Poems by Serhiy Zhadan: Words that make breathing easier

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A woman shows her destroyed house in a village near Donetsk

Photo: ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO / REUTERS

In this war, the Ukrainian poet Serhiy Zhadan wrote, he and his friends were only outsiders.

They come to the towns and villages on the front line between Russia and Ukraine.

Not to fight.

But to recite poetry.

Or make music.

This is of course somehow pointless and silly, out of time and out of the fighting reality.

They do it anyway.

About his visits there, Zhadan writes: "In the last six years, six years of the war, I have seen dozens of libraries in towns and villages at the front. They hardly get any new books, but many of these institutions are awakening a second life, becoming places of Strength, to places where, despite the war, the artillery fire, the darkness and the cold, life lasts. A kind of modern church where you don't go to pray but to warm up. Not the worst form of service, I think. "

Letter from the lost post

Serhij Zhadan is a brilliant poet.

Each of his books opens new doors wide into a previously unknown world.

Raised in the multiethnic city of Kharkiv, the second largest city in Ukraine, he is the great poet of the unifying Europe, singer of his home country and the refugee city of Berlin, which he has often visited.

He writes about the lost post on the edge of the continent, writes novels, reports, essays and, above all, poems.

Doesn't matter to him that this post is lost.

His new volume of poems is called "Antenne", and in it he writes: "Bold poet of the sluices on the European rivers, poet of a country that dies defenseless when it feels winter, speak of hope, fear and hopelessness do not read."

The book begins with the death of his father.

And how the son then discovers that the father kept a diary.

Although he didn't read anything himself, not even his son's books.

With emotion and sadness, the son discovers in the clumsy texts of the father everything that the father could never say in life.

"I had to read his entries on the weather to understand how important we were to him. The great magic of writing is being able to express joy and sadness even with numbers."

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Author Serhij Zhadan: From Melancholy to Euphoria

Photo: Oleksandr Rupeta / imago images / ZUMA Press

Zhadan describes the men of the village after the death of his father.

How they sit together and mourn and know that they must now pray.

That they want to pray.

But they don't know the words.

You have no prayers.

They just know it should be now.

It would be right now.

It would help now.

"Perhaps it was the most touching thing I had ever seen - atheists warming up, sitting next to each other and looking for a prayer to remember another atheist who went before them."

The son is also an atheist.

But he feels the emptiness in these moments, the great emptiness, like never before.

"My father died on January 4th. That day, thick, thick snow fell. For a while they moved towards each other." 

Enthusiasm is always at the beginning

I haven't read anything so beautiful, tender and sad for a long time.

Zhadan can change the tempo, temperature and temperament of his poems in no time at all.

It's often only a line or two from melancholy to furor to euphoria.

But enthusiasm, even in grief, is always at the beginning: "The constant desire to share your own enthusiasm, it is what forces you to look for words, to rearrange them, to plunder words, to shake them, to turn it upside down. "

Enthusiasm makes everything bright and clear and always opens new doors for others, the readers.

Enables new ways to see the world.

Zhadan's poems, translated into German by Claudia Dathe, make enthusiasm easy for the reader.

Zhadan writes: "We only have a duty - to share what is most important: our voice, our sensitivity."

And adds: "May next spring come. We may be embarrassed by optimism. May the stalks of the reed like antennae filter the most important things out of the air - rhythm and forgiveness."

Read Zhadan's "antenna"!

And above all, enthusiasm will be filtered out of the air around you.

It will make breathing easier, a lot easier.

In the SPIEGEL book show "Spitzentitel", Volker Weidermann also spoke to Serhij Zhadan - you can see the video of the entire episode with Mely Kiyak

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