Why are books being banned and their authors not permitted to fulfill with readers in right now’s Belarus? Why are there artists who can’t exhibit their works, and whose live shows are banned? Why do writers in growing numbers discover themselves behind bars, with the consequence {that a} vital a part of our modern literary scene – in addition to our classical writers of a century and extra in the past – now consists of jail literature? Why does the Belarusian language undergo discrimination, marginalisation and, finally, destruction much more severely than in Soviet occasions? And this in a rustic that’s nonetheless referred to as Belarus!
Some will say that it is because now we have in our nation an age-old, cruel warfare of cultures, wherein certainly one of them, believing itself to be higher and superior, tries to dominate the opposite and destroy it. Others will keep that we’re coping with a warfare towards tradition typically, waged by one thing completely bereft of any tradition. I’m not going to attract any ultimate conclusions. As an alternative, I’ll limit myself to touching upon two points. The primary is to ask how far concern of tradition and hatred of books can go. The second is to ask what this tradition and the books it produces are at occasions able to reaching.
Calibanism
No, that isn’t a typo.
Oscar Wilde as soon as wrote ‘It’s the spectator, and never life, that artwork actually mirrors’. I’ve at all times thought this to be a high quality flip of phrase, even when too paradoxically exaggerated. Wilde goes on to call this explicit spectator, when he writes of the fashion of Shakespeare’s Caliban at seeing (or not seeing) his personal face in a mirror.
‘The Enchanted Island Earlier than the Cell of Prospero – Prospero, Miranda, Caliban and Ariel (Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2)’. Supply: Wikimedia Commons
I now realise that the grasp of paradox was not exaggerating. This yr Belarusians have been in a position to see a Caliban with their very own eyes. And never only one: they’ve witnessed the entire idea of state calibanism. The Miensk Metropolis Prosecutor’s workplace is packed to the rafters with Calibans, who in August 2023 delivered a verdict on a number of works of literature by naming them ‘extremist’.
It’s not solely modern authors who discovered themselves on the listing; so did classics of the 20th and even nineteenth centuries. It’s uncommon certainly for authors who died way back to fall foul of the legislation right now. There may be, as an illustration, the well-known playwright Vincent Dunin-Marcinkievič (1808–1884); streets are named after him and statues erected in his honour in our cities and cities. The query of demolition of statues and renaming of streets has not but arisen; a extra ‘elegant’ answer has been discovered. It’s completely attainable for just one a part of a e-book to be seen as legal. Two verses from a bit of quantity of our playwright’s works, and the introduction to the e-book written by a recent literary scholar. With out making an attempt to mimic what occurs within the movie Useless Poets’ Society, allow us to now, my expensive college students, all tear out of our copies these pages of the introduction. Come on, don’t be shy, and don’t overlook these two verses, tear them out too!
There are occasions when the regime’s hatred of sure authors is apparent. Take, for instance, our modern Uladzimir Niakliajeū, who shouldn’t be solely a widely-known poet, however who additionally entered politics and took part within the 2010 presidential race. On election day he was attacked by members of the safety providers wearing plain garments and brought to the emergency division of a hospital. He was kidnapped from there, and for a number of days his household had no concept whether or not he was nonetheless alive. Finally he was discovered within the KGB jail. He spent forty days there and was then stored underneath home arrest for a number of months. He took no direct half within the 2020 presidential marketing campaign, besides was repeatedly hauled in for questioning and finally pressured to go away Belarus. Not for the primary time in his life, he now lives overseas. An apparent extremist!
One other e-book seen as extremist is the one by Łarysa Hieniuš (1910–1983), a poet who lived in emigration. After the tip of the Second World Warfare she was forcibly faraway from Czechoslovakia to the USSR and sentenced to 25 years in a labour camp. She spent eight years there. However her spirit was by no means damaged. She continued to help different prisoners along with her poetry. They got here to treat it as ‘glucose’, so nice was the power they derived from what she wrote. After being freed, she refused to take Soviet citizenship, and lived out the remainder of her life underneath surveillance by the safety providers. She has by no means been rehabilitated. All that has been completed is to formally cut back her sentence to the interval she really spent within the camp. Doubtless an extremist!
Then there may be the e-book by one other poet within the diaspora, Natallia Arsieńnieva (1903–1997). Her patriotic prayer-like poem ‘Almighty God’ has been the unofficial anthem of a number of generations of the Belarusian opposition, but it surely reached the peak of its fame throughout the Belarusian avenue protests of 2020. This was the hymn carried out by masked musicians and singers wherever individuals gathered; it was from these protest performances that the well-known ‘Free Choir’ finally grew. After all, the writer of a piece that’s extremist in each single be aware couldn’t be something however an extremist herself.
The Calibans from the Prosecutor’s Workplace might cope with all these. However now begins essentially the most attention-grabbing half, the purpose at which they should face a mirror. The fifth merchandise on the listing of extremist literature is the collected works of Lidzija Arabiej (1925–2015), a author that one would have thought completely innocent for the regime. I used to be amazed once I examine this as a result of I had grown up on her kids’s writings and noticed nothing seditious in them. Just a few days later I positioned a replica of the ‘condemned’ e-book in query and started to leaf via it fastidiously – and I used to be dumbstruck once more once I got here throughout her story ‘The white Pomeranian’.
It’s obligatory at this level to make a short digression into the examine of Man’s Greatest Pal. The nub of the problem is that the third place on the listing of the best-known sources of jokes and memes in Belarus, after the illegitimate president and his equally illegitimate son Kolia, is occupied by a bit of white Pomeranian. His identify is Umka and he’s a home pet. Apparently Łukašenka’s most dependable good friend, Umka first began showing on Belarusian information broadcasts within the spring of 2020. That’s to say, a couple of months earlier than the routine falsification of elections and the explosion of protests and repression. On the peak of the pandemic.
In April 2020 the dictator – one of many few leaders on the earth to brazenly deny the existence of the coronavirus – was peacefully planting pine bushes for the advantage of tv cameras; and in a basket there was a bit of white canine. It wasn’t lengthy earlier than conspiracy theorists maintained that the pair of them – the little canine and his grasp – had been meant to attract Belarusians’ consideration away from the issues of the pandemic.
In one other TV programme Łukašenka was seen chopping wooden whereas the white Pomeranian ran round barking. He (the Pomeranian, not Łukašenka) might later be noticed sitting on the desk just like the lord of the manor, taking tid-bits from plates whereas his mate was giving an interview to a international journalist. On the feast of the Baptism of Jesus, Łukašenka even provided him some holy water to drink; regrettably, the white Pomeranian refused to partake. And so it was {that a} third camera-ready newsmaker emerged in Belarus, after ‘Kolia’s daddy’ and Kolia himself.
That is the place Lidzija Arabiej’s story is available in. Allow us to attempt to image the response of the Calibans of the Prosecutor’s Workplace. They see that horrible title within the e-book’s listing of contents, they open the e-book on the precise web page and discover that they aren’t hallucinating, however that there actually is a narrative referred to as ‘The White Pomeranian’. To make issues worse, it ends with the much more scary phrases, ‘Drop useless, you bastard’. It’s not of any curiosity to anybody that the comment was directed at neither the Pomeranian nor his grasp.
The 1975 takes readers again to the Miensk winter of 1943 underneath Nazi occupation, to the starvation of the time, and to the black market as the one technique of not dying of it. A lady brings to market a pot stuffed with mouth-watering sizzling potato pancakes… At this level the Belarusian coronary heart of the censors begins to beat joyfully, they nearly handle to settle down, however sadly that wretched white Pomeranian makes an look. And never solely that, he’s misplaced his grasp.
What’s this, then? ‘It has misplaced its grasp.’ Does it imply that they, officers of state who know solely learn how to search no matter shouldn’t be permitted after which forbid it, have misplaced their employer? What are they to do? Their empathy for the hero of the story grows vastly, whereas at this very second the Pomeranian himself … Let me quote the ‘extremist’ Lidzija Arabiej:
Then the canine turned to the girl, the dispenser of the potato pancakes, and, as if he had all of a sudden remembered one thing, sat up on his hind paws and started ‘sitting fairly’. He tried exhausting to beg on this method for a while, he appeared happy to have the ability to stay so lengthy in what was for him an uncomfortable pose, his eyes gazed at her with devotion and sincerity, pleasure and hope…
His entrance paws hung trembling like rags, his pink tongue trembled – there was drool dripping from it, the canine was making an enormous effort to keep up his place, it was as if his entire physique was saying: take a look at how exhausting I’m making an attempt for you, how exhausting I wish to please you, I absolutely deserve a reward, don’t I?
‘Clear off.’ Eventually the girl had had sufficient and brandished a fork at him.
No two methods about it, that’s a daunting prospect. Ban the e-book without delay! However then the state-appointed readers see how the story ends. The little canine has one other feeling, one that’s stronger than starvation. All of the sudden he sees a member of the occupying forces strolling by and begins to bark at him with all his may. The person in a international navy uniform takes fright and retreats. This delights the Belarusians on the market a lot that the little canine receives an sudden (and long-awaited) reward:
The canine continued to face and bark at him as he retreated from the scene; he barked with all his doggy may, he barked till he was hoarse, till he despaired of ever barking once more. When he had quietened down a bit of he heard an unknown voice behind him:
‘Who’s a superb doggie, then?’
And a bit of heat, aromatic pancake plopped down on the snow in entrance of him.
And that very same voice went on:
‘What a intelligent little pooch. Drop useless, you bastard.’
Critical researchers of Lidzija Arabiej’s work could fairly probably object to what I say and provide a distinct rationalization for her ‘extremism’. They may point out tales within the e-book that cope with the epoch of Stalinism and repressions, with the sentences handed all the way down to ‘enemies of the individuals’ and the households that had been separated when the youngsters had been ordered to resign their ‘legal’ mother and father or given new names and life tales, in order that it grew to become unimaginable for the mother and father to seek out them even after rehabilitation. They may point out the story One Chilly Could which portrays the work of the key providers, who pressure individuals to spy on their nearest and dearest and denounce them. I’ll agree with them and add that the present-day servants of the dictatorial regime really feel themselves to be the heirs and successors of Stalin’s thugs; that explains why repressions have as soon as once more develop into a taboo matter.
However, I take pleasure in imagining how this explicit story in regards to the white Pomeranian was the one which our Calibans’ eyes stumbled throughout, and the way they realised that masters unavoidably die and that their lackeys are left with nothing after years of service on their hind paws besides being informed to ‘clear off’. They’ve lengthy had a selection in entrance of them; both go on serving or begin barking. I feel they should have skilled a surge of rage on the writer when this thought occurred to them. Nonetheless, the thought is now caught of their heads and isn’t going to go away.
Letters of Hope
Uladzimir Karatkievič (1930–1984) is the author of whom Belarusians are most fond; his works should not but burning on bonfires or hidden away in particular categorized, closed library collections, and haven’t even but been deemed extremist. Nonetheless, his most well-known novel, Ears Of Corn Beneath Your Sickle was this yr all of a sudden withdrawn from the varsity syllabus. Maybe this was as a result of the Calibans might see themselves unmistakably mirrored within the writer’s mirror and realised the menace.
The novel is dedicated to the religious and mental maturation of the Belarusian elite, to the youthful technology who took half within the anti-Russian rebellion of 1863. The rebellion was savagely suppressed by imperial troops, and its leaders annihilated. Considered one of them was Kastuś Kalinoŭski, included by Karatkievič as a personality within the novel. This may occasionally clarify why the writer accomplished the primary two volumes of the e-book however didn’t end it; he was unable to take occasions as much as the homicide of his beloved heroes.
This novel, together with different works by Karatkievič, acquired cult standing. Within the Soviet occasions individuals would queue exterior bookshops every time a brand new e-book of his appeared. (The author himself stated, ‘You could write in such a method as to make individuals steal your books from libraries. They steal mine.’) His books made such a robust impression on readers, particularly younger individuals, that they started to take an curiosity in Belarusian historical past and tradition. Even when that they had been raised in Russian-speaking households, they typically switched to utilizing Belarusian.
In 2020 – on the eve of the falsification of the presidential elections and the following mass protests and brutal repressions – Belarusian web customers regularly quoted one explicit extract from the novel. It units out the true nature of Russian imperial reactionary coverage in the course of the nineteenth century:
It was a horrible, exhausting time.
Your entire immense empire had already been mendacity moribund for twenty-six years, ice-bound beneath a horrifying political frost that heaved like an important shaggy beast over its huge expanses. Those that tried to take deep breaths would freeze their lungs…
…There was no happiness wherever.
All the pieces was sacrificed to the idol of state energy.
The key phrases listed here are ‘twenty-six years’; in 2020 this was precisely the size of time that Belarus had been dominated by an illegitimate president. After the routine falsification of the election and the regime’s suffocation of our try at an rebellion, repressions had been intensified to an unprecedented degree of savagery, the remaining vestiges of legality lastly ceased to function, and the Russian imperial presence in Belarus grew to become far more seen. The beginning of Putin’s warfare towards Ukraine demonstrated {that a} politically unbiased Belarus not exists; the puppet dictator, now nearly utterly underneath the management of the Russian aggressor, is free to behave in a single space alone – administering unrestricted terror to his personal individuals. There are literally thousands of prisoners of conscience, a few of whom die in jail in mysterious circumstances. A whole bunch of hundreds of Belarusians have been pressured to go away their nation, those that keep behind dwell in inward emigration. None of them can cease rockets flying in the direction of Ukraine. There’s a metaphor that may be heard an increasing number of typically: Belarus is within the grip of a ‘wild hunt’.
The metaphor sends us but once more to Karatkievič, this time to his ‘gothic noir’ novel King Stakh’s Wild Hunt. You possibly can argue to your coronary heart’s content material about how precisely to elucidate makes an attempt to convey literature and actuality nearer collectively. How a lot do they rely upon writers’ perspicacity or capacity to formulate issues which might be common and due to this fact at all times important? Or how a lot depends upon the story itself, one which goes spherical and spherical in a circle and offers us no probability ever to interrupt out of an everlasting nightmare. Both method, each acutely aware Belarusian is conscious of simply how far more related the Karatkievič story has as soon as once more develop into. It’s a story of colonial strain. Of the degradation of an ‘elite’ that suppresses its personal individuals whereas abjectly serving the international masters. Of how a concern is engendered that paralyses and enslaves.
![](https://www.eurozine.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/CordesWildeJagd.jpg)
Johann Wilhelm Cordes , ‘Die Wilde Jagd’ (The Wild Hunt), 1856/57. Supply: Wikimedia Commons
Nonetheless, it’s also a narrative of the cultural position of intellectuals in returning to us reminiscences that had been nearly completely erased by the occupying aggressors. A narrative of the power of the powerless. Of non-violent resistance which can sooner or later not be sufficient, after which there shall be no possibility however to answer violence with violence. Of the ‘smooth energy’ of affection that stops us from going mad when the darkness is at its most oppressive. Of solidarity and mutual help amongst those that are threatened by a typical enemy. Each Belarusians and Ukrainians are concerned within the Karatkievič story, simply as they’re in actual life right now.
The Belarusian Karatkievič entered the Taras Shevchenko College in Kyiv as a younger man. Right here he got here underneath the affect of mental pals who had been deeply concerned within the examine of Ukrainian tradition; they impressed him to take a stronger curiosity within the tradition of Belarus. He ultimately conceived the concept for his novel and started to write down it. The theme of Belarusian-Ukrainian unity runs proper via it, and there are particular autobiographical parts within the determine of the younger mental Andrej Śviecilovič, a former pupil of Kyiv College. Right here is his dialogue with the novel’s protagonist Andrej Biełarecki:
‘Why did they exclude you from the college, Mr Śviecilovič?’
‘All of it started with an occasion in reminiscence of Shevchenko. College students in fact had been among the many first. The authorities threatened to usher in the police,’ he even blushed. ‘So, we began shouting. And I yelled that in the event that they a lot as dared do such a factor inside our sacred partitions we’d wash the disgrace from them with our blood. And the primary bullet could be fired on the man who would give such an order. Then we poured out of the constructing, there was an incredible hubbub, and I used to be grabbed. After they questioned me on the police station about my nationality, I answered, ‘You possibly can write that I’m a Ukrainian.’
‘Effectively stated.’
‘I do know that it was very dangerous for many who had joined the battle.’
‘No, it was good for them too. A single reply like that’s value ten bullets. And that signifies that everyone seems to be towards the frequent enemy.’
The younger Belarusians who after the presidential election in 2006 – impressed by the Orange Revolution – put up tents on October Sq. (that they renamed Kalinoŭski Sq.) had undoubtedly learn Karatkievič. As certainly have those that are actually preventing for Ukraine within the Kalinoŭski Regiment.
In opposition to the background of warfare, a superbly comprehensible technique of renaming Ukrainian streets received underneath method. The Ukrainian literary scholar and translator of Karatkievič, the poet Vyacheslav Levytsky, put ahead a proposal to vary the identify of Dobrolyubov Avenue in Kyiv to Karatkievič Avenue. His proposal was finally adopted.
That is what Levytsky wrote:
I hope {that a} avenue bearing this identify will assist to easy over at the very least a number of the misunderstandings between Ukrainians and Belarusians who oppose dictatorship. I would love this renaming to be proof of our respect for and gratitude to the Kastuś Kalinoŭski Regiment, Belarusian partisans and all these free-spirited Belarusians who discover alternatives to help Ukrainians.
Many because of Vyacheslav and to everybody in Ukraine who voted in help of his proposal! By the best way, there isn’t a avenue in Miensk named after Uladzimir Karatkievič. I don’t want to elucidate why not, do I?
Alternatively, two entire operas have been based mostly on the Karatkievič novel King Stakh’s Wild Hunt. The primary was written by the composer Uładzimir Sołtan. The premiere passed off within the Miensk Opera again in 1989. It was revived in 2021, expanded with materials from the composer’s archive and with new units and particular results within the Gothic fashion. Nonetheless, life itself proved to be the primary Gothic particular impact: the staging of the opera collided with the Calibanist censors.
The problem right here was a vital phrase reduce out of the libretto when the riders on the wild hunt frighten the mistress of the palace with the decision ‘Raman within the twentieth technology, come on out!’ This may occasionally conceivably be as a result of, on 12 November 2020 on the peak of the protests throughout the courtyards of condo blocks, Raman Bandarenka was crushed to dying by ‘individuals unknown’. He had gone all the way down to the yard in entrance of the block the place he lived, leaving a be aware on his Telegram chat ‘I’m going out!’ His murderers in masks had been suspiciously harking back to the antiheroes from Karatkievič’s e-book.
The second model of the opera appeared this yr, and I used to be lucky sufficient to work on the libretto. The music was written by Volha Padhajskaja, the administrators had been Mikałaj Chalezin and Natalla Kalada, and the conductor was Important Aleksiajonak. The premiere was held on the stage of London’s Barbican Arts Centre. It’s troublesome to think about a extra becoming ensemble for right now: actors from the Belarus Free Theatre that continues to exist in pressured emigration and Ukrainian opera singers.
The Belarusian actors spoke their elements, and the Ukrainian individuals sang – in Belarusian. It was important for Belarusians to listen to this now, at a time of trials, traumas, wrongs and synthetic divisions. I feel that it was vital for the Ukrainians too to listen to about how a lot Ukraine meant to the beloved Belarusian author.
I had the privilege and pleasure of working with the Ukrainians on their Belarusian pronunciation. Our languages are very shut lexically, however utterly completely different phonetically; it is rather straightforward to inform when a foreigner is talking. The musical ear of the Ukrainian singers had a task to play right here: their pronunciation on stage could be the envy of many voters of Belarus.
I can’t say whether or not it was the magnificent composer or the excellent singers Tamara Kalinkina and Olena Arbuzova who performed a better half in making the character of Nadzieja Janoŭskaja within the opera extra highly effective, emancipated and vivid than the somewhat passive picture of the heroine within the authentic e-book. In my humble opinion Nadzeja’s elements had been essentially the most highly effective and unforgettable. Fairly probably, the rest would have been unthinkable after the protests of 2020 and the position girls performed in them.
The premiere was attended by Belarusians from numerous cities, international locations and even continents, the Belarusians and Ukrainians of London got here, however many of the viewers was British. There have been 4 performances, each performed to a full home. After every efficiency there have been shouts of ‘Slava Ukraini’ (Glory to Ukraine) and ‘Žyvie Biełarus’ (Lengthy dwell Belarus), and naturally again got here the replies ‘Heroyam slava’ (Glory to the Heroes) and ‘Žyvie viečna’ (Could it dwell ceaselessly).
Awaiting the viewers, there was on every seat a ‘Letter of Hope’, a postcard in an envelope ready by the organisers, designed and signed by Ukrainian kids who had suffered from the warfare. Some had misplaced their dwelling, a few of them had misplaced their father on the entrance, some had misplaced each mother and father in a bombardment. Nonetheless, within the letters there are not any complaints of ache – fairly the other, they present a need to help those that learn them; maybe the readers are additionally going via a troublesome time. There are expressions of affection in them, even an urge to joke.
‘There are occasions when you need to lose one thing with a purpose to discover one thing new,’ writes Lev, fourteen years outdated.
‘Don’t fear, I’ll at all times be with you,’ writes Sasha.
‘Be sort and kindness will come again to you,’ writes Valik, 9 years of age.
On his postcard Artyom from the Kherson area has this to say: ‘By no means quit. Respect your mother and father. Should you don’t respect them, I’ll come and chew your ear off.’
The Barbican theatre seats 1,500 individuals; 4 performances imply 6,000 letters. I collected 4 of them and preserve them protected.
This translation was supported by the S. Fischer Basis. The article was first printed in Dekoder in German as a part of the sequence ‘Belarus – glimpsing the long run’.
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