“Inside me, where the Russian language used to be, is a dead, stinking, rotting animal.” Since 2014, and even more since February 24th, Iya Kiva lives with the corpse of a part of himself. And her words express an excruciating pain. Ukrainian poet and translator from Donetsk, since Moscow invaded her country she no longer writes in her first language: «My mind is no longer able to veer in the Russian direction. To write, I have to imagine an interlocutor, someone with whom to share the same space ». And now it is no longer possible to do so. «After the Revolution of dignity I started writing in Ukrainian because for me it was a manifestation of belonging to the space with which I was in solidarity. And if in 2014 I had to abandon my life in Donetsk, on February 24, 2022 the Russian army permanently took away my mother tongue from me ». Kiva answers her questions by writing during her long journey that she took her from Lviv, where she lives, to Pordenone, where today, with her colleague Halyna Kruk, in Pordenonelegge she will present Ukrainian poets (Mondadori): an intense anthology, curated by Alessandro Achilli and Yaryna Grusha Possamai, born in wartime and which traces sixty years of Ukrainian poetry marked by the relationship with Moscow, by the lyrics of Vasyl ‘Stus, who died in a gulag , to the verses written under Putin’s missiles.
Paraphrasing Adorno, is poetry after Bucha possible?
“When you see the images of Bucha, Borodjanka, Mariupol, Izjum and Irpin you ask yourself, because there is always the risk of the aestheticization of war or the appropriation of the experience of others. But the purpose of the poetry that is written now is to testify and this type of poetry is not perceived as an aesthetic act, but as a civil act, a duty towards the present and the future of Ukraine ”.
He left Donetsk for Kiev, and then for Lviv. What does it mean for you to be a volunteer?
“Lviv is one of the main centers for volunteers. Sometimes we get attacked with missiles, but fortunately not as often as elsewhere. Living here, compared to other parts of Ukraine, means imitating a kind of normality, even if our lives revolve exclusively around war, to help our soldiers and assist each other. I have been living for a few months at the house of a woman named Anna, who took me with her without asking me for a penny and without us knowing each other. She tells me: “I don’t want to get rich with war”. And I have a chance to make some offers to the army instead of spending the money on rent. In the first months I worked shifts at the station helping refugees, now I take care of military camouflage sheets and I carry out organizational tasks. My days are divided between volunteering and literary activity. Everyone here does a lot, small gestures, but which give us the possibility of surviving and reaching victory ».
Do intellectuals have a duty to society?
«Judging by the number of artists who are fighting in the Ukrainian Armed Forces or who are involved in civilian and military volunteers, I would say that they perceive themselves primarily as Ukrainian citizens. And the Ukrainians realize that victory in this war is a question of survival, which concerns the future not only of Ukraine but of all of Europe. “Stand with Ukraine” is not enough, it has to be “Win with Ukraine”. A military, cultural, media and economic victory. For a certain period, the war theme will remain the pivot around which literature will revolve, I find it natural. Culture always fights to limit barbarism, in the eternal struggle between good and evil ”.
Do you think it is right to cut cultural relations between Europe and Russia, or is culture universal and must always unite? And what do you think about the boycott of Russian culture?
«I will say something quite controversial: before building bridges with the civilized world, especially in the area of culture, Russia must cleanse itself of the blood it has stained. Christianity has practices of repentance, while the secular world can reflect on how Russia – which has always used her culture as a matryoshka covering violence – has turned into a barbaric country. From this point of view, the boycott of Russian culture can be perceived not only as an act of solidarity with today’s Ukraine, not only as an ethical paradigm of reaction to aggression, but also as the possibility of giving Russia a historic chance to embark on a path of repentance, on the crimes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Ukraine but also Georgia, Syria and Chechnya. I urge cultural actors around the world to think of a boycott of Russian culture as a kind of cultural sanction that would push Russian intellectuals to stop posing as victims on stages around the world and instead start talking to Russian society. Only in this way can Russia change. Because if Russian society does not change – not just Putin’s regime – in a few years Ukraine will be the victim of a new aggression. If the crimes of Russia, especially the crimes against humanity, that is the extermination of us Ukrainians due only to the fact that we have a Ukrainian identity, did not testify to the abyss that passes between Russia and the countries that expect the values of freedom and democracy, then one could speak of the universality of culture. The war – supported by the majority of Russians – is the direct demonstration of the defeat of Russian culture, which is absolutely powerless, unable to stop the dehumanization of Russian citizens, their furiousness. “If this is a man”, Primo Levi wrote. “Are these men?”, You can’t help but wonder looking at what they do. And I’m not just referring to those who follow orders. Because it is not Putin who created Russian society expecting something concrete from it, it is the opposite: Russian society has laid the foundations for Putin and his politics. Where Russian culture ends and where imperial delusions of grandeur begin I don’t know. But I know that Russian culture knows how to separate (divide et impera), proclaiming that anyone who does not belong to it is inferior. What I ask in turn is: and does Europe want to decide to build bridges with Ukraine? ».
In his poems he talks about refugees and uprooting. What will it be like for the Ukrainians to rebuild the country?
«All Ukrainians who have felt the war on their skin will never be able to get rid of it. We will continue to navigate for a long time in the murky waters of war, as in a deep well from which you cannot ascend. But the fact remains that the victory that we all expect, because we Ukrainians have no choice but to win, will confirm that we are not only the victims of aggression but people of an incredible spirit. It will not be difficult for such people to rebuild their country ».
What is the role of literature now? Can you read during the war?
“Literature is the way we understand reality. But the Ukrainians can’t read now, because the war takes up all of our space. I have problems with concentration and memory, reading is a physically painful task. I force myself to do it to maintain a mental form. Poems. The only prose book I’ve been able to read is I Blame Auschwitz by Mikołaj Grynberg. I read it in Polish and I realized that reading in foreign languages is easier for me, it creates a safe distance. It is an example of how harmful a traumatic experience the size of the Holocaust can be, not only for eyewitnesses but also for their children and grandchildren. Many heirs of the survivors said that Hitler won the war because they never had a normal life ».