Apart from the food and wine at Ezo, here in the heart of the Sololaki district, people gather for Café Europa – an event presented by Borderland Foundation. Described by its originator, Krzysztof Czyżewski, as ‘a flying literary salon, first initiated in Sarajevo in the 1990s... as a lively circle for mutual exchange’ and modelled after 19th century literary cafés, the idea is to provide space for poets and others ‘to hold disputes and arguments on artistic and ideological issues.’
Our hosts for this evening are Weronika Czyżewska-Poncyljusz, coordinator of international programmes at Borderland along with Medea Metreveli, founder and director of Literature Initiative Georgia from 2019. Tonight, Café Europa brings together a diverse group of participants: Armen Ohanyan (Armenia), Natalia Trochym (Ukraine), Lusine Kharatyan (Armenia), Tamta Melashvili (Georgia), Archil Kikodze (Georgia), Hanna Yankuta (Belarus), Andriy Lyubka (Ukraine), Krzysztof Czyżewski (Poland), Eka Kevanishvili (Georgia), with music by Raphael Rogiński (Poland).
This evening is the launch point for three days of meetings with these, and several other individuals, bringing together a diverse group of cultural, scientific and educational practitioners from Central Europe – a mobile academy – their guiding subject being ‘Dilemma’ – exploring the need for dialogue, conversation, confrontation and artistic expression of the issues and problems facing us in 2023 and beyond.
At Café Europa, at this crossroads of Europe and Asia, each participant offers their own creative thoughts on a ‘Dilemma’ they face.
Archil Kikodze, whose work can be found in German, Swedish, Polish, Romanian, Bulgarian, Armenian and Azerbaijani languages, tells us of how he started writing at the age of 21; ‘clumsy stories’ he says, printing 500 copies of his book in a basement and only selling 50 – ‘Most of which my mother probably bought.’ In the 1990s, no-one was reading, the only people reading, as he recalls, were old women sitting at the kitchen table. These, he thought back then, were his only readership, and when he presented one of his books recently at Frankfurt Book Fair, again his audience was full of older women. ‘I worry that soon my audience will pass away and they will not be sad to leave this place now, with war in Karabakh, Ukraine, Israel.’ He is afraid that his writing will be too pessimistic. How to face this dilemma? ‘I try to leave a little window of hope,’ he says, ‘but I worry this window will close.’
Natalia Trochym, an editor, translator and director of a publishing house from Lviv, tells us that she has come from the war zone, and her deep concern is how children perceive the war, how it is affecting them. She tells a story of a mother singing a lullaby to a child, which is a poem by Taras Shevenko (1814-1861). ‘Who wrote such a beautiful song?’ asks the child. ‘Let’s invite them to our house.’ The mother says, ‘We can’t because he died many years ago.’ The child cries out, ‘No! It’s impossible! He’s died too?’ And now, Natalia tells us, they don’t sing this lullaby anymore.
Hanna Yankuta, a poet and writer from Belarus, tells the audience that her dilemma is ‘to write or not to write.’ With the problems in her homeland, she didn’t think writing could change much, especially since Belarusian language itself was repressed. Yet since she had emigrated she found she now relied entirely on the word, literature offering the most stable point in her life. She presented extracts from her poetry book ‘Constitution’ – which takes the Belarusian Constitution of 1994 as its source of inspiration, with her texts responding to the legal language employed. As she explains, these poems work with the idea of language: how it shapes us, what it does to us, what to hide or reveal, and how we might resist the oppression of language and culture.
ARTICLE 15
The state shall bear responsibility for preserving the historic, cultural and spiritual heritage, and for free development of the cultures of all ethnic communities residing in the Republic of Belarus.
Each culture has its own range – from brushed pottery to penicillin, trees that raise arcades in honour of gravity, and nettles that absorb lunar rhythms – to pluck itself from obscurity, even neurosis is no less than jazz, and the arrhythmia is a Beethoven sonata.
ARTICLE 26
No one may be found guilty of a crime unless his guilt is proven under the procedure specified by the law and established by the verdict of a court of law that has acquired legal force. A defendant is not required to prove one’s innocence.
We are guilty that we are born, we live and die. The state and the biosphere bill us differently.
ARTICLE 27
No person shall be compelled to be a witness against oneself. Evidence obtained in violation of the law shall have no legal force.
I can identify maybe only the after-effects of the Big Bang. Witnesses of what came before signed a non-disclosure agreement.
ARTICLE 55
It shall be the duty of everyone to protect the environment.
The only value of amber is to load it into stoves or load it into power plants, so that it gives amber energy, because what’s beautiful burns the best in the world, what’s ugly can’t burn like that.
(Translation by © Hanna Komar, John Farndon)
Andriy Lyubka, a Ukrainian poet, writer and essayist, residing in Uzhogorod in Transcarpathia, tells us that we now live in very difficult times and we cannot hide. This is not, he believes, a time for fiction, rather he will write essays and diaries, to bear witness, and get involved with positive community actions. He gives some practical civic examples, whereby people are raising much needed materials and equipment for soldiers in the front lines of the war. Students and teachers of a school ‘in the picturesque and ancient village of Korolevo’ offer money they usually collect for flowers for their teachers; a young couple donate money gifted at their wedding celebration, they ask people to donate the monetary equivalent of a bouquet. He himself began a fundraiser through his Facebook page to buy a vehicle, which has now grown exponentially, organising the purchase and delivery of nearly 200 jeeps for the Ukrainian armed forces.
He recalls a 1947 poem by Czesław Miłosz, ‘Song on Porcelain’, where the poet uses the image of broken tableware to evoke the brutal effect of warfare upon the land and people. ‘Of course, when I read that poem by Milosz, I thought about flowers,’ reads Andriy, ‘more precisely, about the symbolism of giving up of flowers to support the Ukrainian army. In a war between weapons and flowers, I will definitely choose weapons. A flower is too defenseless for this terrible time. It has no practical function, and it is of no real use. A flower does have one important function though – it reminds us of beauty, of the perfection and elegance of the created world, of the fact that there is a place in life not only for evil, hatred and low instincts, but also for genius, sublimity and tenderness.’ He dreams about victory, a time when people will be able to give each other flowers again.
Eka Kevanishvili, a poet and journalist, considers her dilemma to that in a fairytale, where as the protaganist you follow a path and finally reach a crossroads – one way leads to life, one to death, and you have to choose a direction. There’s no going back. She speaks of the challenges of being a mother, a daughter, a reporter, of finding the time to even write poetry. She then performs this poem, in quick fire Georgian. The English version, translated by Margaret Miller, is as follows:
One day Eka Kevanishvili really wanted to write a poem.
The poem had to be about a big earthquake that happened in a small city.
But she thought, “Let me just do a load of laundry first, and then.”
She thought, “Let me just whip up this dish first. What’s left – chopping
the herbs?
Then let me just lean over the washing line to hang out the clean linens
Three of the ten clothes pegs will drop onto Rita Esebua’s balcony.
Sometimes the underwear, too. So what?”
She thought, “Let me just clean the dusty books with the rag, and I’ll open
them –
Each sentence will call to mind the stories,
I’ll hide away in old adventures – the work will get done, it will count as
reading.
Until then I’ll write the poem my head,” thought our Eka Kevanishvili,
Who once, in the caption of a TV programme
Was described as a young Georgian poet.
Then she thought,
“Rubbish to be taken out or poems to be written.”
She put an outdoor coat over her indoor clothes and went down the
steps with the plastic rubbish bag.
The poem was indeed tugging at her, it wanted to leap out of her head,
“How come you’ve been dragging me around for so long, aren’t I
bothering you anyway?”
Eka was saying, “Wait a moment, look, they’re making kiln bread,
Let’s just take some home, let’s just put the icing on the cake.”
Having arrived back home, she was met by a mountain of ironing in
revolt.
The dress shirts and t-shirts were enraged – “What have we done to
deserve this, leaving us scattered around like that for two weeks.”
“Good,” said the poet Eka Kevanishvili.
“Okay, you badly creased things,” and she started to put them back in a
good mood.
The poem was really being written, written in her head,
One phrase replaced another – as if the earth was moving again and
here it is,
As the time came to set down he full stop, the doorbell was heard.
The hungry man came in, tired from work, and sat down at the kitchen table.
“Let me just feed him,” Eka Kevanishvili thought, and brought out one
after another
What she had whipped up an hour ago.
“Let me just wash the dishes,” she thought.
And she washed.
And she ironed.
And she tidied up.
And she dusted.
And she wrote it, this poem – about the poem
That Eka Kevanishvili really wanted to write.
Tamta Melashvili is a writer, activist and researcher. Her work addresses issues of trauma, inequalitiy, sexuality and power. She has been translated into German, Italian, Russian, Croatian, Lithuanian, Macedonian and Albanian. She begins with an extract from her last novel ‘Blackbird, Blackbird, Blackberry’, offering this presentation to Café Europa. She reads:
“I’m very excited. I walk lightly, as if I’d wings. There’s no way the women from the other village will beat me to the fruit. I'll pick those thick ripe blackberries before them. Hey, I’ve even got a hook and a pair of gloves. I'll be savoring those ripe, thick blackberries on long, gloomy winter mornings. You know the mornings I mean, don't you? Dripping, damp, cold winter mornings. Mornings when you can’t be bothered to get out of bed, when you’re tired of life. Days when you simply can't even stick a leg out from under the warm quilt, when you can’t be bothered to exist, or even to breathe. Do you know what got me through last winter? Blackberry jam! I would spoon some onto a hot piece of bread crisped in the wood stove and have it with some tea. My Lord! It melted in my mouth! I’d also dip some bread into my tea. I still have all my teeth, but you can’t be too careful. Really, the blackberry jam was the only reason I was glad to get up early in the morning: blackberry jam and some toasted bread. Come on, Etero. Get up, so many pleasures are awaiting for you! It really was the only reason to get up, wasn't it? It really did make it easier to get up on those cold, wet days…”
‘This is an excerpt from my last novel and when I had to think about a dilemma related to my work/ fiction, this passage was the first one that came to my mind. This is kind of an everyday dilemma for most of the people in most parts of the world - dilemma of standing or not standing out of the bed - in the world of a constantly stressful environment where we are extremely exploited by the system in so many ways and therefore too vulnerable, fragile and precarious.
And I wonder what becomes the dilemma I am talking about when we get more vulnerable living through the war when having a bed or being able to sleep even for a few hours is a privilege?
What becomes the dilemma when we get more fragile living through poverty when we work just for survival with merely two options - extreme exploitation, on the one hand, or starvation, on the other?
What becomes the dilemma when we are constantly precarious and unsafe because the future is vague, the present makes us anxious and our mental health is under constant attack?
And what happens if we invent our own pleasures to get up for those hooks to stay attached to the realities we live in like Etero’s, the protagonist's blackberry jam?
So when negotiating our dilemmas - getting out of bed can be very political and radical, staying in bed can also be very political and radical, and blackberry jam can also become very political, don't you think so?’
Krzysztof Czyżewski then reads some of his short haiku poems from his book ‘Żegaryszki’ with a musical accompaniment by Raphael Rogiński. ‘The thing is to value small,’ he explains, ‘To value the David against the Goliath, to trust in making small steps and small gestures, small gatherings and deeds.’ He emphasises the need to have trust in these small things, like this event, even as we face far bigger problems and challenges. One by one, one small thing after another, together those many small things make change in the world. ‘If we only believe in big numbers,’ he says, ‘we are lost.’
Two guests from Armenia complete the evening presentations. Lusine Kharatyan is a writer, anthropologist and translator. Armen Ohanyan is a fiction writer, essayist and literary translator. Both speak of the dilemma of homeland (belonging) and displacement (loss). ‘Can words change anything?’ Armen asks. ‘Can they even stop one bullet?’
Text and photos by Brendan Jackson
