I’ve got nothing to say today, I’m afraid. For a writer, to speak about Ukraine these very days is to divert attention from the voice of Ukraine herself. Paradoxically, speaking of something else or about oneself means the same. The question of poetry after Auschwitz has been replaced by the question of poetry during Auschwitz and, basically, we have no answer to it.
I believe in the great culture of Russia no matter what my Ukrainian colleagues would say today. Auschwitz canceled neither Johann Goethe, nor Georg Trakl, much less Paul Celan. Everything we had done made sense, and this sense will last if this western civilization of ours does. But it is Ukrainians, and not us, who fight and die today for it to resist the evil Horde. They fight and die so that their culture could have a future, and so that our culture could have it as well, though it excites nothing but disgust among them right now.
I think we need a new point of concentration. I don’t mean analysis, because on the rational plane, everything is crystal clear, but embracement within ourselves. You have to reconsider your life plan somehow when people die FOR YOU every day. Perhaps, I will write poetry, publish books and magazines, and compile anthologies after it is over. I don’t think I will do it in a dramatically different way than I used to (everything I did in my life was for those Russians who are against the war; because I cannot offer those who support it anything but the flamethrowers of the Ukrainian Forces). However, right now, I don’t know how it's done.
March 22, 2022 Translated by Anonymous