Poetry

Poetry

Until recently poetry dominated the literary landscape. Romanticism, which came to life in the 1830s and flourished in Shevchenko’s works, never really ended. Recently it seemed that 2 out of 3 writers were poets, and prose suffered from a debilitating tendency to poeticize.

The younger generation of poets came on the scene determined to bury «the sweet Ukrainian style» as well as to put an end to the poetry of populist slogans and pathos. Yuri Andrukhovych, Oleksander Irvanets, and Victor Neborak — three poets from Western Ukraine (which is also not accidental) — founded in the mid 1980s a group called Bu-Ba-Bu (standing for Burlesque, Bunk, Buffoonery). In contrast to their predecessors, their poetry relied heavily on language games, where words, which had never before found their way into poetry, suddenly took on primary importance. The three poets are extremely sarcastic. They parody literary traditions, and, especially, all aspects of the poetic embodiment of the national project.

Their even younger followers and successors — members of numerous avant-garde (as they all call themselves) groups, took further steps toward wiping away the poetic vocabulary. For example, it appears that the aesthetic purpose of another group of poets called Propala Hramota (The Lost Certificate) is to shock the listener or reader with swear words and narratives describing the most unpoetic of situations.

Volodymyr Tsybul’ko, a poet from Kyiv, goes his own way. His work subverts grammar, spelling, orthography. His poetry challenges not only the rules of rhetoric but also of syntax, and the written word itself. It is essentially nonsense verse. The inner crisis of culture, disharmony and the confusion of the soul, growing out of profound psychological and social change, cannot be expressed through a harmonious current of masterly rhymed metaphors. His sabotage of the language is creative: his language games compensate for what may be seen as a universal sense of displacement.

The three members of the Bu-Ba-Bu group and their followers declared that the age of poetry has passed forever. The very notion of poetry suggested a provincialism and moral hypocrisy. They practically suggest it is shameful to write poetry of any kind. Vet they are themselves poets. Their own writing, however, has become part of a psychological hang-up. In a recent interview, Yuri Andrukhovych, on the occasion of his 33rd birthday, said he rejects the conventional view which regards poetry as being there to serve some social function. For him, poetry has only one duty and that is its obligation before the language. In this he finds support in the well known ideas of T. S. Eliot. Performing this function, he simultaneously fulfills his task before the people, the state, and humanity. But it isn’t his job to think about this. Then he offers his recipe on the subject of what a poet must and must not do: «… A poet must protest, must be unsatisfied with society, must insult it, etc., but he should be treated as a necessary evil.» The statement suggests that its author, like most members of the younger generation, does not yet have a clear purpose. His claim contradicts the myth of a disengaged literature.

Andrukhovych confidently issues directives and recipes for literature. He knows exactly what the art of the future will look like. And in this he does not differ greatly from many generations of his predecessors.

Three times during this century the future of Ukrainian literature was passionately debated: in the 1920s, the 1940s in the ?migr? literary community, and again at the end of the 1980s. Every time the same rhetoric and arguments were used, and the result was always the same: reality overruled all grand plans and predictions.

The latest Ukrainian poetry approaches words and emotions in a spirit of play. Becoming more and more philological and playful, it often substitutes verbal gaming for philosophical purpose. Some poets escape from life into hermetic, esoteric, abstract imagery. Those who are brave enough to propose spiritual solutions for the problems of modern life are on the margins of the literary world. Any hint of poetic support for state building is laughed at. The poet, working hand in glove with the politician, is vigorously derided.