“A Dictionary of Emotions in a Time of War: 20 Short Works by Ukrainian Playwrights,” compiled, edited and introduced by John Freedman. Laertes Press: Chapel Hill, N.C., 2023. 266 pp. ISBN: 9781942281337 (paperback), $20.00.
Time is an inexplicably precious element during war. It is particularly visible in the case of recently published current Ukrainian literature translated into English. The war, begun by Russia in 2014, instigated numerous on-line or live readings and staged performances, as well as anthologies of poems, such as “Words for War. New Poems from Ukraine,” edited by Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky.
Then, on February 24, 2022, Russia launched its full-scale war on Ukraine. Naturally, Ukrainian literary works reacted in response, and were soon collected, translated and published that very year, under the title “Voices of Freedom: Contemporary Writing from Ukraine,” edited by Kateryna Kazimirova and Daryna Anastasieva. Half a year later, this anthology was followed by “A Dictionary of Emotions in a Time of War: 20 Short Works by Ukrainian Playwrights,” edited by John Freedman.
The contents of the two newer anthologies, “Voices of Freedom” and “A Dictionary of Emotions in a Time of War” appeared in print almost instantaneously, in terms of the time needed to find, compile and translate the texts, considering that most of the writers were still experiencing war every day. All three publications were preceded or accompanied by numerous public readings of both poetry and prose on the subject, in Ukrainian and/or only in English translations, thus contributing to а growing interest around the world in Ukraine and its literature.
The extraordinary prehistory of “A Dictionary of Emotions” is an admirable illustration of this awareness. Mr. Freeman, the proficient editor of this collection and co-translator of most works in this collection, describes in the preface how this project was encouraged by William Wong, his colleague from Hong Kong.
“No sooner had the Russian invasion of Ukraine begun than William sent me the following query: ‘Can we do a worldwide reading of a Ukrainian play?’” Mr. Freeman said.
This was to provide support for Ukrainian writers and playwrights caught by historical events. Mr. Freeman immediately contacted Natalka Vorozhbyt, a cinematographer and playwright in Kyiv, and Maksym Kurochkin, playwright and theatre director, as well as the co-founder of a new Theater of Playwrights in Kyiv.
Mr. Kurochkin promised to involve members of his theatre and advised Mr. Freeman not to use any pre-war works, only to commission brand new ones about the invasion. The latter lined up English translators and the support of a London theater director who even shared his theater’s modest purse.
Philip Arnoult of the Center for International Theater Development in Baltimore, Md., was ready to find funding for commissioning and publishing the new Ukrainian works. As a result, Mr. Freeman collected poems, plays and short prose pieces from 19 authors (the 20th did not manage to send his work). Fifteen of the writers had their works commissioned for this collection.
In this anthology, Mr. Freeman provides a micro survey of the history of Ukrainian literature and the role of Russia constantly trying to suppress it. He is a drama critic, a playwright and a translator (from Russian) of over 100 plays, and a curator of “Worldwide Play Readings” in Belorussian (in 2020) and Ukrainian (in 2022). Within the first year alone, he and his colleagues organized 285 performances of 110 texts by 45 writers in 27 countries and 19 languages, he said.
The subtitle of the present collection lists “20 short works by Ukrainian playwrights.” One might expect then that this compendium consists primarily of plays (or sketches in the dramatic form), however, there are only six of them; two others are written in a combination of genres, as are several other short pieces.
When Mr. Kurochkin suggested collecting only new works, the motivation was “that the utterly extreme circumstances would require writers to seek out new ways through which to express their thoughts, observations, and emotions,” he said. And so they did.
For example, the writer Olena Astaseva of Kherson with her own submission provided this anthology with its main title, which hints at the different approaches that many playwrights take to develop their theme.
After all, playwrights and artistic directors are at heart the interpreters of words and actions, and they point out and highlight significant elements in a work. Ms. Astaseva writes 9- or 10- line observations and verbal exchanges and adds headings that direct the reader to concentrate on her chosen caption: panic, fear, hunger and betrayal. Then she advances to several longer pieces of one page each that address hatred, love, irritation, guilt, sensations of loss, bitterness, disillusionment, anger, emptiness, despair and faith. These works were performed and filmed in more than a dozen countries prior to the publication of the anthology.
While Ms. Astaseva’s texts reflect what she highlights in the subtitles, so do many texts of some of the other playwrights in this collection. Together, these subtitles provide the readers, as well as history, with a special type of dictionary of words and feelings felt and experienced by millions of Ukrainians beginning on February 24, 2022.
Oksana Savchenko is a screenwriter and playwright from Kyiv. Her short story “I Want to Go Home” is written in the style of a confessional diary, with succinct and critical self-analyses, as she leaps from one event to another that she experienced after fleeing abroad. She highlights her newly developed hate of the Russians, who have invaded her country and now behave with impunity. For example, Russian soldiers come across a stable of racehorses and starve them. A Ukrainian man who wishes to save them starts feeding them, but Russian soldiers kill him.
Ms. Savchenko hates the enemy, being aware that “you want to kill the one that kills you.” When she fled from her town, she confesses that “I took a knife to protect my child.” Her 12-year-old daughter reacted to the Russian invasion with the words, “I had plans for life; I don’t want to die. I had plans.” Motivated by these words, her mother quickly flees with her to another country. The author admits that “I write in Russian and I hate it. I write in Russian – because I want this text to be read by Russians.” Further on she explains that “I can’t breathe because of my hatred for the Russian whores. I can’t breathe. War is when you can’t breathe. Out of hatred. War is when your body is convulsed with pain out of fear for your relatives.”
While most of the writers in this anthology remained in Ukraine, Ms. Savchenko said that “it was easier in Kyiv. It was easier on your own home ground. You are ashamed that you left.” Her memories bring her pain, and for this reason, she wants to go home immediately. Ms. Savchenko wrote the words above only 16 days after Russia again invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Another playwright, Tetiana Kytsenko, from the Donetsk region, discusses the need for Ukrainian nomenclature and its significance. She would rename Putin as Hitler; she also criticizes people who address her as Tatiana (the Russian form), when she is Tetiana (in Ukrainian).
Anastasia Kosodii from Zaporizhia is a playwright and director. After the early days of the invasion, she organized many readings of Ukrainian plays in London and several German cities. Her three-page preface and poem, “How to Talk to the Dead,” discusses the fact that when a war is in progress, people often see corpses. She mentions an artist who is now exhuming bodies, and comments about corpses: “I don’t fear them. They are our dead. Let them come. They died so badly. I at least will talk to them.” And then the author asks: “How do you talk to the dead?”
Andriy Bondarenko is a playwright, screenwriter and dramaturg at the Lviv Puppet Theatre. His 22-page striking poem “Survivor’s Syndrome” seems to continue the preceding author’s examination of the type of life survivors presently face. “The Apocalypse has come. / Everything that was/ is no longer. […] This is how worlds/ disappear – like a light bulb/ going out, like water draining/ from a bath, like eyes being/ shut out…”. “We now live in a world/ in which our world no longer/ exists.” His world exists now only in his own memory, as he lists 30 ruined cities that he will never forget, nor what happened to them, from Bucha to Mariupil, Chornobyl and Kherson. He claims that “we will forget/ nothing. Nothing that/ happened. Ever.”
As those remember who
Have nothing but this to
remember. From whom
everything else was taken away.
Thus shall we traipse through
the Apocalypse now.
It is the memory of what
happened when there was nothing left. /…/
This memory is what we are now.
To hold it, we must build a new world.
(Translated by John Freedman and Natalia Bratus)
A detail-oriented presentation of war events is related in a realistic manner by Pavlo Arie in his “Diary of Survival of a Civilian Urbanite in Conditions of War.” He grew up in Lviv and is a playwright and artist. Written in the style of a journal, he describes the first 15 days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In a philosophical tone, he analyzes many events as well as his own psychological state and provides his evaluation in a calm and collected manner.
Survival and war are the keywords in this work. Each day triggers a special news report, which he quotes, as well as excerpts from actual television newscasts. On the second day, he notes that friends from more than 11 countries have contacted him asking how he is managing, but there were none from Russia. By describing his own daily inconveniences, the author provides examples of the situations facing many of the four million people who live in Kyiv: searching for groceries or even celebrating a colleague’s birthday in a very modest manner (making pumpkin soup). On Day Eight, traffic lights are not on, weapons are scattered everywhere and many pets are outside and alone. On Day 12, garbage collection is renewed.
“And again there will be explosions, and sleep will come from 2 to 4 a.m. News about the bombing and rocket attacks on civilians in the densely populated cities of Ukraine do no let me sleep. They do not give me a single moment of peace. They do not let me breathe,” Mr. Arie writes.
The scene for Day 13 is written as a play and includes internal dialogue. The protagonist goes to the only open grocery store in the area and sees an elderly lady with a cane trying to carry two large bags of groceries. He tries to help without scaring her. They walk slowly toward her apartment building and exchange very few pieces of information about themselves since she is still being very watchful. Upon reaching her door, she asks Mr. Arie for his name. Deeply moved by the answer, she identifies herself as Vera Pavlovna, and says “I thought I was alone. I was abandoned.” She concludes that her late father must have sent Mr. Arie to help her. They both cry.
On day 15, Mr. Arie goes to his Kyiv Academic Drama and Comedy Theater on the left bank of the city. Through a window, one can see a poster for a performance of his own play, “Odysseus Comes Home,” that was to have been held on February 24, 2022.
“But war broke out at four in the morning, and Kyiv was made the target of bombs and rocket attacks. Time flies in somersaults. My country is not conquered, but it is destroyed, destroyed by the aggressor,” he writes (those words were translated by John Freedman and Natalia Bratus).
Natalia Vorozhbyt, the new leading Ukrainian cinematographer and playwright, illustrates the Russian invasion’s degrading effect on the smallest social unit in Ukraine: on married couples who are separated by the war, with women often displaced to foreign countries. One such Ukrainian woman is in Vienna and is being tailed by an admirer. She then goes to a 1945 monument to a Soviet soldier, takes off her coat and stands naked from the waist down, with blood all over her lower body. Other women, in similar attire and state, join her. Whether it was in 1945 or 2022-2023, women are attacked, and soldiers die as Russia continues to rape and annex neighboring countries.
Authors in this anthology depict their own reactions to war events, as well as their own sensitivities and philosophies of life. They express them in their own individual styles, often employing jarring verbal and/or literary images. There are unforgettable scenes and situations, or expressions of explosive emotions and salient thoughts about the present and the future. Several authors here also seem to enjoy experimenting with literary subgenres.
The editor of this dictionary of emotions performed a tremendous task in compiling, co-translating and editing the texts, which have a smooth flow in the translations. Nevertheless, there are two stylistic imperfections. Many readers, especially literature specialists, would have appreciated an indication of the original language of the translated texts (most works are in Ukrainian, some in Russian). Similarly, there would be more consistency if topographical and monetary designations from both languages into English adhered to Ukraine’s standard nomenclature.
All in all, this remarkable anthology is a unique and praiseworthy collection of short pieces, illustrating the intensity of the events, and portraying the people’s particular reactions and feelings rendered in the inimitable individual styles of the 19 authors. In turn, these extraordinary works also allow readers to bear witness to the impacts of existential pain on the citizenry of Ukraine today.