Novaja litaraturnaja situacyja: Źmiena kulturnaj paradyhmy by Hanna Kiślicyna Restaǔracyja ščyraści: Litaraturna-krytyčny kanstruktar by Iryna Šaǔlakova (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS I49 Kislicyna, Hanna. Novaja litaraturnaja situacyja: ?miena kulturnajparadyhmy. Lohvina?, Miensk, 2006. 210 pp. Notes. Price unknown. Sa?lakova, Iryna. Resta?racyja styrasci: Litaraturna-krytytny kanstruktar. Lohvina?, Miensk, 2005. 144 pp. Notes. Price unknown. Singe the collapse of the Soviet Union, the literaryprocess in Belarus, as in several other successor states, has developed very quickly indeed with a range of new literary initiatives and groupings. Many of the officially sponsored journals on the other hand have now lost their vitality, and book publishers have retrenched into unenterprising conservatism, but there has also been a vigorous growth of new periodicals and publishing houses to provide outlets for the young and enterprisingwriters of today. Indeed, as the political situa tion inBelarus becomes increasingly bleak, literature has flourished as a kind of alternative reality. To match this development there has been a notable renewal of literary criticism, and the two books under review here provide good examples of the new sophistication that has replaced the anodyne or denunciatory criticism of the past. The ludic aspect of much postmodern literature is hardly mirrored in Hanna Kislicyna's serious and well researched description of the new literary situation, and the change in the cultural paradigm, although her previous book, Blonde Attack (2003), featured not only a less than staid titlebut also a cover picture of the critic gazing out fetchingly from a pink felt rabbit suit. As the titleof thatwork implies, it contained some strong opinions put with a sometimes controversial directness. Her new book is more measured and systematic,beginning with a magisterial overview of the new literary situation using the headings of the work's title, followed by a review of three of themain post-Soviet literary groupings, the 'Tutejsyja' (Local People), the Tavarystva Volnych Litaratarau (Society of Free Writers), and 'Bum-Bam-Lit' (Boom Bang Literature), currently the most provocative of them. These reviews are followed by a chapter on the feminist discourse in contemporary Belarusian literature, before a final chapter on the diffusion of genres in the new literary situation.Kislicyna's thoroughgoing and highly informativebook will be very useful to students, not least in its half-dozen or so summarizing points at the end of each chapter. It makes a serious attempt to review the major changes in Belarusian literature of the last decade using not only liter ary texts but also the multiplicity of theoretical statements and manifestos that appearedin thisperiod. Iryna Saulakova's previous collection of articles and reviews was Sientymien talnaje palavannie, abo U krytycnych sutarenniach (Sentimental Hunting, orIn the Critical Underground, 2000), whose whimsical title concealed innovative and thoughtful, but essentially serious literary criticism. Saulakova's latest book, for all the apparent pathos of the reference in its title to restoring sincerity is, in fact,best described by the subtitle, 'a construction kit of literary criticism'. Here the ludic element is strong inmany parts ofwhat, for all its learned terminology, is something of a literary salmagundi. The witty opening chapter depicts writing inBelarus as 'bad for one's health' (p. 4), outsider status as inevitable, and criticism as widely thought tohave died. Writers, however, like a response to theirwork, and this is Saulakova's startingpoint, despite her quasi-lament 150 SEER, 86, I, 2008 that 'prose, poetry and drama luxuriate in post-modern pluralism, whilst criticism has to remain within the bounds of decency, i.e. classicism' (p. 7). The first chapter concludes with the discussion of three very differentbooks about the 1920 Shick Uprising, a major event in ?migr? and unofficial Belarusian history. In the second, under the playful title 'Portrait de Famille (Against the background of a fullmoon and eclipse of the sun)', she considers some of the poetry published in the periodical press during 2001. This is followed by 'The Unbearable Strangeness of Being', a review of thewriting of Jury Stankievic, one of the more freethinking of the older generation of writers; 'AnApologia forRealism' discusses the prose ofRaisa Baravikova, a farmore conservative writer; in Anatomy of a Single Loneliness' thework of poet and critic Leanid Hahibovic is given sympathetic consideration. The next chapter, 'Play (of) the classics' reviews a variegated assortment of books by both older and young writers whilst, in the following...