries has now been consigned to oblivion by the most insipid propaganda, which merely exploits slogans and quotations from Pushkin, Gogol and Dostoevsky to demonstrate the artistic greatness of the artificial “Russian world”, while on the Ukrainian side, these great names of the past are demonised and accused of having inspired the imperial policies of the tsars, the Soviet communists and Putin's sovereignists, imposing the “language of the enemy”. This eliminates any possibility of understanding and dialogue, refusing to believe that “the other” has its own cultural, social and religious dignity, and everything is reduced to aggressive assertions of increasingly artificial identities, as is now the case in the world of technological communication, which is reflected in social relations at all levels, including military operations, diplomatic negotiations and dominant political ideologies.

An attempt to re-establish bridges of real and profound communication is offered by a bilingual Russian-Ukrainian poet and translator, Irina Jurčuk, a native of the city of Kharkov on the border between the two countries, the epicentre of the ongoing conflict. She has been living in Germany for years, working as a doctor and writing poetry in both Ukrainian and Russian, for adults and children. After winning numerous literary awards in Ukraine and internationally, her book Nadzemnyj perekhid, “The Overpass”, was recently published in Kiev. It is an anthology in which she combines texts by contemporary Russian and Ukrainian authors with translations and her own bilingual rhymes.

Jurčuk says she was inspired by “the poetic charm of her native language and the desire to expand the limits of her abilities”, moving from translation work to creative expression. Bringing together the different dimensions of Russian and Ukrainian culture also “coincided with the need to psychologically distance herself from the frightening reality of war”, using immersion in translation as a mechanism for escaping tragedy.

 

In this way, one can try to ‘build a bridge between languages and eras, between contemporary and future generations of Ukrainians’, rediscovering one's true identity in language, without being destroyed by abuse and claims.

It suffices to recall a term that is now overused in all latitudes, that of ‘genocide’, which the states in conflict accuse each other of. The main motivation for the “genocide of Russians in Donbass”, which for Moscow justifies the “special military operation”, is precisely linguistic, imposing on Russian speakers in the region the use of only the Ukrainian language, just as Ukrainians believe they have been subjected for centuries to the “genocide of Russification” from which they must free themselves once and for all, recalling the prohibition of the Ukrainian language by Russian emperors in the 19th century and the subsequent waves of erasure of Ukrainian identity by the Soviets, including the suppression of the Greek Catholic Church and the Russian-speaking domination of patriarchal Orthodoxy.

The aim of the anthology is therefore to rise “above” (nadzemnyj) all the diatribes and battles, to try to limit the damage as much as possible and rediscover the true expression of both languages and cultures, thanks in part to the “different musicality of sounds in different formulations, using poetic tools that break down the barricades”, says Jurčuk. Composing verses is the best way to use languages, and translation forces us to look at each word very carefully, analysing its meaning in the context of the rhyme, rather than simply reporting its formal equivalent. Even with a good knowledge of a foreign language, it is inevitable to constantly consult dictionaries and choose to use forms that are very different from the conventional ones, especially when it comes to languages that are very close to each other, such as Russian and Ukrainian, as was the case in the past with the Greek-Latin, Romance, Anglo-Saxon languages and so on, with the result of improving one's own native language.

Translation always runs the risk of betrayal, but it is only in this way that the process of tradition is accomplished, in the different variants of the same term from the Latin tradere. In times of “traditional values” proclaimed from the heights of political and religious pulpits, literary and poetic endeavour can truly rediscover the authentic value of traditions, of which language is an essential vehicle. As Jurčuk explains, “translation is a small life in the space and time of poetry, trying to avoid the pitfalls of loss of meaning or to bring it over to one's own side, different from that of the author”. In times of increasingly sophisticated machine translation, a new space for mutual understanding is opening up, demonstrating that technology solves nothing without the contribution of the individual.

There is currently no dialogue between the cultures and literatures of Russia and Ukraine, and it will be difficult to reconnect for who knows how long, at least a few decades, assuming that military operations end sooner or later. Jurčuk quotes a verse by a Ukrainian poet writing in Russian, according to which in the future, the library / will be a danger to men / and in the blinding 21st century / it will be in the fire of phenomena, obviously in an English translation that does not respect the original Russian or even the Ukrainian translation, but always emphasising how books and words are becoming less and less certainties and more and more weapons of mass destruction.

Ukrainian literature in general, and poetry in particular, are developing as never before in history, and the war has further accelerated the pace of creativity, with a great awareness of the need to dissociate oneself more and more from Russia. The Russian language, which all Ukrainians know and speak fluently, has become a traumatic factor in their tragic daily lives, from which they must distance themselves completely. It often happens that Russian spoken at home out of habit is censored in public because of the shame it causes to hear it, and not everyone has the opportunity to switch entirely to expressing themselves in Ukrainian, a native language long repressed and now the language expressing a desire for radical change. President Volodymyr Zelenskyj himself, before running for president in 2019, took a course in Ukrainian, being Russian-speaking by family heritage.

However, the new Ukrainian culture does not want to be determined solely by the reaction of protest against the aggressor, but seeks to define an identity projected onto a future that is yet to be written and proclaimed, knowing full well that Russia's pressure will not stop at missiles and territorial conquests, but will try in every way to regain the self-awareness of a people from whom the Russians themselves originate and with whom they are still closely related. Language will increasingly be the “immune defence in a living organism”, says Irina Jurčuk, who seeks to maintain a bridge over the abyss between the two peoples, with a dedication necessary not only to Russians and Ukrainians, but as an example to enemy peoples all over the world, using the language of both to rediscover common and greater truths, as in these verses she composed under the roar of bombs destroying homes:

... The science of escape, the experience of survival,

the sheet tightened like a noose,

and I dream: every blow in the universe is a direct blow to me...