Their heart at half mast, their heart beats for a country, that of Ella Yevtouchenko (26 years old), but also that of Bruno Doucey (61 years old), the designers of the exceptional anthology Ukraine. 24 poets for a country. She wants “to demonstrate that Ukrainian poetry is and has always been diverse, full of beauty and joie de vivre, of strength and resilience, that it does not get bogged down in the past but projects itself into the future, that it develops and teems with experimentation, subjects and emotions,” explains Yevtouchenko.
In five distinct parts, we go back in time, following the recent history of the “Maïdan generation” (the one after the collapse of the USSR), passing through the so-called “At the foot of the wall”, then recalling “The dissident voices”, “The Renaissance shot” until the “Pioneers” of the beginning of the XXe century.
In 2015, Yuriy Zavadskiy already wrote: “It seems that you hold a grain of earth in your hands, / completely exhausted. // You said to me: – Imagine if on a spring day like today, the war started…”
Bohdan-Oleh Horobtchouk worries, on April 3, 2022, that “the charred remains of poetry / are waiting to be buried”. However, in MontparnasseElla Yevtouchenko says: “We came to see these dead […] brought them supermarket wine / […] we have come to tell them that perhaps we ourselves are mad in the eyes of others / since we pour poetry into the heat-dried earth / with the voluntary illusion that there will be someone there to drink it . »
Others, like Oleh Kotsarev, try to salvage what they can: “What’s in the backpack: // fleeing the bombardments / I took / without really knowing why / my collection of poetry / ‘what’s in a man’s pocket’” while “a refugee / cheats – he hides in his sleeves / eight words / of various / dialects. » Is this the « word » of which Ostap Slyvynskiy speaks, « the word “without doubt” which affirms and hesitates each time, / defenseless word, / like an old dog who has lost his nose and follows the light ” ?
From S. Jordan, this single stanza dated 2008: “What would I do if I suddenly became a deminer? / I would dig up anti-personnel mines, / hide them under my bed, / and at night I would listen / for explosives / to take root / like / an onion. »
However, if there was only one text to remember from this major ensemble, it would be To plant a tree by Vassyl Stous who recalls that we “planted flowers, bushes and trees along the barbed wire. / The wild vine covered the sharp quills”. The flowers came. We were thus able to satisfy this need for “aesthetic education of prisoners” demanded by the management.
I would like to emphasize how reading this anthology is not only necessary in these times of dereliction, but how admirably it serves poetry itself.