Literatura: Week 8

Writing Ukrainian literature in Russian, a lecture and seminar with Vitlay Chernetsky. This is Russpohone writing in Ukraine, relationships between language, literature, politics, between Russia, Ukraine and former Soviet Union countries. This seminar focused on work by four authors.

All four are contemporary writers creating literature using Russian language. These writers are Andrey Kurkov, Boris & Liudmila Khersonsky, Anastasia Afanasieva and Aleksandr Kabanov. Work covers writing from 2014 – present. This includes analysis of identity, narratives and language in literature.

Part of this work is factual documentary writing. One text is Ukraine Diaries by Kurkov from 2014. In this week’s Times Literary Supplement there are two articles about Ukrainian literature. One, Writers at war explores this topic, an analysis of war and documentary writing in Ukrainian. A second article about Ukrainian poetry  is by Uilleam Blacker, lecturer from Literatura week 6. During early weeks of Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine I followed Yevgenia Belorusets War Diary available in publication and on Isolarii’s website here: https://www.isolarii.com/kyiv

Literatura: Week 7

A seminar on work by living poets with lecturer Iryna Starovoyt. Exploring Ukrainian literature of independence, post-Soviet writing including Ukrainian independence, and Orange Revolution. Role and purpose of poetry in times of social change, upheaval and action.

Four contemporary writers: Natalka Bilotserkivets, Serhii Zhadan, Marianna Kiyanovska and Kateryna Kalytko. This work includes poetry inspired by fairytales, folklore and ancient myth. A focus on poetry in times of war.

Additional reading by Alisa Lozhkina exploring art and revolution. Relationships between literature and visual art. This includes photography, film, installation and painting. Markiyan Matsekh’s 2013 work A Piano for the Berkut appears in a documentation film from BBC News, below.

Playing the Piano to riot police in Ukraine, BBC News, 2013.

Literatura Week 6

A seminar with lecturer Uilleam Blacker. Exploing Ukrainian Literature in Dialogue. Two authors, both born in 1850s Ukraine, both died in 1916. Exploring nation, empire and modernity.

Text one: Pure Race by Ivan Franko. This story uses action on a train as a symbol of modernity. As in films, this becomes a setting for chance encounters with a group of otherwise unconnected characters. Varied in outlook and class. This translation by Oles Kovalenko is from 1977.

Two short stories ‘Chava’ and ‘Get thee gone’ from Scholem Aleichem. Part of an eight story cycle, Tevy the Dairyman. There were similarities in this writing with Laurence Sterne’s characters in Tristram Shandy. Unreliable narrator, a stream of consciousness style and dialogue between author and character.

Short Stories, by Ivan Franko.
Dnipro Publishers, 1977.

Literatura: Week 5

A seminar with Sasha Dovzhyk, lecturer and Special Projects Curator at Ukrainian Institute London. Ukraine prose of war: contemporary literature of Eastern Ukraine. Fiction and prose from 2014 onwards. Two texts in response to Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine.

Two popular contemporary writers. Serhiy Zhadan and Olena Stiazhkina. Zhadan is a rock-star and poet. Stiazhkina’s text was In God’s Language, translated by Uilleam Blacker and Larissa Babij. This was an excerpt of a full text and alongside this, one full novel.

Zhadan’s 2019 novel in translation is The Orphanage. An account of one man’s journey through a war torn town in Ukraine to collect his nephew. A visceral, raw, emotive account of responses to war. One striking element of this text is a sense of disorientation. Dislocation from past and future, disorientation in both time and space. A tangible and literal fog covers this story. A difficult and evocative read.

The Orphanage, 2019. Translated by Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler and Reilly Costigan-Humes.

Literatura: Week 4

A seminar with lecturer Bohdan Tokarsky. Focusing on Ukrainian dissidents. Work from 1960s and 1970s during the Thaw and Brezhnev era. Existential poetry and work exploring selfhood.

Reading included original translations, reading in English and Ukrainian. This focused on two poets, Vasyl Stus and Vasyl Holoborodko. In particular a concept of, in Ukrainian, самособоюнаповнення (samosoboiunapovnennia). A form of self-reflection, looking at oneself, or fluid self, exploring relationship with oneself as process. This is also evident in works by Rainer Maria Rilke.

Further reading included a text by Stus’ son, Dmytro Stus. This included and made reference to how and where Stus appears on film. There is footage of Dmytro Stus and his father’s reburial in 1989. This is by Slavko Chernilevsky in a film Vasyl Stus: The Road of Thorns. I am searching for this material online.




Week 4: Lecture Notes




Further reading: Vasyl Stus: Life in Creativity by Dmytro Stus.

Literatura: Week 3

A seminar on theatre with lecturer Mayhill Fowler. Focusing on Ukrainian Avant-Garde. In particular work from 1920s exploring theatre, culture and state. This focused on two plays.

Both are from Soviet Ukraine. These were by playwright Mykola Kulish. The People’s Malakhy from 1927 and Sonata Pathétique from 1930. Kulish was a member of VAPLITE. Discussions in this seminar included relationships between author and his characters.

Reading also included connections to visual arts in all forms. In particular I focused on work by Alexandra Exter. I viewed paintings from her set designs in Houghton Library when I visited Harvard. It was fantastic to get contexts of her practice.




Alexandra Exter set and costume designs. Set Design: Othello, 1921–1928.

Literatura Class 2

Seminar 2 was with lecturer Tamara Hundorova author of The Post-Chornobyl Library. This seminar was Ukrainian Modernism and Feminism. This focused on two writers, Lesia Ukrainka and Olha Kobylianska. A discussion of two texts in relation to modernist themes. This included relationships to Kafka, T. S. Eliot and Deleuze.

My first reading was a text by Lesia Ukrainka, Cassandra. This is a dramatic poem, a 1968 edition translated by Vera Rich. In particular I focused on a discussion on truth (p. 217).
“Does a voice never tell you in your heart:
“It shall be this, thus and no other way?”
(Ukrainka, 1968, p. 217).
Investigating intuition, truth, dialogue and physical relationships.




Extract from Cassandra by Lesia Ukrainka. Source: The Electronic Library of Ukrainian Literature.

Text two was an extract from a short story. Valse Mélancolique by Olha Kobylianska. This text is from 1897. A story of relationships between three women. This is a first person narration from one woman and her two friends and housemates, one artist, one musician. It is a story of female identity, kinship and love “like a man” (Kobylianska, 1998, p. 151). Perspectives on female identity.


Kobylianska, Olha (1998)  'Valse melancholique', trans. by Roma Franko, in But...The Lord is Silent (Language Lanterns Publications,), pp. 128-170.
Ukrainka, Lesia (1968) Cassandra [Online]. trans. by Vera Rich Toronto: University of Toronto. Available from: <http://sites.utoronto.ca/elul/English/Ukrainka/Ukrainka-Cassandra.pdf> [Accessed 30 June 2023].