BUrlesque, BAlagan, and BUffoonery: How Ukraine's First Literary Triumvirate Came to Be, and What It Created

The history and work of Bu-Ba-Bu on their 40th anniversary.

"A poet of intellectual entertainment," "a brilliant versifier," and "a creator of the unconventional within the conventional": that's how Ivan Malkovych described the three founders of the literary group Bu-Ba-Bu — Yurii Andrukhovych, Viktor Neborak, and Oleksandr Irvanets, respectively.

April 17 marked 40 years since the writers' union was founded. Over that time, the group has held about twenty poetry evenings, staged four 'poeto-operas,' and awarded 13 winners of the Bu-Ba-Bu prize.

The DeTalks team dove into the group's history and explored each member's contribution at the celebration of the union's 40th anniversary.

Biography

Andrukhovych has recalled that in 1984, he was finishing out his year and a half of service in the Soviet army, and that around then, he started regularly receiving letters from Lviv poet Viktor Neborak, whom he'd never met in person but knew by reputation, describing how Neborak would send him his latest poems at the military unit somewhere in the forests of Vinnytsia region.

Andrukhovych has recounted that Viktor was going through a trial of his own at the time, working at a mining vocational school in Donbas, teaching Ukrainian language and literature, in a town called Karbonit (now the occupied 'Zolote-3'), recalling how he'd walk into class and these fifteen-year-old future miners would write things on the board like 'the language teacher is a Bandera supporter!' and similar remarks.

He has described how they agreed to meet up 'in real life,' which happened on New Year's Eve going into 1985, in Lviv, and how that's when they became very close friends, since the poems they'd previously had to pull out of letters could now be read aloud,

Andrukhovych met the third member, Oleksandr Irvanets, at a seminar in Irpin that, as Neborak has written for the union's 30th anniversary, was run first by the Writers' Union and is now hosted by the publisher Smoloskyp.

Neborak has added that he didn't yet know Sashko existed at that point, but that he met him too within a couple of weeks, noting that Viktor and Irvanets themselves first met on April 17, 1985, in Lviv, where they announced the founding of the poetic group Bu-Ba-Bu, adds Andrukhovych.

Yurii himself was also supposed to be present in Lviv that day, but couldn't make it due to health issues. As Oleksandr Irvanets later recounted, he recognized Neborak from a photo published in the magazine Vitryla.

Irvanets has described walking up to him and asking, 'Are you Viktor Neborak?', and how that's how they started talking and ended up spending the whole day together, continues Oleksandr.

Critics divided the young wing of Ukrainian poetry at the time into so-called 'Confessionalists' and 'Metaphorists.' The former included, for instance, Pavlo Hirnyk, Stanislav Chernilevskyi, and Valerii Herasymchuk, while the Metaphorists included Ihor Rymaruk, Vasyl Herasymiuk, Ivan Malkovych, and Natalka Bilotserkivets.

Neborak has explained that under the conditions of 1983-1984, metaphorism was a way to encode certain things past a censorship apparatus that was already losing its edge, while the confessionalist approach called for writing about everything openly, saying that Yurko proposed something in between — not a patriotic-political stance, but rather a carnivalesque one, which in Ukrainian literature clearly had its deepest roots (tied back to Kotliarevsky's Aeneid) in a joyful, vitalist art, somewhat mocking, while still looking back at the classics, explains Neborak.

In a letter to Viktor, Andrukhovych proposed forming a certain 'third' group, describing the whole concept as 'burlesque-farce-buffoonery.' The recipient shortened it to today's 'Bu-Ba-Bu.'

The three next met that same summer, at Ivan Malkovych's homestead in Berezovo Nyzhnie.

Irvanets has recalled that the country had just announced perestroika, and along with it, glasnost and acceleration, describing how the public mood was thawing by a few degrees literally every day, and that at their summer meeting that year, they were also joined by Yurii Vynnychuk, Yaroslav Dovhan, and Ivan Malkovych, noting that Ivan was in fact the one who hosted them at his homestead in Berezovo Nyzhnie, in the heart of the Carpathian region, recalls Irvanets.

For a while, the 'bubabists'' activity was limited to informal apartment readings in private homes and artists' studios in Lviv. But as early as December 1987, the poets held their first public poetry evening at the Kyiv Youth Theatre.

Chrysler Imperial

In 1992, at the 'Vyvykh-92' festival in Lviv, took place one of the bubabists' biggest events — the 'poeto-opera' Chrysler Imperial, directed by Serhii Proskurnia. At the time, according to Neborak, they put on 'four sold-out performances,' and Irvanets added that 'these were the only four sold-out performances in Proskurnia's entire career.'

Irvanets has explained that Chrysler Imperial is very closely tied to their 1990 poetry Awakening, saying it has the same dramaturgy, the same bubabism...explains Irvanets.

Chrysler Imperial is a play about the authors themselves, set in 'those times.' Its central symbol is a Chrysler automobile, which Neborak saw during his graduate studies in Kyiv, 'not far from the Shchors monument.' Poet Ihor Malenkyi, whom Viktor met around the same time, was the one who showed him the car. A Chrysler had been brought to Kyiv before World War II by the father-in-law of Ihor's acquaintance, and, as Neborak notes, it was a trophy vehicle from the Spanish Civil War era.

Andrukhovych has written, in his essay 'Ave, Chrysler!,' that the Chrysler was given to the general by the government of Republican Spain for his part in taking the Alcu00e1zar fortress in 1936, wrote Andrukhovych in the essay 'Ave, Chrysler!'

The owner was afraid to drive the American car into the city, so it sat in a garage for decades. Then, according to the poet, 'so-called perestroika' began, so the owner had it repaired and drove it through Kyiv for the first time.

Viktor Neborak has described this as, to him, a symbol of the Ukrainian public's Americanization, having finally seen the direction they needed to move in, he shared Viktor Neborak.

In the play's finale, members of the band Komu Vnyz carried out blinding headlights with nothing behind them. As Neborak has described it, this was essentially the state society found itself in at the time — lots of chatter, dazzling moments, flashes of insight, and very few real mechanisms for actually making progress toward the West.

Viktor Neborak has summed up the piece as built on skepticism toward Ukraine's immediate Americanization, explaining that in the opera, the Chrysler represents a human-machine meant to teach Ukrainians how to properly live in the modern world, one everyone waits for eagerly, as if for a holiday, and that when it finally appears in the closing scene, it turns out not to be a car at all, but just two headlights with emptiness behind them, summed up Viktor Neborak.

Beyond his ideological contribution to Vyvykh, Oleksandr Irvanets also wrote scripts for the 1991 and 1992 editions of the festival.

The Bu-Ba-Bu Prize

In 1988, the bubabists created their own literary prize — 'For Best Poem of the Year,' named after Mr. Baz, a character who appeared in the poetry of all three bubabists. For twelve years straight, on the first day of the new year, whenever all three could meet up, they'd name a winner whose poem had been published sometime the previous year. The prize was always a 'bottle' of good liquor. The most valuable prize, according to Neborak, 'was a bottle bought at a Kyiv grocery store across from the main post office for almost forty dollars.'

Viktor has added that Midianka received a prize that, once converted to hard currency at the time, came to a third of that year's Shevchenko Prize — equal to their three combined monthly salaries — saying that's no joke, added Viktor.

The prize's first laureate was poet Ivan Malkovych, founder of the publishing house Ababahalamaha, while the last one was won jointly by two poets at once — Ihor Rymaruk and Vasyl Herasymiuk, since that year's winning poem was co-written by the two of them. Over the years, the prize was also won by musician and theater figure Misko Barbara, founder of Mertvyi Piven; poet Yurko Pozaiak; writer and singer Serhii Zhadan; sixties-generation poet Mykola Kholodnyi; and others.

Anniversaries

Each of the poets received a title from the other two once they turned thirty. Andrukhovych became the 'Patriarch' in March 1990, since he's the oldest of the bubabists. Irvanets became the 'Treasurer' in January 1991, owing to his interest in numismatics. Neborak became the 'Procurator' in May of that same year, 1991, for his 'inclination toward analysis and literary scholarship.'

Yurii Andrukhovych is often called the 'Patriarch' of Ukrainian literature, whether seriously or half-jokingly. The Ukrainians explained this by saying that it was specifically his texts that legitimized all of these painful changes and ruptures.

In 2015, Bu-Ba-Bu celebrated its 30th birthday with readings at the literary discussion club Kabinet, in the courtyard of the Lesia Ukrainka Theatre, and at the Book Arsenal.

Viktor Neborak has joked that they wouldn't be handing out dollars, but that people could come look at effigies of Irvanets, Andrukhovych, and Neborak instead, commented Viktor Neborak on the event at the time.

On April 18 of this year, the day after the 40th anniversary, moderated by Ivan Malkovych, two of the three bubabists celebrated at the bookstore Sens. The third, Viktor Neborak, according to Malkovych, has 'chosen the path of creative solitude for 7 or 8 years now.' He did, however, prepare a video recording of himself reading his own poem 'I Was Turning Thirty.'

Malkovych opened the event and described the writers as 'the first true poetic group on Ukrainian territory in the second half of the 20th century.'

The bubabists talked about the past and read poems, both their own and each other's. Andrukhovych read his poems 'The Lemberg Catastrophe of 1826,' 'Pavlo Matsapura, Criminal,' 'The Kolomyia Regiment in Paris,' and 'The Monument.' Irvanets read 'A Little Song For,' 'Eine kleine Nachtmusik,' and 'To Yurko, to Myself, and to Viktor.' The two also traded parodies of each other's poems: Andrukhovych's 'Hairdresser Roza' parodying Oleksandr's 'Nurse Raia,' and, in turn, Irvanets's 'Chumak Hokaido' parodying Yurii's 'Cossack Jamaica.'

From Neborak's body of work, they read 'Detective (Video Clip),' 'Monologue on a Dog-Related Matter,' 'The Kiss,' and 'A Walk Down Akademichna Street.' At the end of the celebration, all three read Neborak's 'The Tambourine' together, standing.

The Bubabists on Bu-Ba-Bu

Oleksandr Irvanets has once remarked that John Lennon, at the height of his fame, once boldly noted that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ, saying the group Bu-Ba-Bu certainly isn't about to make claims like that, but that they're aware of their own significance and continue playing their part in this endless spectacle of burlesque, farce, and buffoonery, said Oleksandr Irvanets once.

Viktor Neborak has written, in the book Vvedennia u Bu-Ba-Bu ('An Introduction to Bu-Ba-Bu'), that they believed they could be different — not gray, beaten down, frightened, and dependent on a stranger's mercy, but colorful, joyful, brave, and free — independent, though not in the way their declared independence turned out to be, adding that despite every temptation and hardship, they sometimes managed to actually be that way!