“It will be wonderful if I no longer have a need to write”: An Interview with Yuriy Tarnawsky
Yuriy Tarnawsky has authored some three dozen books of fiction, poetry, drama, essays, and translations in Ukrainian and English, including the novels Meningitis, Three Blondes and Death, Warm Arctic Nights, and The Iguanas of Heat, the collections of short fictions Short Tails and Crocodile Smiles, three volumes of interrelated mininovels (his own genre) The Placebo Effect Trilogy, a volume of heuristic poetry Modus Tollens, a book of literary essays Claim to Oblivion, and a creative writing textbook Literary Yoga. He was born in Ukraine but was raised and educated in the West. An engineer and linguist by training, he has worked as computer scientist specializing in Artificial Intelligence at IBM Corporation as well as Professor of Ukrainian Literature and Culture at Columbia University.
Tarnawsky spoke with Justina Dobush about modern-day readers, the usefulness (or rather lack thereof) of established creative writing programs, the arduousness of the writing process, and more. We join them mid-conversation…
[…]
YT: One of the best decisions I ever made was to study linguistics. It changed my life. I used to love arguing when I was young. I wanted to set everyone straight. In the '50s, in New York, my friends and I argued every time we got together, and I did it particularly stubbornly. But then, when I finished my doctorate, I completely lost interest in arguing. I thought, I can say what I think, but you think differently, so, go ahead, think differently. I don’t care if you’re right or wrong, because if you don’t know something and you speak nonsense, it’s your choice. But if you know something better than me, that’s fine too. Maybe I should change my mind. It fundamentally changed my personality. I have noticed that people are often unpleasant not because they are bad by nature, but because they think of themselves as different than what they are and they think that they have to fight for things that are important to them. It often gets them into trouble.
JD: It is better to just be yourself and not pay attention to other people or try to match their level, not to fight with them, but rather to fight with yourself.
That's right, and my doctorate helped me to realize this.
You have repeatedly spoken about the decline of literature. For me it is also crucially important to understand what is happening with reading now. Especially here in Ukraine, we have a lot of complaints that people dont read and we have to promote reading. Although, in my opinion, the problem is not how much we read but whether we read at all. After all, many people have lost the understanding of what reading is in general, consequently turning it into an end in itself. In your opinion, do we need to talk more about what reading is and what it means?
I think that forcing people to read is not the way to go. It won’t help. Maybe it’ll even be better to have fewer readers, if they are better readers, so to speak. After all, why do people nowadays read less in general? Because what used to be available in a book can now be found on TV, in a computer, and so on, and it satisfies their primitive daily needs. But if you are a person of a different caliber, a different type, and you need a good book, then you should have such a book available to you. We need to create good literature for people of this type and somehow promote the emergence of such, perhaps smaller groups of readers, so they can get something useful from reading. And why do you need such literature? Because with the help of art–and literature is part of it–you discover things that tell you about the essence of life, about the essence of being human, the essence of the world, which will never be produced by commercial writers. And you, as a noncommercial writer, meet the needs of those people. Because most of the people who are interested in commercial literature, who are interested in TV, etc., they will not read good literature anyway. They don’t want it because it bores them and doesn’t satisfy their needs. They need commercial literature, and the society has to give it to them because otherwise they will look for it elsewhere, in other languages. (I am thinking of Ukraine, which had reasonably good literature but very little commercial, and Ukrainian readers had to look for it among the literature of their neighbors, such as Russia and Poland, who were not positively disposed toward Ukraine. As a result, Ukrainian readers were supporting their potential enemies.) Nevertheless, it is necessary for good literature to exist in parallel with the commercial for a core of high culture to be formed around it, uniting at the same time part of the society around it.
And if we talk about the writing itself, you are constantly experimenting with language, text and genre. In your opinion, why are so few writers trying to experiment today and choose a commercialized approach to creating their own texts instead? Doing so, don’t they deprive themselves of individuality and originality? Why are we so reluctant to express ourselves?
Why does one write? I write because I need to express myself, because I fight with my inner demons, the dragons of my life, on the pages of my manuscripts. I do it as if proving a theorem, and I want to find the simplest and most elegant way to do it. But most writers don’t write like that. They write because they want to be famous, they want to have an impact on the society, they want to be loved, and, of course, they write because they want to make money. This is the reason why we in Ukraine have pretty good commercial literature today but relatively scarce pure literature. I don’t want to criticize contemporary Ukrainian writers because I don’t know them well enough and they have the right to do what they want. Some of them do write well, but it seems to me that they are not immune to commercialism enough to neglect the tastes of the readers and the requirements of the publishers to make their works as good as they could be.
When it comes to writing, it is commonly accepted that a writer should know the language he writes in, have a rich vocabulary, and in general manage the language expertly. So, shouldn't a better knowledge of the language lead to better literature?
I find this hard to agree with. I fought against the “rich vocabulary” theory from the beginning. I see no reason why it is necessary to have a large vocabulary to write well. After all, if you don’t know how to use words correctly, it doesn’t matter how many you know. You can use few words, but in a good way, or vice versa—use a lot of words badly. And even exceptional knowledge of the language in general will not make you a good writer, because being a writer is something innate, and it exists to a large extent beyond language, and for instance, plays an important role in cinematography. For example, one of the greatest Ukrainian writers and probably the best Ukrainian prose writer, Vasyl Stefanyk, wrote with a very limited vocabulary and in a dialect to boot. His language was restricted, but his works are written with such skill that it is difficult for me to name someone better than him among Ukrainian prose writers.
I think in order to be a good writer, you must, first of all, have a strong, confident personality, second, reject all unnecessary external influences, and proceed with your work as if proving a theorem. But if you want your books to sell well, then you should look at the bestsellers, check what topics publishers are looking for, write something like that, and maybe add your own dose of sex and scandal. But this will not be literature. High art is like mathematics—there are certain rules and conventions in it and you must follow them the same way as a mathematician observes the rules and conventions of mathematics while proving a theorem.
What is your view on creative writing programs? To what extent can a writer figure out on his own the rules and con conventions that will help him improve his writing?
Just think of how many wonderful writers we have that came before the middle of the third quarter of the 20th century without the existence of creative writing programs. Shakespeare also didn’t go to school to learn how to write plays. You can learn everything on your own, and that’s great, because then only those who have the greatest need and have the most to say, will develop themselves. I go to conferences of various writers' associations, and in some of them there may up to 40,000 people, of whom 10,000 may be writers and the rest students, or rather mostly female students. Who needs thousands of new writers a year? And how can they be unique when they are taught what to do? I remember how I once went to a lecture at one of these conferences and there was someone talking about plot, how it should be structured, and that there should be the main plot, and the secondary one, and maybe even the third one.... Lord! I got up and walked out. And soon after that in a fit of rage I wrote an article on how useful it is to break a rule. Yes, rules exist to be broken, and when you’re taught that you have to follow the rules, it’s very difficult to even want to break them, let alone doing it. I think it would be better if all those creative writing programs didn’t exist. I don’t see any need for them. Why do we need hundreds of thousands of writers instead of only hundreds who are able to create good works of literature? Because that number is enough, even by US standards, to produce enough books to meet all publishing and cultural needs each year.
And the fewer spurious readers, the less frustration an, pressure on the author, the less of a need to explain what was written to those people who in principle cannot understand it.
In America, there exist two different worlds of readers—one for the popular commercial writers, and one for the non-commercial ones, the first one is big, and the second one much smaller. I believe such a phenomenon awaits Ukraine in the future.
And how did it happen that you stopped liking Jean-Paul Sartre?
Gradually, over the years, I began to drift away from his philosophy. The main reason however was that I learned eventually what kind of person Sartre really was—that in some ways he was quite despicable on personal level, and in addition how ugly was his relationship with Simone de Beauvoir. She would send him her female students to sleep with which he did. I used to like his works, but now I can’t read them. Even Nausea, which is his best work, bores me. I feel the same about Camus even though I once admired his writing. Now it bores me and seems awkwardly written.
Sartre's literary works are an illustration of his philosophical musing. That's fine. I am not able to criticize him as a fellow a philosopher would, but when someone tries to prove that there is no God, as he does in one of his articles, it comes across as childish. God has nothing to do with rationality. He’s a belief, and it is impossible to prove that he exists or doesn’t. He hasn’t been defined as falsifiable. And, most importantly, God is a human need, something which a philosopher should understand. By the way, regarding this topic — I recently got myself, four of Richard Dawkins’ books. I started reading the first one, but realized that it was complete garbage and dishonesty, so I put it away and shipped all four books back. He says that if there was no faith in God, we wouldn’t have terrorist attacks by Muslims, the Inquisition, etc. This may be true, but he fails to mention that we also wouldn’t have all those wonderful cathedrals and beautiful examples of art and music, and the holidays that we all love so much, and that children wouldn’t have St. Nicholas and the gifts he brings, and so on, and so on. That is, there is another side to religion, and if you criticize it for the bad things, you should mention the good ones too. Moreover, these terrorist attacks are not a unique feature of religion, but also of political thinking. Let us recall communism and the purges of Stalin and Mao. What’s more, even football teams have fans who attack others because of their enthusiasm for their team. Well, so how can someone who considers himself a thinker speak so dishonestly?
I once admired Sartre because he said there was no God, which is what I fervently thought myself. I continue thinking that there is no God, but that doesn’t mean that on some level I don’t need him or don’t believe in him. Because, the same as others, I curse God for the evil things done to me he allegedly turns a blind eye to, and I pray to him when I need something. I think this kind of behavior is typical of all of us and that it is innate. So, I got disillusioned with Sartre's philosophy and his literary works. At the same time, as a result, I became better disposed toward to religion, just the rituals, though, not the dogma. I think that religious rituals are very effective. For example, when you go to a priest and tell him your sins, and he forgives you, and you believe in it, it must be a wonderful cleansing. And then consider the various liturgies, and the ringing of bells, and the smell of incense, and the different rites, all of which has nothing to do with dogma—they’re wonderful, and they bring joy into people’s life, and it makes no sense to take it away from them. In fact, it is impossible. People don’t listen to the evidence against religion because believing has nothing to do with reasoning. Such efforts are pointless because they are ineffective and there is no need for them. People need this formal part of religion, so why try to take it away from them?
I also see it the same way now—that it doesn’t matter that God may not exists—you still need something to believe in.
Yes, it’s true. Then the person finds something else to believe in instead of God, for instance, Marxism or Nazism, or racism — racism of different colors and shades. Although with racism it’s a little different because I think it is in our genes to be drawn to those like ourselves, but it can be turned into something pernicious, when you not only love people like you, but hate the other ones. The feeling of belonging to a group, having a stake in this group, is part of being human.
Returning to Sartre, today I finished the seventh draft of my latest novel, Sebastian in a Dream. This work was inspired by the poem “Sebastian im Traum” by the great Austrian poet Georg Trakl. I like him very much and it was he who inspired me to write this novel, although I based it formally on Bach’s Goldberg Variations. That is, it consists of an aria, 30 variations, and the repetition of the aria. I finished it sometime in early June of 2021, but I made some changes and the current version is probably the final one, and it happens to be the seventh. You know, Hohol said that for a work to be completed, it must be rewritten seven times, and being Ukrainian like Hohol, I followed his orders. In this work, among those 30 variations, there are four screams of anguish that are invectives against God for being so bad. This is not my real opinion, but just a conceit in the novel. There I talk about how terrible God is, and may he allow us to curse him and say all sorts of bad things in moments of despair, but at the end I excuse him because he is “a paraplegic of cosmic proportions.” Creation of the world was such an incredible effort that he collapsed and was able to create only a few of the parts from which to make the world. And he created them with the “little toe on his left foot” because of being paralyzed. That’s why we shouldn’t blame him for the world being so bad. In the novel, I speak of randomness as the substitution or manifestation of God. There is a cause for everything, and every effect must have it, and everything that exists is an effect of some cause. These are the laws that govern the world. And God is randomness. In the novel I express my view on the world, which is connected with my existentialism and Sartre.
Is it possible to consider such an approach to God as a universal language that a writer can use? Isn't this the most universal way of conveying one’s inner experiences?
I think that this belief in God has nothing to do with literature or art in general, because it is a characteristic of every human being and is encoded in our genes. I believe we have a need for God and the idea of afterlife because our brains have become too powerful. We can understand that our lives eventually come to an end and that we are nothing more than chemical compounds that combine into physical particles which eventually must decompose. But living with the understanding that you will die one day is very difficult, and that’s why we have this need to believe in life after death, that there is someone who created us and that he did for a purpose. All our behavior is based on the realization that everything that happens must have a cause. Therefore, if we exist, someone must have created us. It is deeply rooted in each of us. A writer may or may not write about this—most don’t and don’t even give it any consideration, but I don’t believe it can be considered a universal language of writing.
Isn’t it risky to return to the theme of God in our secular world?
Just being alive is risky, but you have no choice. When you feel the need to do something, you do it. By definition, there is no choosing here. I try to be honest with myself and am convinced that there is no afterlife, but somehow, I have accepted this fact and can still live more or less normally. But most people need to believe differently. Our body has simply generated this feeling of immortality, so that we can live on, for otherwise there’d be suicides all the time and all over the place, and in general the human race wouldn’t have developed to the degree that it has.
When moving to the US, immigrants often become typical members of the diaspora who try to assimilate. That is, their tendency to try do shed their immigrant identity dominates every aspect of their activity. What prevented you from becoming such a person?
You know, there is a well-known fact in linguistics that small communities of people who have moved from their home country someplace else turn linguistically conservative. At a time when the language is changing in the mainland, it is preserved in those small islands among foreign languages. For example, there are some regions in America which have retained the features of English from the 16th century. The same is true of other spheres of behavior. Look at how powerful was the Ukrainian émigré community of the people who left Ukraine in 1944. These were patriots, educated people who contributed in a major way to the development of Ukrainian culture. I never thought I would stay in America. I thought my moving here was temporary, that we were working to create Ukraine there to bring it home. This is a normal phenomenon among conscious patriots. On the other hand, there are those who, for some reason, simply forget about their roots and assimilate. By the way, the Ukrainian diaspora has developed into one of the most powerful in America. It was and still is a very well-organized society. For example, such a phenomenon as the New York Group of Ukrainian writers doesn’t have an equivalent among any other ethnic group here, or as far as I know, anywhere else in the world. This was due to the political situation and the fact that the Ukrainian immigrant community consisted mostly of the intelligentsia, which was a very important factor. But I have noticed that those Ukrainians who come to the United States now assimilate faster than we did. Five years ago, my wife and I were in Chicago and went to the Ukrainian Museum in the Ukrainian Village. There was an exhibition there from Ukraine and some newly arrived teenagers with Ukrainian roots milled around, already speaking English to each other instead of Ukrainian. When people of my generation came here, we spoke only Ukrainian among ourselves. That is, members of the current diaspora no longer feel a need to hold on to their Ukrainian identity. By the way, in Ukraine we can observe the same thing—there is still a large segment of the population who speak Russian. For me, this lack of need to be yourself is simply unthinkable. This is probably because the political system in which these people grew up was such that they don’t need to be themselves. But I can’t say that this is true of all who have recently come here.
Why is it important for you to remain part of the Ukrainian discourse?
Apparently, I'm inconsistent. I became very Ukrainian when the Chornobyl catastrophe happened and then I felt a strong need for my daughter to speak Ukrainian as well and to raise her as a Ukrainian in general. If I had children now, I would probably do the same, because I continue speaking Ukrainian even with my Polish wife. So, I still remain Ukrainian even though I write mostly in English. I just look at English as the lingua franca, as Latin once used to be.
But in what language do you dream? You know, as Taras Prokhasko once wrote in a column for Zbruc. Do you see your dreams in Ukrainian still or are they in English already?
Dreams have no language (laughs). Dreams are visual phenomena. When somebody speaks in a dream, it depends on who he is. If he’s someone who normally speaks English, he’ll speak English, and if he normally speaks Ukrainian, then he’ll speak Ukrainian. Dreams undoubtedly are nothing but a product of our brain, our mind, and our dreams are what we are. If we belong to the Ukrainian culture, which has its own unique features, one of which is this irrationality, this oneiric quality which we see in the so-called “bizarre prose” of Hohol, Kvitka-Osnovyanenko and some later writers, then, say, an American, will not have the same kind of dreams as we, who are constantly confronted, with this dream-like outlook on life while conscious. But it’s not about language, it’s about the culture of the society you’re belong to. However, I am not an expert on this subject and I may be wrong.
Are you still inspired by the cinema as you once used to be?
I used to love movies. When I was young, films had a huge influence on me, but now, unfortunately, the new cinema doesn’t move me at all. I consider Dovzhenko to be a very important director, and I think Ukraine has produced some very interesting films. I don’t know if Hollywood has made as many good films as Ukraine has. Hollywood has had some great actors, talented directors, and so on, but the goal of its films was always to make money, which didn’t allow for artistically good films to be made. The tradition was also completely different.
Generally speaking, I don’t find anything interesting in the movies any more. I am always looking for something good, but don’t see anything. I think we need a crisis of some sort to come for things to change. We have to go back to simpler things. Plots, for instance, are now so confusing, but for what reason? You can have a simple plot and make a great film. These confusing plots don’t make films better, but just the opposite.
So, in your opinion, plot is not essential in a movie?
No, I don’t think it is, nor is it essential to literature. I intentionally made Three Blondes and Death plotless to prove my point. Look at it this way—you meet a person who becomes a close friend of yours, and over a long period of time you create a chronological image of his development in your mind, despite the fact that you received the information about him in a non-chronological order. However, you will have a correct idea of this person and will be able to reproduce even chronologically what life he’s had. Similarly, in a work of art, you don’t have to build up the story chronologically. You can present the facts in the order you wish, but when the reader finishes reading the book, he will still have a clear idea of what happened, having created the chronology on his own. Instead, you can build up your story in a different way, and if you organize the presentation in an interesting fashion, you will end up with something even better than if you’d based it on chronology.
In my new novel, as I have said, I have taken the form of Bach's variations as a canvas—I have 30 variations organized in a certain way and divided into 10 subparts. Apart from that, I lay another pattern over them — I took the first four variations and I repeated them three times after every ninth variation. So, I take the same theme and vary it one way or another several times, and in addition perform some other variations. So, this is the scheme that I have chosen and it plays an important organizing role. Without it, the novel would be a jumbled mess.
Are you inspired by classical music?
Bach for me is the pinnacle of art. I have never studied music and am very sorry that I didn’t. We were taught to read music in high school, although not well enough for me to sing off a printed page confidently now. But, from the beginning, I felt an organic attraction to Bach’s music. And already in my first novel Roads, which I wrote in my 20s, there is a scene where a man hums a tune, and the protagonist first thinks it's Bach, but then realizers it is Mozart's “Eine kleine Nachtmusik,” and is disappointed by the discovery. It is interesting that even then, when I was 21, without any musical training, I felt that Bach is better than Mozart. And now, when I hear a classical music piece that has no counterpoint, I find it uninteresting. It’s just that my ear feels that there’s something missing. I used to love the music of the French composer François Couperin at one time, but now have no desire to hear it because it doesn’t employ counterpoint. And, although its melodies are beautiful, it seems to me like it lacks something. When I detect counterpoint, my brain instantly latches onto it and delights in following along. I also like the music of the Middle Ages, especially religious works, the music of the Renaissance, because of its polyphony, and some music from the Baroque period. Bach, of course, is Baroque, but it is late Baroque and it is its highest achievement. I also love modern music—Stockhausen, Berio, Xenakis, Ligeti, Crumb, Toru Takemitsu, Salonen.
And nineteenth century, music of the Romantic period, it doesn’t speak to you?
Well, for some reason, I find romanticism not to my liking. It strikes me as sentimental, even slobbery. I fight against the Romanticism in me all the time and don’t want it to come out.
Why?
I don’t know. I just think it’s a bad trait. I think my writing isn’t romantic at all. It’s a conscious choice. My first book of poetry, for instance, is extremely dry, both in its content and the title - Life in the City. I changed a lot after that, I often turn to dreams, but I never became a romantic.
The worst thing a journalist can do is ask the interviewee “What inspires you?” But what do you think, especially when one speaks to a writer, is it appropriate to talk about inspiration, even though it says a lot about creativity, where it, come from and so on?
I think that inspiration is such an obscure and ill-defined term that you can interpret in many different ways, much as you can interpret the concept of love. Love is the most misinterpreted word in the world, because everyone understands it differently. As to inspiration, I agree that there must be some impetus for creating. I have talked about my new novel, Sebastian in a Dream, inspired by Georg Trakl's poem of the same title, although there is almost nothing connecting the two except for the phrase I chose from the poem, "mother carried the little child in a white moon." But in my case the inspiration was primarily rational. In general, I just have the need to write – it is probably a habit at my age. However, different people may be inspired by totally different things.
Are you afraid that time will come when nothing will inspire you or give an impetus to writing?
You know, in the last poem in my first book, I say that I will keep on writing until I become so happy that I will no longer write. The point is that I am waiting to say everything I have to say and will have nothing left. To some extent, I think the same now: It will be wonderful if I no longer have a need to write because writing is an incredible torment—it brings the writer pleasure, but at the same time, it is still a torment. On the other hand, although I am not really afraid of that, I still think, “God, what will I do if I no longer write”?” I will probably then be climbing walls and will obviously be a different person. But maybe then everything will be fine. It all depends on how much time I have left. To be honest, I don’t think that it’s that much.
Interviewed by Justina Dobush
Translated from the Ukrainian by Yulia Lyubka