Which language – which narrative?
From the moment I began writing my first Ukrainian novel, I decided that I was going to write in two languages: one novel in Ukrainian, the other in my native Russian. I really didn’t want to abandon the language of my parents. Although, in the end, I remembered the peculiarities of our familial language collisions. Russia was my parent’s native language, as it was mine. Because that’s how they’d been taught: Russian was the language of higher education, the language of the metropolis, the language that provided opportunities for professional career growth.
…everything turned out differently. On February 24 of this year Russia brought their culture, on tanks, all the way to Kyiv. At that time, my wife and I were staying in a friend’s country house between Bucha and Borodyanka […]. We quickly found ourselves surrounded by a ring of Russian troops and soon began an incredibly challenging and frightening period for us. I will not describe what we had to live through or how volunteers saved us, taking us out of the occupied territories at great risk to their own lives. I will only say that after February 24, I decided that never again in my life would I write or publish any of my work in Russian. I no longer want anything to do with a culture of murderers and rapists.
Kiev is located on the Dnieper River and has been the capital of Ukraine since 1991. According to the oldest Russian chronicle, the Nestor Chronicle, Kiev was first mentioned in 862. It was the main settlement of Kievan Rus' until 1362, when it fell to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, becoming part of the Polish-Lithuanian noble republic in 1569. In 1667, after the uprising under Cossack leader Bogdan Chmel'nyc'kyj and the ensuing Polish-Russian War, Kiev became part of Russia. In 1917 Kiev became the capital of the Ukrainian People's Republic, in 1918 of the Ukrainian National Republic, and in 1934 of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Kiev was also called the "Mother of all Russian Cities", "Jerusalem of the East", "Capital of the Golden Domes" and "Heart of Ukraine".
Kiev is heavily contested in the Russian-Ukrainian war.
Due to the war in Ukraine, it is possible that this information is no longer up to date.
I had a certain amount of luck. I have long ceased to be interested in Russian culture or contemporary Russian literature. I have never received literary honors either in Russia or Ukraine. I have no emotional relationship with Russia. I probably had one once, but that is a long time ago. In any event, I have been on a war footing with Russian literature for a long time. My books were banned in Russia for the first time following the Orange Revolution in 2005. After the annexation of Crimea and the beginning of the war in Donbas in 2014, their import from Ukraine for distribution in Russia become prohibited. I have never felt myself part of Russian literature, and I have never seen my Russian language as belonging to Russian culture or to the Russian Federation. My Russian belongs to me and is part of a phenomenon called Russophonia, that is, the use of the Russian language outside Russia. This phenomenon will gradually disappear in Ukraine as well as in other countries, and Russia is actually doing all it can to ensure that as many people as possible distance themselves from the Russian language.7
Andrej Kurkov: “Mein Russisch gehört mir”. In: Die Welt, 19 August 2022
Handcraft – that is something for the hands. And these hands in turn belong to just one person, that is, a unique and mortal soul, who seeks a path with his voice and with his silence. Only true hands can write true poetry. I see no fundamental difference between a handshake and a poem.9