OUT OF GREAT LOVE

Among certain, one may say, narrow circles of my limited countrymen, the notion exists that I don’t really love Chernivtsi that much. That’s a lie. I do love it. But not all the time. For example, I recall that about twenty years ago I had to spend a week in Donetsk. Well, that whole week, I really, really loved Chernivtsi. And I loved it when I was in Magadan, and in Yakutsk and in the village of Bykovo in the Moscow region . . . But when I return to Chernivtsi, of course, after a day or two, I love it less. That is, a day or two after returning from the village of Bykovo. When returning from Prague or Krakow, however, then it’s a day or two before that.

Sometimes I get uncomfortable because of my capriciousness. I mean—didn’t Nobel Prize winner Czesław Miłosz [1] compare his pre-war Vilnius with my Chernivtsi? Yes, he did. And didn’t Zbigniew Herbert [2] call it “Europe’s last Alexandria?” He certainly did. And what did Adam Michnik [3] say just a few years ago? “Well if this isn’t Europe,” Adam Michnik said, “then where is Europe?” Moreover, a century before Michnik, the Austrian journalist Georg Heinzen [4] con­sidered Chernivtsi to be not just Europe, but “the unspoken capital of Europe, where the most beautiful coloratura sopranos sang, where cabbies discussed Karl Kraus, [5] where the sidewalks were swept with bouquets of roses, and where there were more bookstores than cafes.” Well who cares about cabbies and coloratura sopranos! We even had, according to Rosa Auslander, [6] “a mirror carp/ seasoned with pepper/ silent in five languages.”

And what conclusion can be drawn from all this? An obvious one: in order to talk about Chernivtsi with such passion, one has to have never been there—like Miłosz and Herbert, or has to have visited merely as a tourist—like Michnik and Heinzen, or has to have emi­grated and delved into nostalgic memories—like Rose Ausländer and tens of artists and scholars who truly did make Chernivtsi famous in this world, but who first had to escape from this wonderful city.

Meanwhile, if one is to believe not poetic sketches but social sur­veys, almost 80% of Chernivtsi’s inhabitants today are, in one way or another, proud of the city in which they live. On the one hand, I am, as much as this is possible, honestly happy for them. But on the other hand, I find it a bit difficult to understand the reasons for such pride. Yes, I know that Paul Celan [7] was born here, and that Olha Kobylianska [8] died here, that Ivan Franko studied here, that Yuri Fedkovych [9] worked here, that Mihai Eminescu [10] wrote his first poems here, that Traian Popovici, [11] when he was mayor, saved Jews from the Holocaust here. I would just like to understand how we, today’s residents of Chernivtsi, are connected to all of this?

The reconstructed façade of Paul Celan’s building? Almost. Because, as it turns out, Celan lived not in that building but in the one next door. But, because they mistakenly registered the wrong build­ing, that’s the one shown to tourists. It’s not difficult to delude tour­ists—I’ve done it myself many times. I show them the forged carriage on Kobylianska Street and the clock made of flowers on the reconstructed Turkish Well Square and lead them to “The best café at the intersection of Universytetska and Skovoroda Streets” (this is a veiled advertise­ment, because the café is owned by my friend and publisher). “Europe,” the satisfied tourists say. “Aha,” you reply to the tourists and bite your tongue to resist telling them, in detail, how the European inhabitants of Chernivtsi regularly like to shit in that carriage, how they break that clock’s hands and how they vandalize the exhaust in that café’s attic.

Or, perhaps, is our contribution to European culture today the statue of Fedkovych, which teenagers well-versed in cartoons correctly called, on the day that it was unveiled, a Transformer? But there is a positive: a local politician built a rather quirky restaurant next to it that bears the so very typical Chernivtsi name “The Sorbonne.” I’ll be blunt: in all of the world’s architecture, I’ve never seen anything more disgusting than this thing, this dream of some stoned pastry chef materialized in the historical district of our “Little Vienna.” And so, as a result, standing next to this “Sorbonne,” even the Transformer- Fedkovych has somehow begun to look a bit nicer.

And, concerning politicians. Until recently, it seemed that Chernivtsi was a Western Ukrainian city and that most of the local politicians had political beliefs consistent with this. Not anymore. Because I now fully realize that most of the local politicians have no beliefs, just private inter­ests. And because in the era of the Lout from Yenakievo, these inter­ests can only be defended with political prostitution, the oppositional majority in the city council has transformed itself into a pro-government majority. As a result, the mayor, who had just been elected by the direct vote of the citizens, has been ousted. The citizens, as is most often the case today all over Ukraine, swallowed this and are waiting to see what will happen next. Can this possibly be what famous Bukovynian toler­ance looks like? I don’t think so. Even if the problem is limited to polit­ical raiding—I still don’t think so. It really is much deeper than that.

Let us recall: in Austro-Hungarian times, a so-called “idea of Bukovynism” was given birth in Chernivtsi—a particular Bukovynian identity that gently swaddled an entire bouquet of various national and religious identities. There probably were some minor misunderstandings in practice, but, theoretically at least, it stated that what was most import­ant was to feel that you are a Bukovynian and that being also a Ukrainian, a Romanian or a Jew was secondary. In this manner, a tolerance toward an Other was cultivated, about which, for example, Krzysztof Czyżewski [12] writes in his essay “Chernivtsi—a Forgotten Metropolis at the Edge of the Hapsburg Monarchy”: “An Other is a part of us and a part of a community to which we feel a sense of belonging. An Other cannot be someone who is absent, someone about whom we are indifferent. If we wish to consider, for example, a dervish from Bukhara to be an Other, then we can only do this if we comprehend his belonging to that same community that we deem to be living and crucial for our fate.”

When looking at the present, however, I’m afraid that Czyżewski is incorrect. Ukrainians, Romanians, Moldovans, Jews (those who have remained), Russians (those who replaced the pre-war Jews and Germans) really do co-exist in today’s Chernivtsi without any visi­ble conflicts. But also without any particular contact among cultures. For the “average” Ukrainian inhabitant of Chernivtsi, the Chernivtsi Romanian or Jewish culture is probably no dearer to them than the cul­ture of the Bukhara dervishes. Simultaneously, these cultures (includ­ing Ukrainian) have not produced anything praiseworthy for quite some time and, thus, do not threaten one another. In this manner, it is not life’s force and an interest in the Other, but weakness and apathy that lie at the foundation of the tolerance of today’s Chernivtsi.

Of course, something positive can be found in such a situation. For example, to recognize that even apathetic tolerance is a major achieve­ment compared to passionate “Yugoslavian” hatred. But it’s a real shame to observe how apathetic Bukovynian society gradually loses its once-attractive face. Too weak to apply its old model to all of Ukraine, today Chernivtsi itself, politically (and culturally as well) is drifting in the direction of the village of Bykovo.

Notes

[1] Czesław Miłosz (1911-2004) was a Polish poet, novelist, translator and diplomat. He lived in Vilnius as a student before World War Two. He recevied the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980.

[2] Zbigniew Herbert (1924-1998) was a Polish poet and dramatist who was born and lived in L′viv (Lwów) but was forced to leave the city because of its Soviet occupa­tion in 1944.

[3] Adam Michnik (b. 1946) is a Polish historian, former dissident, essayist, public intellectual and editor-in-chief of Poland’s largest newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza.

[4] Georg Heinzen was a journalist who wrote about Chernivtsi.

[5] Karl Kraus (1874-1946) was an Austrian writer and journalist known for his satiri­cial writing.

[6] Rose Ausländer (1901-1988) was a Jewish poet who wrote in both German and English. She was born in Chernivtsi (Cernăuți, Czernowitz) and lived there for much of her life before finally leaving the city in 1944.

[7] Paul Celan (1920-1970) was a Jewish poet who wrote in German. He was born as Paul Antschel in Chernivtsi (Cernăuți, Czernowitz) and lived there until 1945.

[8] Ol′ha Kobylians′ka (1863-1942) was a Ukrainian writer and feminist. Originally writing in German, she later switched to Ukrainian and became one the leading Ukrainian early Modernist writers. She lived in Chernivtsi for most of her life.

[9] Yuri Fed′kovych (1834-1888) was a Ukrainian Romantic writer who lived in Chernivtsi from 1876 until his death.

[10] Mihai Eminescu (1850-1889) was a leading Romanian Romantic poet who lived in Chernivtsi (Cernăuți) as a student.

[11] Traian Popovici (1892-1946) was as Romanian lawyer and the mayor of Chernivtsi (Cernăuți) during World War Two. He is known for saving 20,000 Jews from being deported from the Bukovyna (Bukovina) region.

[12] Krzysztof Czyżewski (b. 1958) is a Polish author and director of the Center “Borderland of Arts, Cultures and Nations” in Sejny, Poland.

Translated by Mark Andryczyk