Iuliia Bentia: "What is important now is the social orientation of art and its ability to impact social processes and people's worldview"

Originally appeared in Ukrainian @lb.ua

Marta Konyk

Iuliia Bentia is an art, music, and theater critic, archivist, and editor of the Krytyka journal. In 2024, she was a jury member of Encounter: The Ukrainian-Jewish Literary Prize, which aims to promote a deeper understanding of the two peoples' common historical experience and dialogue. The prize is awarded annually to the most influential work in literature and nonfiction (in alternate years). In 2023, it went to Sofia Andrukhovych for the novel Amadoka, while this year's winner is Yuriy Skira's Solid, published by the Choven Publishing House.

In this conversation, Iuliia Bentia talks about the fundamental multiculturalism of Ukrainians, socially engaged art, and experimental forms of its presentation.

Could you tell us about your activities as a jury member of the Encounter prize? Was is it difficult to choose the winner?

The background of this work is cooperation between Krytyka and UJE on the project "War is…" During the year, we commissioned 12 essays to be penned by Ukrainian writers, some of whom were in the army. All these texts came out as a separate book, which was launched at the Lviv BookForum. That was the starting point for communication with the organizers (and later with fellow jury members) and book reading.

Remarkably, our grand jury is actually small, unlike the jury of theater awards, for instance. We had discussions but were always in agreement on all fundamental points. We had an understanding despite differences in individual experiences. Our ages, statuses, and professions differed, but we felt an equally intense immersion in reading, which lasted a long time. I really liked Oleksandr Shcherba's phrase at the award press conference in Kyiv: "After reading every book, I had the feeling: this is the winner. Then I'd start reading the next one and say: no, here's the winner." Indeed, you move on to the next book, and it's completely different. How can they be compared?

The prize's clearly and correctly formulated goals are of great help. Our job is not to choose, relatively speaking, a literary masterpiece based on formal criteria. The prize has goals, so we evaluate books according to how well they fit these goals.

This year's winner, Yuriy Skira's Solid, is an important book for Ukraine today, its positioning in the world, and its internal well-being. There were no disagreements about it among the jury members.

The most fascinating thing about the process is reading books and discovering new authors. Yuriy Skira was a completely new author for me. After I read his book, I found his YouTube channel and learned more about him. This homework, even after the winner was determined, proved once again the correctness of our selection.

Why is this prize interesting for you personally?

It is a private experience related to Ukrainian multiculturalism. I remember my family. My last name is Romanian or Moldovan, and I think most Ukrainian families have a mixed cultural background.

My ancestors on the male side moved from the Ottoman Empire to the large village of Subottsi in the Kirovohrad region. I have been there several times and know that a river divides it into Romanian and Serbian parts. When my father's great-grandfather and his family moved to Ukraine, they spoke only Romanian. In the Kirovohrad region, these multiethnic settlements have survived to this day, and there are also Bulgarian ones. So, it's such a wild field.

Speaking about Ukrainian-Jewish relations, these are very specific, bright cultures clearly presented in the Ukrainian context. On the other hand, this situation overlaps with the rich, multifaceted ethnic picture of Ukraine. The Encounter prize provides a model of wider intercultural interaction, not only between the Jewish and Ukrainian peoples.

How are Ukrainian-Jewish relations changing, according to your observations?

I grew up in Lutsk. It's a small city where a large Jewish community lived for a long time. Jews later immigrated to Israel and other countries. Now we live in a different situation, where there are no large Jewish communities. They were decimated during the Second World War. If you look at the nine books shortlisted for the prize, all of them refer to the experience of the Second World War in one way or another.

We have more interpersonal relationships now. There are certain ideas and general stereotypes we may associate with Ukrainians, Poles, and Jews, while personal relationships follow other rules. Interaction is based on other grounds, at least in the Kyiv artistic environment. I communicate with a living person who has absorbed the cultural experience of previous generations and family memories. And I live my life in a circle of people who make it more exciting, richer, and more colorful, precisely thanks to multiculturalism.

There are a lot of Jews in the Ukrainian cultural milieu, particularly in Kyiv, but this is not always obvious to an outsider.

Yes, and the reason is that it's no longer a separate community. People can be part of a religious community, but, for example, many religious Jews do not position themselves as members of the Jewish community. They feel they are part of Ukrainian society and are integrated into broader Ukrainian cultural processes, representing Ukrainian culture.

Noteworthily, Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, the first winner of the Encounter prize for nonfiction, published The Anti-Imperial Choice: The Making of the Ukrainian Jew. It is a study with an anticolonial focus describing how Jewish authors in Ukraine chose Ukrainian identity in the 20th century. The topic is still relevant.

Eleven years ago, I was in Israel at the invitation of my piano teacher from Lutsk and learned her intriguing story. She was born in Israel, where her parents moved from Lutsk. They later went back, partly because of strong Soviet propaganda in Israel. However, this family barely managed to return to Lutsk. They were first sent to some terrible exile and put under much pressure to compromise the State of Israel by exposing its presumed shortcomings. They refused and continued to live in Lutsk. Their children left for Israel again in the late 1980s. It was more difficult for them to leave because they had returnee experience, which was, in fact, quite typical.

I met many people there whose parents or grandfathers lived in Kyiv. There is a whole grove near Tel Aviv planted by people from Lutsk. We cannot now accurately describe or understand how people lived even in the late 1930s and what the situation was like when the Jewish population was much larger and proportionally more significant than it is in Ukraine now. Returning to the Encounter prize, each submitted book offers us a key.

How has this topic been interpreted in other domains, such as music and theater?

There are well-known works of music on Jewish themes written during the 20th century. These stories are already mythologized in a good way, and much has been written about the banning of these works. The performance of Klebanov's symphony is one example that readily comes to mind. Theater is more eloquent; it is journalistic art drawing much from literary and interdisciplinary studies. Today, the theater actively interprets the war, and even these performances, which one would expect to be straightforward, touch on the topic of discrimination against minorities, particularly ethnic ones. It is very important in military plays.

I don't always like the direct correlation of the Russo-Ukrainian war with the German-Soviet war because these are different situations. But we sometimes involuntarily compare the genocide of the Jewish population during the Second World War with the current genocide of Ukrainians. We see it simply in our public discourse, theater, and literature.

What artistic themes and ways of their interpretation have potential now?

The social orientation is essential now. There is the term socially engaged art, and a graduate student I supervise is completing a dissertation on this topic. He writes about opera projects, and I have rediscovered this subject for myself in a way.

Socially engaged art tries to impact social processes and people's worldview in a country. It tries to shape policies indirectly. You can't put on a play and expect society to realize the problem immediately and change legislation the next day. Instead, there is an understanding of how important it is for art to address these topics. New themes bring to life new forms of their artistic presentation and experimentation.

For example, Yevhenia Senik's book Because It Hurts, shortlisted for the prize, includes three chronological layers, and the author distinguishes them linguistically. Yulia Stakhivska's Sonia and the Play of Colors is also a formal experiment. The author, who is also an artist, reproduces the photographs and works of Sonia Delaunay. At the same time, she constructs a visual series interweaving various Ukrainian and other motifs. In fact, all the books on the award list have turned out to be unconventional.

Originally appeared in Ukrainian @lb.ua

Translated from the Ukrainian by Vasyl Starko.