CONCLUSIONES GENERALES

And the good Lord, looking down from the height of heaven, had pity for the land of Belarus, and said: Let there be Belarusian literature! And, behold, there was Nasha Niva!

Anonymous (Rich, cited in Skamarokhava, 2005)

While fin-de-siècle meant a period of ‘degeneration’ (Schaffer 2007, 3) for some European literatures, modern Belarusian literature was experiencing rapid development, from the general formulation of its goals to the establishment of numerousgenres and writing techniques. Like other ‘minority’ European nations who were redefining their borders and identities as a result of the decline of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires in the aftermath of World War I, Belarusians “emerged from the shadows of minority existence and took the reins of statehood into their own hands […] on the ruins of Romanov power” (Rich, cited in Skamarokhava 2005). In terms of literary

development, due to the Constitution of 1905 which allowed publication in languages other than Russian, Belarusian literature was given access to print allowing its wider distribution147. The codification of the Belarusian language was started after centuries of its ‘underground’ existence in oral tradition.

This was the beginning of a process termed Belarusian Revival. For the first time in centuries of linguistic and political oppression Belarusians had a chance for self- reflection, including the freedom to do that in Belarusian and to see it printed. The

147

Stsiapan Aleksandrovich states that between 1900 and 1917, within Belarus there were 245 books (81 original books of fiction, 27 translations, 24 folklore collections, 14 calendars, 43 non-fiction brochures, as well as religious texts, textbooks, propaganda, music, etc.) printed (Aleksandrovich 1971, 163-164).

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results revealed a painful recognition of their subaltern state148 exacerbated by the feeling of belatedness in obtaining its unique voice in the polyphony of others and the need to assert its validity in the international political and cultural arena. In terms of the Belarusian literary polysystem, intensive borrowing from the latest developments in French, Russian, English and other systems were fuelled by the need to produce new and original Belarusian literature using existing (though mostly European) canons. Adaptation of different moulds offered by “world literature” became a mission for Maxim Bahdanovich who considered it to be “worse than negligence not to take anything of what the hundreds of nations over thousands of years were gathering into the treasury of the world culture. But to bring in only alien, without developing your own, is even worse: it means scoffing at the nation’s spirit”149

(Bahdanovich [1915] 1918, 115).

Most literary developments of 20th-century Belarus matched the political changes that were taking place at the same time as the country was invaded, occupied,

148 _{Belarusian literature of the late 19th-early 20th century underwent a bereavement process not}

unlike postcolonial literatures, with the motives of despair, loss, poverty and sadness being its prevalent tones. Failure to understand this process actually results in denying Belarusian literature a vital step in the linearity of its development and, essentially, leads to its one-dimensional depiction as the one of “poor peasants”. Thus, Soviet literary history portrayed the Belarusian literary process of the time as

discontinued, where Old Belarusian literary traditions were completely cast aside, while new Belarusian literature was created without any reliance on its ‘old’ roots. Up to the present moment, the themes of sadness and mourning of fin-de-siecle Belarusian literature have been interpreted in a Marxist key and explained by economical reasons, revolutionary struggle fuelled by the poor conditions of the

proletariat/peasant masses and their illiteracy. Such interpretations are still prevalent, and the ranks of their proponents even including one of the prolific Belarusian philosophers and ideologists of ‘alternative’ Belarusianness (Bekus 2010), Valiantsin Akudovich. Outlining the general tone and imagery of

Belarusian literature, Akudovich remarks: “In fact, judging by our literature, we seem a gloomy and depressed people. Take anyone of the classics, there is melancholy, sadness, despair everywhere. At the end of the 19th – early 20th century the life of a commoner in Scotland did not appear better than ours socially, but look, how cheerful, audacious and life-asserting is the poetry of Robert Burns! While contemporaneous Belarusian poetry had sheer songs of sorrow” (Akudovich 2010, 35 – 36). The glaring error of placing Burns’ poetry in the literary context of nearly two centuries later than his own is coupled with the fact that Akudovich has most likely not read Burns in the original but in the domesticated Russian translation of Marshak. However, the philosopher’s conclusion reveals his dissatisfaction with the “gloomy and depressed” (read, boring) classics. It is, therefore, suggested that an application of postcolonial tools for the analysis of this historical period may allow for a new interpretation of Belarusian literary historicity.

149

Translation is mine. ST: “Было б горш, чым нідбальствам, нічога ні узяць с таго, што соткі народаў праз тысячы год зьбіралі у скарбніцу сьветавой культуры. Але заносіць только чужое, ні разьвіваючы свайго, – гэта яшчэ горш: гэта знача глуміць народную душу” (Bahdanovich [1915] 1918, 115).

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split into two, joined together, invaded, occupied, “liberated”, re-inhabited after

considerable losses in two world wars and then finally gained her independence150. The period started with Nasha Niva, the first official Belarusian newspaper which was published in Belarusian in two fonts, Roman and Cyrillic. The periodical, printed between January 1906 and August 1915, played a key role in the codification of literary language and in establishing New Belarusian literature both through its new literary publications as well as from wide-ranging discussions of the future and current state of literary and linguistic issues151. Its work was associated with the three ‘founding fathers’ of the new literature: Janka Kupala (who worked at the Nasha Niva first as an editor in 1908-09 and then as editor-in-chief in 1914 until the closure of the periodical in 1915), Jakub Kolas, and Maxim Bahdanovich, all regular contributors to the paper. The new literature was spearheaded by poetry, where Janka Kupala with his revolutionary Romanticism and Jakub Kolas with his epic and philosophical style, took the lead. The image of the author as a musician, initiated by Bahuszewicz, was picked up by Kupala who turned it into one of the strongest and most influential images for the subsequent discourse on the role of the writer in Belarusian literature. Contrary to the Russian association of writer with prophet, Belarusian poets imagined themselves as piasniar (bard) or musician152 (particularly famous became Kupala’s image of the old Psaltery

150 _{These processes were accompanied by the changes of names for the country described in the}

Introduction as well as the adoption of various linguistic policies towards the Belarusian language and literature.

151 _{Most notable of those was the general discussion of 1913 concerning the new directions of}

Belarusian literature started by Vatslaŭ Lastoŭski under the pen-name Jury Veraschaka. Self-educated polymath, Lastoŭski’s vision of Belarusian, or rather, Kryvijan – after one of the local Slavonic tribes – history was again rediscovered in the 1990s with his interpretation of history also used by the

‘Old/European’ idea of ‘Belarusianness’ (Lastoŭski 1997).

152 _{The traditional image of Russian literature has mystical and religious overtones and recalls}

Russian Orthodox fascination with spiritual mysticism. Belarusian imagery of the turn of the century bore mostly pagan, rather than Christian, overtones. Perhaps it may be explained by the role the Eastern and Western churches played in the rift within the Belarusian national identity, an argument which is put forward by the advocates of neo-paganism among modern-day intelligentsia. A certain connection between neo-paganism and Helena Iwanowskaya, one of the first translators of Belarusian folksongs into English, can be made. Through her brother she was associated with Kupala and many young intellectuals in St Petersburg, who were members of Zahliane Sontsa U Nasha Vakontsa Publishers. She personally knew Tsiotka, her neighbour at Iwanowskaya’s family estate. It is possible to suggest she was able to see similarities between the aesthetics of the neo-pagans searches of the New Belarusian literati and the Neo-

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Player and Kolas’ Symon the Musician) singing of – and for – their native land. The titans of the ‘young Belarus’ were diverse: apart from poetry, among their best creations of the period are dramas (Kupala’s P ŭl nk and Raskidanaye hniazdo, both outlining the conflict between ‘old’ and ‘new’ and showing the crisis of Belarusian identity), prose (‘realistic’ and allegorical stories of Kolas) and numerous articles in

periodicals153. The revolutionary zeal of Bahuszewicz’s poetry was significant for Tsiotka (‘Woman’154

), the first female author to write in Belarusian who was also involved in revolutionary activities and propagated national activism. Together with Vatslaŭ Ivanoŭski155

, Tsiotka became very involved in the Belarusian Revolutionary Hramada which in 1905-1907 was active in St Petersburg (Nikalayeŭ 2009, 239).

At the same time, Maxim Bahdanovich was recreating in Belarusian the best known poetic genres from world poetry, aiming to prove that a ‘peripheral’ and ‘weak’ language was flexible and rich enough to carry the weight of classical and European ‘high’ style, considered to be the ‘centre’ of the European canon156

. He, like many of N v ’s writers, widely translated, introducing new ideas, genres and themes into Belarusian literature. In less than a decade the motives of sorrow, of the “cry” of the oppressed peasant ceased their significance as the main mode of poetry. Through his publications, and particularly in the discussion of 1913, Vatslaŭ Lastoŭski argued that

Pagans of Cambridge where she studied before the World War I. Iwanowskaya’s role in the translations of Belarusian folksongs is discussed in further detail in Chapter Four.

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This time was also among their most productive: Kupala’s famous akopaŭski peryjad (the period of Akopy) of 1913, while Kolas produced nine books of poetry and prose.

154 _{The pen-name of Alaisa Pashkevich, it usually denotes a married or older woman.} 155

One of the founders of the Hramada, he was her neighbour and brother of Helena Iwanowska, a translator of White Ruthenian Folk-Songs discussed further in Chapter Four. Iwanowska and Pashkevich knew of each other and met several times in St Petersburg (Turonak 2006).

156 _{Bahdanovich’s legacy and his Romantic vision of the Belarusian past became the foundation for}

the neo-Romantics several decades later, the most notable of whom, Uladzimir Karatkevich, wrote that “he [Bahdanovich] raised our literature to world level. His poems, preserving their profoundly national spirit, are of interest to all people everywhere in the world. His original poetry is an exceptional thing. It includes a fairy-tale realm of goblins, water-sprites and pixies, the expression of real pain for the people, popular songs and complicated classic forms, and poems portraying antiquity” (1982, 153).

Bahdanovich’s poetry with its themes of ‘old Lithuania’, with its symbols such as Slutsk girdles and its state crest of Pahonia (Chase) became the cornerstone of the ‘Old/European’ interpretation of

Belarusianness. At the same time, his image of a native Belarusian cornflower penetrated even into the ‘new Belarussianness’ as the floral emblem of Belarus.

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Belarusian literati had to give back something to the culture they were raised in and urged the writers to focus on the positive, leaving the mode of sadness behind (Ці ёсць расійская і польская культура/ Is there Russian and Polish culture, Ці-ткі мы сапраўды цямней ад усіх? / Are we really the most ignorant of all?, Перш за ўсё самі / Starting by ourselves, Голас сумленнасці / The voice of conscience, Па сваім шляху / Along our Path). Furthermore, Lastoŭski raised the question of Belarusian literature’s status and its entrance into the global literary canon. The question, first formulated by Bahdanovich as to what Belarusian literature could give back to its nation and, furthermore, to other nations (Bahdanovich ([1913] 1968, 133), in Lastoŭski’s interpretation acquired some urgency: “However, at the moment our literature does not have global significance”157

([1914] 1997, 284). He argued for the necessity of new thoughts and ideas, rather than a mimicry of established forms and genres (ibid., 273- 275). These much desired new genres and themes appeared in the work of Ales’ Harun (new themes of town, jail, early traces of science fiction), Jadvihin Sh.158 (satirical, allegorical, psychological prose, travel writings), Tsishka Hartny (‘worker’s poetry’, first ‘social’ novel), Zmitrok Biadulia (lyrical prose, children’s literature), Maksim Haretski (psychological realism in prose) and others. This was also the time of another significant change in Belarusian belles lettres when literature started to make a gradual turn from its narrow focus on the life of peasants to a discussion of issues of society as a whole, including its various strata, such as workers, merchants, officials, students and intelligentsia, among others.

English translations of the period include numerous poems by Kupala and Kolas that were included in their collection of translated works by Walter May (Kolas 1982a;

157 _{“Пакуль што наша літаратура не мае ўсясветнага значэння” (Lastoŭski [1914] 1997, 284).} 158 _{Jadvihin Sh. was one of the students who went to the school founded by Dunin-Marcinkiewicz}

and his family. In a Nasha Niva article he recollects the time spent at the writer’s house in 1877-8, when “his daughter taught a small number of children. We were taught in Russian, Polish, French, taught various things but we never heard either of Belarusian history or Belarusian language” (Jadvihin Sh. 1910).

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Kolas 1982b; Kupala 1982a; Kupala 1982b). Kupala has also been translated by Anisiya Prokofieva (Kupala 1982c), and a book of his sonnets appeared in a multilingual edition with English translations undertaken by Vera Rich (Kupala 2002). Several of the poems by the two poets were published in Soviet and Western periodicals (discussed in more detail in Chapters Five and Six)159 and in the collections of Soviet and Russian poetry (Poetry of Europe 1979; Mukerjee 2002). Like Water, Like Fire contains the poems of Kupala (13 poems and the long poem The Gravemound), Kolas (7 poems and 2 extracts from New Land), Bahdanovich (17), Bujla (1), Biadulia (2). Out of the trio of “the founding fathers” Maxim Bahdanovich has been a popular author to translate: thus, Vera Rich published several translations of his poetry in various periodicals (cf. Chapter Six for details), a small book of Anisia Prokofieva’s translations from Bahdanovich, The Burning Candle, was printed in Minsk (Bahdanovich 1991), a couple of English translations were published in Zuborev’s fictional biography of Bahdanovich (2004). Yet the largest collection of Bahdanovich’s translations into English is Images Swarm Free, which also contains the poems of Harun and Zmitrok Biadulia (Bahdanovich et al. 1982).

2.7. The 1920s and 30s (Soviet and Western Belarus)