One of the most popular Ukrainian writers, Serhiy Zhadan, has mobilized and identified a new mission for himself.
We decided to sit down at the Andriivsky Uzvoz, at the entrance to the Dukat gallery: there is an exhibition in support of the “Charter” brigade, for which Serhiy Zhadan serves. Black shirt, tight jeans, constant conversions. Hugs me. We are talking about the city of Kharkiv – the same year it flew to the center of the city.
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The Kiev gallery presents a beneficial exhibition of works by prominent Ukrainian mits: Oleksandr Roitburd, Pavel Makov, Zhanna Kadirova and Maria Kulikovska. Zhadan immediately led me to the canvas of the Lviv artist Yurko Koch. Specially for the exhibition, I painted a portrait of Nika Kozhushko, a Kharkov mystic poet who died 30 years ago near KAB. The girl was 18. Beautiful, thin Nika is depicted against the backdrop of a recently opened bookstore in the center of Kharkov with the symbolic name “Bookstore”.
“We hung this work on the wall, since it had not yet dried,” said Zhadan, who was a close friend of Nikoya, and after her death, the publication “Folio” came out This is the first collection of poetry and prose “The hour to start tango.” At a beneficial auction, which was held by the philanthropist Katerina Zagoriya on the 15th of April, it was possible to raise over 3.3 million hryvnias for the patronage subsidiary “Charter”, which is taking care of the injured Viyskovymi.
Our support in Kiev is luck: to catch Zhadan, who is alive without pauses between his service with the 13th brigade of the National Guard of Ukraine “Charter”, tours with the group “Zhadan and Dogs”, appearances at the front with numerous benefits approaches, maybe it’s impossible. Over the past few years, he has given ten concerts for the military: “This is what happens in hospitals and at the front: we just hang out with a guitar and a trumpet and play for years and years. concerts are important, but if it’s important to you, think about who is sitting in the trenches,” Sergei says in a streamed voice.
I am not an infantryman or a stormtrooper. I’m just giving so that more people know about the “Charter”
I’ll ask what changed after my mobilization of the tork in the heart. “You won’t depend on yourself anymore. Plans can change come what may.” It was time for Zhadan to finish school before the military: stinks with friends stood in the wake of the “Charter” in the spring of 2022 (the founder of the department, businessman Vsevolod Kozhemyako, a friend of the writer’s youth). Sergei repeats several times during hourly interviews that he is not serving on a military base: his expertise lies in communication, as well as Radio “Charter”, independent of online media, as if he fell asleep story from a team of journalists and military services.
“I’m not an infantryman and I’m not a stormtrooper. I’m just working so that more people know about the “Charter” and so that everything that is necessary is raised,” he says. The auction at “Dukati” is one of the applications of its successful work in this niche, like the concert tours of its group: the musicians were able to collect money for consumption during two months of performances “Charter” 22 million hryvnias. I'm afraid of volunteerism in 2014: it seems that in 2022 it became obvious that there simply weren't enough victims, and point-based volunteer work was ineffective. “This war is a whole new level of waste. Well, okay, you can save money and buy five drones and three cars; burn the cars, but there won’t be any drones every other day. War is a huge waste, which requires planning ahead.”
Mityets singing: culture can help accumulate money for the whole world. I remember my colleagues who are “the most effective volunteers of the region”: the Kharkov group “Kurgan and Aggregate”, the group “Without Limitations”, musician Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, writer Andriy Lyubka. “Culture itself, through its emotionality, can unite rich people,” explains Vin. “It’s even as simple as that, which is something that politics and ideology can no longer interfere with today. Nina’s culture is not about excitement, but about jealousy, and even as one, perhaps, in a real way, you can buy us.”
This is the very power of sport. Zhadan remembers that Serpna in Kharkov held a beneficial auction for the benefit of the river “Charter” and won a special lot – a spectacular football match with the participation of military personnel, the President of the Ukrainian Football Association of Andriy Shevchenko, footballer Serhiy Rebrov and children from front-line territories. A lot of prizes for a record 200 thousand dollars – they added the unmanned FlyEye 2.0 complex for parts to harrow the Kharkiv region.
After two years of communication in the office of the Dukat gallery, Zhadan’s phone rings with ringing calls from the founder of “Charter”, volunteers, and brothers-in-arms. Sergiy says that if he had a chance to find out behind the cordon, what makes up his standard day, he would be asked: what is this connected with the army? “I go to the bank to ask about the trim, in the afternoon I go to the factory to talk about drones, and in the evening I chat with the governor.”
Most of the day today is spent working on Radio Charter, which has become one of the most popular and most talked about media in the country. Between ranking broadcasts, historical programs about Ukrainian war fighters and dissidents of the 20th century, and world-class podcasts about military literature, Zhadan and his colleagues conducted field reports from the front – drive to the position in a car equipped with radio equipment in order to show the spouses “not the glamorous reality, but the reality of life.” And I’m also recording an interview that the whole country is talking about: Rozmov’s three-year anniversary with the legend of Ukrainian literature Lena Kostenko, which took place, was watched by over 700 people on the “Charter” YouTube channel thousands of times and divided into quotes.
Zhadan’s other resonant interview is with Ai Weiwei, who arrived in Kharkiv region to make a movie, and about the team for whom he served as a writer. At the center of the place, built twenty kilometers from the front line, on the smoldering constructivist front, the Ukrainian writer and the Chinese Mitets spoke about freedom, culture and the author’s credentials There is a war in the world. This Rozmova was not easy for both: Zhadan made inexplicable requests about China’s support of Russia and about asking Russians for further mystical projects with Ai Weiwei; the artist carefully confirmed that he should imagine himself as a giant of the world. At the end of the conversation, when interrupted by the sound of the alarm, Ai Weiwei realized that he was alive in Ukraine, having taken up his arms to harrow this life.
“In the comments, people almost wrote about the confrontation between us,” Sergiy grins. “But it’s not like that.” Ai Weiwei’s position is completely boring: obviously, the people would not have come to the reshuffling of the combat brigade, as if they were not supporting the country, for This brigade is fighting. It was near the frontline zone, traveling through the fields, of course.”
The most famous Ukrainian writer in the world, whose novels have been translated over twenty languages and in 2022, the Polish Academy of Sciences nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Translations of Civilizations The world may reconsider the vocabulary of how to talk about war. “We live on the outskirts of the Third World – we don’t know what it is. Apparently, a lot of speeches will require rethinking and renaming.” It is important to talk about the great consolidation of emerging intellectuals who strive for humanistic principles and a position of pacifism. “Pacifism can be justified entirely by the First World, but before this war it cannot be ethical, because putting Russia and Ukraine on Terez’s shawls is immoral.”
The writer is tired of having been behind the cordon for two years of treatment, because he does not have enough resources, but he can only remember the fiery trip to Salzburg, where he was awarded the Austrian State Literary Prize. Among the guests entering was the Pulitzer laureate historian Anne Applebom and the entire political elite of Europe. Zhadan became the first Ukrainian, having rejected this sign, which is awarded to fate since 1965. In his promo, Austrian Vice-Chancellor Andreas Babler noted that Sergius gives “our literature the fear of war, and his creativity has the strength necessary to meet the times of war and terror.”
“When you begin to write a poem, you realize that eternity is before you”
This is our third interview with Zhadan, and it immediately seems to me that in front of me is a superhero: smart, energetic, wise, delicate. The 51-letter writer, who can travel from Kharkov to Mikolaiv and back in a week, play a few concerts at the Palace of Sports for all thousands of spectators, is definitely more than 24 years old. Well, why doesn’t it come to fruition?
“I don’t write to Mayzha at once. I’m silent for an hour – I have work,” the scribe grins. And he adds: going to tell not literally about the hour, but about the camp. “When you start to write a poem, you realize that eternity is before you. But when you understand that in one year you’ll be with the commander, in two you need to accept a drone, and in three you have to settle with the bank, then there’s no time for eternity. I don’t complain. Everything is on time.”
During the three years of the full-scale war, Zhadan saw a collection of poetry “Skrypnikivka”, dedicated to the fluency of language in the hours of war; a collection of short military prose “Arabesques” and a 1400-story collection of lyric “All the Worlds 1993–2023”. The writer respects the unfavorable result. I guess how physically I couldn’t write on the cob of invasion – there was hostility that I just lost my breath. “It was not the same about writing – about reading. The emotional reaction to everything was intensified: you swallow new things – and cry and scream. There is no time for creativity and no time for reflection, if, in principle, you do not see what may happen. You know the cyclical nature of the hour, you need to spend the night, just survive until the morning – and then you have no prospects.”
The first months of the invasion Zhadan did not leave Kharkov. I made short, random posts and published them on Facebook: about shelling, small lamps, door workers, who clean up the streets with love after terrible attacks. Over the years, these texts were published as a book, “The Sky over Kharkov,” in America, Germany, France, and Poland. The writer, it seems, is not literary texts, but rather even nervous, head-on reactions – he never published them. In my opinion, there is no time for great novels about war, and even the scale and epic nature of this genre conveys “an aestheticization of war, and yet it still requires time.” Poetry works best when it is written especially by those who are close to it. “When you read the series of Arthur Dron and Yarina Chornoguz, you understand: this is not just poetry, these are very painful pieces of reality.
For Zhadan himself, writing in the hour of war is a therapeutic practice. “Now, when I sit down to write and translate, I understand that this is the calmest and most peaceful hour for me.” It's a big deal if you're on the way to the cities and between the ledges, passing around on the concert bus. “The remaining translations of Brecht’s verses (for the Kiev theater “Golden Gate”, where Brecht.Cabarett’s production premiered in the spring. – Ed.) I have learned from the dosage: while there are connections of trash and no one is on the phone, that’s all You put down, take out your book, laptop and work. Shaking, uncontrollably – but it’s normal. Sitting at home, at the table – there’s no one around: I come home late, with headaches, full of drones.”
Get out of your way and prefer to use sleep and poetry. “All my life I’ve carried books with me, so now I’ll re-read them. Taking Semyonka out of my backpack, whom I know by heart, after reading it, it seems to have become easier.” Often turns to Bazhan, Celan, Brecht. You need to get used to reading, especially at the same time, for the sake of wine, and put it up to this point before charging.
A writer finds the most energy when working with people. “It’s true, it both strengthens and reveals. But if you believe that people will remain devoted to their land, it will give them strength.” Those who have attended concerts of the group “Zhadan and Dogs” know: they know how to share energy. On the stage of the Palace of Sports, Sergiy has been shredding without repair for two years, shouting “Malvi”, “Rogan”, “Avtozak” at the microphone – it seems like live outlets for a new drug. It seems that young people are inspired to come to concerts – “a fantastic generation of broad people.” Students are the main audience of the group, and this became especially true after the large-scale invasion. “The success of the Zhadan and Dogs team lies in the fact that we sing speeches that few people say these days – we have enough social texts. The truth is that sociality is not political, but everyday, Whose children are getting married. Whose phenomenon is “Kurgan and Aggregate” – if you don’t agree with them, but speak to them in a reasonable voice.”
By the way, Zhadan is a teacher and also knows how to conduct a dialogue with children. Turbota about June is the main directive for this fund, which is working in 2017 on the front-line and deoccupied territories. At the right time, I helped the Luhansk region the most – in the locality of Starobilsk, the stars from my birth, and in the towns nearby: by replenishing school libraries with Ukrainian literature, holding literary competitions, Initiated grants for students, providing medical services at the hospital and hospital.
“We are all skinless skies at once: laughter, joy and tears – everything is mixed up”
“I literally brought a bunch of books there, but now all the schools are under occupation, and the books are depleted.” It seems that one of the main special expenses of this war is the inability to be present in the local area and earn money for the new battle. “It hurts so much that I can’t spend it on the grave before my father. But the greatest waste is the people: you can imagine those from whom they were spilt three or four years ago, and they are no longer with us.”
Father Sergius died in 2019. The material, before the beginning of the invasion, began to be taken away from Starobilsk, occupied by the Russians in the spring of 2022, and the home, de vin viris, was given to friends (“I hope it is still standing”). No matter what happens, I still want to stream and collect: it seems like I’ll wake up crying for a long time, otherwise poetry and movies can be destroyed. “We are all skinless skies at once: laughter, joy and tears – everything is mixed.” It is clear that he does not have the self-flagellation complex of the expansion among Ukrainians – that no one has the right to laugh in the hour of war.
“Sometimes it’s like this: sometimes you find out that someone has died, but you order to sit in company and warmly, and you accept this as a great injustice. But people don’t know what’s happened to you, but you don’t know what’s wrong with them. Perhaps laughter is a good way to overcome grief. It seems to me that this is a time of great respect, and it’s even easier to throw your stereotypes and pretensions at a person – and then be terribly delicate one after another.”
Text: Daria Slobodyanyk
Photo: Stepan Lisowski
Style: Viktoria Filipova
Зачиски: Diana Koval
Grooming: Svitlana Rymakova
Stylist assistant: Yuliia Ostapchuk
Osvitlyuvach: Oleksiy Kuzmenko
Line producer: Marie Nikolaenko
