Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
T.S. Eliot
Imagine using the same word for “yesterday†and “tomorrowâ€. Difficult? Strange? Not for speakers of Hindi, in which “kal†(कल) means both yesterday and tomorrow. Only the verb form can clarify what is meant. In Hindi, the present moment is seemingly in contrast with everything else, unlike in Slavic or Germanic languages, which distinguish three components of time: what was, what is and what will be. In the Indian worldview, time (kаal, काल) is seen as an eternal, infinite and transformable being, a fundamental factor of creation, preservation and destruction. Time is perceived as non-linear and cyclical, in contrast to the western linear approach.
This is what Mohan Rana tells me. Mohan is a poet who for 40 years has lived near London, but still writes only in Hindi. I have never met him in person, but we've been talking almost every day since 2017. He found out about me after reading my poems on some Internet platform. Our conversations are mostly about poetry, planets and stars, sometimes about the plants in our gardens, about robins, pigeons and squirrels. Occasionally we talk about politics, but on another level – the level of poetry, no matter how strange that may sound. When it comes to Belarus, Mohan's words are filled with hope, which also makes me feel a little happier.
My reflections mostly begin with the analysis of words or grammatical categories, with the way we talk about this or that object or phenomenon. This is what linguistics, to which I have devoted twenty years, has taught me. Poetry, which has been with me since I was a child, helps me respond empathetically to the universe and people. In my texts, I lean on these two pillars, and my thought follows language.
I am sceptical of hypothetical situations and the conditional mood. Predicting the future is futile – there are too many variables, especially when it comes to the fate of a country. Chinese speakers perceive the connection between time and physical space differently from westerners: they will gesture forward with their hand to talk about the past and backward to talk about the future. In the Aymara language, the words that stand for the spatial concepts of “in front†and “behind†literally mean “past†and “next†(for example, “in front year†means “last year†and “behind year†means “next yearâ€). This makes sense, because the future is hidden from us, invisible, unlike the past, which we know and that lies before us. But again, this is an ideal scenario, and in the case of Belarus, as with many other countries, the past is not so visible and known.
The Hindi perspective can help us in some way. If tomorrow is a yesterday of sorts, by knowing it, we can peek into the future. On the other hand, our future begins today. The foundations that we lay now will manifest and become our tomorrow.
Yesterday
Since childhood, I have travelled to places far away and completely different from Belarus: Kyrgyzstan, Dagestan, Abkhazia, Ireland, Georgia, Germany. I could get along with an Irish girl even when I barely knew English, or with a German grandfather while not knowing his language at all. At the same time, I could be a complete stranger to a Belarusian colleague whose views were stuck in the Middle Ages. Living in Minsk, I didn't feel at home. Like many others, I went into inward emigration, trying to create a country of my own where I would feel cosy and safe. To a certain extent, it worked. Did the country where I wanted to live exist? I doubt it. But at least it existed in my imagination.
I haven't been to Belarus since 2019, and I stopped actively engaging with the news since the winter of 2020. Since then, I have changed addresses eight times in Austria and Germany, which cannot but affect my worldview and relationships with the world. This nomadic lifestyle taught me to appreciate the moment and remember that nothing is permanent. Now I live in Munich. I could never have imagined that Belarusian history took place in this city and its surroundings, yet Belarusian postcards with poems by Kanstancyja Bujła and Janka Kupała were published here in the in the 1950s, and anti-Soviet rallies were held.
Belarusian Christmas cards produced in the 1950s by the BaćkaÅÅ¡Äyna publishing house, Munich. Source: Budzma.
Belarusians at an anti-Soviet demonstration in Munich in the 1950s. The placard reads ‘Long live free Belarus'. © Francis Skaryna Belarusian Library and Museum, London.
I also discovered that Vasil BykaÅ's novella Miortvym nie balić (‘The dead feel no pain') was printed in the TaraÅ¡kievica orthography in 1965 in Munich, too. I got curious and delved into the topic. That's how I came across a book by AlieÅ› Vinicky, from which I learnt that after the end of World War II, a significant number of Belarusians found themselves in the American occupation zone in Germany, including Bavaria (Munich, Regensburg, Augsburg, etc.). Among them were former prisoners of war, or Ostarbeiter (“eastern workersâ€), but also refugees from Belarus who didn't want to return to the USSR. They lived in displaced persons camps.
Largely thanks to the American administration, which allowed relatively free cultural and organisational activity, Bavaria became one of the main centres of Belarusian emigration. It turns out that 80 years ago, right here, there were primary schools, gymnasiums and teacher training courses with Belarusian as the language of instruction. Belarusian newspapers and magazines such as BaćkaÅÅ¡Äyna (“fatherlandâ€) and Å ypÅ¡yna (“briar roseâ€) informed readers about life in emigration and cultivated the national consciousness. There were also Belarusian theatre groups, choirs and libraries. Today, almost nothing is known about this and it's not easy to find more information.
It was only after independence that in Belarus the wider public learnt about émigré literature and how the life of our compatriots had continued abroad, where they preserved the Belarusian language and culture. In 2020, history seemed to have repeated itself. Many Belarusians were forced to leave and start their lives anew in emigration. Will it turn out that in half a century our compatriots in Belarus learn about us, those who are not in Belarus now? I want to believe that the world is different today: we have the internet, we are not as isolated from each other, and the opportunity to travel, although limited, is there.
I still travel a lot to different countries to give readings. Sometimes the descendants of Belarusian families who left in the 20th or 19th centuries come to listen. I am always happy when they tell me how they or their grandparents ended up there. It gives me a sense of belonging and proves once again that it is possible to remain Belarusian even thousands of kilometres away from one's homeland.
Belarusian emigrants in Germany in the 1950s. ©Francis Skaryna Belarusian Library and Museum, London.
The Europeanness of Belarus
One reviewer of my novel Samota, Å¡to žyla Å pakoi nasuprać (The Solitude That Lived in the Room Next Door) described it as “Europeanâ€. It was meant more as a criticism than a compliment. I didn't know how to react, because I didn't understand what I was being faulted for. For me, Belarus has always been – and remains – a part of Europe. I find it sad that for some Belarusians this is still an unresolved issue. Yes, we have our own peculiarities, like any country, but this doesn't negate our Europeanness.
Western Europe often demonstrates a certain ignorance of historical questions when it comes to regions to the east of the continent. What knowledge there is tends to be limited to the Soviet period. As Timothy Garton Ash rightly points out, “A monolithic eastern Europe has never existed, except in the minds of people in the West.†Western Europe prides itself on being democratic, but this part of Europe only became “democratic†a short while ago (even by human, not historical, standards): Spain and Portugal remained authoritarian regimes until the 1970s. Belgium, Germany and Portugal owned colonies; France, Great Britain, Denmark and the Netherlands still have overseas territories (former colonies) in their state structure. One shouldn't assume that western Europeans have always had freedoms and rights. For a long time, only a privileged group of white wealthy men had rights within these states.
To understand Europe as a geographical concept, one needs to take an interest in history, including unofficial history. Because when a country is held hostage by its geopolitically more powerful neighbours, it's difficult, exhausting and sometimes impossible to gain access to alternative sources. Belarus is a good example of this.
When thinking about history and Europe, it's worth remembering that time here moves unevenly. I'm not talking about time zones, but what the German philosopher Ernst Bloch called Ungleichzeitigkeit (non-simultaneity); when elements, social groups and structures belonging to different eras coexist within the same historical moment. It may be 1937 in one place and, just a thousand kilometres away, 2026. The concept of ‘nationalism' illustrates this phenomenon well. For many residents of western Europe, nationalism is a dirty word associated with the far right. Again and again, we have to explain that for the countries that were part of the USSR, nationalism and attachment to the nation were the only things that prevented people merging into the “new Soviet personâ€. Nationalism helped them not forget about their cultural heritage and language – everything that the Soviet Union did its best to destroy or subsume into Russian culture and language.
In a private conversation, a German-speaking colleague described Belarusians as inconspicuous, saying that they were nowhere to be heard, that they didn't fight for their rights. It hurt and upset me to hear this. This was the opinion of a privileged western European who didn't have to fight for their right to write in their native language, or to explain that their language is not a dialect, that their country has a long history of its own not defined by the decades it has spent as part of an empire. The opinion of a person who, every time they want to travel abroad, doesn't need to be interviewed to obtain a visa. Who, if unable to prove their ties to their homeland (such as having a husband, children, official work and property), doesn't risk raising the suspicions of western European authorities.
Like most Belarusians, I've been through all this. It indicates a lack of understanding when a person raised in a democratic society tries to apply the norms of that society to one that has lived under either autocracy or dictatorship. First, there is no one left to take to the streets in Belarus. Second, this type of resistance is effective in a democracy where the system of protecting civil rights works, where there is a functional judicial system and civil society.
The same colleague criticised me for going to the USA. In her eyes, I was a traitor for going to the land of Trump. But for me, this was an opportunity to see with my own eyes what is happening in the country, to hear about the experience of students and intellectuals. After all, I come from a country that for a long time had limited access to knowledge and people from other countries. So I understand how valuable and essential it is to visit places where things are not so good. Perhaps Americans and western Europeans who dared to travel to the USSR in the last century were met with the same suspicion.
Yesterday, tomorrow… Sometimes it seems like history speaks Hindi.
Tomorrow
I could never imagine writing in any other language than Belarusian. It seemed impossible to me. But never say never. Since 2019, German has become my second working language. For me, it's both an interesting linguistic experiment and a practical solution (there is a shortage of translators from Belarusian to German). Expanding my literary horizons has allowed me to see more clearly the peculiarities both of my native language and of German, as well as the limitations of languages ​​in general, and to admire the virtuosity or distinctiveness of different languages – and, through them, those of different cultures.
My Belarusianness lives in me not only in language; it also manifests itself through cultural codes partly shaped by literary works from my childhood, from the school curriculum. When I walk past a pine tree, I say in my mind: “sasna pry darozie†(“a pine tree by the roadâ€) or “viecier u sosnach†(“Wind in the pine treesâ€); when something hurts, I smile and mutter “miortvym nie balić†(“The dead feel no painâ€); when I try to read indecipherable script in the Munich archive, I recall the line: “taki pisaka, nie rasÄytaje i sabaka†(“such scribbles even a dog can't readâ€). This is how a chain of memories is built. Here my grandmother scolds me for my messy handwriting by quoting Jakub KoÅ‚as's classic poem; here, behind the glass doors of a bookcase in my grandparents' house, are these writers' collected works; here I am in the vegetable garden, but instead of weeding the pumpkin patch, I am watching a blue butterfly flutter among the plum tree leaves and singing BahdanoviÄ's poem “pa-nad bielym pucham viÅ¡ni†(‘over the white down of the cherry tree'). In ways like this, literature is not just “creative writingâ€, but something that becomes part of our identity and travels with us, helping us not to feel lonely and disconnected.
If I try to imagine a possible path of development, which I would like to see not only for Belarus, but for the whole world, I would choose ecology. I don't mean conservationism, since ecological thinking is not only about nature in the narrow sense, but about coexistence – any existence means coexistence. We are all symbiotic systems and depend on each other. Perhaps the most harmful idea that the western European Enlightenment brought forth is that of ​​an autonomous subject that from birth needs neither care nor protection. The ecological approach instead teaches coexistence in such a way as not to harm itself or others. To flourish oneself and to support the flourishing of others is a useful skill for future ecological thought, for a new paradigm or lifestyle. Ecology is about languages ​​and cultures, about economics and politics, about interpersonal relationships – where toxicity and destruction, war and hatred are rejected because they do not contribute either to existence or coexistence.
But no matter how much I would like to believe in the best, I realise that humanity is not yet ready to abolish war; that armed conflicts will continue; that there will be new tragedies and more traumatised generations. It is therefore essential to learn not to succumb to despair, and to remember that with our optimism and humour, our empathy and the immortality of the sense of beauty in our hearts, we save ourselves and others – without loud slogans, but actively and daily, yesterday, today and tomorrow.
This translation was supported by the S. Fischer Foundation. The article was first published in dekoder.
Â
