Yuri Andrukhovych on irony during war, ‘quarantining’ Russian’ and why he believes in a Ukrainian victory

Yuri Andrukhovych is a name that carries weight in Ukrainian literature, though from the sound of it, the Ivano-Frankivsk native, a significant figure in Ukraine’s intellectual scene since the early 90s, would rather be seen as a writer and poet who is “light of his feet” — able to keep his sense of humor and wit amidst the daily struggles of Ukrainian reality since the start of the full scale invasion.  

It’s a mentality he fears will become more difficult for Ukrainian writers to maintain as the war drags on.

“I hope this war is not eternal, because my concern is that because of the war, we are now somehow too serious in our cultural ideas and the cultural works and maybe too pathetic. So it is something which I tried to attack, during all my life, (the idea) that, “Ukrainianess,” Ukrainian tradition is too serious and too pathetic. And maybe we have a good perspective to do it, more playful, more ironical, more open,” he said during a recent interview in English with Chytomo. 

We met Andrukhovych in early September at Fraktura, a modern, elegant bookstore (run by the publishing house of the same name) near the Victims of Fascism Square in Zagreb, Croatia’s capital. He was there for the Festival of World Literature to promote the new Croatian translation of his novel “Radio Night.” The interview, conducted in English, covered a range of topics — from his relationship with music as a writer and shifts in his views on the future of the Ukrainian language, how long he thinks the war will last, his views on roundtables with Russian writers, his frustrations with Western media coverage, and why he believes in a Ukrainian victory. Finally, Andrukhovych also teased his latest project, a new work set in a city in the Carpathian Mountains.

The transcript, which continues below, has been lightly edited for clarity and readability.

Chytomo: So you are in Zagreb to discuss a new translation of your book “Radio Night” into Croatian. How do you hope it is received? 

Andrukhovych: I hope it’s well received, because I still love this novel very much. And I had good reactions in my country, first of all. And it has been published in Germany and now in Poland. And, I expect more publications in a few other countries. This is quite a complicated novel. In the very center of it is a piano player who used to be a rock musician, and then he went to the most important political event in his country. It was a huge revolution in the capital. So he used to play piano music for the barricades at that time. And, it is quite a musical novel. I always dreamt about writing in a musical way, that my book could somehow ‘sound.’ And this book really has the possibility to ‘sound’ because there is a playlist connected to the book. You can get it, just through a QR code, and then you find it on YouTube.

Chytomo: Because the playlist corresponds to specific parts of the book? 

Andrukhovych: Yes, because I forgot to mention his role after the revolution. He’s working at a radio station, his private radio station, and we spend the night with him. He starts broadcasting at midnight, and we are with him until eight in the morning. And he tells stories about his adventures in that life. But at the same time, he plays his favorite music for listeners. And so we get these 15 songs in the playlist.

Chytomo: Did you, when looking at the writing as it corresponds to the music, was it a question of rhythm? Was it a question of emotional tone? How did you find yourself responding to the music as it was to the actual prose? 

Andrukhovych: Yeah, it was my dream to play some music, to be a member of some band since I was a teenager. But I didn’t learn any instrument, so I tried to… It was the reason I became a poet. Because I was going to meet some friends, musicians, and I could write the lyrics for them. And it was just the dream of my youth. But it became a reality after many years. And I started collaborating with many bands. First of all, I have a long cooperation with Polish musicians, the band Karbido.

And so we recorded five albums. And I experienced some other kind of artistic life, not just literary routine, but also this way of life of a progressive rock band. And it was this experience which I wanted very much to transform into literary text. So it is like mutual richness between my literary career and musical experience.

Chytomo: How did you find that your work is received in Croatia? And how do you see it for Ukrainian authors more generally?

Andrukhovych: I think we have a very positive situation in the sense that the people here in Croatia are highly qualified readers, so to speak. If you just take a walk here in the city of Zagreb, you’ll see many bookstores. This is a reading culture, a reading society. And Ukrainian authors, like me, a few of us have been translated into Croatian in the last year. And also, this is a question of translators.

So there is not a very large number of them who can translate from Ukrainian. But for example, the translators who did ‘Radio Night,’ they are two professors of Ukrainian studies at the university here [Dariya Pavlešen and Ana Dugandžić]. And they are just brilliant. So I cannot read in Croatian, I cannot really understand this language, but I get some feedback, articles, reviews from Croatian media. And I’m always very satisfied to find here this very high understanding of what I do.

I’m also very happy that the books written by my daughter, Sophia Andrukhovych, are published here. Two of them are even here in this bookstore. I can see ‘Amadoka,’ her newest novel. So I think it’s a very productive situation for us, Ukrainian authors. And I’m afraid we in Ukraine haven’t published many Croatian authors. We don’t have such a vision of what today’s Croatian literature is.

Chytomo: Let’s take a step back to talk about the Ukrainian language and literature as a whole. As I was preparing, I went back and read an interview you gave in 2020 to Volodymyr Yermolenko for the book “Ukraine in Histories and Stories: Essays by Ukrainian Intellectuals.” At the time, you were fairly pessimistic. It was a different moment. You were afraid that, because of the constant influence of Russia, Ukraine would become a predominately Russian speaking country. 

A lot has happened since. 

Andrukhovych: Yeah, of course, it’s a very interesting paradox of the Russian military invasion. The aggressors cut off Ukraine; they just pushed us from their shadow, away. And I think three years ago, I was also critical about the political choice of Ukrainians in 2019. I was critical towards the president and his government and I didn’t see the future of Ukraine optimistically. But again, the war has changed it. So it’s a very extreme situation, which suddenly brings some completely unexpected developments. Unexpected things are going on, like this solidarity, the unity of all the regions of Ukraine and a much higher level of patriotism. So I’m actually much more optimistic now than in the year 2020. 

Chytomo: What do you consider the role of language and literature in this struggle for sovereignty and the struggle for independence?

Andrukhovych: Yes, I’m quite far away from the idea that the writer should be some kind of national teacher or leader of national development. I think the main function is just to give that chance for the language and for freedom of thinking and freedom of expression. And, you know, as one of the post-Soviet countries, Ukraine had huge problems with this aspect, with freedom of speech, for example. But Ukrainian writers are one of the social groups which has changed a lot of things in that sense. So, the fact that we have defeated any censorship, I mean, not just the institutional one but also this personal censorship, which was very typical for Soviet times. Writers were very restricted in their own imaginative power.

And so the writers are part of the cultural landscape in the world, which is always visible. They are very active in social networks, in media. They are not so actively read as they are heard. And I would say there are many, many dozens of thousands of people who know me, but they haven’t read any of my books. They know my statements, my interviews, my political proposals. And so it’s a very special work and task.

And the last point I would like to make is, you know, as the Russians came to some Ukrainian cities like Mariupol and occupied them, one of the first moves, one of the first attacks, were on the libraries there. And they had, over the years, collected some names and titles of books. They have a long blacklist of works of Ukrainian literature. And they grabbed them from the libraries, and some of these books were burned. So, in my opinion, it’s a sign of how important this is, Ukrainian literature and Ukrainian culture.

Chytomo: Yes, at Chytomo, we had a feature on the destruction of libraries and the efforts to rebuild them. But with everything that’s happening in the context of Ukrainian literature and language, what gives you cause for optimism and what gives you cause for concern? 

Andrukhovych: I will start with my concern. I hope this war is not eternal, because my concern is that because of the war, we are now somehow too serious in our cultural ideas and works, and maybe too pathetic. So this is something I’ve tried to challenge throughout my life — that ‘Ukrainianness,’ Ukrainian tradition, is too serious and too pathetic. And maybe we have a good perspective to make it more playful, more ironic, more open. And this is the concern that if the war lasts the next two years or maybe decades, we will somehow become more and more conservative.

Chytomo: And humor played an important role in the beginning of your career…

Andrukhovych: Yes, it was a part of all of our aesthetics in the 1980s. We had our poetic trio called BuBaBu, and we tried to continue it after this group stopped appearing. And what is optimistic? I think it’s, of course, an absolutely unique existential experience. We live now in a time where, I believe, the best Ukrainian novels, movies, and theatrical shows are being born. So maybe it’s the time of the biggest challenge we could imagine. And it’s, of course, a kind of stimulating time for our artists.

Chytomo: What is the role of Russian authors and Russian language now within Ukraine. How do you approach that topic? 

Andrukhovych: First of all, the question of our resistance in that war. We need to deal with some global myths, mythology, kind of mythology about the so-called great Russian culture. And this, let’s say canonized literary heritage is a kind of whitewashing of what today’s Russia does. So there is a kind of consensus in Ukraine among cultural, activists, we just put this Russian heritage, we put it, in the terms of “pandemic”, let’s call it, uh, quarantine. So we deny some common discussions, podiums, presentations with Russian colleagues. And if, if they are against their regime, we usually deny too because we have this principle now that the world, the intellectuals in that world should really be stressed, should understand how far(the extext to which), this Russian invasion is also the product of intellectual work, how far (much), it has been prepared by great imperialistic Russian culture. I’m not sure it will be always in that way. I’m actually rather, I’m sure that, we, we will be back to this, Russian literature, but, with some a precondition, which should be, of course, a Ukrainian victory in the war.

Radio Night — Ukrainian edition

Chytomo: Though in in some ways, the threat isn’t just Russian. In the essay “What Language Are You From?” you tell a story about being on a panel in which a French book agent advises writers from Central and Eastern Europe to change their names to make them more pronounceable and switch the language they write in. We recently interviewed the curator of the Slovenia pavilion at the Frankfurt Book Fair, and he described a situation in which many Slovenia writers are doing exactly that — changing their names and writing directly in English. 

Andrukhovych: I think, of course, there’s always this temptation to join something that is bigger than your own area… and actually, we can use the terms of import/export for cultural works too. So, literature and books, novels that have been written in English, have much better chances, per se. Or in Spanish or in French. But I would prefer to stay with Ukrainian because it’s the only language where I don’t have any borders. I’m absolutely free. And I enjoy my writing. If I were to try to write something in a foreign language, I would always feel like I’m sitting in a cage of that language. I wouldn’t have the freedom to be witty, to be provoking, to be just what I want to be.

Chytomo: Are you working on a new novel? 

Andrukhovych: Yes. 

Chytomo: Where does that stand? 

Andrukhovych: To be honest, I’m not sure it will be a novel. I haven’t decided. But now, maybe it will be a collection of short stories with the same protagonist. And it’s about the beginning of the ’70s. So it’s a time when I was as old as my hero in that book. The stories are about a boy who is between 10 and 12 years old, and the country will not be mentioned, but you recognize some signs of Ukraine or of some totalitarian system. And you always see and feel that there is a war, a war that is like eternal. You don’t have interwar times. Actually, each peaceful period of time is actually interwar time in that country. And there are some signs of this epoch, like Soviet tanks going somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains in the direction of Czechoslovakia. So you can understand it’s 1968. The main idea is unknown to me. But it’s a long period that I have before I finish it. I’ve just completed some seven parts of this future book, and I have really huge satisfaction in writing it. So I think it’s also about our today’s war. This eternal war is like what we have today as well. And I hope the readers will recognize these allusions.

Chytomo: In terms of how writers and intellectuals from the U.S. and the West have engaged with the war, what frustrates you the most? What do you think people are having trouble understanding about what’s happening now in Ukraine?

Andrukhovych: I think there’s a problem with the style of reporting about Ukraine. I would say, in our country, we get information about the front and the situation in the cities in a more optimistic way. We have a quite positive vision of how it will be, and that we, I mean Ukraine, will win this war. I think Western media are, of course, more objective than Ukrainian media, but they are very much concentrated on our losses. The general vision of the situation in Ukraine, in a Western audience, can be extremely tragic and extremely pessimistic. So, I think the task for intellectuals from both sides would be somehow to balance things. I understand that we are now in this military situation, that we have some kind of informational restrictions, censorship. And this is the specifics of our country, which is fighting. But the reports in Western media could be more different, could also be concentrated on Ukrainian achievements.

Chytomo: What do you think drives that? Why would the view from Western media be so pessimistic? 

Andrukhovych: I think one of the principles of media is that bad news tends to sell better. Catastrophes are always a compelling subject to report about. Maybe that’s the main thing. The second issue is likely this myth that the Russian army is undefeatable and never loses wars. It’s not historical thinking, but mythological. 

Chytomo: In the context of the war, what gives you reason for hope? What gives you reason for optimism? 

Andrukhovych: I think, with the way of thinking, which is, writer’s thinking, I look into this historic process because I’m a witness, one of the witnesses of this process, which started in the 1980s. So I’m always in this, let’s say, historic stream, [about] ‘how Ukraine is changing,’ how Ukrainian life is getting better and better, and, how we go through the different obstacles made by Russia which are always more and more and more difficult. If we look into the year 2004 Orange Revolution, but it was just three weeks of such a challenge. And then, Ukraine won. Then was the second Maidan. It was three months and Ukraine won. And now we have a real war. And maybe it is going to last three years. It will be somehow logical. But I see it as a novel written by somebody, I don’t know, by God, like somebody, weltgeist. And, you know, I am a reader of that novel, and I am sure there will be a happy end. It doesn’t make any sense for the author to find some end for this book.

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.