There, in the republic, today mostly poems about love for the motherland and how Donbass will not submit to the enemy are in circulation. In general, everything is like in the days of Stalin’s socialist realism. It is clear that the writers from our list are working contrary to the thematic “state order” dictated by the front-line situation. But, by the way, they manage to speak about the war in the language of poetry, and not in a newspaper editorial or propaganda poster. But the worst thing is that they all remain there, on the ground, where shells are exploding every minute.
“It’s really bad…”
Igor Bobyrev is a poet, author of publications in all the major literary magazines published in Russian around the world. His miniatures are actively translated into European languages, primarily into Italian.
Every day, on his Facebook, Igor keeps a poetic and prose Time.news of what is happening. The MK correspondent contacted Bobyrev on Friday evening, when sirens howled in Donetsk, frightening the city with a population of one million (more precisely, the former “millionaire”). Then the poet assured that he retains courage and endurance:
“I don’t see the point in panicking out of nowhere. Of course, just in case, you can put the necessary things in your backpack and keep it with you. None of the acquaintances is not going to leave yet, no one is panicking. People walk their dogs to the sound of a siren. True, we turn on the siren from time to time for no reason. And it’s hard to remember that it was turned on during the bombing.
It was not possible to continue the conversation on Sunday. In a personal Igor replied that he could not speak. And then he made an eloquent post: “while you are showing off, everything is really bad.”
The two previous entries are also not optimistic: “now they are firing from artillery often and loudly, they have been shooting for 40 minutes”, “as expected, they started bombing at midnight.” Both of them were taken on the night from Saturday to Sunday. And the last poem Bobyrev posted on social networks on February 15 is eloquent evidence in favor of the fact that when the guns speak, the muses are silent.
“It’s more audible there than near me…”
Sergey Shatalov is a poet, prose writer, director, translator of French and Italian poetry, winner of a number of awards, editor of the Dots magazine, compiler of the legendary Strange Story Anthology. His poetic texts were published in Russia, Europe, and the USA.
Against the backdrop of disruptions in communications in the neighboring LPR and periodic Internet outages, the first question was about the means of communication:
– Sergey Anatolyevich, how are you with mobile communications? All OK?
Yes, Phoenix is working.
— In what district of Donetsk do you live?
– In Leninsky.
– How much is the increase in the intensity of shelling over the past 24 hours?
– In principle, the shelling has always been like that. They just got active. This is the usual sound design of our places.
– Is there a direct threat to you? There were no “arrivals” near your house?
“There is no threat to me, but there is a threat to my family. Because the daughter lives on the border with the street. Biryuzova – Staromikhaylovka nearby. It’s louder there than near me.
– You and your loved ones did not think to evacuate?
– My mother is sick. Where will I take her? I will take her to the hospital tomorrow.
– But it’s unthinkable – to constantly hear the cannonade, to create in such conditions!
– This is a normal state. We, creative people, are in motion, which allows us to keep our creative tone. Poetry is the main energy of life, the supplier of human energy. Poetry, music and dance are what moves a person further. Without this, a person simply does not exist …
(At these words, the Network turned off again. I had to put an end to it.)
No one cancels planned weddings …
Our third interlocutor is the Donetsk poet Natalya Izotova, a graduate of the Literary Institute named after. Gorky. Russian thick magazines closely follow her work, and in the “Friendship of Peoples” her collections are published about once every two years.
– Natalya, do you also hear strong “bangs”? How does the mining capital live now?
– In the Voroshilovsky district, the situation has worsened, today the night was not quiet even in the prosperous center. They shot. The day before yesterday, a car exploded near the administration building, not far from my house. On the same day, the evacuation began, which is now going around the clock, which has never happened before. Public transport does not work. A general mobilization of the male population has been announced. And at the same time, people who have decided to stay buy products at the market according to their usual lists, do not stock up on canned food. No one cancels planned weddings, there are evacuation buses and cars with ribbons on the roads, such an impressive contrast, ready-made shots for a movie.
Why aren’t you leaving?
– I’ll stay. You could say it’s a family tradition. My family is the embodiment of the settled way of life, no one has ever been evacuated during wars, no one has emigrated. There are, of course, my internal reasons for not leaving. I feel like a non-random piece of the puzzle in everything that happens here, I don’t want to be removed from this story. “Blessed is he who visited this world / In his fatal moments …” – Tyutchev’s words help to live in the war years and especially in moments of exacerbation.
How do battles affect your poems? The last poem – what was it about?
– When the war began, I completely stopped writing and only in 2020, during self-isolation, I again began to write down the incoming lines and rhyme. In poetry, I do not respond to external events. For me, poetry is only self-exploration, vigorous activity interferes with this immersion. And strong shocks also interfere with me personally, I am not one of those who need to speak out to make it easier. Up-to-date coverage of events is the task of the media. But military symptoms are found years later in my poems, for example, in the form of words and syntactic constructions that were not characteristic of me before. I don’t consciously write about the war, but, according to Mayakovsky’s testament, sometimes I unconsciously write about the war, yes.
The last poem was last spring, in April, and it is about time, not about the one in which people live and die, but about its very substance, regardless of the living and the dying.
— Do your colleagues in the writing department, former LIT classmates, write to you? Does the literary community show solidarity?
“I don’t live a literary life and I don’t know what’s going on in the literary community. Fellow students of LIT write, ask how I am and if I need help. These are relationships that are not so much related to literature as simply human.
– A poet in war – what is his mission and what is his place?
– It is possible to understand what the poet’s mission really was in a certain period of time only after many years. What we consider our mission in the course of life may turn out to be only an internal motivation for actions. I do not think about the mission, it sounds too pretentious. My place in the war is in my home.
The depth of Izotova’s metaphorical immersion can be seen on the example of this text:
I am typing a written report
Millimeters of skin
I stopped scratching poetry –
I’m picking them up too.
My life comprehends frontally
Your artificial intelligence
And now our common secret –
My veins under my eye:
They drew them with a black river,
Like a shimmering outline
The bloodstream does not circle in a spiral –
Flying along the front line.
On the glass of telegram chat
Smart Phone –
My index print
Like a postage stamp.
(“DN”, 2020, No. 9).
Instead of an afterword. against the flow
When flows of refugees rushed from the LDNR to the neighboring regions of Russia, Irina Bauer, a writer, editor-in-chief of the Donetsk magazine “Sunduk”, returned from Moscow to her homeland. She went home, despite forecasts of an imminent offensive by the Ukrainian army and rumors of a complete closure of the border.
– Of course, I’m coming back, because I always ask the question, what can I do for Donetsk. This is my homeland. Even if I am in danger, I will live there.
– Does your journal publish authors, relatively speaking, of the local “patriotic” circle?
Yes, we have formed such a circle, but our magazine does not close on it. I have many Russian writers represented. Vasily Nacentov, Dmitry Murzin, Yulia Sycheva, Ivanovo branch of the joint venture. Voronezh writers. The next I plan to publish Belarusians. We must not focus on one topic, we must see the whole world.
– By speaking out for the Russian language, did the pro-Russian part of Donbass fully unite with Russian culture? Or did this merger remain at the level of Grigory Leps’ concerts?
– We still need to learn Russian modern literature. I will do what I can. I will print it stubbornly and endlessly!