Authors

Discussion

Poetic language, a priori possessing qualities that make it a perfect instrument for social and political protest, is undoubtedly capable of transforming reality at a factual level. The symbolic and the real, tightly interwoven within the fabric of a literary text, create an all-pervasive symbiosis capable of resisting oppression and stagnation. Poetry, as a workshop of words, gains particular significance in times when language itself is embedded in a propaganda system and is widely exploited to reinforce ideological constructs that serve the interests of the state. The state propaganda apparatus, while ubiquitously employing language, nevertheless cannot appropriate, isolate or fully subordinate it. However, it is capable of expelling from the public sphere any antagonistic forms and expressions of language. Under today’s conditions of authoritarian domination by the Russian state apparatus, it is especially crucial to preserve and develop alternative linguistic phenomena that both reflect and make possible an alternative cultural environment. 

One striking example is the “School of Experimental Writing,” founded by Galina Rymbu together with a group of Russophone activists and poets. The School stands as a unique and emblematic form of literary and educational protest. By exploring the topics such as feminism, queerness, postcoloniality that are marginalized and excluded from the Russian official state agenda, it contributes to the creation of an inclusive democratic space of solidarity and unity. Rymbu, who has lived in Lviv throughout the war, reflects deeply on questions of poetic language in general, as well as on her own language which, for her, is on the one hand her mother tongue, and on the other, a “language of the killer.” In this paper, through the lens of translocality and nomadism, I will also examine Rymbu’s poem “Mama Writes. I am Writing”, in which this theme unfolds.