{"id":169152,"date":"2022-03-16T23:54:02","date_gmt":"2022-03-16T21:54:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uacrisis.org\/?p=169152"},"modified":"2022-03-16T23:54:05","modified_gmt":"2022-03-16T21:54:05","slug":"inheritance-by-olesia-ostrovska-liuta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uacrisis.org\/en\/inheritance-by-olesia-ostrovska-liuta","title":{"rendered":"“Inheritance” by Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

More than 100 years ago, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in his novel Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge <\/em>that we depend on our family heirlooms\u2014house, furniture, books and everything our family has owned for scores of years\u2014to give us our roots. All these things lend the world around us\u2014and us in that world\u2014a firm foundation, granting us certain powers and making our existence more meaningful. Those old walls, dark wardrobes, paintings in worm-eaten frames, and yellow photographs passed down from generation to generation create a continuity that we so need to lean on in times of crisis. Half a century later, Milan Kundera expressed a similar feeling in his novel The<\/em> Unbearable Lightness of Being<\/em>: cut off from what was previously stable, a person becomes very much like a balloon that drifts weightlessly, dazed by the insignificance of their life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or take Kate Atkinson\u2019s Behind the Scenes at the Museum<\/em>. I finished reading it a few days before Russia\u2019s devastating, horrific attack on Ukraine in the night after February 23rd\u2014literally just before the Russian atrocities started in Ukrainian cities. In Atkinson\u2019s novel, the entire plot revolves around an old photograph of a woman named Alice. Page after page, we learn about the life of Alice\u2019s descendants, each of whom has kept one of her photos. Namely, this is about the connection between Destiny and Thing\u2014a tie that gives us our sense of continuity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am writing this in Kyiv but am cut off from my library, and so I cannot look up quotes or check plotlines; I have to rely on my memory alone. As I\u2019m writing, I can watch in real time\u2014thanks to modern technology\u2014the Russians bombarding my suburban neighbourhood, blowing up places I know, their rockets destroying architectural ensembles that had survived even WWII. And I recall something else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hot June of 2021 in Kyiv. My institution\u2014the Art Arsenal, Ukraine\u2019s largest cultural center\u2014 holds a festival called the Book Arsenal. Tens of thousands of people milling about, thousands upon thousands of books, hundreds of events, jokes about \u201cour literary Woodstock\u201d from my writer friends, evening concerts in the heart of the old city, hugs all around. I\u2019m taking part in a panel discussion about charity and culture. Suddenly it occurs to me that my generation, people 40+ years of age, is the first generation of Ukrainians to inherit any kind of material assets. Our grandmothers lived through two world wars, the Holodomor and the Holocaust, dispossession and expulsion to Siberia, had nothing to pass down. They only lost, again and again. In my family, for example, my peasant grandparents had inherited morgens<\/em> of agricultural land from their parents. Land was the most valuable resource. This zemlia <\/em>land was later expropriated from them, and my mother sometimes recalled how her father had told her: \u201cI can\u2019t give you anything, so you must study and provide for your own self.\u201d Our parents gathered up their possessions and scraped together a living from the smouldering ashes of WWII. The cities in Ukraine lay in ruins, buildings destroyed, and the antique furniture, china, paintings, and even photographs\u2014everything that is passed down from one generation to another\u2014had been lost in the terrible destruction. So that is why only my generation inherited something\u2014or at least was supposed to\u2014from their families, even if it was no more than an old Soviet apartment, a tiny dacha<\/em> land plot, a collection of books, or a dusty cut-glass table set. Whatever it was, we were the first to inherit in a long, long time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or let\u2019s take Ukrainian museums and archives. Back in the early 20th century, the most valuable items were removed to Moscow and St. Petersburg. I believe that even the archives of the Ukrainian National Republic are still there. The works of outstanding artists, such as frescoes by the brilliant modernist Mykhailo Boychuk, were labeled as contradicting Soviet ideology and destroyed. The artists, meanwhile, were shot, executed. In WWII, many Ukrainian museum collections left the country together with the Germans; many others were lost in the constant bombing. In a telling example, just a few days before the Russian invasion we at the Art Arsenal closed an exhibition titled \u201cFuturomarennia\u201d https:\/\/artarsenal.in.ua\/en\/vystavka\/futuromarennia-2\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This broad panorama of Ukrainian Futurism displayed paintings, graphic arts, embroidery, cinema, literary works, theatrical costumes, reconstructed theatrical props, etc. Designing it took an enormous effort, with scarce surviving material gleaned from various sources and painstaking put together into a representative whole. Now all those works are in danger again. Everything that had been tracked down, preserved, presented to the public, and welcomed as our heritage for the upcoming generations, is being destroyed by the Russians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Russian artillery and aircraft are bombarding our cities. For example, the 1920s ensemble of Constructivist architecture in the heart of Kharkiv, is being repeatedly hit by rockets. They destroy everything which, as I was thinking during that panel discussion last summer, my generation finally inherited de facto for the first time in a hundred years. Once again we are facing the unbearable lightness of being\u2014lack of the things which, according to Rilke, give you the sense of ground under your feet. Not only beautiful architecture and museum artworks, but even something as simple as your parents\u2019 flat in that old Soviet-era nine-storied building. Once again, we are one on one with emptiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kyiv, 6 March 2022<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More than 100 years ago, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in his novel Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge that we depend on our family heirlooms\u2014house, furniture, books and everything our family has owned for scores of years\u2014to give us our roots. All these things lend the world around us\u2014and us in that world\u2014a firm foundation, granting […] More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":169153,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[690,611,748],"tags":[],"section":[743,648],"form":[],"yoast_head":"\n"Inheritance" by Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta | UACRISIS.ORG<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"More than 100 years ago, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote in his novel Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge that we depend on our family heirlooms\u2014house, furniture, | Uacrisis.org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/uacrisis.org\/en\/inheritance-by-olesia-ostrovska-liuta\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta 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