The song of water and fire

With this publication, Intent continues its series of reviews dedicated to the works of contemporary Ukrainian authors. The reviews for Intent as part of this project are written by Maria Halyna, a Ukrainian writer, poet, and literary critic, winner of literary awards.

This May, the Hrushevsky Scientific Library hosted a presentation of Vasyl Makhno's new novel Angel and Donkey (Staryi Lev Publishing House, 2026) as part of a creative tour.

First, about the author, because he deserves it. Vasyl Makhno, a winner of numerous literary awards whose prose and poetry have been translated into many languages, a student and then a teacher of literature at the Ternopil Pedagogical Institute, has lived in the United States (New York) since 2000. Both are very important for us now, because the author met the end of the Soviet Union and the "turbulent nineties" in his homeland, so he obviously knows what he is talking about.

Vasyl Makhno. PHOTO: www.krytyka.com

Now about the painful part for me, which is spoilers. Due to the pressure of genre fiction publishers, our authors and moderators are desperately trying to avoid spoilers, which, in my opinion, is wild, because spoilers, if anything, interfere with novels with a mystery, page-turners. So, for me, it was a pure intellectual pleasure to hear the author's key ideas, almost a retelling, and even some small details of the novel, which, by the way, cannot affect the perception if you are dealing with a work of fiction. That is why I will allow myself to relax a bit here, because the author calmly told everything at a meeting with the public, who, I am sure, have not read the novel yet. I have just read it myself, because 600 pages is a lot.

On the contrary, as Mr. Vasyl himself noted, fiction, a literary text, differs from "just books" by such a mysterious, difficult to grasp, but existing phenomenon as "electricity"-the tension created by style, hidden rhythm, echo of events, echo, suggestion, etc., so one should not be afraid of spoilers. As for the rhythm and echo of events and microplots, I understand the subtitle of the novel as a spoiler, or a hint: "With Poems about Fire and Water." To be honest, there is not a single poem in the novel. But that echo, that hidden rhythm, is there, because in fact Vasyl Makhno was also an outstanding poet. So it's not surprising.

Why fire and water? Because these two themes are paired. Water destroys the life's work of the fictional protagonist, a Ukrainian-American writer from Buchach, to whom the author gave, I am sure, some details of his own life (the author himself appears as a passing character in certain episodes). The fire destroys the first major work by another native of Buchach, the Nobel laureate Shmuel Josef Agnon-it is his life that interests the protagonist, and it is with him that he mystically stretches himself in time and space. Significantly, there is an insert novel within the novel dedicated to Agnon's biography. But - according to the author's intention - the protagonist Viktor Preisner writes a completely different novel, also a kind of echo... More on this later. Let me return to the presentation.

Actually, I was pleased to hear about the embodiment of the idea of the future book in material objects (I know what it is, because I do it myself). Here we are talking about the carved figures of an angel and a donkey that the author-and, by the way, his hero, the writer Viktor Preisner-bought in a shop in Jerusalem. It was these figurines that gave the novel its title: both the "real" one, that is, the one published by the "Old Lion," and the fictional one, because he died in a hurricane that hit the Atlantic coast of the United States. Well, not that he died completely, because certain surviving fragments of the novel are presented in the book as a kind of appendix. If this novel had been conventionally written in its entirety, it would probably have added to the fame of its fictional author. Or it would not.

For Viktor Preisner's idea was very ambitious-the last days of Jesus Christ on Earth, embedded in the historical landscape of the Jerusalem of that time, with its complex political interactions and oppositions, uprisings, rebellions, military road construction, and so on, against which another, simple human story unfolds, a fragment of which we are witnessing. And which, obviously, is no less important than everything else that is happening around us. At least for its participants, because for them everything that is happening in Jerusalem these days is just a background, but a background that, as it turned out, affects their future destinies. And, frankly, a fragment is enough for us, because we can reconstruct the remains of that history ourselves. Sometimes a fragment works better than the whole, because it holds a promise.

Vasyl Makhno. PHOTO: OSTAP.KIN

A novel within a novel-even two novels within a novel-is not new to us, but what is interesting here is why the author uses such narratives to layer the story of Viktor Preisner.

Why the story of postwar Buchach ("a railroad station lost in time and space, who fought with whom, the devil will break your leg," his former American wife Ann says about the hero's homeland, which is a typical technique of being surprised by an outsider's perspective) resonates with the story of Agnon, or even with the biblical story, is up to the reader to decide. Vasyl Makhno seems to be starting from the present, plunging into deeper and deeper time layers.

The question here is whether that writer Viktor Preisner did not accept the death of his life's work with a certain relief, as a release from his duties, just as he might have accepted the death of his home, which was damaged by a hurricane, or as a divorce from his wife. Because, frankly, he seems to have a very short breath, both in his relationships with women and in his work. At first, of course, he wrote poetry-everyone does, like Agnon. Then he wrote short stories, like almost everyone else, and it was his collections of short stories that created his more or less stable reputation. A novel is a different matter, and we do not know whether that author would have been able to create one even under favorable circumstances; he was struggling with it for too long and painfully. It's good that Vasyl Makhno, whom we know mainly as a poet and author of essays, had enough breath. I could end here. But I will add a little more.

For me, it is the story of the unsuccessful (what can I say) writer Viktor Preisner, who was born in the heart of the "bloody lands" with a confusing and difficult history (which is why the biography of Agnon, who was born in Buchach, is so important to us), about his relationship with a group of similar aspiring writers, about the Kama Sutra and his expulsion from the Komsomol, about a woman he met by chance on a train, and so on, read like a page-turner that would not be spoiled by any spoilers. Because here the big plot is not as important as all the details and trifles that the author remembers and that I remember For example, the two of them are sitting in the dormitory at dusk and see through the window, through their vague reflections, a lighted trolleybus passing in the distance... Why is this important? Well, precisely because these are, excuse me, "poems." And in poems, it is not always important what they are about, but it is always important how... And one more thing: it happens that we know more about Jerusalem and what happened and is happening there, or about the United States, than about what happened in our country... Because someone has already written about it, but not about us.

Марія Галіна