The Age 1985 - Ukraine revisited by Ludmilla Forsyth

Ukraine Revisited
What steppe to take
By Ludmilla Forsyth

Dmytro Chub
Yuri Tkach (translator)
ON THE FENCE
Lastivka Press (Distributed by Bayda Books, 30 Fairway Rd, Doncaster 3108), 152p., $6.95 pb
ISBN: 0 949617 05 9

Dmytro Chub, in his introduction to On the Fence: Ukrainian Prose in Australia, observes that "Although there are some fine novels set in Ukraine’s historical past and under Soviet rule, the period spent in Displaced Persons camps in Germany and the émigré experience in Australia has given birth to no more than a few short stories. While older writers sentimentalize about a lost past, younger writers do not wish to stir up the sensitive issues in the community." This is the problem of the anthology. While it may be admirable to translate Ukrainian writing into English, the act of doing so exposes the weaknesses of both the translator and the writer.

As long as the prose or fiction remains within the language context of the group, it gains from the common memory of things past, shared pain, shared loyalty, shared guilt. To the printed word is added associated experience. Set it into a new language, a different social context, and the word has to work much harder in getting things right.

It seems to me that in this anthology, words don’t work well enough in most of the writing to raise it above school essay standard. Perhaps this doesn’t matter because experiences are being set down, and those members of the community who do not read Ukrainian are gaining knowledge of life outside their own. In telling his tales, my father can shape experience into a short story; my mother can’t. The event remains an incident, a fragment, a didactic stick, or a dismembered thing unconnected to a body of ideas. However, good oral storytelling does not necessarily mean skill in writing. In the speaking, voice, tone, cadence, and pauses make clichés acceptable.

Some of the stories here need to be heard—literally. They also need to be reworked. A more skilled translator or a more imaginative editor may have given them the kiss of life. But as they are on the page, they remain waiting for the magic touch.

One of the best pieces, The Power of Beauty, while relying strongly on the sense of a speaking voice, imaginatively parallels two moments of epiphany. The first is a painting by a Russian in which two Soviet soldiers are caught by the beauty of Raphael’s painting of the Madonna. "One of the soldiers is holding his helmet, removed as if out of respect; the other, wounded, seems frozen in mid-movement." The soldiers are people.

Another story recounts the protagonist’s experience of the "ridiculous evacuation of Kyiv" and shows an actual moment of epiphany amid chaos, death, and blasphemy:

"On the far side of the ditch, on a small mound, stood a naked young woman. She was wringing the brassiere and panties she had removed, sending a stream of muddy water to the ground. She stood there unmoving, indifferent to her surroundings and the dozens of male eyes fixed on her. Facing the marsh, with tightly pursed lips, she stared with wide-open eyes in the direction of Kyiv."

I would have preferred the story to end without the over-explicit moral—that even Russian soldiers are people. Yet, I’ve been taught to read symbolically; others haven’t had the privilege of my education or the benefit of cultural exposure, which included symbolic interpretation.

Some of the stories are reworked folk-tales, others are reminiscences of personal history, painful to read because the horror, confusion, and hurt are so ineptly told. There are many stories which remain untold because guilt, fear, and an inability to confront what was done and to whom prevent the émigré from telling. To have power over language to recount the heart of darkness is something to wait for in Ukrainian writing in English.

Ludmilla Forsyth, born in Ukraine, now lectures in Literature at Victoria College, Melbourne.