Mondegreen Read online

  Ukrainian Research Institute

  Harvard University

  Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature 2

  HURI Editorial Board

  Michael S. Flier

  George G. Grabowicz

  Oleh Kotsyuba, Manager of Publications

  Serhii Plokhy, Chairman

  Cambridge, Massachusetts

  Volodymyr Rafeyenko

  Mondegreen

  Songs about Death and Love

  Translated and introduced by Mark Andryczyk

  Distributed by Harvard University Press for the Ukrainian Research Institute Harvard University

  The Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute was established in 1973 as an integral part of Harvard University. It supports research associates and visiting scholars who are engaged in projects concerned with all aspects of Ukrainian studies. The Institute also works in close cooperation with the Committee on Ukrainian Studies, which supervises and coordinates the teaching of Ukrainian history, language, and literature at Harvard University.

  © 2022 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College

  All rights reserved

  Printed in the U.S. on acid-free paper

  ISBN 9780674275577 (hardcover), 9780674271708 (paperback), 9780674271746 (epub), 9780674271760 (PDF)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2021949032

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021949032

  Photo of Volodymyr Rafeyenko courtesy of Nataliia Kravchuk

  Cover image and book design by Mykola Leonovych, https://smalta.pro

  Publication of this book has been made possible by the Ukrainian Research Institute Fund and the generous support of publications in Ukrainian studies at Harvard University by the following benefactors:

  Ostap and Ursula Balaban

  Jaroslaw and Olha Duzey

  Vladimir Jurkowsky

  Myroslav and Irene Koltunik

  Damian Korduba Family

  Peter and Emily Kulyk

  Irena Lubchak

  Dr. Evhen Omelsky

  Eugene and Nila Steckiw

  Dr. Omeljan and Iryna Wolynec

  Wasyl and Natalia Yerega

  You can support our work of publishing academic books and translations of Ukrainian literature and documents by making a tax-deductible donation in any amount, or by including HURI in your estate planning. To find out more, please visit https://huri.harvard.edu/give.

  The publication of this book was made possible, in part, by the Translate Ukraine Translation Program of the Ukrainian Book Institute (Ukraine).

  The purchase of rights and preparation of translation were also supported by generous contributions from individual donors through a crowdfunding campaign organized by Razom for Ukraine (United States).

  Publication of this book was made possible, in part,

  by a grant from the Harriman Institute, Columbia University.

  We are deeply grateful for the generous support that this translation has received from the participants of the crowdfunding campaign organized by Razom for Ukraine. It is because of the patronage of visionary individuals such as these that the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard has been able to implement its sprawling programs in research and publications dedicated to the promotion of knowledge of Ukraine, its history, and culture. Thank you!

  BENEFACTOR

  Sviatoslav Bozhenko

  CHAMPIONS

  Yuriy Barminov

  Chopivsky Family Foundation

  Oksana Falenchuk

  Maria Genkin

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  Tanya Nesterchuk

  PATRONS

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  FRIENDS

  Our gratitude also goes out to over thirty further friends of Razom for Ukraine and HURI who supported this publication with their donations.

  All names are sorted by last name within each category of support.

  Who are you, Lord?

  —Saul

  The mare’s head knocked-n-rocked.

  —“The Mare’s Head”

  Not so young, sir, to love a woman for singing, nor

  so old to dote on her for anything. I have years

  on my back forty-­eight.

  —William Shakespeare, King Lear

  On Essence

  I looked at all the little lambs —

  Those are not my little lambs!

  I looked back at the village huts —

  I don’t have a village hut!

  —Taras Shevchenko

  What could be the essence of all of this, O master? Haba breathed in the frigid Kyiv air and pondered how this year’s autumn had been so warm and yet the cold came so quickly, seemingly out of nowhere, and how this was a real mind-fuck. Well what then could be the essence of all of this? And what is the Ukrainian essence, if you compare it with, say, the Russian one? Of course, the Ukrainian essence, if it is our national one, should be different from the essential essence, so to say, of the enemy? Right? Or are there certain philosophical coordinates where the national disappears and the essentially human sets out upon its difficult and senseless path? Can we suppose that Russians are inhuman? That Ukrainians, for example, are humans while Russians are—the ­reverse (the re-verse—what a wonderful word; re-creation? A time of reproduction? And Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me in the re-creation will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel).1 And if we are to accept this, well then how about the French or, more generally, the Europeans? How do you co-exist with them? All those Sartres, Camus, and Levis—what are they, biologically speaking? Deleuze, Derrida, Barthes. And Darwin in particular (Charles Robert Darwin)? And where the hell did this curious theologian come from? And couldn’t some virtuous person have showed up and bashed his bones with a baseball bat to stop him from writing that idiocy of his about people and monkeys having common relatives? Well tell me this, Mr. Theologian. Do you get a kick out of a monkey and wise men having common relatives?

  Of course not, it’s all very clear. Homo sapiens—or, as it is proper to say now, Homo sapiens sapiens—with all your sadness and intoxication, well, who haven’t you slept with, you loser, especially in those knotty 1990s. And what then can be said about the 2000s and 2010s, which were filled to the rim with fire.

  You know, sometimes things line up in such a way that it becomes unbearable. The soul gets torn by a sense that life is expiring and pulling away from you, like the nighttime local train to Publiieve-­Neronove (the same as Klavdiieve-­Tarasove, a small town in the Borodiansk district of Kyiv oblast. Founded in 1903, located 1,440.71 miles from Paris. At the fork, stay to the right and continue on A4/E25/E50; follow the signs toward Paris/Luxembourg/Thionville), which flickers its phantom fires. And, moreover, a spiritual development doesn’t come at all. You look back into past days and
they are empty, and instead of a greater awareness ringing in the radiance of a fullness of existence, you are left with the bland, concrete slice of cake of a provincial railway platform. Empty packs of cigarettes, sunflower seed shells, a half-empty bottle of Chernihiv Light beer, a homeless dude on a bench reading Conan Doyle. The wind spreads yellow dust. And, standing up to your ears in that dust, you come to understand that you haven’t done anything worthy in your life (existence is bleeding to death, looking into you with the sad eyes of dead relatives and folk tale characters).

  And it is in that state that sapiens sapiens drifts through the woods. In that state. And there’s a monkey sleeping there. Can you believe it, dear compatriots? This guy is preoccupied with existence, while the monkey just fucking sleeps. This guy’s sadness has got him by the balls, while the monkey, drunk off champagne, lies beneath the walnut tree. The bodhisattvas of Ukraine. Each in its own manner, of course. And that is where relatives come from.

  It would be better for this Darwin to ask whom his mother slept with. This theologian. Why is he picking on monkeys? There are so many animals in our society that that spiel about monkeys—it’s not even half the truth. It’s only a quarter of the problem. I wonder why he didn’t write anything about those wild boars, crows, hedgehogs, rats, butterflies, dragonflies, dogs and wolves, bears, snakes, laughing and crying hyenas, and just a few innocent woodpeckers, that make up our political scene? It’s a real frog-fest, this parliament.

  “But why is it Darwin that I am attacking?” Haba suddenly wondered.

  Why not Martin Luther? And the fact that he’s German doesn’t mean anything. Germans, actually, are the same way, except that they are fonder of order. If you should break some sort of law, like, for example, deciding to take a leak in the middle of the Brandenburg Gate, then your friend-­bursche, with whom you had just been downing beers in a bar, will turn you in to the police, you can be sure of that. Even if you were a proponent of, say, anarcho-­radicalism.

  “So then, what is all this leading to?”

  Well, who knows, master, what this is all leading to, Haba shrugged his shoulders, but I am learning a language. A language so musical and magical. One that leads you to all kinds of nonsense and multicolored idiocy, it calls you to March madness, to holy hollow November. You can mumble non-stop about anything in this language for a hundred thousand years, and speak gobbledygook with your tangled, refugee tongue. (Gobelen? Gusk? Let’s home in on that rabbit and his balls).

  And it is at this moment that Haba thought that, perhaps, he is beginning to develop a polyglot syndrome. While talking to himself only in his native Russian, he remained an average Joe. But when he began learning a second language, all sorts of God-knows-what began entering his brain. From much knowledge, there is much despair.

  “That is the fate of today’s intellectuals,” he said to himself, sighed heavily, and, with a dawdling sadness, breathed the lively air of perpetual expulsion into his greying beard, made the sign of the cross, and continued strolling down Obolon Avenue.

  Well, what the heck can you do, it’s autumn. Autumn. And what is autumn? It is the onset of a turning point. The sky cries in blood beneath your feet. And stupid crows scuttle through the puddles. Kyivan crows, fucking eh.2

  “So then,” Haba mumbled, “why the hell didn’t you, Mr. Pushkin, tell us anything? You were a pretty decent chap. And talented. If you saw a Jew, you would say to him: look at the Jew. If you saw a babe, then you’d say: ababahalamaha.3 And then you’d grab her by her skirt. Come here, sugar. He brought her to his corner, wrung his hands, sat her tied-up on a stool and said to her in perfect German: I am your Sacher-­Masoch, mein daaarling. I brought you to the City of the Lion itself. I’ll start telling your tales, calling you pannochka, you’ll be a sexually satisfied chick. You’ll become a true halychanka.4 But she says to him: go fuck yourself, you perverted horse, damn you! I ain’t no halychanka, I’m the French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac. The novel sequence La Comédie humaine, which presents a panorama of post-­Napoleonic French life, is generally viewed as my magnum opus. And I have such long, curly hair, because I curl it on giant nails forged in a metallurgic guild, and that’s how I sleep, after drinking Marsala and smoking weed. I wake up in the morning looking flawlessly beautiful. And I could share this good fortune with you.

  ***

  Haba entered the subway station and placed his card up against the square of unfathomable supply. It immediately replied that, apparently, he was free to enter. But it also informed him that Haba could only have access to Kyiv’s innards three more times. An average refugee’s entrance to a metro station is very strictly regulated.

  Haba slowly slid down the stairs. In the horrific depths of the underground, glowing in a ghastly electricity that is carried by the winds from nearby hell, trains run along waves in demonic ventilators of human souls. There’s always just a scattering of people here in the evenings. Everyone is heading somewhere. The old, the young, the Russian-­speakers, the Ukrainian-­speakers. Tatars, the French, Jews, the English, the Chinese, the Vietnamese, Russians, Roma, Romanians, Moldovans. Girls and boys. The readers of Andrii Kokotiukha 5 and of Augustine Aloysius Joyce. Fans of innovative sex and of conventional sex. A whole Babylon is shifting somewhere underground, and this mixing of human streams is senseless. It is clear that the city of Kyiv is insane. For it’s the city of the mother of Rus´ and an elderly and somewhat cataleptic one at that.6 And this is felt. And the Kyiv metro is the quintessence of this. If, of course, the Ukrainian language has the word “quintessence.”

  And Haba was unsure about that fact and so he saddened, sensing how the Kyiv autumn tumbled down here to him from the surface above. Like that stubborn mare’s head. In an attempt to cheer himself up a bit he once again began to mumble a few, in essence primitive, in essence extremely banal, energetically sentimental lines about autumn.

  Autumn. Boats are burnt down to the ground. Hey-hey-hey-without a sound. Hey-hey-hey, nothin’ but hey-hey-hey.7 Just when you start translating something truly energetic and sentimental, the translating bug abandons you and you are left standing naked and in shambles (by the way the root “sham” (sic!) comes from the traditional Japanese musical instrument—the shamisen, which itself is derived from a Chinese instrument, a refugee of sorts) smack in the center of culture, like a pink monkey on a stage. An altogether unpleasant feeling.

  Haba looked at the mob that packed into the train together with him but then found a map and settled down. Mr. Pushkin said nothing. That’s for sure. But, gentlemen, if you’re going to blame someone then it should be Nestor the Chronicler. And, actually, a whole bunch of wonderful people before him. Let’s say, John the Evangelist. I mean, come on, man, if you indeed saw those four horsemen in your dreams, those that flew in to bomb Syria, then why didn’t you write just that? As in, dear people, what can I tell you about Armageddon. You read my Apocalypse, or should I say αποκαλυψις (the train isn’t going any farther, the stop is Heroïv Dnipra, cream, icy-cream, lima bean, protein, sea bream, sunshine on my shoulder makes me happy, mama ooh-ooh-ooh).

  Suddenly, Haba noticed that, one, he had fallen asleep for a few minutes and, two, for those few minutes he was once again heading in the wrong direction. Fatigue, like an insidious and hard-working woman, never stops cultivating your brain. Haba yawned, glanced at the backs of the final passengers and exited the train. He stood for a few seconds, sensing how the recent five-minute blackout had changed something in him, jerked his shoulders (a certain wicked force jerked his entire stiff body, bent him over, twisted his bruised bones in pain) and went over to the opposite side of the platform.

  So what’s this all about? Ok. Here it is. Mr. Jonah. “The Apocalypse,” of course, is approached here solely metaphorically, perhaps—in a postmodern manner, maybe somewhat surrealistically or biblically-­symbolically. As if viewed from an ivory tower. But he could have also stated it honestly, not taking
into account the centuries of future (past) space, and cut to the chase: you, Ukrainians, know that when the Russian Khaganate begins bombarding Mesopotamia—worldwide doom looms near you. And not—past those forests, and not—past those trees, but here, by the “barbacan” and the “cupidon.” 8

  Once again, he traveled beneath the ground, glancing occasionally at the map in the dark window beyond which he imagined an endless obscurity of long, damp tunnels, filled with traces left behind by people for eternity. Pictures, inspirations, faces, thoughts, life and sadness, the warm, brazen, and nonetheless not-yet-final death of sapiens sapiens, fated to remain forevermore within this hoard, within these walls, in this echo that gaits in the metro’s underground since the beginning of time. At a certain point, the current era fades away, doors are closing, the next stop—eternity, and shadows continue to traverse between the walls of the tunnel until morning. The shadows of forgotten ancestors.9 They think that they are people, that someone awaits them at the other end of their hopeless journey.

  The metro absorbs everything that’s human, accumulates it, and transforms it into the beyond. Three minutes in this train and a person no longer belongs to oneself, will never see oneself, although, of course, will also never forget oneself. Seconds will pass, they’ll add up to minutes and hours, you’ll go up to your reflection in a pool of water and say to it: I am your child. The water ripples and replies: You’re no child, you’re just a regular brat, a simple reflection, bro.

  In other words, every ass knows: whether you choose to follow the map or not, the paths that subway trains travel are not dependent on it. And generally, neither does your life. This, of course, is silly—constantly staring at the red, green, and blue lines of the metro map. This is lunacy. Even if your suspicions are justified, and these lines—like everything else in this beautiful city—change into their opposites every minute (“betrayal-­victory,” a purely Ukrainian form of the “body-soul” dualism), there’s nothing you can do about it. So, forget about it, buddy, forget about all this crap, don’t follow the lines on that imagined map, it’s just as much of a ghost as is, by the way, everyone near you. There is no one. You are alone in this city—nobody needs that stupid sliver of light, that microscopic bit of warmth, that grey mind, those black eyes, those yellow Easter eggs, that never satisfied staff of love, that liver that craves Borjomi mineral water, that sun—a red little star glowing somewhere in the chest, that stunning and insidious thing known as the “I.” Actually, that last thing is also absent, although it is still entitled to a whole three rides on this metro.