Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 9 – Just as was the case
with Ivan Bunin, Boris Pasternak, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the awarding of
the Nobel Prize for Literature to Svetlana Aleksiyevich, a Belarusian author
and opposition figure who writes in Russian, represents a victory for Belarusian
literature and a defeat for the Russian regime now in power in Moscow.
In a commentary today on Grani.ru, Vitaly
Portnikov makes this point clear in a survey of the reaction to Aleksiyevich’s
award in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine and in his assessment of what this says
about the state of Belarusian literature and even more important of the
Belarusian nation (grani.ru/opinion/portnikov/m.244887.html).
In many ways, he suggests, the reactions
of people in the three Slavic countries was entirely predictable. In Belarus,
the official media treated the event in a very low key manner because
Aleksiyevich is an opponent of Alyaksandr Lukashenka even though she is the first
Belarusian writer to win this prize.
In Russia, there were some who wanted to
claim Aleksiyevich’s prize as “a victory of Russian literature” (echo.msk.ru/blog/minkin/1636924-echo/),
as others denounced her for her outspoken opposition to Putin and his
authoritarian and imperial rule as “a Solzhenitsyn in skirts” (ruskline.ru/news_rl/2015/10/09/solzhenicyn_v_yubke/).
And in Ukraine, as Portnikov notes, some
wanted to claim her as a Ukrainian because she was born in Ivano-Frankivsk.
(Although he doesn’t mention it, some Ukrainian commentators at the very least
wanted to interpret her award as a slap in the face of Russia: dsnews.ua/society/u-nobelya-antisovetskoe-litso-08102015191000).)
“Beyond any doubt,” Portnikov says, “Svetlana
Aleksiyevich is a Belarusian writer. Belarusian to the same degree that Joyce
and Yates are Irish writers, Mark Twain and Hemingway are American, Marquez is Columbian
and Llosa, Peruvian.”
“In the contemporary world,” he continues,
a writer is defined not by his or her language but by “a civilizational choice.”
One can call Aleksiyevich a Russian writer “only in the world of Russian
swaggering, but in this boring little world of Prokhanovs, Prilepiins and the
like … there is in general no place for a genuine literary figure.”
Consequently, “instead of taking pride in
a new achievement of Russian culture, it is better to simply and honestly be
pleased for Belarus and Aleksiyevich,” Portnikov says. The award to her reminds the world about ‘the
blood lands’ to the west of Russia and about the people who live their lives”
there generally out of the view of the world.
That world was and is one where many have
not been allowed to choose their language and instead have been forced to use
the language of the empires which have controlled it at various points. But Aleksiyevich has made a self-conscious
choice to use Russian and she has good reasons for it, Portnikov says.
Some Belarusian language commentators are
already asking why she isn’t writing in Belarusian and “what will happen with
this language if even the Nobel Prize committee agrees with the notion that the
best in Belarusian culture is being written in another language” than the
national one?”
“I assure you,” the Ukrainian commentator
continues, “that everything is in order with the Belarusian language and
culture and that we are already approaching the moment when the empire finally
will weaken its creepy tentacles and leave Belarus in peace.” And Aleksiyevich
has made a mighty contribution to the coming of that day.
Belarusian literature has always been
deeply rooted in the land rather than in any empire, he argues, because “its
main task has been the preservation of Belarus under conditions when the main
goal of the empire was to destroy Belarus, to deprive this beautiful peaceful
land of its own worldviews, culture, and language.”
The Belarusian writer decided in advance
to “lay down a challenge to this empire, a real challenge, the force of which
can be felt only with the help of the language which the empire itself uses,”
Pornitkov continues. Might she have done
so in Belarusian? “Of course,” but then she would not have had the audience she
wanted and has.
Her subject is empire and the evils it has
inflicted on the good people of small nations and states. And given that, he
asks, how could she write in any other language than in the language of those
of the empire responsible? The same
choice should be made by anyone writing about the travails the Belarusian
language has suffered and why.
For all these reasons and others besides,
Portnikov concludes, it is important to insist that Aleksiyevich is “not the sixth
Russian Nobel laureate in literature.” No, she is “the first Nobel laureate
from Belarus, a vital and living indication that Belarus exists – and will
triumph” in the end.
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