WHY HASN’T THE NOBEL PRIZE
BEEN AWARDED TO VASIL’ BYKAU?
I met Vasil’ Bykau in 1992 in Warsaw. As a member of the official delegation, headed by Stanislau Shushkevich, Chairman of the Supreme Soviet, he participated in the Grand Opening of the Embassy of the Republic of Belarus, the first one in a short history of this country.
One year prior to our meeting I had translated the Ablava (The Swoop) by Bykau. It was published in the Literatura na wiecie monthly in 1991.
It was already at that time when I considered Bykau to be the only candidate who deserved being recommended for the Nobel Prize award. He was one of the Olympus clan of Titans who was destined to fight the evil in all of its displays. He would disclose and denounce roundly the governmental forms of crime, which the whole twentieth century was bleeding with.
The titles of only some of his novels speak for themselves: The Trap, The Wolf Troop, The Portent of Disaster, The Dead Feel No Pain, In a Fog, The Swamp, The Swoop, The Wall …
His literary character is a man, who was hammered by the government-orchestrated swoop to the wall, ready to get the lead. He is far from being happy, and he is not capable of singing the „Ode to Joy” with foolish enthusiasm. His own memory as well as his integrity, pierced with pain of his native people, his earth, plowed by tank tracks and scorched by Verbrennungs-units, SMERSH-brigades (Death to Spies) and the defensive units, his land, which is blood-stained with the blood of the Kurapaty victims and contaminated with the Chernobyl strontium, will never let him do it.
Europe dos not need all this memory. Having stuffed its belly with delicious viands, it celebrates with feasting, copulates. It does not want to be reminded about its „achievements, i.e. Arbeit macht frei, inscribed on the Oswiecim (formerly Auschwitz) death gate, its half-a-century flirt with Josef Stalin and his loyal followers, for whom personally life was getting better, life was becoming funnier and the fun of life was accompanied by the gun shots targeted at the backs of the heads of „public enemies”…
But Bykau would constantly remind them (Europeans) about it. Each single word of his would disturb their sweet dreams. How could they award the Nobel Prize to him for all that? Plus, he was a Belarusian. And, oh, by the way, where is his Belarus? It must be somewhere in Russia, they believe. They have heard about the Russians, they really did! As for the Jews, they heard about them, too. They have even heard about the Poles. The latter ones are said to be learning by heart the „Ode to Joy” to sing it one day on the Vistula banks. One more step, and we will tame them while the rest of the problems will be automatically taken care of. Then we will be able to erect the monument-museum in Breslau – pardon! – in Wroclaw to commemorate the German exiles from the East.
We know nothing about Belarus and do not want to. Let President Putin take care of it. That’s, actually, what he is a president for. He has his own agents and let them do their job. Why should we screw up their job, awarding the Nobel Prize to a Belarusian? More than that, Putin has inexpensive natural gas, inexpensive oil, cheap labor force. Plus, our Money is there … And the market stretches from the Bug down to the Sakhalin Island …
That is why the Nobel Prize has never been awarded to Vasil’ Bykau.
But he managed to have preserved his individuality, his selfhood.
He remained to be crystal clear.
He passed away as an incorruptible, independent and great personality.
He was Great in his selfhood.
He joined the majority of Great and Independent individuals.
He is on the Olympus now.
CHESLAU SENIUKH
(Warsaw, Poland)
Translated by Ivan Burlyka
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