The entire war drama in Europe seems to have fallen on the kind shoulders of Liudmila Ulítskaya (Dablekánvo, 1943), a Russian writer who has gone into exile in Berlin for her critical stance towards Putin. This elegant and friendly woman, short silver hair, loose shirt and colorful foulard, she was, before being a novelist, a scientific researcher, a biologist specializing in genetics. She is well placed in the Nobel pools, last night she received the Formentor de las Letras 2022 award, at a gala held at the Santa Catalina hotel in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. A little earlier, she spoke with this newspaper.
Why has he gone into exile in Berlin?
I am not the only one, there I have met many others, such as Svetlana Alexievich, with whom we have agreed to meet. In Berlin I have a flat, which I bought about twelve years ago, after my first success in Germany, when house prices there were not so high. There are Russian intellectuals and artists reaching every country in the world.
What is your mood?
The one I share with thousands, or maybe millions, of my compatriots: pain, fear, shame. Putin behaves like a slum hooligan, someone with little talent and no humanity.
How is your departure from Russia similar to or different from that of your grandparents?
It is difficult for me to compare: in World War II, in 1941, my grandmother and my mother left the country with their household goods in tow: pots, blankets, even a sewing machine. My grandfather had just been released from the labor camps and was accepted as a volunteer in the militia. At that time, the Germans were close to Moscow. I mean, my family was running from the Germans, and I just ran to the Germans! Curious, right? My grandmother had some elderly people in charge of her, the parents of her husband, her sisters and also her pregnant daughter. In 2022, I have started a new life with a seven-kilogram suitcase, a computer in a backpack and an 88-year-old husband.
How do you feel when they speak of your work as 'Jewish literature'?
I take it with a smile, it's a compliment. In all countries we find writers with Jewish origins, both in Russian, English, Spanish, French... in Chinese I don't know any. The Jews have given great writers to the world, they have always read and written.
In Sóniechka (1995) he tells us about the enormous power of reading. How would you define the protagonist? Do you have something from you?
Both I and my character Soniechka belong to the most reading generation in Russia. Frankly, I think it was the most read generation in the whole world. In Soviet Russia at the time, of all the cultural treasures, reading was the most accessible...and almost the only accessible one, actually. Soniechka is largely my reflection, but we are not identical. I had a lot of hobbies and interests in my youth beyond reading.
What is the difference between the lies of women and those of men?
I still think the same as what is said in my book Mentiras de mujeres (2003): when men lie they do so for rational reasons, they seek profit, a material, practical result. A woman's lie is much more emotional.
Where does your sense of humor come from?
From my parents, from my whole family, from strong and courageous people. When my grandfather and his brother played cards, the most important part of the game was the jokes and taunts they threw at each other.
Carnality is very present in his novels...
That owes a lot to my profession as a biologist. When you cut open a pregnant rat, sever its womb, extract the tiny embryos, and then crack open its skulls to extract its tiny brains for later use in lab work... well, you have carnality at your fingertips forever. .
I was also referring to sensuality...
Sexuality interests anyone, don't you think? But there is a detail typical of the Russian language: we do not have a terminology to refer to the sexual, to the sexual organs themselves, without being too scientific or too rude. You fall into the medical or the extremely obscene, there is no middle ground.
You are that middle ground when you talk about it...
It is a challenge that motivates me a lot.
In November, your novel A tent under the sky (Automatica), originally from 2010, will be published in Spain. Can you tell us about this book?
It is unusual for me in terms of form: I decided to write it as a 'novel in stories'. As for the topic, I propose a conversation about my generation, about what it meant to grow up in the harsh Soviet environment, between reticence and outright lies about the past and the present. And, of course, I deal with the search for one's own identity and how it is forged. It was a time without intermediate concepts, only "for" or "against", like a black and white film. It is this existence without colors or shades that my characters try to avoid. And that is a feat. In the novel, the character of a talented literature teacher emerges who places in the hands of his students the universal key that opens all locks: intelligent, careful and constant reading of literature, history and philosophy books, natural history and of chemistry. It was easy for me to write about this because I have walked this path myself. In this novel the fate of three friends, classmates and students of this teacher is traced. They are my contemporaries, people I knew and were friends with.
Alik's Merry Funerals (1997) is being reissued this fall. How would you define the vital attitude of your protagonist?
In the post-war Soviet years, when I was young, we lived in constant shortage of everything: school notebooks, soap, toilet paper, meat, milk, bread... There were queues to buy food and household items. The only thing that abounded was the warmth of friendship. We survived by lending a hand to each other, we helped each other in everything, we spared no energy, time or money for our friends. That, in essence, was the recipe for survival. The characters are from that time, but they appear at a later stage in their lives, they have left Russia and live in New York, and yet they maintain the same principles of life. Simply put, this book is a hymn to friendship.
In Sincerely yours, Shúrik (2003), the protagonist is a seducer. In this and in other of his books, we move away from the tragic vision of what is topically called 'the Russian soul'. Does the Russian soul exist and what is it?
The myth of the enigmatic Russian soul is just a publicity stunt by Russian nationalists, a ruse, like the Nazi myth about a supposedly sublime German spirit. Geneticists have investigated the so-called 'national package' of genes, and have concluded that there is no such thing, there are only racial traits, such as the eyelid crease in people of Asian descent or a frequency of genes that define a high concentration of melatonin in black people, determining the color of the skin... But I do not agree with your assessment of Shurik as a seducer.
But if he sleeps with countless women...
But he is not a seducer, but a kind and soft-hearted man, who responds affirmatively to all requests and requests he receives, says yes to everything. First, to his grandmother and his mother, and then to young women – and not so young – who want to make him his friend, his lover or his helper. He just can't refuse. But it is because of his good soul.
His name appears in the pools of the Nobel Prize for Literature. Do you think about it sometimes?
The list of Nobel laureates and non-Nobel laureates only demonstrates that the jury's verdict is a complex phenomenon. The fact that Nabokov did not receive the Nobel does not place him in a lower literary rung than he occupies, good God, Sholokhov, who did win it. No, I do not aspire to the Nobel prize, it is better to be second. I have been awarded the Formentor award, and that is a great honor for me.
Do you have personal ties to Ukraine? How does the news about the war affect you?
All my friends who lived in the Ukraine have left. A friend has lived in Canada for a long time and another in Israel. My parents' families were from Ukraine, my father's from kyiv, my mother's from Poltava. It was a long time ago and I don't know any relatives there, though I sure have. The news about the war is the first thing I see in the morning when I wake up and the last thing I look at before going to bed. I have a feeling that the third world war has already begun.
What are you writing?
I have my computer here... the only thing I do without a computer is go buy bread. Every day I write my diaries, which will be published when I die and will be my most interesting work. Don't forget: when he's dead, call my executor, my agent and translator Yúlia Dobrovolskaya, here, and have him publish everything. We should all write daily because the text is the only thing that survives, everything else disappears.
What do you think about Andrei Kurkov's decision not to publish any more books in Russian, his mother tongue?
He has every right in the world to decide in which language he wants to be published, it is his right, of course, and it is up to him alone to make that decision. In my opinion and in my case, it is not a good decision to refuse the publication in Russian. I separate politics from culture and I think that if you have something to say, you should say it and spread it. When I was a child, there were a lot of censored or hard-to-get books. For reading certain books you could even go to jail. The more books available, the better.
