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War and conflict, eternal paradoxes, create pain, death, but also the need for storytelling, in verse or prose. The invaded Ukraine is now experiencing a true literary flourishing, paid for, however, with the blood of writers and poets committed to the defense of their country
Every conflict, every war, brings with it a sort of “natural” mobilization of writers, poets and cultural personalities who join in the defense of their values and their country, each embracing different ways, reasons and ideologies.
With the 2022 Russian aggression of Ukraine, some have taken up arms, enlisting in territorial defense or the Ukrainian Armed Forces; others have given themselves to volunteering and humanitarian aid; still others have begun – or often it would be better to say continued – to fight on the cultural front, at home or abroad. We are mainly talking about writers and poets, who during war and since war, talk about their war experiences on social media or through other cultural initiatives.
This literary flourishing, however, is suffering a terrible price. On July 1, 2023, a Russian missile killed the Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina (1986-2023) in the eastern city of Kramators’k, while documenting Russian war crimes in Ukraine with the human rights organization Truth Hounds. She had recently started writing poetry, in response to the war. Just a few months before her death, it was she who found, under a cherry tree, the diary of the poet and children’s writer’s occupation Volodymyr Vakulenko (1972-2022), whom Russian soldiers had kidnapped and executed near Kharkiv.
At the beginning of 2024, however, it is the turn of Maksym Kryvcov (1990-2024), known by the nom de guerre “Dali”: killed in combat at the age of 33, he was a poet and a prominent volunteer, whose death shook the entire nation. He had just published the collection of verses “Poems from the crossbowman” (Virši z byjnyci) which he dreamed of giving to the (former) commander of the armed forces Valery Zalužnyj.
Considering that literature, war literature in particular, is losing very important figures day after day, between June and October 2022, the PEN Ukraine group and the project Read itwith the support of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), launched the initiative Slova i kuli (Words and Bullets) to give voice to Ukrainian writers and journalists who joined the armed forces or became volunteers following the large-scale Russian invasion.
Several well-known names appear on the front, such as the writers Artem Čech and Artem Čapaj, the director originally from the Crimean peninsula Oleh Sencov (prisoner of the Russians from 2014 to 2019) and the journalist of Georgian origins Vachtang Kipiani.
Engaged in voluntary work are the poet and singer-songwriter Serhij Žadan, known in Italy thanks to the publishing house Voland who has published several of his novels, and the writer Andrij Ljubka, who raises funds to provide cars to the armed forces and puts on free shows for displaced children on the theme of war; until July 2023, Viktorija Amelina was also part of the team.
From the Majdan revolution to today’s war
Telling the war in words is not an easy task; and yet, it is necessary. And as well as being necessary, it becomes inevitable when you find yourself with the war at home. But how can we describe the massacres, the inhumane trenches, the artillery fire and the tragic reality of the front? How to convey pain, suffering, anger and fear in a few verses? And, above all, who manages to fulfill this task and why is it important to maintain this cultural memory?
One of the very first poets of independent Ukraine to write from the front is Borys Humenjuk, who enters the history of Ukrainian war literature with the collection “Poems from the War” (Virši from vijna) published in 2014, a crucial year for Ukrainian history. From 27 December 2022 appears missing . In its last interview , released only in February 2023, the poet declared that he felt ready for a war with Russia: “I don’t expect to go back. If it happens, it will be a miracle.”
As an artist, Humenjuk has been able to fully exploit the opportunities of war in the new world of information since the first conflict: he wrote on Facebook from the front, about more or less important events, some political thoughts, without ever forgetting verses and poetry.
For a writer, the word is a true driving force of life, even in the trenches, but writing in war and about war is something complex: “It is not enough to have combat experience and be a war hero, it takes literary talent. We need a Ukrainian Hemingway” Humenjuk pointed out, praising his colleagues Artem Čech, Serhij Pantjuk, Olena Herasymjuk, and Vasyl’-Žyvosyl Ljutyj (bandura player) and Ihor Dvyhalo, a bard nicknamed “master”.
Humenjuk’s verses, with a calm but intense tone and full of sentimentalism, differ from the more naive and original ones of Marija Starožyc’ka, journalist and playwright who now dedicates most of her time to volunteering and writing, and whose poems appear regularly on his Facebook page . In the volume “For what” (Navyšo. What for) of 2015, Starožyc’ka documents a year and a half of his life and work linked to the Majdan and the outbreak of military operations on the eastern territory of Ukraine, while the theatrical work “The Bag” (Boiler – which refers to the term war) narrates the events of a group of fighters surrounded during the hard times Battle of Ilovajs’k .
“My experience as a writer helps me, because sometimes [la realtà della guerra] It can be psychologically difficult. I try to grasp the details, sometimes I write something on my phone so I don’t forget. For example, funny or interesting phrases”: that’s how Artem Čech spy his need to write and simultaneously fight to defend his country since 2015-2016, when he left for the first time as a volunteer soldier. In 2022, despite continuing to define himself as a civilian, he has returned to the ranks of the armed forces, but writing does not abandon him.
“Poetry is my way of expressing the truth and ideas that are discovered on the front lines. I always write poetry in a state of pain. I don’t write when I’m happy” affirms Yaryna Čornuhuz poet and paramedic at the front since 2014, known for her solo protest in March 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, “Spring on the granite” (homage to Revolution on granite ) against the presidential administration’s decision to grant quasi-legal status to the breakaway republics of Luhansk and Donetsk. His book “How to explain the vicious circle” was published in 2020” (How to get rid of the military wheel) which contains a collection of free verse poems on trench warfare.
Long before the disputed Donbas region became a war zone, the poet Lyuba Yakimchuk described with a smile the wild apricot trees in bloom in Pervomajs’k, Mykolaiv Oblast. Now that poem “The Apricots of Donbas” (Abrikosy Donbasu) begins with the line “Where apricots no longer grow, Russia begins.”
What do we say about the war and the war?
Some stories and initiatives from the war and about the war predate the invasion of February 24, 2022. As part of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the graphic novel “On the Mainland” was released in spring 2021 (Na velykij zemli ), a joint work by Artem Čech and the illustrator of Lithuanian origins Beata Kurkul. The comic narrates the return to civilian life of a Ukrainian soldier (fighter on the Eastern Front in 2014) who tries to give meaning to his life. It is a short work, but full of meaning, whose first words spoken by a paramedic are: “A brother leaves…” (Throw out brother). Death, however, is left out of the frame, because there is no need to brazenly show crude realism; even finding the words can be difficult.
We experience the same sensations reading the second volume of Pavlo Derev’yanko’s fantasy trilogy “The War Trap” (Teneta vijny), in which war – set in 1852 in imaginary lands – torments the lives of five brothers in arms. The “breaking latest news of the Gray Order” trilogy (Litopys Siroho Ordenu) is a tribute to the Ukrainian defenders.
The anthropologist and journalist Olesja Jaremčuk also addresses the theme of war, but does so through the stories of minorities. If in “Ukraine Mosaic” (Our Inši) the war appears almost distant, in its most recent reports published by Reporters reveals all the pain he carries with him.
All the books written during the war (even those that do not concern it closely) refer to it. “Every work of fiction written after Ilovajs’k, after Volnovakha, after Mariupol’, after Bucha must show our respect for the memory of the fallen” writes Hanna Uljura talking about cultural memory , stating that survivors of the war have a fairly clear task: to glorify the heroes and mourn the dead; one task, not two.
“What else remains for us, the poets still alive, if not to pass on the memory, tell, write and translate the dead?”. Yaryna Grusha thus ends yet another obituary article on the tragedy that strikes the pens of Ukraine.
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