Sea, Freedom and Memory: Why You Should Read Something

The Staryi Lev Publishing House has published a book of poetry by Odesa resident Andrii Hayetskyi, Something. This is the author's second book; his first book of poems, Three Dots, was presented in 2016. Andriy Khayetskyi is also a public figure, activist, and founder of the street poetry project Direct Speech and the free association of poets Just Poetry. So, after the booksCrimean Tatar Families by Yevhenia Henova,Nonfictional Stories of the Odesa Tram by Dmytro Zhdanov, and10 Conversations about the Ancient History of Ukraine by Andriy Krasnozhon and Oleksandr Krasovytskyi, Intent is pleased to add Something by Andriy Hayetskyi to its library.

A defenseless guard

Andriy Kh ayetskyi is one of the most distinctive young voices of Ukrainian Odesa, writes Kateryna Kalytko, a writer and Shevchenko Prize winner in literature, in her foreword.

And this alone would be enough to read his poetry collection with the grateful interest that we owe to our South. But there is something more and more subtle in the writing of this original author, something worthy of a deeper conversation. Perhaps it is the transparency and clarity of the space in which he stands, writes, feels, and gives voice to. Perhaps an amazing ability to hear his imaginary reader and to engage in a dialog with him, releasing something intimate and alive in this conversation. Perhaps a warm tenderness, a detailed memory. Something.

Khayetsky's poetry is distinctly insitu. The Latin expression in situ literally means "in place." In archeology, for example, it is used to characterize an artifact that has never been moved from its original place; in biology, it is the study of a process in its place of origin; in chemistry, it is the behavior of an element within a reaction mixture. Andriy Hayetsky's writing is like this: clearly localized, immersed in living processes in a specific private geography. These poems are laconic, transparent, sometimes on the borderline of conscious naivism and folklore, sometimes with notes of British and American Imagism of the early twentieth century, where the pure image becomes the center, an independent unit of artistic expression. And sometimes they just look like sea glass, colored splinters, which were once something else, and now have become an integral part of the coast, the line of contact between land and water.

Andriy Hayetskyi is a very delicate poet, not expansive. His self-irony is subtle and is often read in the conscious dissolution of his own figure in the landscape, in the dialog. He has no didacticism, no loud conclusions imposed on the reader, no unambiguous insights. Khayetsky's first poetry collection was calledThree Dots, and the book that the reader is now opening is called Something. This is an interesting, consistent, and honest method: the author declares his artistic responsibility for the sector of the world where he is, for the horizon that his vision reaches, for the emotion that his sensory world contains, always leaving space for the incompleteness of creation, of speaking, for another point of view, and thus for the continuation of the conversation.

In your silence, the sky is
before sunrise.
I
in it
live.

One of the common discussions about Odesa's literary grand narrative has always revolved around the thesis that the local flavor cannot be expressed in Ukrainian. It's a classic of colonial reduction of meanings. But is Odesa really all about the famous courtyards, the yogi carts, anecdotal crooks, gangster folklore, raiders and catacombers, laughter for any reason? Didn't anyone feel idiosyncratic about this, didn't they protest against the narrowing of space, the placing of a living organism inside a glass souvenir ball that rains sparkles when you shake it? In his novel Tangier, Ivan Kozlenko, another important young voice of Ukrainian Odesa, once aptly noted that Ukrainian culture does not have such a distinct attraction to the sea as, for example, the Mediterranean tradition; it is as if we were born in this sea and it does not surprise us. I should note that it should surprise us. The space adjacent to the sea is the mouth of not only great rivers but also many human stories, tragedies and joys, the starting point of great journeys and the place of their end, the border of the oikoumene. But above all, the air of freedom is most acutely inhaled here. The great value of Andriy Hayetsky's writing lies in the fact that he, inseparable from the Ukrainian sea, writes about this freedom. He writes not deliberately, not tearfully, but naturally, like the air he breathes, like the very reflex of breathing, rarely realized, but necessary for life. And it is in this way that the poet Andriy Hayetskyi is free of all regional stereotypes, a living language of his living landscape, his soil, his sea. It is his Ukrainian language.

In one of the main texts in this collection, he talks about the sea, which will one day come ashore and call itself God. And this is not even an attempt to construct a Ukrainian thalassocentric myth; it is the dim subconscious of the maritime state, without which it will cease to be its true self.

But there is something else. Fragrant apples in small children's hands, wet footprints from winter shoes in a school classroom, picked quinces warming up on the stove. Yellowed sophores under ruined walls. Gavs shouting at the bus station, knowing exactly when the bus will arrive and how many seats will be available. Tairovsky Institute of Winemaking. The Big Cart with its tail down. Air raid sirens, ambulance sirens, mines in the sea. The city in different seasons. Faces and names of dear people. Steppes, estuaries, winds, shouting gulls. Home. So many things, simple and complex at the same time, that make love tickle in the solar plexus. So many things that define and explain where you really are and what it means to you. Something.

I say "everything is fine
I'll tell
everything is fine"
"the main thing"
says the woman
"find the center of gravity"
yes, yes
really
this is the main thing
and it's really quiet by the estuary now
and the northeast wind is blowing

For so long and so blatantly, Odesa has had a share of knowledge about itself stolen from it. For all the declared openness of the porte-franco, multi-ethnicity, the Cossack cemeteries on the outskirts and the thirty-million-strong Ukrainian sea, about which Jabotinsky wrote, and the local Prosvita, the first in the empire, have consistently been "lost" in the local diversity; "Fortunatus Piskunov's Dictionary of the Ukrainian Language, published in Odesa in 1873; Chykalenko's Odesa period; episodes of Ukrainian Odesa's struggle for itself during the First Liberation Movement; the chronotope of The Master of the Ship (thank God, now more carefully read), where Yanovsky, Dovzhenko, and Krychevsky come together; Odesa historian Mykhailo Slabchenko, a Cossack descendant, convicted in the IED show trial; Odesa dissidents Sviatoslav Karavansky and his wife Nina Strokata, Borys Necherda, Oleksa Riznykiv, Pavlo Otchenashenko, Volodymyr Barsukivsky, and others; the uneven but persistent cardiogram of the Ukrainian cultural movement after the restoration of independence; the fierce Halyna Dolnyk, who opened a Ukrainian bookstore in Odesa 25 years ago and has been gathering active youth around her ever since. Those who now declare that they are "bringing" Ukrainian culture to Odesa are continuing the tradition of this theft. The lively and strong voices of young Odesa authors Valeriy Puzik, Nadiia Glushkova, Hanna Kostenko, and Andriy Hayetskyi did not appear here yesterday and have grown to be distinctly Ukrainian in the frontline polyphony. They speak with full right, and this persuasive speech will continue as a defense of their land

but the day before yesterday
I first heard
the phrase
"twenty-second century"
from a famous Ukrainian philosopher
and thought
"wow"

In one of the texts of the collection, Andriy Hayetsky calls himself a "defenseless guardian" - and he really is. A guardian of everything he loves so tenderly and burningly, of everything he takes into his writing, so that these experiences and people may continue endlessly, alive and free. And yes, defenseless-because the one who loves sincerely and strongly is always defenseless.

Snows are temporary.
Hearts are forever.

Ігор Льов