Munich: Literature festival in times of war and peace

Created: 2022-11-15, 4:25 p.m

By: Katrin Basaran

“You can cry later”: The Ukrainian writer and journalist Tanya Malyartschuk uses literature to fight for the end of the war in her home country.

© Catherine Hess

Interview with the Ukrainian writer Tanya Malyartschuk about the Munich Literature Festival, which starts on November 16, 2022.

So many words to be said and read, so many books to reveal their truths and stories!

The Munich Literature Festival, which will be celebrated until December 4, 2022, starts today.

The forum, the core of the festival, is curated this year by the Ukrainian author Tanja Maljartschuk (39, “Blue Whale of Remembrance”).

The Bachmann Prize winner has lived in Vienna since 2011.

Her homeland is of course the topic of the forum, but not only, as she revealed in the Zoom interview:

You said in the spring that you were also suffering physically from the war in Ukraine.

How are you today?

Tanya Malyartschuk:

I've grown a thick skin.

I can't handle the situation emotionally any other way.

You act rationally and do what you can to end the war.

It's all about perseverance at the moment.

You can cry later.

That's how many Ukrainians do it.

War sounds so abstract, most of us have never had to experience one.

Tanja Maljartschuk:

I can no longer say that for myself.

Anyone who has a relationship with Ukraine experiences this horror first-hand - you don't have to be there to see it.

All emotions hit you at the same time: Here you mourn the death of a friend, here you develop hope because a few places have been liberated again.

And nothing prepares you for a war - you've read books about the Holocaust, World War II, seen hundreds of films.

You stand completely naked before this new experience.

How are your loved ones in Ukraine?

Tanya Malyarchuk:

My family is safe I hope.

Because in Ukraine there is no place where you are really safe.

My friends, mostly writers, face a double challenge: either there is an air raid warning or there is no electricity.

You want and have to do the job somewhere between basement and darkness.

Millions of people live there in conditions we cannot imagine.

My friend, the literary critic Hanna Ulura, lives in Mykolaiv.

The city in the south of the country has been shelled every day since March.

She cannot escape, her mother is bedridden.

What gives her strength: She goes out and talks to people.

"I finally understood how much I love these people," she told me.

“How helpful people can be in an extreme situation.

The Ukrainian people are united?

Or are there also voices that advocate a cession of territory in favor of peace?

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Tanya Malyarchuk:

I can't see inside everyone's heads.

There are no such conversations in public.

Because everyone knows that ceding territory to Russia does not guarantee peace.

The tanks would soon roll on.

I have a few women in my close circle whose husbands have already fallen.

Nobody ever says that this death was in vain.

In your books you paint the picture of an oppressed people in search of identity.

How would you describe the Ukrainian soul?

Tanya Malyarchuk:

The striving for freedom and self-determination is very pronounced, almost bordering on obsession.

Ukraine has recently experienced more than 70 years of dictatorship that killed millions.

A dictatorship always picks out the best, the brave, and torments them.

Those in power are not only concerned with killing, but with forcing a society into slavery.

In my family, which was socialized in the Soviet Union, it was always said: "Don't stand out!

Better keep quiet!” Because it can be dangerous.

For the people of my generation, who only experienced the USSR for a short time, it is no longer possible to live like this.

After the 2014 revolution, the Euromaidan, Ukraine has been strengthened by many positive changes.

The people themselves have taken responsibility for the state,

which rarely happens in post-Soviet countries.

And even the intellectuals – traditionally more in the opposition – have become active in it.

Even now: so many artists and writers who would otherwise never have picked up a gun volunteered for the army in February.

Two of these young authors will bring you to the Munich Literature Festival on November 18th.

What do Artem Chapeye and Artem Tschech bring with them?

Tanja Malyartschuk:

Both of them are clever thinkers and observers - and they are in the middle of this war.

It is still not sure if they will actually make it to Munich.

But when it does, it's the best way to hear this stark, brutal reality firsthand and look those affected in the eye.

Artem Chapeye, for example, translated works by Edward Said and Mahatma Gandhi into Ukrainian before the war.

He has always described himself as a liberal leftist and pacifist.

On February 27, he volunteered for the army after taking his wife and children to safety.

"Sometimes there are situations where Mahatma Gandhi would have taken up arms," ​​he said.

It would have been understandable if you had focused on Ukrainian culture at the literary festival.

But they continue to come full circle.

"Being free - telling a new story about Central Europe" is the theme.

This is irritating, because for most people Central Europe ends at the German-Polish border.

Tanja Maljartschuk:

Central Europe is not a geographical term, but a political one.

The countries that lie between Germany and Russia have been repeatedly occupied with brutal force.

Its borders have been redrawn a thousand times on a map as a bulwark between west and east.

They were determined to belong to Europe or to the Soviet Union - even after the collapse of the USSR.

They were not listened to and their importance for the stability of the West was not recognized.

That should be discussed.

What do you want visitors to take away from your program?

Tanja Maljartschuk:

If the audience asks questions, moves out of their own comfort zone and is willing to acknowledge the influences Central Europe has on the West, I'm happy.

But of course it is a literary festival, a cultural festival.

I have a lot of talks planned, which is a bit unusual.

There is a great tradition of readings in Germany.

At the moment, however, discussions seem more important to me.

I want to create space to exchange ideas, to compare experiences, to rethink the past.

I'm a passionate supporter of the European idea.

For Ukraine, too, there is no other way than to Europe.

She's part of it - or she'll perish in the brutal East.

What is your personal highlight at the events?

Tanja Maljartschuk:

Every event is a personal highlight for me.

If I should single out something, it would be “Foreign Europe in Poems”.

Poets from Ukraine, Albania and Lithuania come together with German-speaking poets for an exchange.

I think the idea is very nice, it shows what literature can do.

It's about getting closer to the truth through aesthetic components.

Finally, a question about Ukraine: looking to the future, how do you see your country?

Tanja Maljartschuk:

I'm not thinking in these dimensions at the moment.

For me, the future means acting in the present.

She alone decides.

As intensely as I do today to stop this war, that's what the future will look like one day.