"Myth Made Cheesy" Katarzyna Kotyńska

Yuri Vynnychuk, Танго смерти (The Tango of Death), Folio Publishers, Kharkiv 2012

“The Tango of Death” by Yuri Vynnychuk was one of the most anticipated books in autumn 2012. With four friends as the main characters – a Ukrainian, a Pole, a Jew and a German – the author promised to take on the subject of the life shared by different nationalities in interwar Lviv. An abundance of literary and documentary works on that historical era and intense discussion about the multiculturalism of Lviv could provide inspiration as well as the material necessary for creating a panorama, which was indeed missing. It may come as a surprise, but after 1991 no novel appeared to explore this subject. The first reviews of “The Tango” were enthusiastic. They indicated the author’s inventiveness, his stylistic mastery, absorbing plot and full‑blooded characters. The book became extremely popular, reached the top spot on the best‑sellers list, and winning the BBC Book of the Year 2012 Award was just a cherry on top of it all.

Critical reviews appeared in no time at all. What is interesting is that it is easy to see a symmetry between admiration and accusations: what some call inventiveness, others describe as imitative to the extent of plagiarism. Absorbing plot is juxtaposed with boredom and predictability; convincing characters – with their artificiality.

Undoubtedly the novel – in both its “historical” and “contemporary” plot – is in its major part a collage of well known motives, sometimes recognisable at first sight, sometimes less obvious. Vynnychuk himself described this as “undercurrents” and “allusions” of his text, designed for more sophisticated readers. Andrij Drozda, a critic from Lviv identified these “allusions” in a much more radical manner: he accused the author of operating on the edge of plagiarism, especially in the chapter which includes a summary of a treaty on mirrors, authored by a philosopher called De Selby. This text, supposedly accidentally discovered by one of the characters, is in fact an extensive quote from an Irish writer, Flann O’Brian. But O’Brian is just the beginning of a list of “inspirations”. To give just a few of the most apparent, I will mention Jorge Luis Borges, Natalka Sniadanko and Oksana Zabuzhko.
The presentation of interwar and wartime Lviv was also constructed out of motives well‑known to anyone who reads Leopoliana. For instance, the description of the famous Atlas’s joint is taken directly from Andrzej Chciuk’s memoirs (which got there by transit through “Joints of Lviv” by no other than Vynnychuk himself), and the “empty” – as far as plot development is concerned – chapter, which narrates the story of a fly‑man, who falls to the concrete from a Lviv tower block, is in fact a very old anecdote stretched to the scope of a few pages. From the point of view of an experienced reader, this “lively, interwar Lviv” is not a convincing creation, but a ragged patchwork ripping at the seams.

Now let’s have a look at “The Tango of Death” from a different perspective. Readers who are familiar with the local historical and cultural context give the novel critical reviews. What happens when the book lands in the hands of people to whom Lviv is known only from geography lessons? Some people said that accusing Vynnychuk of distorting the image of Lviv and its history has as much sense as blaming Dan Brown for not making “The Da Vinci Code” appropriate as a handbook of the history of the Church. Popular literature is after all not intended to educate or tackle difficult subject matter in search of catharsis. It is supposed to bring pleasure, touch or possibly encourage further explorations. And this is what Vynnychuk apparently managed to achieve: his novel makes the images and motives grow on the imagination of his mass‑market readers – because, for the first time, they were gathered in the Ukrainian language (and with a vivid Galician dialect to boot) in between the covers of one book, although analysed one by one they are mostly repetitive and familiar, even from Vynnychuk own novels. As it seems, when superficially read, the Lviv idyll a la Vynnychuk once again defends itself perfectly. It is only confirmed by the opinions forged outside of Lviv.

But can we really finish the discussion on “The Tango of Death” by just letting it go? The novel is pop literature, thus the author has the right to dose as much fiction and post‑modern collage as he prefers; it is not an academic work, but pure entertainment. Is this multicultural idyll with a distinct Ukrainian accent as harmless (or useful even), as the author and wide group of critics claim?

I guess there is a problem here that I consider to be more grave, and it concerns the Other. One of the novel’s aims was, among others, to present interwar Lviv. From the narrator’s friends, the Jewish boy receives the most of his attention. The Other is also the element that joins the “historical” and “contemporary” thread. It is time to pose the question of whether this multiculturalism, the existence of which Vynnychuk believes in so deeply and has emphasised numerous times, is really depicted in “The Tango” or is just faked.

The Jew in the novel is not a real person, but a nativity play figurine with no other function than to realise seemingly attractive rituals and activities devoid of any deeper meaning. It is most visible in the excerpt about Soviet soldiers, who drank themselves to death in the Jew’s – idealistic communist’s (how stereotypical is that) – apartment. Their funeral, thanks to a bribe organised at a Jewish cemetery and seemingly according to the Jewish tradition – although conducted by a Czech catholic undertaker – is improbable and inconsistent, although it perfectly matches the picture of the Jewish community observed from “the outside”. A minuscule example in this unworldly construct: the boys, to pass as a grieving family, put on hats with sidelocks made out of oakum attached underneath. The dead are brought to the cemetery surrounded by candles and wreaths, although the Jewish tradition does not allow such thing – and if artificial sidelocks are needed, shouldn’t we be dealing with mourners who obey their tradition.

The Other is presented without deeper thought. To the contrary, he is created of typical stereotypes, present in the mass imagination – he’s one of the cunning Jews, who in exchange for money will make anything happen, even though they look weird and sing funeral laments in an incomprehensible language.

Another example – even more disturbing – is the scene of a pogrom in 1941, depicted in a comical, anecdotal manner (worth mentioning that during book meetings Vynnychuk denies the pogrom really having a place: he claims that Poles beat up a few Jews who collaborated with the Soviets, but no women, men or the elderly, or alternatively – that some “scum” initiated a fight in the Jewish quarter). The Other is treated here as an object of observation, which suffers some (brutal) treatment; a subject, a person, an individual unworthy basic empathy.

The list of charges does not end at the depiction of the Other, but having in mind the length of this text, I will merely suggest the remaining problems. Most of all I have some great reservations towards the presentation of women in the novel. Roughly speaking, they are divided into two groups: young and sexy students, who look at the narrator of the “contemporary” thread (the writer’s alter ego, to which the author himself admits) with dreamy eyes, or gossipy, mundane, eccentric and nosy (in various amounts) old hags, painful to look at. In this world, crossing the boundary of mature age – here understood as becoming a mother – irreversibly changes a woman into a witch.

In some sense, such a division matches the general concept which transpires from the contemporary plot. In my opinion it can be easily characterised as a harlequin novel for men, who go through a mid‑life crisis. Here, in Soviet times, a scientist who feels misunderstood by his family, leaves his wife, son and job to fully sacrifice himself to his passion. He writes reviews and articles, and this way earns enough to pay the bills and – attention everyone – pretty decent alimonies. With time – not in his homeland, but in the countries of the West – he gains great and financially rewarding (!) recognition in the academic world, and lives a good life thanks to the income from his publications sold abroad. Serious scientific publications. In a wildly niche field.

The plot of any contemporary harlequin develops typically: the main character, strong and independent, but poor and lonely meets the love of her life as a result of a radical life change, and everything is hunky‑dory for as long as they shall live. The probability is not important. What matters is the appeal of the plot and how dreamy it appears. With this novel we have to do with a repetition of this scheme, despite some unborn complications and unnatural bonuses: ascetic loneliness leads to the top of academic glory and into the arms of the only woman who understands you. She is young and beautiful of course.

Benign although annoying factual mistakes need to be mentioned here (the boys experience “three Christmases” – according to the Gregorian, Julian and… Jewish calendar; mistletoe blooms with pink flowers, a mangler is the same as a washboard etc.) – and what we get is a seemingly light and funny cocktail, which in fact turns out to be nauseating and indigestible. But the most important thing is that this unsuccessful, imitative novel is at the same time – with the whole stir it caused – a very important novel in the discussion on Ukrainian identity. So bad, but so crucial.

Translated from the Polish by Joanna Dziubińska

Katarzyna Kotyńska – research associate at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences, translator of Ukrainian literature, Ukrainianist, literary scholar. She is the winner of the Angelus Central European Literary Award for translating Oksana Zabuzhko's novel „The Museum of Abandoned Secrets” (2013). She published the book " Lwów: o odczytywaniu miasta na nowo” [Lviv: on reading the city anew, 2015].