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I recently read from someone about the «invaluable experience of the nation, gained by the blood of our brave knights.» A ridiculous and pathetic gnome that makes you want to cover your ears and howl. More of that, this pathos evokes the desire to shoot at your comrades – purely for the «priceless experience».
Invaluable experiences are trips to Machu Picchu, the Way of Saint James and an internship at McDonald’s. War, death and millions of injured are a tragedy, a ruin, and a wound. This is a road back to the Neolithic, to a dehumanized society, economic collapse and cultural depression. No wars have ever brought anything good, no national tragedies have ever lifted anyone from their knees. This priceless experience is a black pit from which more than one generation will have to climb out.
Our long-suffering nation did not take anything from these priceless experiences of recent centuries. Especially in the XX. The struggle for liberation, repressions, famine, wars, repressions again, merciless degradation of social classes, and on, on, and on. The blood of brave knights, the sweat of glorious ancestors, the saliva of epic heroes and the earwax of nomenclature proto-heroes. This is all from the lessons of literature and history in the period of developed Kuchmism [the two terms of Kuchma’s presidency, 1994-2004], all this pathetic mud, provincial aesthetics and an irresistible urge to fetishize trauma.
These thousands of deaths, ruined cities and villages, widows dried up by grief, refugees and displaced persons, people without homes and homes without people, these yellow and blue ribbons on exhumed bodies and gold crowns in a plastic box can hardly be called a priceless experience. It’s about the impossibility of accepting and comprehending, about the impunity and meaninglessness of death as a result of the meaninglessness of life. This is about a war-burnt country in which it’s impossible to live and in which it’s impossible not to live. This, after all, is about when it’s basically impossible to live.
Our brave knights are infantry, artillery, and mechanised brigades who simply «cover» [the enemy] with fire because they have no choice. This is about such fierce fear and such a meat grinder that it is not even known what drives them forward. It’s about the smells of rotten and baked bodies in armour, about the cynicism of self-preservation and ruthlessness to others, to one’s own and to oneself, about black packages (packs, boxes), about the dim light of morgues and postoperative biowaste, about death as everyday life and about the crossed limit of perception of anatomical horrors. Priceless experience that even our grandchildren will spit out.
And already after the victory, in tens of years, another literature teacher will stuff the heads of these grandchildren’s brains with pathetic porridge under the villager’s gravy. There will be hundreds of thousands of silent heroes, several thousand wartime cliques and millions of people with post-traumatic stress disorder. Suicides, crime, deviance. In general, a social catastrophe, which will sprout wildly from the fertile soil of invaluable experience. And there will be the joy of victory, too. But not for long. The joy of victory is a short-lived phenomenon. It is extinguished by the need for hard work and understanding the consequences. And the taste of metal in the mouth, acetone breath and bionic prostheses for the lucky few.
- Chekh, after the victory, we will drink as wild!
We’ll drink. But later, such a hangover will come that you’ll want to drown. But no. We will also survive a hangover. A hangover is also an invaluable experience, although an optional one.
Translated by Vitalii Holich
The author’s column is a reflection of the author’s subjective position. The editors of «Tvoe Misto» do not always share the opinions expressed in the columns, and are ready to give those who disagree the opportunity for a reasoned answer.
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