VM: Yes, considering he has very different aims from what we have: my aim is to write books and his aim is to stay in power. He wants to keep Belarus away from Russia, and I want to drag readers away from Russian literature and make them read Belarusian literature.
MG: What’s the situation of Belarusian culture and language today?
VM: I have a feeling that 20 years ago to understand Belarus one had to read Russian literature because the two countries were quite similar. But it’s not like this anymore. We have two very different societies, we in Minsk are more like Eastern Europeans. And the city is very different from Moscow despite the same language being spoken here and there [Russian]. It’s like with South America where most countries speak the same language, yet they are all very different. So language is not always the answer, at least not the only answer. We can remain Belarusian without the language. But the language is, of course, very important.
MG: What was your road to Belarusian? Because your first language is Russian…
VM: Yes, Russian was my first language, I studied in Russian, and I actually never thought I could speak or write in Belarusian. It was all because of my second novel Stsyudzyoni Vyrai – this means ‘Cold Paradise’, it’s an interesting religious and ethical concept. Vyrai in popular belief is on the one hand a place were birds fly during cold months, and on the other it’s where spirits go after death. So it’s a paradise and a warm country at the same time.
The concept of the novel was that it starts with an American guy writing in Belarusian. Of course he makes a lot of mistakes, he says that he is travelling (he’s currently in Istanbul), he is a fine arts dealer. He meets a girl from Belarus, and this girl somehow gets him interested in Belarus. As it turns out she is a dissident hiding from the KGB. So to impress her he starts, or so he says, to learn the language (he claims his ancestors are from Belarus). He writes notes in this language that get published in some literary magazine. Via these notes he tries to invite her to a meeting, but she’s in hiding. So he suggests that they meet in Vilnius – and he waits for her every week at the same time in the same café. The second narrator is the girlfriend of the girl, who apparently is lesbian, and she says this guy is a KGB agent – he’s not a proper KGB agent, but he made up that he was American to catch her in a trap. The girl disappears in Vilnius and is put into a mental hospital in Minsk. And then another guy says that this girl is also a KGB agent. So it’s a kind of self-discrediting story of three narrators.
MG: But how did this political thriller impact your language choices?