Comparison between the Trieste novelist and the Austrian writer, attentive observer of the dynamics that have affected that jagged area
One of the most profound connoisseurs of Central Europe, of its mixes and lacerations, of its intertwined and often furiously divided and mutually hostile cultures is Martin Pollack, Austrian writer and scholar to whom we owe books, short stories, fundamental inquiries that reveal an extraordinary wealth of information and an intense writing force, well known and appreciated also in Italy, where many of his books are translated and loved for their precision and their dry stylistic strength that enhances the imagination, the ability to go in search of events, of men, of the many stories that history is made of. We have been friends for many years, we have also traveled together in some of those culturally and politically labyrinthine countries.
More than Mitteleuropa, Pollack speaks of intermediate europeOf «Europe between», middle Europe which sometimes seems to consist not so much in some countries and territories, as in the spaces and cultures in which these intersect and divide. As the increasingly atrocious war of recent days also demonstrates, the “Middle Europe”, while fertile in encounters and mixes, is often a tragedy. Is Ukraine, I ask him, perhaps a concentrate of the so-called “Middle Europe”?
MARTIN POLLACK — The current war of aggression of Putin’s Russia against independent Ukraine represents a profound turning point in these lands, which until the First World War were truly a mixture of diversity, of many peoples and ethnic groups, Poles, Ukrainians – which then in the The Habsburg Empire were mostly called Ruthenians – Jews, Germans, but also many smaller ethnic groups and, such as the Huzuli, closely related to the Ukrainians, but nevertheless a separate group with a culture of their own. And then the Armenians, Roma and Sinti, just to name a few. In retrospect we like to present it as if these peoples and nationalities lived mostly in harmony, but this reading does not stand up to historical analysis. With the awakening of nationalism in the 19th century, these territories were also traversed by national movements and aspirations which often culminated in bloody conflicts. Think for example of the Polish-Ukrainian war of 1918 and 1919 which ended with the newly established Poland claiming the territories for itself – and oppressing the Ruthenians / Ukrainians who lived there.
CLAUDIO MAGRIS – This is yesterday’s story; today, in those lands, the incredible courage of the attacked appears to be a barricade against what appear to be the barbaric general tests of the destruction not only of a country, but of the world. The Ruthenians, so dear to Joseph Roth, are a people or, as has been said, an invention of the Hapsburgs to spite other peoples, for example the Ukrainians and, by increasing the number of nationalities, the strength of each of them decreases. they with respect to the central power? Today, when we say Galicia, we think above all of a Polish culture, but Galician literature is also largely German-speaking, think of the stories of Franzos or Sacher-Masoch, just to give an example. You yourself have made known with your translations and travel books in Galicia, Lviv, Czernowitz, many Polish authors to the Germans. There is also the great Polish Jewish culture, Yiddish literature – think of the two Singers but also of other great ones, from Alejchem to Peretz, many masterpieces. Today, in those torn lands, what remains of this variety?
MARTIN POLLACK — Indeed, the Ruthenians were an invention of the Hapsburg bureaucrats who insisted on giving an exact name to everything they administered. But the name already existed before the Hapsburgs. Ukrainians called themselves russyny O russnakywhich roughly corresponds to Ruthenians, and their language the russkyj, not Russian, but Ruthenian or Ukrainian. There was a great deal of confusion, but that didn’t worry us. Because for the people, for the people, the small and very small communities of origin, the village or the district were important. Usually they didn’t know anything else. With the designation of “Ruthenians” the Hapsburgs also wanted to counter the awakening of Ukrainian national sentiment by applying this designation only to the inhabitants of Galicia, but not to the inhabitants of the other Ukrainian territories. The richness of these areas lay precisely in their diversity, it is not for nothing that Galicia is defined as a country rich in poor people, rich in languages and cultures, in cultural diversity and at the same time very poor. Galician misery in the 19th century was proverbial and led to mass emigration, mainly to North America.
CLAUDIO MAGRIS – Since when has this world become “your” fantastic, cultural, sentimental, literary world?
MARTIN POLLACK — This colorful and tragic world has fascinated me since I was a student. The fact that vast territories with the metropolis Lemberg, but also Czernowitz, today Tschernivzy, once belonged to Austria; that many great authors and thinkers came from here, such as the Nobel laureate Schmul Josef Agnon, who wrote in Hebrew, but also the German-speaking author Joseph Roth or his Polish friend Józef Wittlin, who with The salt of the earth, he wrote a great work on the First World War, it was an incentive to deal with this world, which sadly was irreparably destroyed in two great wars, not to mention the Holocaust. That this world has once again plunged into a bloody war is one of the great tragedies that afflict our Europe, because it is actually a war directed against Europe, against all European values, against democracy.
CLAUDIO MAGRIS – Yours is an extraordinary reading of the landscape, an x-ray of its nature in which its story has gained strength. How far is it possible to distinguish nationalities in this kaleidoscope of identities and cultures? Do different names really correspond to different identities? When you feel the transition from a Central Europe to one intermediate europe?
MARTIN POLLACK — I think it is almost impossible to draw clear lines between identity and cultures. It is part of the tragedy of these lands that it is above all bloody wars that draw clear dividing lines, for example between Ukrainians and Russians. Many Ukrainians, in Kiev, but especially in the east, speak Russian, however they feel Ukrainians, the language does not matter. The names are also of little significance. The storms of stories have reshuffled peoples, but also individual families, they have erased identities. I have met people in Carpathian villages who, when asked which people they feel they belong to, confusedly answer that they are here schy, locals, the village and its immediate surroundings, the church determine their membership. For me this too is an expression of middle Europe, this vagueness, this inability to recognize ourselves in modern concepts of nation. They don’t need it, they don’t need it. Often only when they are forced into war do they discover which flag they are serving, which state claims them as soldiers, as slaughter fodder.
CLAUDIO MAGRIS – A great scholar of these themes, Karl Schlögel, says that in space one can read time, not vanished but deposited, so to speak, contained in space. What time can we read today in the attacked space, sometimes destroyed in these days of war?
MARTIN POLLACK — Karl Schlögel is one of the leading experts on the historical context of these lands. He not only studied and told them, but he really loved them. When you see with what sincere pain Schlögel speaks in these days of the attacked and tormented Ukraine, he really takes your heart. I believe that these lands are experiencing a real turning point today, the outcome of which is still uncertain. But it’s a turning point, that’s for sure. In these traumatic days, Ukraine is finding itself again, consolidating its identity. This is, in a sense, comforting, even if in reality nothing positive can be drawn from these events.
Claudio Magris reviewed the book by Martin Pollack “Topography of memory”, published by the publisher Keller, in the “Corriere della Sera” of 5 June 2021
March 3, 2022 (change March 3, 2022 | 10:09 am)
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