Strange heart disease translated from Ukrainian by Elena Marinicheva and Zaven Babloyan. Taras Prokhasko: “In such cases it is best to call me a writer...

Prokhasko Taras Bogdanovich is a Ukrainian prose writer. Born in 1968 in Ivano-Frankivsk (Western Ukraine). Graduated from the Faculty of Biology of Lviv University. Author of a number of stories and the novel “Unprosti”. Winner of the J. Conrad Award, BBC Book of the Year in the Children's Book category. Works translated into Russian were published in the magazine “New World”, the anthology “Galician Stonehenge”, and were published as a separate book “Difficult”. The conversation with Taras Prokhasko took place at the round table of the Moscow festival “Ukrainian Motif” in October 2012. Taras Prokhasko spoke not his native Ukrainian, but Russian. We tried to preserve the flavor of his lively speech, making only minimal edits. Questions were asked by Andrey Pustogarov.

Andrey Pustogarov: Today we have at our round table a guest of the festival, Ivano-Frankivsk prose writer Taras Prokhasko. Taras, once again, please introduce yourself - it’s always interesting when a person introduces himself.

Taras Prokhasko: I am Taras Prokhasko. It is best to call me a writer in such cases. And it is best to call it “from Ivano-Frankivsk” in such cases. That is, you introduced me absolutely correctly. Then everything will appear gradually.

Let's start, perhaps, with the Stanislavsky phenomenon 1 . Lately I have often heard the opinion that this topic is not relevant. Like, when was he there? - in the early 90s. And a lot of water has flowed under the bridge since then, and even its participants have long stopped pressing the fact that they are part of some kind of association. But, in my opinion, this was the rise of Ukrainian literature. On the surface lies the thesis that it was associated with the break of eras, with the transition from Soviet power to independent Ukraine. And at that time it seemed that all the doors were open, and the very expectation of change gave everything an internal drive. And yet, if not in the works themselves, then in the ideology of the authors, there was a significant element of resistance to the Soviet system. To exaggerate somewhat, we can say that in subsequent years Ukraine no longer had a clear ideology. The idea of “entering Europe” was good in the early 90s. Then it turned out that all this was not easy. Perhaps the exhaustion of all these ideas has led to the fact that Ukrainian literature is now developing mainly in quantitative terms?

It's easy for me to talk about these times, because they were very Good times. Because I was young and this was the start of something new. And I perceive all this not as part of the history of literature, but as my life. But on the other hand, it’s hard to formulate something... That is, there are different strategies: someone gets together to create their own path, some kind of ideology based on a common view of the world, but it happens completely differently - this is exactly what happened with the Stanislavsky phenomenon – we just lived, just did something, and only later a definition was found for this.

And we have all become a little victims of the fact that we must now be responsible for how this or that thesis, word, sentence fits into this overall picture. And you were very right when you talked about the feeling of possibility, the possibility of everything. The feeling of openness of the world was the most important thing. We all grew up in the Soviet Union, we were young... in the early 90s we were all twenty-something, thirty years old... This is, in general, a very important moment in the history of Ukraine - now there are few people left who did not study in a Soviet school . Who knew something other than the Soviet ideological system. As a child, this was a defining thing for me, because most people of the older generation studied either under Austria, or under Poland, or under the Czech Republic.

And these people were bearers of an alternative, they knew that something could be different... And now I see that there are very few people left who did not study in a Soviet school, even in Western Ukraine, and they no longer define anything, and these are already such individual memories... We are now beginning an era when the generation that went through the Soviet school, one way or another, is already everywhere... We also went through the Soviet school. And our protest was aesthetic. None of us thought about becoming a Soviet writer. In the Soviet Union there were many opportunities to still learn something different. We were brought up on all this world literature, including Polish translations. And we were raised by our elders, our grandparents. And all this somehow added up to aesthetic otherness - the house, the books. And suddenly it became possible what you were talking about - the openness of the world. And it turned out that what we did, thinking that it was, speaking in the Russian tradition, “in the box” - shuflyad O va, literature of shuflyada in Ukrainian, it turned out that it could be shown to someone.

And this was, of course, a big change in consciousness. “Chetver” was the first magazine on our territory that we started making without turning to anyone for permission or help. Of course, before there was a tradition of samizdat, but now it was a different feeling: you can do this and for this already... This is no longer such a real war, this is already an aesthetic protest. And this all resulted in us finding each other. Even this anecdotal example - I came to this magazine “Thursday”, which was published by Yurko Izdryk, based on an advertisement on the fence.

Among the various “Polish visa”, or “Order of the Great Patriotic War, I’ll buy it at a high price” - there was also “an apartment for sale in a Polish house”, or “an apartment for sale in an Austrian house”, that is, this was also the terminology used (I later noticed that in Chernivtsi there were “Austrian houses” and “Romanian”, in Uzhgorod – “Austrian” and “Czech”) - and among all these advertisements there was “we invite you to work in an independent uncensored literary magazine.” And I read it, I came. It was a miracle that this was possible, and it turned out that this was not some kind of scam, which was a lot in the 90s - and “I sell curare poison, and “red viper poison”, and “red mercury” - but here they offered literary magazine, and it turned out that it was really a literary magazine.

And this feeling - precisely that we, it turns out, can do as we want - it was the most powerful. And perhaps later this turned out to be the biggest blow for our generation. Because it turned out - yes, we want a lot, and it seems to us that we can do a lot, it seems to us that we are no worse than Cortazar, and we just need to say - here we are... the feeling that just declare yourself and that’s it They will say - oh, the Ukrainians have finally come to world literature!..

And then it turns out that the set or stock of these ideas and these opportunities... the world does not need us as much as we thought. This was the biggest blow for a significant part of my generation. And writers - that’s still the case, more or less, but I know artists who also thought - now they’ll find out about it, and the whole world will be here. But it wasn’t like that...

In conclusion, I’ll just say: it seems to me that the most important thing in the Stanislavsky phenomenon is that in this space a lot of tiers, a lot of layers came together. There was precisely this, as they call it now, family or living history, that is, there was still a tradition of living history - these stories, retellings. It is also very important that this part of Ukraine was minimally Russified, that is, the Ukrainian language lived a full life there, and it was not associated with something artificial or even with something ironic, or forbidden, or with some kind of manifestation of “national self-awareness" or protest. It was simply alive, in which they talked about all things - the highest and the lowest.

That is, this language was very much in use. This was the language in which people thought. And it is very important that this layering is historical, associated with family memory - it was not unambiguous. All these memories of different periods, of different destinies, they were so intertwined that it became clear that if, say, one grandfather was in the SS division "Galicia", and the other, say, the director of a plant and because of this he had to be a member of the party... in a word, everything was not so clear - there was no pathos not only in relation to the Soviet regime. There was a lot of understanding. And this is very good for literature - when everything overlaps each other in such a complex way. And these are the most important things.

You said that you all studied in a Soviet school. And in Soviet institutions, I would add. But in your books this part of life is missing. It seems that the years spent in the Soviet Union are generally a taboo topic for you.

I will answer in this way: for me, one of the most important, even youthful, writing strategies was to convey experience... first, to convey the experience received from previous generations. This is what is called living history. I understood that life was finite and I could leave at any moment. And I understood this as an important task, because it seemed to me that perhaps this memory that I have, this family history of mine, of my loved ones - perhaps it is very important. And it seemed to me that this was my mission. And then I’ll do my own thing. And now I’m thinking about writing more... I’m growing to understand my life, my childhood, my youth...

Yaroslav Gritsak 2 once told me ... so I asked him: why is there such a rejection among Ukrainians of the memory of 89-91 years - about what was called the “struggle for independence”? And he explained to me what it was crowding out because there was nothing really heroic about it. That is, in this revolution of 89 - 91 - well, in Lvov it began in 88 - in fact, no one except the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church (which, by the way, was present here on Arbat in 87 - 88), no one really I didn’t do anything heroic.

But what the parishioners do or faithful for their church, it a priori has a different connotation of heroism: they do not talk about some kind of heroism - for them this is normal behavior. Therefore, all these things are repressed from consciousness. But I promise that I will write about it. Because I think a lot - how it was all constructed, all that life, and how this acceptance and rejection was intertwined not only in my mind - perhaps even less in mine - but, say, in the generation of my parents, who passed on to me rejection of the Soviet regime, under which they were taken to Siberia. Then they built their lives...

I'm not saying that they were collaborators in the Soviet Union, but they lived completely normally in the Soviet system. And when my youngest brother 3 - he was 10 or 12 years old - said that Soviet Union does such stupid things... He then began to read a lot of the world's ancient classics... He said that what they were doing now was so stupid that it would not last long, that all this would soon collapse. Because it's simply impossible, it's absurd. And my mother, who was from that solid generation, but who was already a Soviet doctor, she said - well, it still takes a hundred or two hundred years...

This is how it all coexisted? Then, already in some ninety-nine or even two thousand, I thought that in my daily, street-home life, last years Soviet and current years, they... nothing has changed. Well, of course, I can say what I want or write, but this is only because for some reason I began to write. If I had not written, I could have said the same thing - because those people who said to themselves in the kitchen, they continued to say so... That is, in fact, it’s all very difficult, and to say unambiguously about some kind of protest... Well, you can’t constantly fight... Fragments of stories about Frankovsk in the 80s and 90s were included in the story “Several stories can be made from this.”

Now let's finally move on to you yourself. As you know, there are logical and historical methods of knowledge. I propose to stop at the historical and go from your birth to the present day. I know that the famous Ukrainian writer Irina Vilde is your aunt. Somewhere you mentioned that your grandfather wrote some kind of literary, let’s say, works. What influenced you? Was there any impetus to write?

There was a very important feature in my family, in my city, in my family - although it is universal, it does not belong to anyone separately - it is not alien to writing, literature. The culture of writing is very important in the sense that it is the only way to record anything. And the presence of writing has always been something natural. You probably understand this mystery, this awe - notes from your grandfather or ancestors, or even some incomprehensible bills - how many pounds of butter there are, something else - all this is of great importance. The most important thing is that writing and saving these records is something normal, ordinary and natural. I came across this so early...

I don’t want to say that my relatives, my grandmothers, grandfathers were outstanding writers, but this is one of the most important things, strange things, that you can feel close, for example, to the same Gogol and not make something out of it -that of the literary school - that I am also the same as him... But I am also the same... It is very difficult for me to convey this now, and this is also, probably, a feature of literature, that a writer cannot accurately express his thought, and this is not bad, because it gives some broader opportunities...

In the 40s, a lot was lost from various notes, even from letters. Not to mention the fact that all this suffered from various elements, there was also such an important thing as burning - burning documents, burning books. And people themselves burned a lot of books in their homes, so that this would not become another reason for complaints and repression. Maybe it never would have happened, but people did it for their own safety. It's like fastening a seat belt: you don't know whether it will help or not, but it's still considered better. Therefore, very little of this writing remains. And it always seemed to me that this tradition of writing something down - not so that it is literature that will shake the world, but so that it does not go away - it is necessary.

With Irena Vilde, this is a complex story, because this, one might say, is the most significant writer with whom I came into contact. She was already the eldest at that time, a grandmother, one might say, by some signs, although she was very young by other signs. I was still a child, but I understood that here I was coming into contact with the most outstanding writer that exists now. She, in fact, wrote very well, and Ukrainian literature without Irena Wilde in the 30s would have been completely different - it was something similar to the same Stanislavsky phenomenon or to “Boo-Ba-Boo” 4, but only in the 30s.

The 30s were a difficult time of serious ideological confrontations - both within Western Ukrainian society, and the confrontation of all parts of Western Ukraine with the ideology of the countries to which they belonged. From radicalism, from universal European fascism to nationalism: totalitarian nationalism, integral nationalism, humanitarian nationalism... Not to mention the fact that all this was combined with a great religious revival, and a very good religious revival. This was a time when even the bishops of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, who were later considered enemies of the Soviet government and the Ukrainian people, said that there was no need to politicize this.

That is, the policy of the church was the way church policy should be. And everything was intertwined. And then a young girl appeared who began to write absolutely freely about what was happening, about what she was experiencing, and it was all devoid of an ideological strategy. It was living, real literature. Then she... also very interesting - this is formation, this is history... then she received the Shevchenko Prize - already in the 60s. At one time, she allowed herself to be one of the few to write personally to Stalin.

That is, it was accepted by the Soviet government. And even in my family there were different opinions on how to accept her at home: either as a normal aunt, or as one who writes letters to Stalin? Then she edits her wonderful, perhaps too long novel, “The Richynski Sisters,” written in the 20s and 30s. He edits from the point of view of the new government, so that it all fits in somehow... And this made the novel completely uninteresting to read... These are my childhood observations related to Irena Vilde.

And besides, there was also the experience of constantly reading authors who were miraculously preserved in these home libraries. Well, I had this strange thing - I decided that I would not read Soviet literature from the school curriculum in the 9th - 10th grade. True, I cheated on myself - I read “Riders” by Yuri Yanovsky and - well, he was already out of the program - Mykhail Stelmakh’s “Swan Geese Are Flying” - such idyllic stories about childhood.

I believed that I had to grow up a little and then it would be possible to get acquainted with Soviet Ukrainian literature, because it seemed to me - precisely because of this Aunt Irena Vilde - that there might be something unsafe for an immature head. But, since as I grow older, I begin to understand that growing up still doesn’t come, that it’s still early, it’s still early, maybe I’m not ready yet, so I still haven’t answered the question: what should Irena Vilde have been like in that situation?

I only know a very important thing: her husband - the first, beloved and most important, the father of her children, was shot by the Germans in 1943 in Vorokhta 5, and shot because he was a forester. That is, they had their own claims, but there were other claims on the other side, and it is unknown which partisans... and whether he helped any partisans. Now it is unknown why...

I realized that people who live close to the forest should always be responsible for the fact that they live close to the forest. Because the forest is dark, and the forester was always responsible for everyone who came from there. And all life under these conditions was connected with the question, what is right? The main question - literature, including - has always seemed to me to be this: what is more important - to live and live out your life, or to give your life, just because someone told you that it is necessary, or do you feel that you have to give this life? And what about this measure of giving? And who is right? On the one hand, here are Faith, Hope, Love and their mother Sophia. When they were killed in turn with a painful death, mom could have stopped everything after the first martyrdom of Vera, they could have said that everything is all right, good, good, there is no Christ, and that’s it - go for a walk, the whole family will live on.

But they decided, including their mother and sisters among themselves, that Christ was more important. And it’s good that they... they are saints. This means that they were somehow special, they did something for this even before they died. What should people do who are not saints, who are people? And how, in the face of all these historical, social, public movements and changes, can one make a choice between ethics and procreation?

I want to cling to your phrase. You wrote somewhere that you wanted to become a forester. Despite the fact that the forester becomes responsible for everything that happens in the forest, and his fate can be tragic, did you still want to become a forester?

I didn't become a forest ranger because of my father, who worked in the forestry industry. And he knew reality well, and he knew me. He said: You will be very disappointed when you face what is happening. You will either fight this all your life, or you will simply leave it on your own. He knew my views on ecology, on the preservation of forests, nature, and knew how it all really was in late Soviet times, not to mention the present. Already in the late Soviet period everything was quite demoralized. And he advised me not to do this.

I was also a prize-winner of the Republican Olympiad in Ukrainian language and literature and had the right to enter Kiev University for Ukrainian philology or journalism without exams or with some easier exam. But I no longer wanted this, precisely because I did not want to be a Soviet journalist or a Soviet writer. And so I decided that I love writing and I love nature - I will become a biologist and write books about animals. A popular window to the world at that time was the Mir publishing house, which began publishing Darrell’s books in the 80s.

You mentioned that both your father and mother were exiled to Siberia. Is it together with their parents?

No. The mother was not expelled. But I suspect that all this took a very heavy toll on her psyche. It would be better if they sent her away. I'll tell you why now. My father was a child when he and his mother were deported to Siberia, and the accusations were ridiculous. Of course, they were not in the camps. My other relatives were there. But this was a special settlement. A month in a calf wagon, then thrown out in the forest and - build yourself new life. Winter is already approaching, Siberia... But among themselves, grandmother and father later talked about it like this: “when we were still at the resort.” They ended up calling it a resort.

And they regretted why life turned out this way: I would like to go to Baikal myself, but for some reason you never go? You keep putting it off and putting it off... And suddenly the news comes: tomorrow you are going to Baikal. And you go. When my grandmother was already old and laying down, and already felt weak, and said to herself “maybe I shouldn’t get up?”, then, according to her, she kept thinking: what if the door was knocked down now, people in black came and said “get up?” and on the way out,” then if I could find the strength, I would get up and go. Why am I worse than the NKVD? Why can’t I tell myself: “get up and do what you want.”

As for my mother’s family, my grandfather on my mother’s side, when the German fascists came, that is, maybe they were not fascists - the German government in Ivano-Frankivsk... Very often this daily life develops regardless of our desires and principles. For example, Galicia was included in the German state, in the Reich, but Eastern Ukraine was not included in the Reich. From there they were taken to work, there they shot on the streets, even OUN members, nationalists, there they liquidated Jews 6 .

But, what is very important, in Galicia other services, not the occupying troops, were involved in daily life. Just as the Soviet Union later said: that’s it, you are our citizens. They came and arrested for treason, but the people were never citizens of the Soviet Union. And they came, were included in the Soviet Union - and voila! treason to the Motherland. And these German authorities gave public utilities, let's say, to the local population. And they told the local government: let someone be the director of the power plant. My grandfather studied electrical engineering at the university in Vienna for 11 years. Moreover, he wanted to study more and more. And after all this, he came to Ivano-Frankivsk. And of course he was the most famous electrician in the city. And this Ukrainian delegation came to him and said: well, finally, take care of the power plant.

Well, volens-nolens, he took up this power plant. And then, when the Soviets came a few years later, this was already considered complicity, because instead of blowing up the main generator with them, they provided the city with electricity. But my grandfather managed to leave this job in the first months, then they moved to another region, and there – the shortcomings of the system – no one thought about it anymore.

Thus, my mother’s family was not deported, but she still had her childhood fears – that all this would somehow come out somewhere. They are not connected with ideological things, but simply such a threat... But my father did not have this, because after this happened to him, he freed himself from it... These are the different stories in my family.

It seemed to me that I noticed the biologist’s point of view in your words that the NKVD comes - and a person finds himself in another habitat, in which he would not have ended up by his own free will, but which now enters his life. But in your works, in particular in your early stories, you can also see your familiarity with philosophy. In particular, you obviously read Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. That is, biology permeates all your works, but this biology is not the same as Darrell’s, which, roughly speaking, tells about the adventures of little animals. You have been called a wandering philosopher. I see in your works a kind of biological philosophy. Is this conscious?

Consciously. At university I wanted to study zoology. At that time, the science of ethology was in vogue - a science of the future, a science at the intersection - about animal psychology, animal behavior. But I was enrolled in the group of nerds. They told me it’s okay, in a year you’ll transfer to wherever you want. And I began to study botany.

Suddenly I realized that the study of biology - if you do not study any specific reactions - is the same philosophy. I think that similar things can happen in other disciplines. In the same electrical engineering or physics. I was interested in how all this was possible. I always had another outlet in theology. I am, in fact, very religious, in the sense that I do not doubt God's act of Creation. That is, I don’t know how, what, what we can understand, what we cannot understand, but I have no doubt that the world is part of God’s plan. When I began to look from the point of view of biology - the same botany, floristry - I, for example, thought: how to explain the existence of plant species? I understand that everything is food for something, but there are still too many of these similar species plants. It is impossible to rationally explain why this is. And such moments were very important for me and very interesting - as a method, as an instrument of my personal theology.

In your family there were, as they say, urban, refined intellectuals, and, on the other hand, your familiarity with rural life is clearly visible in your works. How does this all fit together in your life?

It so happened that after this Siberia... My grandmother went there as a widow, because my grandfather died in the first days of the Polish-German war. He was taken into the Polish army and died in September 1939. And my father was born on January 1, 1940. That is, he never saw his father. And I didn’t see this grandfather of mine. Then they ended up with their grandmother in Siberia, and there in Siberia they met a man who also had a complicated family history, whose family was taken to Poland, and who served six or seven years in the camps and settled in Siberia.

They were already about 50 years old when they met there and began to live together. It’s difficult to talk about love at first sight, because being together seemed natural and - let’s overcome all this together. Then it became possible to return - it was the 56th good year– and they immediately decided that we would leave everything and go here. And they settled with this man - Mykhail - in the Carpathians. I consider him my grandfather just like the one I never met. And he was very important for me and in all this geography. That's how I ended up in these Ukrainian mountains and in this house. The house is small, but I grew up there.

And this was not country life. It was normal life in the mountains. Of course, there was no daily work with the plow, because everything grows very poorly there, except for forest and apples. But it was part of my life. And it’s also very important to me now, as a memory: when they started living together, they were 49 and 51 years old. And it might seem that life was lived, especially since everything was like that, but they lived together for another 30 years - this is a lot for a life together. And then, when my grandfather died, my grandmother told me that these last 30 years in her life were never happier. And for me, this is always a reminder that you should never say: that’s all - life is lived, nothing new will happen, that, as the song says, “I won’t be like that anymore, I’ll never be the same again” 7 .

In fact, “tensha o tempo”, as the Portuguese say – “mayo ches”, as the Hutsuls say – is time.

You said that one of your motivations for writing was the desire to preserve the memory of the past. But this rather refers to your later work. But in the early stories there seems to be no intention to record the history of a kind. On the contrary, in the story “The Feeling of Presence” there is the following phrase: “It seemed to him that by remembering, he would deprive the world of its last properties, so one should not take away anything by remembering.” Is this, in fact, the same thing or is it some kind of transformation of your views?

When I talked about recording, I didn’t mean just recording some events. By the way, just the year before last, during renovations in the basement of our house in Ivano-Frankivsk, they plastered a wall on which a chronicle from 1939 to 1945 was scratched with a nail: during the bombings they hid there and wrote something down there - so laconic story. But I even perceived some of my personal reflections as evidence of history. And this is also important to record. So you asked about the city, the village. Very often there was a division along this line: there are urban ones, and there are rural ones.

“The problem is that Ukrainian literature is very rustic.” Or “the problem is that the city is such and such, and the village is such and such.” And I somehow managed, thanks to I don’t know what—this everything I received, I guess—to synthesize these things. I was interested in combining it all. I felt like I belonged both in the city and in the village. And I feel like I belong in different parts of the world. It’s not that it’s all mine, but I could just as naturally be there. And the lessons of history - not only this literal chronicle is important, but historiosophy; how it all plays out later.

This is exactly where you can find access to your novel “Not Easy.” The style of the novel is, of course, the style of a city man, but this style partly models the thinking of a man of nature, who lives merging with the landscape. This is manifested in grammar, in the construction of phrases. But I want to ask you the following question. There is incest in the novel. The hero successively marries a woman, then their common daughter, then this daughter’s daughter, that is, his granddaughter. Moreover, every mother dies immediately after the birth of her daughter. As they say, what did you mean by this? Is this emphasizing the isolation of Galicia, its reluctance to let strangers in?

First, I will still talk about the language of the novel. I had an internal task to show the Hutsul region, the Carpathians in a way that is rarely addressed. Because Kotsyubinsky in “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors” and many others spoke about “the world of mountains, legends and ancient traditions preserved intact.” That these Hutsuls survived because they isolated themselves from the outside world.

I wanted to show the other side. After all, the Carpathians only seem to be a barrier. In fact, they are a bridge. These mountains have always been an incentive to cross them. Meet those who are there, on the other side. It's like a magnet. And therefore, the movement, if we speak in slang, along all these paths and playas, these roads of the ancient Carpathians, was always intense. If you look at history, then, of course, there were not thousands of peoples, but everything was very connected with everything around. The Hutsuls were the first to go. Back in the 17th or 18th century, they already traveled to Bosnia, or to Russia - to Odessa region, or to Bessarabia. Not to mention the fact that they went to sell cattle in Silesia. And they came to them too different people for something: for salt, for wood. And all this was included in the global process. And I wanted to show this Hutsul region in this way: yes, there was isolation, inaccessible places, but, on the other hand, there was normal movement. It was a normal part of the world. And the settlements... these are the kind of settlements that now exist in Germany or Italy. It is impossible to say whether it is a city or a village. Yes, this is a province. But the problem is only in the way of thinking, only in how much of this province you consider yourself to be. The movement in the space of one life for people from these places was very large. This is all I wanted to convey.

And if we talk about incest, then, firstly, it’s easier, because you don’t have to figure out where that wife came from, that wife... Here they are all together and one after the other. And, on the other hand, I wanted to convey that what you love can be present in different people, And I also wanted to talk about doom, This is a symbol of doom. That, they say, this is how these circumstances independent of a person developed, that you had to stay small with this woman, and when she grew up, and you saw that this is the woman who is the best - because you haven’t seen others - well, what a does it make any difference whether it is a daughter or not? Then I wanted to somehow get out of this confrontation between doom and conscious choice.

Do you often get asked this question in Ukraine, like me?

At the very beginning - yes. Now, when 10 years have passed, and a lot of people have already read it, and when it turned out that it was not forgotten, and this novel is being republished, then this question no longer arises so often. But at first they asked: why incest, what did you want to say? And I always thought that this is how it turned out. In this world of mine, this is how it was. And in another way... There are many explanations. Well, not exactly incest, but, say, this form of cohabitation or community, when nothing arises immediately, but when people somehow live next to each other and begin to understand what is good for them. And over time they get better and more interesting...

1 The name given to a group of Ukrainian writers – Y. Andrukhovich, V. Eshkilev, Y. Izdryk, T. Prokhasko and others – who published in the 90s of the 20th century in the Ivano-Frankivsk magazine “Chetver” (“Thursday”). A number of Ivano-Frankivsk poets, artists, photographers, and musicians also belong to the Stanislavsky phenomenon.

2 Famous Lviv historian.

3 Yurko Prokhasko (born 1970) – Ukrainian essayist, translator from German.

4 Ukrainian eccentric poetic group of the late 80s - early 90s of the 20th century.

5 A settlement in the Carpathians.

6 In Western Ukraine, during the “German” period, there was also a mass extermination of Jews.

7 It won’t be the same as it was the first time (Polish).

Taras Prokhasko

NOT SIMPLE

And whoever does not read this essay will have a difficult time in life, since their Difficulties will bypass them with their obvious plots, and maybe even turn off the sound and lights.

Yaroslav Dovgan

Sixty-eight random first phrases

1. In the fall of 1951, it would not have been surprising to move west - then even the east began to gradually move in that direction. However, Sebastian and Anna in November 1951 went from Mokra to the east, which was still more numerous at that time. More precisely, to the eastern south or southeast.

2. This trip was postponed for so many years not because of the war - the war could change little in their lives. Sebastian himself decided to break the family tradition, according to which children were shown places associated with the history of the family at the age of fifteen. Because then, when Anna turned fifteen, Sebastian realized that everything was repeating itself, and Anna became for him the only possible woman in the whole world. That not only can he only be near her, but he can no longer be without her.

Meanwhile, in Yalivets - the family nest where Anna should have been taken - the Difficult Ones were waiting for her. And Sebastian knew that they would very easily convince their daughter to stay with them.

In the end, the fact that Anna would also become Difficult was foreseen by them even when she was born.

3. In April fifty-one, Anna felt that Papa Sebastian was her only possible husband, and they became close.

That spring, many wandered along unheard-of routes and spread incredible rumors. This is how Sebastian found out that Nepr O The stale disappeared from Yalivets. Since then, no one has heard anything about them.

For a whole summer, Sebastian and Anna fell in love unconditionally, and several different armies passed by them. Nothing prevented us from going east, south, or southwest. When it got really cold and the roads squeezed tighter into their ruts, they finally left Mokra and in a few days could be in Yalivets.

The journey was postponed for three years. But Sebastian was not afraid of anything - he had a real wife again. The same breed as always.

4. He couldn’t imagine how he could show his daughter all the places in the mountains from Mokraya to Yalivets for real. Instead of four days, the journey should last four seasons. Only this way, and also during the day, at night, in the morning and in the evening, could Anna see how different this road looks at the same time. He looked at the map, read the names out loud and became happy just from this.

He wasn't even upset that the card didn't tell Anna anything.

To tell the truth, he was a little worried about the trees that he had not seen for so many years. Their growth is the most common reason that places suddenly become unrecognizable. And the most important proof of the need to never leave nearby trees unattended.

As for the transition itself, no journey knows what can happen to it, cannot know its true reasons and consequences.

5. Franz once told Sebastian that there are things in the world that are much more important than what is called fate. Franz had the place in mind above all. If it exists, there will be history (if history exists, then there must be a corresponding place). Find a place - start a story. Come up with a place - find a plot. And plots, in the end, are also more important than fates. There are places where it is impossible to tell anything, and sometimes it’s worth speaking with just the names in the correct sequence in order to master forever interesting history, which will hold stronger than a biography. Toponymy can be tempting, but it can be completely avoided.

6. And something similar happened to Sebastian. He found Yalivets, invented by Franz. He was fascinated by linguistics. Toponymy captivated him, and he wasn’t just captivated by the mesmerizing beauty of names.

Plaska, Opresa, Tempa, Apeska, Pidpula, Sebastian. Shesa, Sheshul, Menchul, Bilyn, Dumen, Patros, Sebastian.

When no mountains yet existed, the names were already prepared. The same as with his wives - they were not yet in the world when his blood began to mix with the one that was supposed to become their blood.

From then on, all he could do was stick to this limited toponymy and this shortened genetics.

7. Francis met Sebastian on the rock behind Yalivets. Sebastian was returning from Africa and shooting birds. The sniper rifle did not let me feel the kill. Through optics everything is seen as if in a movie. The shot doesn’t just interrupt the film, but introduces some new scene into the script. Thus, he shot quite a few different small birds flying over Yalivets just to Africa.

Winter was about to begin. She must change something. Winter gives purpose - this is its main quality. It closes the openness of summer, and this should already result in something.

Francis was looking for something that could be used to make his next animated film. And suddenly - before winter, a rock above the city, in the middle of the city, a flock of birds above the mountain that fly to Africa, Asia Minor, where there are fields with saffron, aloe and hibiscus between giant rosehip bushes almost in front of the long Nile, many killed in the eye multi-colored birds stacked one on one, which is why different colors even more different, in each right eye there is a reflection of the intercontinental route, in each left there is a crimson spot, and not a single feather is damaged, and a light breeze throws the fluff of one weightless body onto the ghostly fluff of another, and the shooter’s eye in the reverse refraction of optics. And a shooter. Red white African.

8. Sebastian’s hands are frozen. He froze them in the night Sahara. Since then, my hands have not tolerated mittens. Sebastian said to Franz - what should pianists do when it gets so cold?

They looked in all directions, and everything was good. Because it was autumn, and autumn was flowing into winter. Franz named different mountains without even showing which was which. Then he invited Sebastian to his place. He had not had guests for a long time; he had not met anyone unfamiliar on the rocks for a long time. This was probably the first time they drank coffee with grapefruit juice. When Anna brought them a jug to the glassed-in gallery, where the copper stove was heated with cuttings of vines, Sebastian asked her to linger a little and show what was visible through this window. Anna listed - Pleska, Opresa, Tempu, Pidpula, Shesu, Sheshul, Menchul, Bilyn, Dumen, Petros.

It was late autumn of 1913. Franz said that there are things much more important than what is called fate. And he suggested that Sebastian try to live in Yalivets. It was getting dark, and Anna, before bringing another jug - almost just juice, only a few drops of coffee - went to make his bed, since she would not yet be able to do it by touch.

Chronologically

1. Sebastian remained in Yalivets in the fall of 1913. He was twenty years old then. He was born on the other side of the Carpathians - on Borzhava - in 1893. In 1909, he lived with his parents in Trieste for a whole month, and a year later he went to fight in Africa. I returned home through the Black Sea and Constanta, then the Rodnyanskie Mountains, Grynyava and Pop Ivan. Passed Chornohora, passed under Goverla and Petros. It was late autumn of 1913.

2. Yalivets appeared twenty-five years before.

This city was invented by Francis, who was more often called Francis. For twenty years Francis lived in the cities of Lviv, Stanislav, Vyzhnytsya, Mukachevo. He learned to draw only from one graphic artist (he once worked with Bram, and then made and forged seals) and had, and wanted, and could move with him from place to place. One day they showed him a camera and he stopped drawing. However, a little later, right after Morshyn, an illustrator died, who accompanied the Krakow professor of botany - they were going to Chornohora to describe the plants of the Hutsul region. In Stanislav, the professor noticed Franz, and a few days later he saw a place where he felt like he belonged - kindred and happy. A year later, Francis returned there and began building a town.

And five years later, Yalivets was the most fantastic and quite fashionable resort in Central Europe.

3. Anna, because of whom Sebastian stayed in Yalivets, was first called Stefania. The real Anna was her mother, her wife Francis. She was treated for fear of heights because she was a climber. I came to the resort with my friend, a speleologist. They did the same thing better than anyone in the world. Only she climbed up, and he climbed down, but both of them lacked space most of all. When Anna became pregnant by Francis, she decided to give birth to the child here in Yalivets. And when Stefania was born, Anna no longer wanted to return anywhere.

She died in a duel to which she was challenged by her husband. Francis immediately renamed Stefania Anna. He raised his daughter himself until the very day when he invited Sebastian, who was returning from Africa to Borzhava, to their house. Then Francis saw that now she would either submit to another man or to no one.

Taras Prokhasko

NOT SIMPLE

And whoever does not read this essay will have a difficult time in life, since their Difficulties will bypass them with their obvious plots, and maybe even turn off the sound and lights.

Yaroslav Dovgan

Sixty-eight random first phrases

In the end, the fact that Anna would also become Difficult was foreseen by them even when she was born.

3. In April fifty-one, Anna felt that Papa Sebastian was her only possible husband, and they became close.

The journey was postponed for three years. But Sebastian was not afraid of anything - he had a real wife again. The same breed as always.

He wasn't even upset that the card didn't tell Anna anything.

As for the transition itself, not a single journey knows what can happen to it, cannot know its true causes and consequences.

5. Franz once told Sebastian that there are things in the world that are much more important than what is called fate. Franz had the place in mind above all. If it exists, there will be history (if history exists, then there must be a corresponding place). Find a place - start a story. Come up with a place - find a plot. And plots, in the end, are also more important than fates. There are places where it is impossible to tell anything, and sometimes it is worth speaking with just the names in the correct sequence in order to forever master the most interesting story that will hold you stronger than a biography. Toponymy can be tempting, but it can be completely avoided.

Plaska, Opresa, Tempa, Apeska, Pidpula, Sebastian. Shesa, Sheshul, Menchul, Bilyn, Dumen, Patros, Sebastian.

From then on, all he could do was stick to this limited toponymy and this shortened genetics.

Winter was about to begin. She must change something. Winter gives purpose - this is its main quality. It closes the openness of summer, and this should already result in something.

Francis was looking for something that could be used to make his next animated film. And suddenly - before winter, a rock above the city, in the middle of the city, a flock of birds above the mountain that fly to Africa, Asia Minor, where there are fields with saffron, aloe and hibiscus between giant rosehip bushes almost in front of the long Nile, many killed in the eye multi-colored birds, stacked one on top of the other, making the different colors even more different, in each right eye there is a reflection of an intercontinental route, in each left eye there is a purple spot, and not a single feather is damaged, and a gentle breeze throws the fluff of one weightless body onto the ghostly fluff of another, and the shooter's eye in the reverse refraction of optics. And a shooter. Red white African.

8. Sebastian’s hands are frozen. He froze them in the night Sahara. Since then, my hands have not tolerated mittens. Sebastian said to Franz - what should pianists do when it gets so cold?

Taras Bogdanovich Prokhasko - current Ukrainian writer, journalist, one of the representatives of the Stanislav phenomenon - born May 16, 1968 Roku in Ivano-Frankivsk.

Mati Prokhaska is the third niece of the writer Irina Vilde, who maintained close ties with their homeland and often visited them from Lvov. Prokhaska’s grandfather on her mother’s side during the First World War during the war, serving in the Austro-Ugric division, which stood opposite the unit at the front, as described by Ernest Geminwey in the autobiographical novel “Farewell, gone!” enu at 1956, if youmu gets 16.

At school, Prokhasko had a good knowledge of biology, having taken part in the All-Ukrainian Olympiad in Ukrainian language, but could not find himself as a Radian philologist or journalist, so he joined the biology department of the Lviv State University name of Ivan Frank ( 1992 ). Behind the fag is a botanist. After completing university, he was encouraged to work in the biostationary planted in the mountains, and Prokhasko was encouraged to work through his home environment. Participant of the student movement 1989-1991 rocks, while taking part in the “revolution on the granite” in Kiev at 1990.

After graduating from university, he initially worked at the Ivano-Frankivsk Institute of Carpathian Forestry, and then taught in the local area, 1992-1993 rocks being a bartender, then a watchman, a presenter at the FM radio “Vezha”, working at an art gallery, in a newspaper, at a television studio. U 1992-1994 I was a “mandarin” editorial editor for the magazine “Chetver”, because at that time I was constantly traveling to Lvov, where I started at the university. Laureate of the "Smoloskip" ( 1997 ).

U 1993 Taras Prokhasko, together with Andriy Fedotov and Adam Zevel, starred in the short film “The Houses of St. Francis”, and y 1996 near the village of Delyatyn, Ivano-Frankivsk region, the first international video art festival in Ukraine was held, the grand prize for which was the production of the two-part film “The Flow into Egypt” ( 1994 ), de znyavsya Taras Prokhasko, yogo blue ta Lesya Savchuk.

U 1998 Having started working as a journalist for the Lviv newspaper “Expres”, for a year he wrote author’s columns for “Expres” and “Postup”. I wrote for an hour before the online newspaper “Telekritika”, and then, when Prokhaska’s friends created the “newspaper of your death”, they began to write articles and conduct an author’s column in the Ivano-Frankivsk regional newspaper “Galician Correspondent”.

U 2004 Having lived in Krakow for several months, he received a literary scholarship from the Polish cultural foundation “Stowarzyszenie Willa Decjusza - Homines Urbani”.

Week 2010 Prokhasko first visited the United States, and then had creative evenings in New York and Washington.

Pratsyue in “Galitsky correspondent”. Friends, there are two brothers, one starts as a historian at the Ukrainian Catholic University, and the other starts as an architect and a civil servant at the Lviv Polytechnic. Member of the Association of Ukrainian Writers.

Behind the words of Prokhaska, he became a writer when he received 12 fates. At school, I didn’t read the Radyan’s Ukrainian writings, but only after the army, I read the works of Vasyl Stus and started writing myself. The fragments of the Faculty of Biology, where he began, as a non-mysterious middle ground, Prokhasko, for a long time, took into account that the current Ukrainian literature does not exist like this. The first thing you can do is read more 1990 Roku, having become acquainted with Yurk Izdrik, there was a stir in Ivano-Frankivsk about the creation of the literary-mysterious hour-painting “Fours”. The first works of Prokhaska Izdrik were not accepted, but then Prokhasko wrote his first account “The Burnt Summer”, which was published by the chapel.

Among the writers close to his “singing type of light perception”, Prokhasko names Bohumil Hrabal, Jorge Luis Borges, Bruno Schulz, Vasyl Stefanik, Danilo Kisha, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Milan Kundera, Honore de Balzac, Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Iya Dovlatova, Leva Rubinshteina , and among his favorite works is Andrzej Bobkowski’s work “War and Peace” (1940-1944) and “Sherlock Holmes”.

It is sometimes seen that Taras Prokhasko is a very tall man through and through, and yet he is strongly felt in his writings, and he clearly reinforces him from other Ukrainian prose writers. It is not surprising that we are constantly trying to capture the fluidity of immutability and create an external rivalry between the human soul and the growing light. Many of Taras’s works have an inherent biographical quality, but his prose is unmistakable, and yet it comes close to an intimate conversation.

The series of internal and intimate experiences “FM “Galicia”” and “Port Frankivsk” seem to have a parable character. Written in the form of a drawing, based on different themes, recently published in the newspaper “Galician Correspondent” and voiced on the air of FM radio “Vezha”.

Prokhasko takes part in various mystical performances. U 2009 together with other writers (Yuri Andrukhovich, Yurk Izdrik, Volodymyr Yeshkilev, Sofiya Andrukhovich) taking part in the project “Homeless” (“Without the Sign of Mystical Life”) by Rostislav Shpuk, later presented in Poland to the International Festival of Homeless Mystery.

At sickle 2010 Prokhasko, as part of a musical-literary dialogue, attended the Porto Franco festival by reading a lesson from the novel by Stanislav Vinzenz “On the High Plain” on the ruins of the Pnivsky Castle. During the reading hour, the French cellist Dominique de Viencourt performed a Bach suite.

2011 Taras Prokhaska’s book “Botak” was recognized by the Book of Fate.

2013 Rock The BBC Book of Rock Award went to Taras Prokhasko’s children’s book “Who Makes Snow,” written together with Marya Prokhasko.

Nagorodi:

1997 - laureate of the Smoloskip award.
2006 – first place in the “Fiction” nomination for the book “Who could have earned a lot of evidence” (version for the magazine “Corespondent”).
2007 – third place in the “Documentary” nomination for the book “Port of Frankivsk” (version for the magazine “Corespondent”).
2007 – laureate of the Joseph Conrad Literary Prize (founded by the Polish Institute in Kiev).
2013 – Prize named after Yuri Shevelov for the book “The One and the Same.”

Create T. Prokhaska:

1998 – “Annie’s Other Days”
2001 – “FM Galicia”,
2002 – novel “Uneasy”
2005 – “For whom it would be possible to get a lot of evidence.”
2006 – “Port Frankivsk”.
2006 – “Ukraina”, together with Serhiy Zhadan.
2007 – “Galizien-Bukowina-Express”, together with Yurko Prokhasko and Madalena Blashchuk.
2010 – “Botak”.
2013 – Prokhasko T., Prokhasko M. “Who makes snow.”
2013 – “One and the same.”
2014 – “Signs of Maturity.”
2014 – Prokhasko T., Prokhasko M. “Where the sea has fallen.”
2015 – Prokhasko T., Prokhasko M. “How to understand a goat.”
2017 – Prokhasko T., Prokhasko M. “Life and Snow.”

Taras Prokhasko

NOT SIMPLE

M.: Ad Marginem, 2009

Taras Prokhasko. Nepro?st?

The first Russian collection by Taras Prokhasko, a prominent representative of new Ukrainian prose, included three of the most famous books: the novel “Uneasy” (2002), the stories “Several stories could have been made from this” and “How I stopped being a writer.” The novel "Uneasy" can be considered Ukrainian magical realism; the stories, built on the narrator's obsession with his own memories, refer to Proust. However, if Prokhasko should be included in any alien tradition, it is the Jewish tradition, attentive to the problems of memory and life of the shtetl. Ivano-Frankivsk, where the writer was born, becomes such a “place” for Prokhasko. In "Uneasy" his story is told in an imaginary way, in "Several stories could be made from this" - a real one, or rather, everything that the narrator managed to remember and conjecture was given out in a single stream. “There are things more important than fate,” he repeats to himself all the time. main character“Challenging.”—Perhaps culture. And culture is a clan, a conscious stay in it." Apparently, that’s why he sleeps with his own daughters. His daughters are not simple, and they are interested in the Difficulties - with a capital letter, “earthly gods,” as the narrator attests to them, who hunt for life stories And “the basis of any private epic is a list of ideas about the places in which family history took place.”

Like any work built on a pure idea, the novel is almost impossible to read. In addition, “Uneasy”, which, according to the tradition of magical realism, should be extremely poetic, is written in monstrous, sometimes even clerical language, as if deliberately contrary to this tradition. But together with the subsequent stories, the novel develops into a picture of a very meaningful literary movement - from epic to word, to a new language, to reliving one’s own history.

Don Winslow

The Death and Life of Bobby Z

M.: Inostranka, 2009

Don Winslow. The Death and Life of Bobby Z

A 1997 novel by American Don Winslow, known to us from two wonderful detective stories, “Frankie the Machine's Winter Race” and “Power of the Dog.” Winslow, who gave up his career as a stage actor and manager for detective stories in 1991, is now a successful author of more than ten books. Everyone promises to turn Frankie the Machine into a movie with Robert De Niro in leading role, and there is already a movie based on “Bobby Z” with Paul Walker and Laurence Fishburne, which was released here under the name “The Set-Up.” The film is wild, like the book itself, which Winslow wrote entirely on the train - without outline, straight away. That's how it reads, except that the mixture of jargons that Winslow composed for "Bobby Z" was lost in the Russian translation. However, we have not been surprised by bad translations of detective stories for a long time.

So, the Federal Drug Control Service (for Americans it sounds simpler - DNA) finds in one of the prisons the loser Marine Tim Kearney, who is like two peas in a pod like the drug business guru Bobby Zet, who was supposed to be exchanged for the captured agent. In exchange for freedom, Tim is offered to become Bobby. The hero agrees and, along with the fame of the best drug dealer in California, gets a beauty, a child and a bunch of mafiosi hunting for his head. To survive, save a child and a couple more Bobby-Zet millions, you have to be a very tough Marine. Like Tim Kearney, not the spoiled Bobby Z.

This is not just a good detective story, but also a very timely one, because if it had been written five years later, it would have been impossible to read. But here the Marine is just a Marine, behind the stately figure of the American soldier there is no ghost of Iraq, the beauty is just a beauty, bombs explode and machine guns fire at a speed worthy of Die Hard, and behind all this there is such a lightness typical of the last decade that we It doesn’t even bother me, which is one of the main characters a seven-year-old child becomes involved in a gang shootout.