Modelo de las seis Dimensiones (M6D)

One cannot help but notice how uniquely oriented to village life is twentieth-century Belarusian literature from the 1950s to the 1970s. This notion is developed thematically by the continuation of peasant-oriented topics from the earliest days of modern Belarusian literature at the end of the nineteenth century. [...] It lies in the peasant origins of the mainstream Belarusian writers. Indeed, they portray best their first-hand experiences (Gimpelevich 2001, 596).

The next phase of Belarusian literature is associated with the Cold War, the ‘Iron Curtain’, and pro-Russian linguistic policies. The censorship of Glavlit and ideological pressures, which will be discussed in more detail in Chapter Five, meant that there were few authors who dared to express even implicit social criticism or non-conformist thoughts. Pro-Russian politics and centralization meant that guidelines for Soviet realism were to be introduced into each of the fifteen republics. Thus, ready-made schemes for successful writing and canonical patterns were provided, demanding close adherence to Soviet, aka Russian, models. Every other national literature in this

situation had no choice but to agree to a ‘provincial’ status174

. Since this period has been given an exhaustive treatment in three separate volumes by McMillin (1977a; 1999; 2010) only some general comments on the overarching tendencies of the literature and literati of the period will provided here. The growth in status of the Writers’ Union gave an opportunity for many to afford to become professional authors and freed them for full-time ‘creative work’. The result of that was, predictably, a growth in book

production, particularly multi-volume prose sagas. In keeping with established tradition, partly for fear of censorship, as the depiction of other classes could always lead to accusations of being a sympathiser of the “bourgeoisie”, and partly due to the general rise of ‘the village prose’ in Russian, they were mostly dedicated to the recurrent theme

174 _{If the capital of the USSR was Moscow, with all translation activity and literary innovations}

happening and being approved there, the rest of the Soviet Union republics had to wait until orders came down from Moscow for their Unions of Writers in accordance with a strict chain of command.

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of Belarusian literature, i.e. the village and its inhabitants. The Palesse Chronicle of Ivan Melezh, dedicated to the South-Eastern Belarusian frontier, is a particularly

successful example of such sagas. The legacy of Ivan Shamiakin, a prolific prose writer, is uneven in quality but contains new themes (urban prose) and fast-moving plots. Another comparable “pillar of the official Soviet literary establishment” (McMillin 1999, 144) was Ivan Navumenka, an author of many novels dedicated to World War II. Besides larger prose genres, short stories and “miniatures”175 were also written by such authors as Janka Bryl and Jan Skryhan. Particular fame came to Vasil Bykaŭ, whose long-short stories (which he refused to define as novels although they fit the criteria in terms of volume) dedicated to war contain existential dilemmas and deep psychological observations. The popularity of the war theme in Belarusian literature of the time was enormous and can perhaps be explained as the way for writers at the time to deal with otherwise frowned upon issues of individual choice in life-threatening situations, avoidance of responsibility and even collaboration with the coloniser. The safe protective cover of depicting a struggle against a coloniser from the West, rather than the East, allowed the asking of these poignant questions in Belarusian literature and paved the way for the new Revival of the 1990s, as well as for some developing implicit postcolonial trends, particularly with Bykaŭ.

New developments in poetry (free versification, new themes and imagery) were introduced by Maxim Tank in his 60 year-long prolific poetic careeragainst the more traditional approaches of Broŭka and Hlebka who chose to adhere to Communist slogans and accent-syllabic forms (Kalesnik 1959; Mikulich 1994; Astraukh 2001, 12- 16). The poetry of those who returned from exile with the ‘thaw’ (Duboŭka, Puscha, Alexandrovich, etc.) tended to be much more traditional and less inspired than their earlier work. At the same time, new names, such as Siarhj Dziarhaj, Anatol’

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Hrachanikaŭ, Arkadz Kuliashoŭ, Pimen Panchanka, Aliaksei Pysin and Vasil’ Zuyonak appeared. The poets were developing new themes of war, philosophy, and “all the (permissible) questions of Belarusian life in the Brezhnev years, entering with equal vigour into debates about topical social and poetic issues, such as questions of the past and future of Belarus, time and place, or children and age” (McMillin 1999, 38). A particular trend which can be observed is the gradual rise of women’s poetry (Edzi Ahniatsvet, Jeudakiya Los’, Danuta Bichel-Zahnietava, Vera Viarba, and Jauheniya Janischyts). Drama was also developed, though not as intensively as poetry or prose (Laŭshuk 2010; Vasyuchenka 2000), by Arkadz’ Maŭzon and Andrei Makayonak.

It is the literature of this period which is the best in terms of its representation in English (if not from the point of quality, then from the fact of the appearance of a large body of translated work). This was mostly due to The Progress Publishers in Moscow who were the officially ‘approved’ publishers of all translated literature into foreign languages. The poetic anthologies by Rich and May contain the largest corpus of translated poetry176. Rich’s magazine, Manifold, contains translations of Natallia Arsenneva’s work of the period. The prose is represented in two anthologies of contemporaneous works, Colours of the Native Country (Volk-Levanovich 1972) and Home Fires: Stories by Writers from Byelorussia, which appeared under the auspices of Raduga Publishers in Moscow (Moroz 1986). Several books by individual authors written at the time appeared: they are, first and foremost, translations of several Bykaŭ’s

176 _{Vera Rich’s Like Water, Like Fire splits this period into two: The Years of Reconstruction}

(1945 – 1953), which contains the poems of Mikhas Kalatchynki (1), Luzhanin (1), Tank (4), Kuliashou (2), Vitka (2), Kireyenka (2), Auramchyk (1), Anatol Vialuhin (1), Mikhas’ Kalachynski (1), Krapiva (1), Aliaksej Pysin (1), Piatro Makal (1); and The Thaw – And After (1954 – ): Bujla (1), Jazep Puscha (1), Brouka (5), Piatro Hlebka (1), Kuliashou (11), Zarytski (1), Tank (16), Siarhej Hrachouski (4), Aliaksej Rusetski (3), Pysin (1), Buraukin (4) [misspelt as Baurukin in 1 poem], Dziarhaj (3), Los (1), Vitka (1), Panchanka (5), Kireyenka (1), Auramchyk (1), Anatol Vialuhin (4), Aliaksej Pysin (4), Piatro Makal (2), Nil Hilevich (4), Ryhor Baradulin (4), Viartsinski (1), Ales’ Zvonak (1), Anatol’ Viartsinski (1), Dubouka (2), Larysa Henijush (1), Janka Sipakou (1), Vitka (1), Pilip Pestrak (1), Luzhanin (1), Zarytski (1). Most of these authors, with one or two poems each, are represented in the Fair Land of Byelorussia anthology by Walter May.

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novels177, a long-short story and an extended historical-literary essay by Uladzimir Karatkevich (Karatkevich 1989; 1982), novels by Shamiakin (1973) and Melezh (1979) and a collection of short stories by a Belarusian writer living in Poland (Janovic 1984).

2.9. Literature of the “Glasnost'” (1986 – 1990) and Independence