The Fantastic Worlds of Yuri Vynnychuk

Introduction: The Artful Wizard of Vynnyky

Introduction: The Artful Wizard of Vynnyky

Ukrainian writer Yuri Vynnychuk was born in 1952 in Stanislav, Ukraine. The city is now called Ivano-Frankivsk (affectionately known as “Frankivsk” by the locals) and has been an epicenter of literary and artistic activity. A bevy of exciting new post-modernist writers have emerged there including Vynnychuk’s postmodernist contemporaries Yuri Andrukhovych, Yuri Izdryk and Taras Prokhasko as well as extremely talented younger writers such as Tanya Malyarchuk. Ukrainian literati have dubbed this concentration of prominent writers from this provincial city “The Stanislav Phenomenon.” While Vynnychuk does not belong anymore geographically to The Stanislav Phenomenon nor to Post-Modernism, his roots still lie there — a little less that three hours away by dingy, dusty, sluggish train. The charming city of Lviv with its cobblestone streets and endless cafes on every corner has been his physical and spiritual home for a considerable amount of time.

Vynnychuk’s father was a doctor for the anti-Stalinist and anti-Nazi Ukrainian partisans during World War II, and his uncle on his mother’s side Yuri Sapiha was killed by the Soviet secret police (the Cheka) in 1941.Vynnychuk was named in memory of his murdered uncle. In 1973 Vynnychuk completed the Stanislav Pedagogical Institute where he developed the reputation of a prankster. At that time he became involved in student publications as well as in the literary underground. In 1974 the KGB conducted a search of his house but found no materials that would have incriminated him in the eyes of the Soviet regime. In order to avoid inevitable arrest, he moved to the larger city of Lviv, where he hid at apartments of several friends, constantly covering his tracks from the all-seeing eye of the KGB.

Until 1980 Vynnychuk was blacklisted and not allowed to publish in official sources. Till then he published works under the names of various other writers and ghost wrote books on occasion. He eked out a living from the honoraria from his various pseudonymous publications, a practice which, by habit and by design, he continues to this day. During the 1980s he held readings of his works in the apartments of friends and became well-known for his satiric poetry and stories about a mythical country called Arcanumia – a land where the streets and, in fact, everything, are paved with fecal matter. Any association of Arcanumia with the Soviet Union or Soviet Ukraine, of course, would have been purely coincidental. “The Island of Ziz” (“Ostriv Ziz”) is the best-known story from this cycle. From 1980 on, Vynnychuk was allowed to publish his articles and translations in the Ukrainian periodical press. He made a number of enemies among the Soviet literary establishment for his merciless attacks against hack writers. In 1987 Vynnychuk was instrumental in the creation of a stage singing and performance group “Ne zhurys’!” (Don’t Worry!), which rose to swift popularity in Ukraine. After a tour to Canada and the United States in 1989, Vynnychuk decided to leave the group and devote his time exclusively to literature. Off and on he has continued to participate in concerts with the group. Under Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika-perebudova and subsequent Ukrainian independence, Vynnychuk emerged from the underground (always keeping one foot there even to this very day) to occupy an eminent place in the new Ukrainian literature. His collection of fantastic stories The Flashing Beacon (Spalakh; 1990) sold out almost immediately. He also published a collection of poetry Reflections (Vidobrazhennia; 1990) and compiled and edited two anthologies of Ukrainian fantastic stories from the 19th century. His pulp fiction novellas Maidens of the Night (Divy nochi, 1992) and Harem Life (Zhytiie haremnoie, 1996) enjoyed extraordinary popularity. His love of storytelling and of his adopted hometown is combined in several volumes – Legends of Lviv (Lehendy Lvova, 1999), Pubs of Lviv (Knaipy Lvova, 2000), and Mysteries of Lviv Coffee (Taiemytsi lvivskoi kavy, 2001). His fantasy novel Malva Landa (the heroine’s name) appeared in 2000 and a collection of fantastic tales Windows of Time Frozen (Vikna zastyhloho chasu) in 2001. And his novel Spring Games in Autumn Gardens (Vesniani ihry v osinnikh sadakh, 2005) won the 2005 BBC Ukrainian Book of the Year Award. His collection of autobiographical works, Pears a la Crepe (Hrushi v tisti, 2010) also was nominated for the BBC Prize. His book Tango of Death won the 2012 BBC Book of the Year Award for Ukraine and has been garnering an extraordinary amount of attention both in Ukraine and in European circles, particularly in German and Czech translations. His most recent novel The Apothecary appeared in 2015. Its plot harkens back to seventeenth-century Venice and Lviv.

Vynnychuk currently resides on the periphery of the Ukrainian literary establishment, appropriately just outside the city limits of Lviv in the village of Vynnyky (yes, the name of his home bears a close resemblance to his last name). He worked as a columnist and culture commentator for the anti-establishment newspaper Postup and Post-Postup for much of the 1990s, inviting the rancor and lawsuits of crusty scions of both neo-Soviet fascism and neo-nationalistic excesses and falsehoods, the warmed over leftovers from Soviet times. He became editor-in-chief of the new Postup newspaper in 1996, which he continues to edit. Just as virtually every satirist, Vynnychuk is a seeker of justice and truth with no holds barred. When I published my first book of translations of his works, the elusive Vynnychuk used to be difficult to locate in Lviv, but you could find him on occasion at the Femida Cafe on Sichovi Striltsi Street, devouring the exquisite potato pancakes (deruny) and sipping home-grown Ukrainian beer in a room that the local Kulturtragers in Lviv called “The Vynnychuk Room.” Alas, that café closed down several years ago to become a store, and you’re more likely now to find him at the café in the Dziga Art Gallery in the oldest part of the city at the end of Armenian Street.

Vynnychuk is an astoundingly versatile writer and an accomplished storyteller. He is a chameleon who can adapt his narrative voice in a variety of ways. He is also, perhaps, the most politically incorrect writer writing in Ukraine today. He often intends to shock with his prose. He has the uncanny ability to take his reader to the very edge of decorum (in the story “Max and Me” and in his novel Malva Landa in particular), but not go beyond it. He creates anticipation, and then artfully frustrates it (largely to the reader’s relief). I have divided his writings in this edition into eight categories, which, under no circumstances, comprise all of his narrative voices. I added four of those categories in this expanded edition of translations of his works: excerpts from his more recent novels. His lyrical and philosophical stories such as “An Embroidered World” and “The Windows of Time Frozen” are exquisitely crafted pieces that capture a fecund poeticality that is both powerful and sublime. “An Embroidered World” captures the essence of the tragedies of Ukrainian history and the Ukrainian soul in the style of magical realism with bittersweet charm. Vynnychuk, the psychologist of the human condition, appears in stories like “The Clover Was So Fragrant” and “The Doorbell,” in which the characters, who go to great lengths not to be their brother’s keeper, either implode or explode into their own psychological hells. Vynnychuk’s fantastic tales and alternate worlds function both as social commentaries and satires; they as well often provide outstanding examples of the application of the literary device defined by Viktor Shklovsky as “making strange” (ostranenie), of jolting the expectations presented by the status quo of the narrative by creating strikingly new perceptions of reality. We find that at work in stories such as “Pea Soup” and “The Flowerbed on the Kilim.” Many of Vynnychuk’s stories suggest that some extraterrestrial force that imposed its will on humankind could only have created something as vile as communism. The snails of “The Snail Chronicles,” for example, take over humans by means of thought control.

Vynnychuk is also the contemporary Ukrainian master of black humor and the grotesque — much in the tradition of his countryman Mykola Hohol (aka Nikolai Gogol). Pictures of Vynnychuk from the late 1970s and 1980s even have a marked resemblance to Hohol. This, of course, may only be pure coincidence… The story “Max and Me” (a smirking Hy-hy-hy in its original Ukrainian title) is a wicked satire of Ukrainian life circa 1979 through the depiction of a hillbilly-like family of demented cannibal capitalists. The mythical town of Ratburg (Shchurohrad) is another manifestation of an allegory of the old Soviet ways. Vynnychuk’s works in the area of pulp fiction erotica are emblems of the newfound literary freedom in post-independence Ukraine, which allows for the publication of previously taboo subjects. His novel Malva Landa resides on the edge of taboo and black humor with an opening scene that stops short of realized p********a, but lyrically and artfully draws the reader into its chimerical world. Vynnychuk and the characterization of women in his works from his unapologetically male perspective begs for extensive literary analysis, and often is the locus of his novel Spring Games in Autumn Gardens as well as his autobiographical novel Pears a la Crepe.

Vynnychuk is an incontrovertible iconoclast and satirist, who much like the Ancient Greek penner of iambiks Archilochus in ancient times, pummeled Soviet icons and demons with words that killed. Now he lambastes forces of stasis and backwardness, whatever their political or national ilk. A subtle and a sometimes less than subtle bitter irony infuses much of Vynnychuk’s writing. But all writers are products of their times and experiences, and a writer must write what he sees. These stories represent some of the best short works and excerpts of novels of one of the finest prose stylists and storytellers from the first generation of Ukrainian writers able to write in complete freedom. It is my hope that these translations will provide an inkling of the author’s narrative range and polyphony of voices, giving the reader glimpses into his many fantastic worlds of the imagination.

Michael M. Naydan

Woskob Family Professor of Ukrainian Studies

The Pennsylvania State University