Mixing Culture and Politics
“They think you cannot mix culture and politics. I said: Maybe *you* cannot. I can!” – Andrey Kurkov
I have a bad habit of hanging on to some newspapers well after the items found therein are considered “news.” But if you’re a reader of print, you know the treasure trove that a (good) daily newspaper is, so let me tell you about this article that I read last night from the May 29 issue of the New York Times Magazine. (I’ve been razzed before about reading a “real” newspaper instead of the news items that algorithms push out. Because news is “old” by the time I read it in the morning. But if you know the newspaper, you know that those people aren’t getting everything else surrounding that one news item…) It’s titled ‘The Pen and the Sword,’ and it’s about Andrey Kurkov, “Ukraine’s most famous living writer.”
After describing Kurkov’s and his wife’s move in February to a safe place far from Kyiv, Giles Harvey writes about Kurkov’s work, childhood, and the geopolitics that inform it all. Kurkov has a lot to say about the relationship between Russia and Ukraine, especially as someone who was born in St. Petersburg and writes in Russian but carries a Ukrainian passport and takes care to think about the nuances of what “Ukranian literature” might mean. Harvey writes about Kurkov’s views on cultural boycotts against Russians (the example used was NYC’s Metropolitan Opera)…and that’s how the quote at the beginning of this post surfaced.
It’s an interesting thing to ponder: Can some writers be divorced from politics? I mean, let’s get real…are Elin Hilderbrand or Nancy Thayer going to touch “politics”? Not necessarily in the way we might imagine, but nothing we create — or consume — exists in a vacuum. The way we think about “politics” can be very limiting. Have you thought about what you’re reading — and what conditions would allow the author to publish it?
PS: Kurkov’s latest novel, translated to English by Boris Dralyuk, is Grey Bees. It’s an exploration of geopolitics through the eyes of a beekeeper and is described as “warm and surprisingly funny.” I’ve just reserved it at my library. (Ed. note: I posted about Grey Bees here.)
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