Talking about literature in times of war is a great luxury. It is now much more common to talk about war in Ukrainian. To see war, you don't need to open a book — just look out the window.
Today is 7 July 2025. Last night, eight explosions were heard in Kharkiv. In the morning, the Russians attacked the city again. As of 16:00, 66 people are reported to have been injured or suffered acute shock. An hour ago, it was reported that one of the wounded women had died. The Russians are destroying our cities and our fellow citizens. Russia is waging this unjust war of aggression to exterminate us. And what can be said about literature in such a situation?
It can be said that even in this war, which has been going on since 2014, books are being written and published in Ukrainian. Some of them are even being translated into other languages, such as German. In this case, what can an Austrian reader, for example, expect from a book translated from Ukrainian? What could this book be about?
The war will certainly be present in this book. Even if it is not in the plot, it will fill the pauses and voids. It will be felt in the silence and breathing, in the waiting and confessions. Because it is the war that defines our daily life, our habits, our new reality today. This war is total and affects all of us today — all of us who are united by our country, our citizenship. And our language.
Literature, writing, language shape our ideas about the world, our perception of the world — its scale, its contours, its sound. People have the opportunity to look at life through the lens of the books they have read, to evaluate it based on the experiences and dialogues of the main characters. However, reality usually turns out to be much greater than literature, more voluminous, more frightening, more convincing. Classic stories can explain something to us, but they are not always able to convince us. We grew up on great literature condemning war, rejecting it, denying it. It is natural for us, following the great voices of the 20th century, to repeat the theses about the inadmissibility of evil, the condemnation of injustice, the nobility and ethics of compassion. But it is one thing to encounter injustice and compassion in the pages of books, and quite another to see it all in the neighbouring neighbourhood.
Our reality does not fit into the reading experience today; it goes beyond it and, by and large, does not need it. Literature does not always seem appropriate when it comes to contemplating death. However, it is necessary to bear witness to war, both for literature itself and for its readers. To bear witness in order to continue fighting. To bear witness in order to love.
In conversations about war, the fatal and insurmountable difference is usually the difference in experiences. The experience of being in the vicinity of hell cannot be imitated or imagined — it can only be experienced personally. Literature may be sufficient to convey, at least to some extent, the depth of someone's despair and the glow of their hope. Paul Celan's voice — broken, dark, full of anxiety and tenderness — can hardly explain to us all the pain of loss and the blackness of despair of the people who lived through World War II. However, it bears witness to the war and the entire 20th century much more accurately and vividly than history textbooks and biographies of dictators. We should not underestimate the capabilities of our language. Especially when language changes and loses its usual capabilities.
What happened to our language? How did the war change it? Its lightness disappeared. Instead, pain appeared. A lot of pain. And it turned out that its excessive presence deforms the language, deprives it of balance. We now speak the language of people who particularly want to be heard, who are trying to explain themselves. This should not be seen as excessive egocentrism. We are not shouting to draw attention to ourselves — we are shouting to draw attention to those who are worse off than us, who are particularly suffering, who are in pain. We are shouting for those who cannot speak now, who have been deprived of their voice, who have been deprived of their heartbeat.
The presence of literature in times of war may seem excessive, inappropriate. Literature involves working with language, creating new linguistic combinations, creating in general. War, on the other hand, is destruction. Destruction of life, destruction of reality, destruction of language. In times of war, language breaks down. The familiar structures that support its functionality and effectiveness collapse. War deprives us of our balance. Accordingly, it deprives us of our familiar intonations. Looking into the darkness, you are forced to weigh what is said and heard particularly carefully.
What do we want when we talk about death? To warn, caution, accuse, mourn? What are the possibilities of literature when it comes to darkness and decay? War is a situation of maximum distortion, total breakdown. Any fixation of military reality is a fixation of broken space, damaged language.
What are we talking about? About recording experiences that we have never had before. None of us had ever been so close to death or felt so threatened before this war. Cities where every resident — regardless of whether they are male or female, child or elderly, military or civilian — is a potential target in wartime. This changes the weight of life, changes the understanding of time, radically changes the sense of the future. This affects language. Only in circumstances of total pain, of general defencelessness in the face of evil and injustice, do you realise how important and necessary, or conversely, how inappropriate and tactless your words can be. Literature cannot exist outside of context, outside of the feelings and emotions of those with whom you share a common linguistic space.
Today, we are trying not just to preserve the remnants of reality that were shattered by the start of the war. We are trying to reassemble this reality, to restart it, to reimagine it, to rename it. We are learning to control our language from scratch, we are testing words for functionality and effectiveness, we resemble a person who is learning to walk again after a terrible catastrophe. Language turned out to be not very stable, not very resistant; it turned out that it has weak spots, areas of particular vulnerability and openness. It also needs to be restored and revived after pressure and overload, after breakdown and burnout. Language is not something stable and unchanging, something universal and infallible. Quite the contrary — it is prone to making mistakes, striking the wrong note, making false statements. Language is not infallible and flawless.
But it is language that gives us the opportunity to speak again after a long period of numbness, after deadly silence, after muteness that comes, confirming your lack of strength and desire to explain anything. It is language that gives us the opportunity to explain the world to ourselves and ourselves to the world. Language is our most accurate and effective tool today in our attempts to understand the world, in our efforts to be convincing and understandable. We use a language that is only now growing and recovering, like a branch after a break. We use this language to talk about things that we have never talked about before, that were not in our vocabulary, that we never pronounced because they were simply not part of our experience.
Today we have a completely different experience. And, accordingly, a completely different language. This language will obviously be used to write completely different literature. Perhaps this literature will lack nuances and doubts, playfulness and frivolity. However, I want to believe that it will not lack the courage to talk about pain and joy, about light and darkness, about powerlessness and hope. It will not be afraid to bear witness to those who need love and understanding. In fact, I assume that this will be literature of love and understanding. After all, this literature will be written by people who are currently being deprived of precisely that — love and understanding.
It is very important for us to have the ability to speak. But it is no less important to be not just heard, but understood. Because the language in which books are currently written in Ukraine is the language of people who are trying to protect their lives and their dignity, their voice and their right to speak. That is, the right to testify and to love. Sometimes this is enough to resist evil.
This text was first published on Radio Khartiya.