Poet who understands words erotic and also is a dissident, famous European radio journalist, essayist and wine lover Igor Pomerantsev is thinking about personality’s geography, language sensuality of South, emigration, dialogue of cultures in time and territory and what is more — about the poetry and independence that can be born in (by) it
Diana KLOCHKO Photos Milena Findeis
Igor Pomerantsev:
Not without a pinch of irony I often say about myself — «the only Austria-Hungarian poet, who writes in Russian». Certainly, it’s a nod to Chernivtsi where I spent my childhood. Whether we like it or not, geography largely is the base of our personality. If you are German who grew up in Khazakhstan and you speak Russian — you are different from German from Schwaben. In thirties Victor Shkolovskiy called writers and poets who grew up in Odessa «South-West School». This school is connected with such names as Babel, Kataiev, Bagrytskiy, Olieshy... «Secret agent» of this school was also Pasternak as his parents were born in Odessa. It seems to me that it’s possible to refer Gogol to this school also. It’s him who had done inoculation of «South» — I am talking about the attitude when people wrote and float their boat. My personal experience of emigration proves that the first emigrant’s reaction — it’s allergy on other’s taste, colour and smell. In St. Petersburg Gogol felt something similar. He was suffering being in the North. He felt himself in St. Petersburg like modern East European emigrant in America of XXI century; he experienced sensual and emotional misunderstanding. Immigrant created from such dough sees in aboriginal zombies, except nation of
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new motherland to which he got on his own wish as evil spirits. It happens in childhood: you are invited to the living room, you are put on the chair and everything what you are eating seems to you lusciously strange. Though Gogol, when he arrived after immigrants St Petersburg shock to Italy happened to be nearly at home in Sorochyntsi. It’s true that Sorochyntsi is closer to Rome than to St. Petersburg. That’s why he so energetically wrote and lived in Rome as if he returned back to Poltavshchyna. The closer it is to the South the renderer the world acceptance, more delicate the cloth with which artist works; different zone of colour, light and emotions. That’s why childhood on the South remains with you forever. Childhood, his geography, measures writers who wouldn’t make it up with each other. So if to read their work from the tenderness point of view it happens that they are united and very strong team. The place where historical time and territory collides — we get crossroad. Something similar happened with Chernivtsi — Olga Kobylianska Ukrainian and Rose Ausländer Austrian — were linguistic crossroads. Kobylianska wrote in German and Ukrainian. Ausländer — German and English. And Paul Celan left after himself not only German poems but Romanian as well.
Austria-Hungary was a Mediterranean empire with way out on Croatia and Trieste and it was heiress of Holy Roman Empire. It’s nowadays thinking about Austria, Hungary and Czech Republic there connection with Mediterranean seems to be unreal. Culture is not spotted, it isn’t situated in certain space but in time it doesn’t lose connection with other epochs. In this sense Black Sea «southWest» — is a part of long ago Mediterranean. Black Sea is a huge bay of Mediterranean Sea. Austria-Hungarian classics didn’t disregard either syllable-tone, or rhythmic. There is such a term in science of metals as «metal fatigue». Metal gets «fatigue» as a result of ultimate load. Poetry is ultimate tension of language, and this poetry language is also getting «fatigue». We live in the epoch of fatigueness from traditional poetry. Syllable-tone was in its time a search of freedom from prose writing and then step by step became a burden from which you want to become free. Maybe, the time will come when vers libre will be a burden. Now poets are already searching other forms of expression: poetical slam, rap. Some forms of freedom in poetry are for one day, the others are long-livers. I think rap was a reaction on difficult jazz improvisation. Inside afro-American culture was born its own protest from being purified: we refuse your musical refinement and go to verbal «humorous rhymes». And jazz and rap are deep phenomena and they influence all the world culture. Poetry is a freedom and as soon as it feels pressure, imperative and compulsory canons, it escapes. It drifts there where «A sailing bark is showing only». Until now poetry succeeded in doing this. It’s easier to rhyme (the rhyme guides, prompts), it’s just going after alliterative devices. But a poet has to think. For this he has to refuse from usual ways, from usual passes. A lot of Russian and Ukrainian poets speaking about syllable-tone, mean some «special», «their» tradition, forgetting that syllable-tone was adopted in the same way as rhyme. Vers libre has one feature: author’s non-talent is obvious; vers libre doesn’t leave a chance for those who don’t have anything to tell. But in rhyme poems it’s possible nicely and charmingly do the imitation: here is the quote, familiar intonation, phrase. Everything is familiar and cozy. But in poetry inner drama can be, for example, lexical, build on confrontation of Latin, Greek, Anglo-Saxon and Slavic roots. 40% of English vocabulary has Latin roots especially it concerns words which define abstract terms. Latin is a civilization guide. AngloSaxon words are particular, connected with speeches and English poet has to feel this. The whole drama of Russian poetry is confrontation of «stolen» and
«permitted freedom» (Mandelstam quote). Russian poet has to steal freedom. And this process excites and captures. The nerve of Ukrainian poetry is language survival, its vitality. Prose tells stories and poetry dugs deep into the language. Prose can be translated, poetry — no, because the nature of the poetry is in language. It’s impossible to replant this nature. Surgeons learnt how to transplant heart, but no one managed to transplant nervous system.
BUT WHEN IT COMES TO POETRY, I STOP DEAD, AS THIS IS MY INTIMACY ZONE WITH LANGUAGE I can write journalistic materials — news, reportages — in different languages, in English or Ukrainian. I started my journalistic career in Ukrainian department of editing of «Svoboda» radio in Munich, and I wasn’t nearly edited however my editor was very demanding — poet Igor Kochurovskiy. To write reportage in English is not very difficult for me. But when it goes about poetry, I stopped like dug in as it’s a zone of my intimate relations with language. Like in chemical reaction: a little bit more or less of one reagent, not proper temperature, more amount of light — and there is no poetry from this poem. Once I had a performance in Russian speaking city on the South of Ukraine and the woman presented me told: «We will ask him what for he needs translations of his poems in Ukrainian». It sounded sinister. But every poet dreams that his poems are translated in all, absolutely all, even exotic languages of the world, even though he understands that it’s vain! Especially interesting to read my own poems on those languages which you know or at least feel. Ukrainian translations of my lyric cause the feeling of anxiety, interest and excitement in me. They bare the grammar, vocabulary and remind me about my language genesis. My birth certificate is my poetry. ИС. 7