Мондеґрін. Пісні про смерть і любов

Ukrainian language

Published Nov. 11, 2019

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Good at actualizing modalities of its region, but laden with male gaze

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Most interesting takes on national literature always come from outsiders—like Kulbak’s “Raysn,” both silly and convincing, or Gogol’s “Mirgorod.”

Rafeyenko also has that complex background which lets him synthesise different worlds. Not he’s only a writer with seven Russian-language novels, but also a literary critic. In 2014 he was displaced from Donetsk to Kyiv (I have little understanding what chunk of life he had lost then, and it’s a bad habit to draw conclusions from person’s literary alter egos). A year ago, I’ve read his second-to-last book, “Length of Days,” about the presence of the war in Donetsk and Kyiv, about “national unity” that struggles to be born.

It’s pretty common to see national myths using women as substitute for Homeland, giving them roles to play in the national order: of a mother, of a lover, so one may seek her valorously, or loose her tragically. Rafeyenko too uses such …