“YOU CAN’T LIVE REMEMBERING, BUT YOU CAN’T LIVE FORGETTING”: UKRAINIAN RECEPTION OF CONTEMPORARY POLISH LITERARY REPORTS ABOUT THE WAR (W. TOCHMAN, W. JAGIELSKI, W. GÓRECKI)

Abstract

During the last few years in Ukrainian translations appear more and more books  belonging to non-fiction literature, including literary reports. The current popularity of this genre on the Ukrainian book market, as well as among readers, is caused by the topicality of the issues raised in such texts. A separate place in the Ukrainian reception of translations of contemporary Polish literature is occupied by the subject of war conflicts, because one of them during last several years takes place in Ukraine. So we perceive in the Ukrainian public discourse a sharp demand to discuss important and painful for most Ukrainians problems, related to rethinking of the ethical categories, moral values and adopting of traumatic experience related to war. Reports by W. Tochman (translated in 2009), W. Górecki (in 2018) and W. Jagielski (in 2019) devoted to completed or ongoing conflicts described in private stories, are not only testimonies of the fate of specific people, but they are also an element of the collective memory of nations. In the article have been analyzed texts-reactions that show the main accents of Ukrainian interpretations of these works. They all are connected by thinking about man and his world in and after the war, an attempt to search for its causes and effects, as well as the possibility of learning for the existence after the war with overcoming the pain, despair, hostility and mutual accusations of those who survived in it. In addition, the article has proved the important role of report, thanks to its reminder function, for modern Ukrainians in (re)updating the traumatic experience as part of their collective memory, which was removed from historical narrative in Soviet times, but is now being absorbed because of the war in the Donbas region. Separate attention (on the example of the Caucasian microcosm of Abkhazia) was devoted to sociological and historical analysis by the recipients of Ukrainian quasi-states with disputed borders and an unclear status with the inhabitants, who are constantly looking for their identity and being in the difficult relations with the rest of the world, which denies them to exist.