Yaryna Chornohuz is a combat medic in the Ukrainian Marines, currently serving on the frontlines. She also happens to be a brilliant poet, capturing the reality of the Russian invasion with powerful lyricism. I was very moved by Chornohuz’s “A Cycle of Wartime Poems” translated by Kate Tsurkan and Ostap Kin, which were featured in our Summer 2022 issue. I had the opportunity to interview Tsurkan and Kin about the importance of literature in the time of war, and we conducted our conversation over email, from our respective homes in Ukraine, the United States, and Ireland. I am proud to share this dialogue, in which we discuss—among other things—how language can be an act of resistance and how it is crucial, now more than ever, to amplify the work of Ukrainian writers and artists.
Rose Bialer (RB): I would like to begin by asking how each of you came to translating Ukrainian literature? How did you first encounter Chornohuz’s poetry?
Kate Tsurkan (KT): Well, I am first and foremost a trained scholar of French literature, but life is truly full of surprises. By a twist of fate, I moved to Ukraine, and a year later, I met my husband and ended up staying here. What was simply a field of interest in my work as a literary magazine editor became an obligation to understand and delve deeper into the culture that I’d married into.
As for Chornohuz, I first learned of her poetry through the journalist Justina Dobush, who read aloud the poem “too red a spot” for Asymptote. She also did an interview with Chornohuz for Apofenie, and kept telling me that this is a writer to keep my eye on. I owe a lot to Justina because when I was just starting out and admittedly knew very little, she was one of those Ukrainians giving me much-needed insight on the contemporary literary scene and Ukrainian culture in general. Chornohuz is part of the growing genre of Ukrainian veteran literature; prior to her role in the military, she was an active member of the Ukrainian literary sphere and also worked as a translator. These days, Ukrainians know her best for her military service and activism. Her poetry and overall perspective on war had such a visceral impact on me that I felt it needed to be shared with the world.
Ostap Kin (OK): I’m originally from Ukraine, born and raised there. When I switched continents, I started translating from Ukrainian into English. It all started as a combination of factors, including challenge, curiosity, and a need to experiment; I wanted to get firsthand experience about how work that appeals to me may sound in English, and what the whole process looks like. Lastly, I did hope to share Ukrainian literary works with others.
I heard about Yaryna Chornohuz from the news sometime in 2020. As an activist, she protested, I remember, in the governmental headquarters. Kate Tsurkan is the one who introduced me to her poems and invited me to work on their English language.
RB: When describing A Cycle of Wartime Poems in your translators’ note, you wrote, “It contributes to the creation of a new narrative in writing about war, which is also a narrative about life.” I loved this line and wanted to know how you believe war and life co-exist in these three poems, and perhaps in this war in general?
KT: The very future of Ukraine depends on the absolute and total defeat of Russia. You have to understand that not only the military went off to fight against the Russian invaders. Ukrainians from all walks of life enlisted: men, women, gay, straight, young, old, married, single. It goes on and on. Just about everyone in Ukraine currently has a friend or family member serving in the Armed Forces, or they know someone who was displaced, even tortured and killed. For example, my husband attended the funeral of one of his classmates at the start of the invasion, who was killed trying to ward off the advancement of Russian forces in the south.
Since February 24, we all see a lot of obituaries on our social media feeds. Some of the brightest minds of Ukraine were killed defending the country, and that pain of losing those who were actively engaged in making the country better is a pain that will never fully subside. As Chornohuz puts it so poignantly in her poem “about the truth”: and you dream at night / about the mothers of the dead / who carry stones to graves among the thickets / who will forget themselves / but not the sons under the tombstones. The most important thing for those who survive this war is to remember and honor their sacrifices.
OK: We can speculate and say that literature is mainly about two themes: love and war. Life is an in-between theme, a thread between them—and it’s a significant one. Responses to wars are not new; they are as ancient as writing and war—and all such responses differ tremendously, from country to country, from region to region, and from language to language. At the same time, they do share something in common; what unites them is this idea that authors attempt to come up with a language that can somehow help them cope with everyday life, death, fear, anger, and anxiety.
I was particularly captured by the somewhat surrealistic line in Chornohuz’s poetry that zigzags, maneuvers, and goes through her poems. You deal with these powerful and strange images that capture the reader’s attention, and, at the same time, there’s this tension and suspense so necessary in poetry. Writing is the most significant response to war and death; writing is, in this case, life.
RB: I believe that it is important to discuss the fact that many Ukrainian authors and artists do not want to appear in the same magazine issues or cultural festivals as Russians during wartime. Kate, you have written about this topic recently for New Eastern Europe and The Atlantic Council. The Summer 2022 issue, in which the Chornohuz appeared, included a translation of a piece by a Russian playwright. This mistake, while unintentional, has been a learning experience for Asymptote and has brought this important issue to our attention. What do you both think that event organizers, editors, and cultural consumers need to understand about the political significance of inviting Russians and Ukranians to share the same spaces?
KT: I want to start off by acknowledging that I appreciate how the editorial team at Asymptote responded to this. After I learned about the Russian playwright getting published in the same issue and explained to the editors what the problem was, they immediately informed me that they would support Chornohuz no matter what her decision, even if she wanted to withdraw her poetry. So I talked about it with her and she, being rather wise, decided that since it was a genuine mistake, it could be viewed as a learning experience for Asymptote’s editorial team.
Many Ukrainian writers have expressed that they do not want to appear alongside Russian writers for as long as the Russian army occupies Ukrainian land. If you watch Russian state television or even word-on-the-street interviews, you quickly understand that the Russian army is engaged in a genocidal campaign; the supporters of their war do not recognize Ukraine as a legitimate nation state. In light of this, some rather well-known Russian writers in exile have been penning op-eds or giving interviews about how only Putin is guilty and the Russian culture is not to blame. In my opinion, this is a bit naive, if not outright intellectually dishonest. The same goes for those who cry “no to war,” but also bemoan the loss of Russian culture in Ukraine without acknowledging how it came to be. This may sound blunt, but I don’t think Russian literature needs to be defended right now. It was and always will be part of the world literature canon. There is no shortage of Russian translators or readers of Russian literature; we can’t yet say the same for Ukraine. I believe it is important to do everything possible to support Ukrainian artists during this difficult time.
I think two examples from literary history can help clarify this stance perfectly: the Ukrainian poet and dissident Vasyl Stus died in a Russian prison camp in 1985, the same year that Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the USSR and ushered in the era of perestroika. Stus committed no crime—unless you count being Ukrainian a crime, that is. In 1992, just a few years later, the Russian poet and dissident Joseph Brodsky read his disgusting poem “On the Independence of Ukraine” to an audience in the United States, in which he tells Ukrainians that on their deathbed, they will be renouncing their national poet Taras Shevhcenko for Aleksandr Pushkin with their last gasp of breath. So you see, being a pro-democracy Russian dissident, unfortunately, does not always equate to being pro-Ukrainian. How can such people today keep talking about Pushkin, Dostoevsky, and the rest of their lot, after what they saw in Bucha or Izyum? How can they try to equate their plight to that of Ukraine’s when the extent of the horrors of Russian occupation in cities like Kherson and Mariupol have yet to be revealed? I just don’t understand it. A lot of Ukrainians don’t understand it, either, and they’re rightfully angry with Russians for it. There are some talented and respected Russian writers who took the time to learn about the history of Russian aggression in Ukraine and support Ukrainians during this difficult time without seeking public affirmation. All I can say is that they’re not the ones snatching up bylines right now and referencing their novels in the opening lines. They are deeply ashamed of their country and their failure to stop everything that led up to this war; I have genuine sympathy for such people.
I would advise any editor of a literary magazine or organizer of a literary festival to be aware that supporting Ukraine can’t exist in name only. You come out looking rather foolish if you say things like “true art is universal” and therefore everyone should just get along. The best option is to simply avoid putting Ukrainian and Russian artists together for as long as the war continues. However, if you know that both Ukrainian and Russian artists are being contacted for a project, at least let them be made aware of this, so they can decide for themselves on how to proceed. Transparency is the most basic form of respect in this situation and will help avoid any unpleasant conversations later on.
OK: It’s a long story that goes on for years and decades. If you open any anthology of Soviet writing in an English translation—poetry or prose—you will find hardly any non-Russian authors. Maybe just one or two authors in those collections would be Ukrainian, Belarusian, Georgian, or Armenian, but that was an exception to the rule. Traditionally, when one looked at the literature of the Soviet era, it associated predominantly with Russian; this trend also traveled to the post-Soviet period. This has, however, been slowly changing for the past few decades, and it’s possible to see other literatures that co-existed in that part of the world.
What can be done is to open doors to Ukrainian literature and to amplify Ukrainian voices in the broadest sense. The world is rediscovering Ukraine and Ukrainian literature at this particular moment, and ideally, this exploration should not be limited to contemporary literature—although it’s vitally important now. Preferably, it should also include other layers of literary traditions from previous epochs: poets from the perestroika period and early post-Soviet times; dissident, underground, and unofficial literature of late Soviet period; literature created by émigré authors during the interwar period and in the post-World War II period; Ukrainian modernism and avant-garde of the first decades of the past century.
RB: Now more than ever, language has taken on a new meaning—specifically the political decision of Russian-speaking Ukranians to write and speak only in Ukrainian. I read in an interview with Chornohuz that detailed her efforts in preserving Ukrainian language and culture, including volunteering with a program called MovaMarafon (Language Marathon) to help support Russian-speaking Ukrainians who would like to make the lingual switch to just speaking Ukrainian. What does the Ukrainian language mean to you as Ukrainian speakers, literary translators, and critics of the war?
KT: I am a non-native speaker of Ukrainian and therefore have a different relationship to the language, obviously. But I really admire those people who made the switch to speaking Ukrainian after communicating in Russian for most of their lives. It is no easy thing to do, regardless of the language pair. I also speak Russian and sometimes it is difficult for me to keep the two languages separate, especially since ‘surzhyk’ (the mix of both languages) was always commonly heard on the streets of Chernivtsi. But choosing to speak Ukrainian during wartime is a conscious and just choice which conveys to the Russian invaders that Ukrainians do not want to live in their hellworld. This process of Ukrainization was only accelerated by the Russian invasion. Now eastern Ukrainian cities like Kharkiv will never again be mistaken for a “Russian” city after what they’ve endured.
This is not to say that the Russian language itself is inherently “evil”, but rather that it has been weaponized by Russia. They turned it into a weapon by busing Russian teachers into the occupied territories of Ukraine and not allowing Ukrainian children to learn their own language. They also turned it into a weapon by locking Ukrainian women and girls in basements in places like Bucha, telling them that they will rape them to the point where they no longer wish to bare Ukrainian children. If you want to look at it from a historical perspective, it goes back even to the times of the Russian empire and the Soviet Union, where Russian authorities did their best to marginalize the Ukrainian language. Prior to the start of the invasion, many Ukrainians were actually pretty tolerant regarding use of the Russian language; if they didn’t want to speak in Russian, they simply responded in Ukrainian. Now the Russian language carries a very negative connotation for people in Ukraine because it is associated with all the death and destruction of the past several months. At the same time, you can still occasionally hear Russian being spoken on the streets of Chernivtsi and find Russian books in some bookstores.
Perhaps the day will come when Russian is “just a language” again, as with German, but not for the foreseeable future. We have to acknowledge even just hearing the Russian language can be unpleasant for a lot of Ukrainians right now, and that pain is based in very real, horrific acts that many have witnessed firsthand or even endured themselves.
OK: This is not the first time the Ukrainian language and literature is dealing with wars and catastrophes: we remember the Great War and responses that appeared then, as well as the Second World War, including the Holocaust—another important topic that is often not taken into account. Consider, for instance, the 1942 poem entitled “Pokhoron druha” (The Funeral of a Friend) by the famous modernist poet Pavlo Tychyna, yet to be rendered into English.
RB: What challenges have you encountered when translating and publishing Ukrainian literature? What has the reception of translated Ukrainian literature been in the anglophone world? Have you found that these challenges or receptions have shifted since Russia’s invasion in February?
KT: Unfortunately it took a war for most literary magazines and publishers to realize that Ukrainian literature is deeply interesting and worth paying attention to. There was a growing interest in Ukrainian literature prior to the start of the invasion, but it moved very slowly. As my friend and colleague, the translator Zenia Tompkins constantly reminds me, we are building the foundation for Ukrainian literature abroad. When the invasion started, I put out a call to magazine editors and asked them to publish more texts from Ukrainian authors, and I am really thankful to the editors who understood how important it is to elevate Ukrainian voices during this difficult time. Other editors, who shall remain nameless, told me that certain texts were “too subjective”, such as the marvelous wok by Markiyan Prokhasko that I ended up publishing myself in Apofenie. Thankfully, though, such responses were in the minority. A lot of agents and publishers are now signing deals with Ukrainian writers. If anything, I hope this momentum will continue and we can make something positive out of our collective suffering.
Readers in the anglophone world have been extremely receptive to Ukrainian literature, in my opinion. People are constantly asking me for book recommendations on Twitter, and one of my most popular pieces was a listicle I wrote for Literary Hub on contemporary Ukrainian books currently available in English translation. It’s for that reason I also hope some of the texts from classic Ukrainian authors will be published in the near future, because they are just as important and noteworthy as their contemporary counterparts. Reading their work will help you understand Ukraine better, too.
OK: In terms of challenges, English and Ukrainian belong to two completely different groups of languages, and thus many nuances are tricky to translate. Now, I will share just one example. One of the eternal questions is how to render the ty (you informal) and Vy (you formal) forms—it’s genuinely challenging and hardly possible to find any adequate equivalent and solution in English; many layers are not visible in these structures when they have been rendered into another language.
Regarding reception, it’s a topic for a whole different conversation—a significant one, as it may help pinpoint the future of Ukrainian letters translated into English. It’s one thing is to find a publisher, but it’s something different to see how the completed work will be read and received. It’s probably too early to conclude how the reception has changed since Russia’s full-scale aggression began.
RB: Finally, has translating Ukrainian literature from the frontlines changed your relationship to the war?
KT: No matter how moving a text is, I don’t think that it can compare to the sensorial experience of war. Some of my acquaintances have taken part in the liberation of the Kharkiv region. Despite reading their occasional online updates, I will never truly understand what they felt during battle. Despite calling my friend’s 82 year-old mother in Kharkiv, I will never understand what it has been like for her to live with the constant sound of shelling, or the fear she felt when shrapnel pierced one of her windows.
I live in Chernivtsi, a small city in the west of Ukraine. We have had many air raid sirens but few missile strikes, thankfully. Most have been shot down by air defense. This is to say that our wartime experience has been quite unique. Hundreds of thousands of refugees have passed through our city since February 24, and military enlistment officers patrol the streets daily with their clipboards. We exist on the margins of war, yet nonetheless the war is still a part of our daily lives. In my capacity as a journalist, editor, and translator, I’ve always had the same goal: to promote Ukrainian literature and culture abroad. The invasion didn’t change that. Instead, it affirmed my belief that it is the right thing to do.
When it comes to the writers serving on the frontlines, I consider it especially important to promote their work now. They put their lives on hold for us. It is thanks to people like them that I can sit in a cafe on Kobylianska Street in the city center of Chernivtsi as I type this and worry less about getting murdered by Russian soldiers. The least I can do to show my gratitude to Ukrainian frontline writers is promote their work so that they have new readers who are as eagerly waiting for them to return home as I am.
OK: The poetry written about war may or may not change us, but what it does, as Ilya Kaminsky pointed out, is capture and demonstrate changes happening within us.
Kate Tsurkan is the editor-in-chief of Apofenie Magazine and a Ph.D. candidate at New York University. Her written work and translations have appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, Vanity Fair, Harpers, Asymptote, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. Along with Daisy Gibbons, she is currently translating Oleh Sentsov’s Chronicle of a Hunger Striker, forthcoming from Deep Vellum.
Ostap Kin is the editor, and co-translator with John Hennessy, of Babyn Yar: Ukrainian Poets Respond (forthcoming from HURI/Harvard University Press), editor of New York Elegies: Ukrainian Poems on the City (Academic Studies Press, 2019), which was awarded the 2018–2019 Prize for Best Translation from the American Association for Ukrainian Studies, and the co-translator, with John Hennessy, of Serhiy Zhadan’s A New Orthography (Lost Horse Press, 2020), finalist for the PEN America Award for Poetry in Translation and co-winner of the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry. He also co-translated, with Vitaly Chernetsky, Yuri Andrukhovych’s collection of selected poems Songs for a Dead Rooster (Lost Horse Press, 2018).
Rose Bialer is the assistant interview editor for Asymptote. She holds a BA in Sociology and Spanish from Kenyon College and is currently earning a MPhil. in Comparative Literature from Trinity College Dublin. Bialer’s book reviews have appeared in publications such as Full Stop, The Kenyon Review Online, Action Books Blog, The Florida Review Online, and Rain Taxi. Follow her on Twitter here.
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