Writing in Wartime

Writing produced during a war is emotionally charged; the texts testify to strong emotions, anguish, anger, and hatred. In reaction to this, German intellectuals have raised a finger of remonstration and warning, calling for moderation from Ukrainian authors.

"Have we really reached the point where a writer who expressly outs himself as a hater of an entire nation must be awarded the prestigious Peace Prize of the German Book Trade? In his book "Sky Above Kharkiv", the Ukrainian poet Serhij Zhadan calls the Russians a "mob", "criminals", "animals", "filth". And it continues: "Russians are barbarians, they have come to destroy our history, our culture, our education." The Peace Prize winner writes: "Burn in hell, you pigs.""

Franz Alt, Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels: Skandalöse Auszeichnung, taz (https://taz.de/Friedenspreis-des-Deutschen-Buchhandels/!5886985/)

This quote is taken from a guest commentary published by journalist Franz Alt in the taz on October 25, 2022. Alt, a self-proclaimed Christian, published a book entitled Peace is Possible in 1983 and is one of the signatories of the so-called "open letter of German intellectuals," which was presented to the German Chancellor in April 2022.

Franz Alt's commentary serves as a springboard for my discussion on contemporary Ukrainian literature, a literature being produced under extreme circumstances, where writers are no longer reaching for long, traditional literary forms, but opting instead for art forms that reflect the stress and lack of time that are inherent to living under the shadow of war: Essays, poems, and war diaries, where each entry uses a precious window of time in which to record feelings and thoughts. The publication platforms include social media (Serhij Zhadan), daily newspapers (Oksana Matychuk, Evgenija Belarusets, Jurij Durkot) and essay volumes (Oksana Zabuzhko, Tanja Maljartschuk). The writer Victoria Amelina, who died during a Russian attack on July 1, 2023 at the age of 37, had not written any novels since the beginning of the war, but collected testimonies relating to war crimes and has now become a victim of a war crime herself.1 Meanwhile, Tanya Maljartschuk writes in her essay Anno belli, which appeared shortly after the beginning of the war:

"I am no longer a writer and perhaps will never be able to be one. Words freeze in me, they die, perish with each successive missile that bombards and shreds my world."

Tanja Maljartschuk, Anno belli (2022). In: dies., Gleich geht die Geschichte weiter, wir atmen nur aus. Essays. Köln 2022, pp. 138-142, here: p. 141.

But it is not only the form that has adapted to this extreme situation – content has also changed: Texts are often emotionally charged, impassioned works that come from a place of deep anguish, profound dismay, or express extremely touching moments, tending more towards pathos than ethos, and evoking a range of powerful feelings from shock to thrill to anger and hatred. On the one hand, this should not be regarded as an anomaly, for "great emotions" have always defined art. Aristotle's Poetics, for example, testifies to the fact that literature not only depicts, but should also generate feelings, such as fear or pity.2 On the other hand, there are commentators, in particular, authors of feature articles in the German-language media, who are opposed to the raw emotions being expressed by Ukrainian authors and have called for rationality in dealing with the enemy. In the worst cases, we have seen displays of a cold lack of empathy, like when Jakob Augstein, in a conversation with Tanya Maljarchuk, claimed that anger, rage and grief "nourish literature" after Maljarchuk had spoken of not being able to write because she, like her country, was teetering on the brink of the abyss.3 While Ukrainian authors are being lectured and rebuked, then thrown back into a nightmarish, life-threatening reality, their German interviewers and interlocutors speak of aesthetics and reason.

There are a number of examples in the so-called "German debate culture" where the emotional, often angry texts of Ukrainian authors are met with German incomprehension, which in extreme cases leads to conversations that resemble car accidents rather than dialogues, as Stefan Winterbauer writes in the aftermath of the verbal and emotional clash between Augstein and Maljartschuk.4 I would like to take a closer look at the debate – or collision – between Oksana Zabuzhko and the Slavist Jens Herlth: On February 24, when the war broke out, Zabuzhko happened to be in Warsaw for a reading, and on that day began what she herself calls "The Longest Book Tour" – the title of her latest book, translated by Alexander Kratochvil. Oksana Zabuzhko, born in 1960, is one of the most important contemporary Ukrainian authors; before February 24, when she left for a two-day reading in

OpenStreetMap / Open Database License (ODbL)

Warszawa

deu. Warschau, eng. Warsaw, deu. Warszowa, deu. Warszewa, yid. Varše, yid. וואַרשע, rus. Варшава, rus. Varšava

Warsaw is the capital of Poland and also the largest city in the country (population in 2022: 1,861,975). It is located in the Mazovian Voivodeship on Poland's longest river, the Vistula. Warsaw first became the capital of the Polish-Lithuanian noble republic at the end of the 16th century, replacing Krakow, which had previously been the Polish capital. During the partitions of Poland-Lithuania, Warsaw was occupied several times and finally became part of the Prussian province of South Prussia for eleven years. From 1807 to 1815 the city was the capital of the Duchy of Warsaw, a short-lived Napoleonic satellite state; in the annexation of the Kingdom of Poland under Russian suzerainty (the so-called Congress Poland). It was not until the establishment of the Second Polish Republic after the end of World War I that Warsaw was again the capital of an independent Polish state.

At the beginning of World War II, Warsaw was conquered and occupied by the Wehrmacht only after intense fighting and a siege lasting several weeks. Even then, a five-digit number of inhabitants were killed and parts of the city, known not least for its numerous baroque palaces and parks, were already severely damaged. In the course of the subsequent oppression, persecution and murder of the Polish and Jewish population, by far the largest Jewish ghetto under German occupation was established in the form of the Warsaw Ghetto, which served as a collection camp for several hundred thousand people from the city, the surrounding area and even occupied foreign countries, and was also the starting point for deportation to labor and extermination camps.

As a result of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising from April 18, 1943 and its suppression in early May 1943, the ghetto area was systematically destroyed and its last inhabitants deported and murdered. This was followed in the summer of 1944 by the Warsaw Uprising against the German occupation, which lasted two months and resulted in the deaths of almost two hundred thousand Poles, and after its suppression the rest of Warsaw was also systematically destroyed by German units.

In the post-war period, many historic buildings and downtown areas, including the Warsaw Royal Castle and the Old Town, were rebuilt - a process that continues to this day.

Warszawa in the Online Encyclopedia of the Culture and History of the Germans in Eastern Europe (German)

Warszawa at Google Maps

, she had lived in

OpenStreetMap / Open Database License (ODbL)

Kyjiw

deu. Kiew, eng. Kiev, eng. Kyiv, pol. Kijów

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.

Kyjiw in the Online Encyclopedia of the Culture and History of the Germans in Eastern Europe (German)

Kyjiw at Google Maps

; since then she has been staying with her literary agent in Warsaw. On the 60th day of the war – which Zabuzhko calls the 83rd of February – she writes: "I'm still wearing the same coat as on February 23, when I flew to Warsaw."5

The book contains several essays that deal with the history of Ukraine, which is intertwined with the biography of the author. Taking this book as an example, one thing the war texts have in common is that they are always – also – about Ukraine. Zabuzhko’s text is also about what happens to a writer who suddenly has nothing else to do but explain Ukraine.

"When the first Western journalist who called me on February 24 (at eight in the morning, humming impatiently) asked with sincere curiosity what I meant, what Putin wanted, I answered with a shout. I paced up and down the room, shouting at the poor man through the phone as if he embodied the whole collective West: ‘Are you making fun of me?! He has told you dozens of times directly to your face what he wants: for Ukrainians to disappear, to vanish into thin air, for us to cease to exist like Hitler's Jews, he even uses the same words. 'Final solution of the Ukraine question'. How long are you going to pretend that you didn't hear that? ... He's been hammering into your heads for eight years that Ukrainians and Russians are one people, and in the summer he published a brainless article about it, just like Stalin once did about linguistics. What's not to understand about that, that this is the annexation of a country? Did you really believe that he would stop after Crimea?’”

Oksana Sabuschko, Die längste Buchtour : Essay. Graz 2022, pp. 33-34

You can hear the anger in her words: "I answered with a shout", i.e., her verbal anger is underscored by her raised voice. Here, Zabuzhko is angry at the journalist who asks naïve questions, but also at the "collective West" that simply did not listen properly for years, and – probably – she is angry above all at Russia, which wants "the Ukrainians to disappear." At the same time, anger implies a moral dimension; the American psychologist James Averill writes in his 1982 book Anger and Aggression that rage is set in motion by an unjustified act.6 The angry person thus reacts to a violation of moral principles.

However, Zabuzhko comes into direct confrontation with the Western perspective – this time that of a Slavist – through another text: Lektionen von einem großen Bluff, published in the NZZ on April 22, 2022, again translated by Alexander Kratochvil. In it, Zabuzhko makes a radical reckoning with Russian literature, which, she says, has seduced the West. The West tries "to rationalize evil, to understand the criminal (as Dostoevsky did in his novels).”7

Zabuzhko’s text is characterized by its breathlessness: she speaks of how the Russians have been deprived of free breathing, they breathe "as if under water and trivially hate those who have lungs instead of gills".8 At the same time, Zabuzhko writes breathless sentences, that is, she performs what she talks about: "It must be stated that an entire country has been infected by this underwater breathing and that a monologue, a totalitarian monologue exists along a power vertical from top to bottom, in landscape, architecture, language and ideology, from which have emerged monotonous cities and streets, films and television programs, and always the same monuments, ideally "from Lisbon to

Wladiwostok

deu. Wladiwostok, rus. Владивосто́к

Vladivostok in the Online Encyclopedia of the Culture and History of the Germans in Eastern Europe (German)

Vladivostok at Google Maps

" – it is a prison with a correspondingly brutal hierarchy of planetary proportions."9

She uses a long, breathless sentence with repetitions ("a monologue, a totalitarian monologue") that increase in intensity, as well as nouns and adjectives with associations of horror: "a prison with a correspondingly brutal hierarchy of planetary proportions."

Zabuzhko’s radical thesis that Russian literature has seduced the West, "staged itself as a beautiful princess [imprisoned] by a brutal power, and finally quietly [infected] the West with its childishly passive insensitivity to evil,"10 provoked a swift reaction from German-language (specifically, Swiss) Slavic experts: Jens Herlth of Fribourg and Thomas Grob of Basel have written articles in defense of Russian literature. Herlth calls Zabuzhko’s worldview "mythical" because, first, she dehumanizes Russians (as a result of Russian literature) and implies that Russian literature is devoid of European and humanistic elements. Of course, one could argue that her statement is radical – but isn't Ukraine facing a radical situation at the moment? When Herlth writes about Zabushko's essay that "processes in the real historical and political world elude her worldview,"11 he, the German professor, attributes to the Ukrainian author a wild thinking that is inferior to rational and implicitly Western thinking.

At this point, doesn't Slavic studies, which has so far exclusively "looked at Kyiv through Russian glasses,"12 as Zabuzhko’s rightly observes, have to do some soul-searching and consider how to take a different, critical look at Slavic literatures – and thus also at Russian – not from the perspective of the center, but from the periphery? The aforementioned Victoria Amelina wrote in an essay that the “cancel culture” being waged (or not waged) against Russian culture at the moment is nothing compared to the “execute culture” of the 1930s, when Ukrainian culture was virtually annihilated by the Russian rulers. "Instead of debating how to deal with Russian culture, Western intellectuals should be talking about how to prevent the next Execution Renaissance Execution Renaissance The term "Execution Renaissance" refers to the generation of Ukrainian writers of the 1920s and 1930s who flourished in the early days of the Soviet Union, but were then executed in the course of the repressions of the 1930s. ," she writes.13

Through the highly emotional texts they are currently writing, Ukrainian authors are reacting to the violence that they and their country are experiencing from the outside. Their strong emotions are expressed in words (in explicit insults, according to Zhadan), but also in their tone of voice (when Oksana Zabuzhko shouts), and of course in rhetoric (through repetition and heightened emotional expression). And what do some German critics counter these emotions with? Lectures, rationalizations, aestheticization, and calls for moderation. The question is whether such disciplining, with all due respect to the democratic claim of a "German debate culture," is the right reaction at this time.

This article is part of a series of articles that goes back to the conference German Narratives on Russia's War in Ukraine_, which took place as part of the Volkswagen Foundation's_ War in Ukraine theme week (February 22-24, 2023, Herrenhausen Palace, Hanover). The conference and the translation of this article were made possible by the Volkswagen Foundation.

Footnotes

Victoria Amelina, Cancel Culture gegen Execute Culture. In: Aleksandra Konarzewska Schamma Schahadat / Nina Weller (ed.), “Alles ist teurer als ukrainisches Leben”. Texte über Westsplaining und den Krieg. Berlin 2023, pp. 56-63. – On Amelina see, for example, Uilleam Blacker, “Victoria Amelina Obituary“, in: The Guardian, 7.7.2023 (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/07/victoria-amelina-obituary; accessed on 24.7.2023). ^

Ottmar Ette / Gertrud Lehnert: Einleitung. In: dies. (ed.), Große Gefühle. Ein Kaleidoskop. Berlin 2007, pp. 7-11; here: p. 7. ^

https://www.radioeins.de/programm/sendungen/sendungen/353/2210/221017_radioeins_und_freitag_salon_18588.html, approx. 6:40. ^

Stefan Winterbauer, Augstein vs. Maljartschuk, 21.10.22. https://www.meedia.de/medien/augstein-vs-maljartschuk-ein-gespraech-wie-ein-autounfall-507675c859e475a16c90f371db8cf304. ^

Oksana Sabuschko, Die längste Buchtour : Essay. Graz 2022, p. 18. ^

Quote from Alfred Stumm, Wütende Texte. Die Sprache heißen Zorns in der deutschen Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts. Berlin 2022, p. 17. ^

Oksana Sabuschko, Lektionen aus einem großen Bluff. In: Aleksandra Konarzewska Schamma Schahadat / Nina Weller (ed.), “Alles ist teurer als ukrainisches Leben”. Texte über Westsplaining und den Krieg. Berlin 2023, pp. 80-87; here: p. 82. ^

Ibid., inaccurate quotation. ^

Ibid. ^

10.

Ibid., p. 85. ^

11.

Jens Herlth, Was kann denn Tolstoi dafür?, In: Aleksandra Konarzewska Schamma Schahadat / Nina Weller (Hgg.), “Alles ist teurer als ukrainisches Leben”. Texte über Westsplaining und den Krieg. Berlin 2023, pp. 92-96; here: p. 92. ^

12.

Victoria Amelina, FN 2, p. 46. ^

13.

Victoria Amelina, FN 2, p. 46. ^

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Writing in Wartime

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