‘Mondegreen’: Songs about Death and Love by Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Volodymyr Rafeyenko is not a new figure in Ukrainian literature. He debuted with his novel “The Length of Days: An Urban Ballad” in 2017. By then, he already was a seasoned writer who had left his previous career behind. The fact is that until 2014 and the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian war, Rafeyenko lived in Donetsk, his hometown.

He wrote in Russian, and was a part of the Russian literary scene rather than the Ukrainian one. The war marked a turning point in the writer’s life, and greatly influenced his writing. Rafeyenko is currently focused on the experience of living through a war, the internal displacement from occupied Donetsk to Kyiv, and his transition from Russian to Ukrainian (and from the Russian cultural space to the Ukrainian one). His prose acts as a kind of harbinger of war’s madness and the apocalypse.

His 2019 novel Mondegreen stands as his first book of prose written in Ukrainian. Gaba Gabinsky, the protagonist, is a displaced person from Donbas who transitioned from Russian to Ukrainian, and is now exploring the intricacies of his new home. What does this transition look like? In Rafeyenko’s book, it is a journey akin to wandering through Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland.

Mad philosopher

The novel opens as Gaba is walking along one of the residential districts in Kyiv and pondering aloud about language and his existence. If one pays close attention, it becomes clear that we are listening to an impromptu yet remarkable lecture on the philosophy of language, albeit delivered by a man who seems either mad or extremely traumatized by the war.

In Rafeyenko’s works, a common recurring character archetype is someone who is seemingly not of this world. The mental breakdown experienced by his characters connects them less with the literary tradition of psychiatric hospitals and madness and more with the biblical prophets and holy fools. For Gaba, the war precipitates his mental breakdown, leading him to perceive the world in broader and deeper ways. We know from cultural history that “madmen” often transmit divine truths and become the voice of gods on earth. Similarly, the war opens the eyes of Rafeyenko’s characters to the true nature of the world and its people.

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Gaba is a hapless seer who experiences moments of expanded consciousness when, instead of seeing ordinary people in a supermarket, he perceives their primal, animalistic nature. This unique blend of madness and vision allows him to witness the transformation of individuals in Donbas, who, just like the girl he’s in love with, break out of their old selves as if hatching from egg shells, emerging as entirely new creatures. These metamorphoses, the kind that would have impressed Virgil, are vividly depicted in Rafeyenko’s “The Length of Days: An Urban Ballad.”

Affair with language

The majority of events in Mondegreen unfold neither in Kyiv, nor in the occupied Donetsk, but within the protagonist’s mind, or to be precise, within the realm of language. The word “mondegreen” itself refers to misheard or misunderstood words, and this concept is central to the novel’s essence. Every word Gabinsky utters triggers a cascade of associations and quotations. The process is both precise and beautiful, even though people outside the Ukrainian context might not be able to fully understand it.

In Gabinsky’s mind, a fantastical collision continues between the Ukrainian and Russian worlds,a clash not of ideologies, but of distinct languages and cultures. “Mondegreen” illustrates that language and culture have never been neutral and safe. The language in this novel turns out to be a creature that swallows and manipulates you, and is lurking within the individual. Rafeyenko’s Gaba is shadowed by a creature — the Horse’s Head, drawn from folk tales. This creature, just like the mythological character Baba Yaga, represents the world of the dead.
It is worth mentioning that describing the transition from the reality of occupied Donetsk and his former life to free Kyiv, Rafeyenko employs the metaphor of dying. The characters in his novels undergo a symbolic death of their former selves to embark on a new existence, marked by a different language and cultural milieu. Consequently, it is fitting that in the Ukrainian-language life of the hero, he is accompanied by a figure from the fairy-tale kingdom of the dead.

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The story of Gaba’s wanderings in the world of the Ukrainian language began many years ago, in his childhood in Donetsk, where it was the language of children’s books, spoken by squirrels, nightingales and a creepy Horse’s Head. As the people around him spoke Russian, Gaba, considering himself to be a human being as well, naturally gravitated away from the Ukrainian-speaking world to speak “humanly” as well. Thus, when as an adult Gabinsky steps out of the confines of the Russian language, it’s no surprise that the first entities he encounters in the rich expanse of the melodious Ukrainian language are the fairy-tale creatures from his youth. And among them is the Horse’s Head, his new mentor and companion. In fact, she, like the animal guides of folklore, will lead Gaba through this new and beautiful world.

Orpheus of the war world

It seems that the word “war” itself has, over the last decade, also become a mondegreen — a word or phrase misheard or misinterpreted as a result of incomplete homophony, which is transformed into an expression or word with a new meaning. Consider how frequently people hear “conflict” in its place, And how many readers still confuse Rus and Russia? And how many substitute the reality of war with their own concept of it?

Volodymyr Rafeyenko’s Ukrainian novels are tales of individuals fleeing from war. Yet, they are devoid of the dramatic sentimentality often found in contemporary narratives about the world wars. There’s no room for tears. Rafeyenko’s characters resemble those from the Old Testament, their lives marked by wars, pain and eternal wandering. In Rafeyenko’s portrayal, war signifies the death of the old world, its habits and its language. All it produces is death and Old Testament lamentation. His characters are destined to be reborn into a new life and to continue their wandering. “Petrykor, the Smell of Ground After the Rain,” Rafeyenko’s newest novel, set during the period of the full-scale invasion, introduces us to “people of war,” new half-mad characters. They mistake the living and the dead, wander around Ukraine and Europe searching for their place in the world and peace. But do they find it? Rafeyenko leaves this question deliberately open.

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The publication is a part of the “Chytomo Picks: New Books from Ukraine” project. The materials have been prepared with the assistance of the Ukrainian Book Institute at the expense of the state budget. The author’s opinion may not coincide with the official position of the Ukrainian Book Institute.