This is one of the most incredible,
disturbing, and rare books I have ever
read. The Ukrainian name, for the same
place is Babyn Yar, it's a deep ravine
in the North of Kyiv, I visited when I
was there, the first Saturday of my
summer trip, I went to pay my
respects, it was the site of terrible
crimes, murders, all of the Jewish
population in Kyiv were killed there
when the Nazis occupied Kyiv in the second
world war, the Jewish population, has
never recovered. I hated it, as soon as I
got out of the Metro, I wanted to leave, I
forced myself to stay, a lot of the park
has been landscaped now and I consider its
important, for people to visit, and also, I
have thought a lot, about the authenticity
and gut feeling, of just completely hating
a place and all it represents, and in a
way the purity of those feelings although its
sickening and almost impossible to feel.
There is something sinister about the place
people still live there, it was the site of a
former mental hostipal, before the Nazis
invaded. This book is really horrific,
brutal, there are images still in my mind, one
in particular, about the way bodies were
towered up, with women’s hair on the
outside, to set fire to. There was one
point in particular, when I got really upset,
the book got into my dreams, I have acitvely
/
visualing this material, it was, and is, my
mind, I did the visualising. I want to give it
back now, it’s a rare copy, I found it
by chance at MMU All Saints Library. The
text is all written (under a psydonym,
originally) by a man who was a young boy
in Kyiv, and just escaped, the army,
enlisting, and the soldiers, a lot of times. It
is written originally, from his perspective
and then it was censored. I noticed, and
checked too, my reactions to the censors
voice in this copy. The material removed by
the censor has been re-added, in bold, and
there are parts early on when I had to
consider, why certain parts were removed,
to do with the presentation of a Soviet ideal,
other parts are really obvious. There is
also, additions, after the original publication.
The author reflecting back, on himself, as
he wrote it, and adding context. So three
voices, the original authors voice, the
censor, or voice of the state, and then the
author looking back, all in the same voice. I
looked at Bakhtin, for ideas about dialogue
and voices, in literature, I found something
about an invisible voice, where a character
is spoken to and is visible only through the
text addressed to him / her, not directly.
The censors voice is interesting in Soviet
literature because to publish was, and is, a
story too of the material. Life and Fate, for
example, is so raw and energised, because
it is so unedited. Large parts of the
/
text loop around and if it had been
edited, to remove the repetitions, it would
have lost its impact.
Here’s my drawing
Last week, I read Rebecca Solnit, on the
Guardian and the article I read is about the
power of voice, empowered, silence, and
quiet, and the difference - she says quiet
is chosen, and to an extent (or for her
purposes) silence is, or can be imposed. I
want to explore this more. Partly because
of the silences after Holodomor, and
because of what I saw in London, when
a lady at a talk spoke about Holodomor
and Chernobyl. The voice, and also many
voices, for example, Svetlana Alexievich, she
uses chorus’s and also ploy - poly-voices,
a book to represent, many voices. And her
voice, the author.
