Belarusian events of the summer-autumn of 2020 are very weakly reflected in art. Perhaps because the gestalt is still unfinished. Perhaps because art cannot keep up with rapidly changing social networks. Or perhaps because what we, Belarusians, have experienced is very difficult for modern civilized people to reflect on.
Perhaps, the writer Alherd Bacharevič made one of the most imperfect attempts. His "Breakthrough in the Museum. Stories 2020-2021" — a collection of stories — was published in mid-2023. This book, it seems, has become not only the best description of Belarusian suffering to date but also perhaps the best in the author's creative life. It is evident: it resonates with readers, both professionals and amateurs, albeit not very eagerly. It is understandable—reliving collective and personal trauma once again is unpleasant, uncomfortable, and painful.
But it is necessary.
The reader, along with the author and the main character of "A Truss in the Museum," is condemned to an endless plot twist: did I do everything right then? Did I exert enough effort? Eternal hellish torment.
There are too few reviews of "A Truss in the Museum," as well as reflections on the events of 2020. Modern research has begun to challenge the thesis about relieving psychological trauma through its re-experience, saying that negative emotions supposedly disappear then. Belarusian writers are not in a hurry to recall their emotions, and readers do not rush to address them either. 2020 hurts, and apparently, it will hurt for a long time. Perhaps, after some time, there will be works that will depict those events in a romantic-heroic light, and descendants will be moved and honored by them, just as literature about the uprisings of 1830 and 1863 emerged in due time. But for now, Alhierd Bacharevič offers the Belarusian reader to meet their PTSD face to face again, in the form where any traumatic experience becomes even more traumatic.
It is precisely "A Truss in the Museum," if we disregard a couple of controversial aspects typical of films and several almost unnoticed texts by a wide audience, that stands out as the main artistic work about 2020.
The book was published by the "Knigavka" publishing house and may claim to be the most significant event in Belarusian literature in recent times.
The writer created it in emigration, in the Austrian city of Graz, where he went together with his wife and the actual co-author (as well as the prototype of one of the heroines of the work), Yuliya Tsimafeeva, in the fall of 2020. However, the book was written in the heat of events, so it cannot be called full-fledged emigrant literature. Despite its fantastic elements, "Breakthrough in the Museum" reads like a documentary chronicle.
Alherd Bacharevič breaks the text into separate microplots, conceptually linked parts. He also shared his magnum opus - the novel "Dogs of Europe," perhaps the most resonant work to date. But "Breakthrough..." turned out to be both more compact and more substantial. For the writer, this book became a good way out of a creative dead end, into which he had fallen with the aforementioned great novel, certain parts of which were, admittedly, on the verge of epigone - reflecting the texts of Vladimir Sorokin.
Compositionally, "Breakthrough in the Museum" consists of 16 parts, each with its own plot and dimension. However, it is perceived as a complete work, not a collection of stories. It is challenging to call "Breakthrough..." a full-fledged novel since it has no more than two hundred pages. Yet, despite its volume, it paradoxically comes closer to being defined as an "epic" because it possesses all the characteristics of one: a grand work about significant historical events. Moreover, "Breakthrough in the Museum" falls within the realm of existential literature. It is almost unbearable reading for those who have experienced it and who could easily become a character from one of its parts at any moment.
For Belarusian literature, true representatives of existential prose are Bykau, Adamovich, Alexievich. Bacharevič follows in their footsteps but in a slightly different way. Having traversed the merciless and senseless youth modernism of the nineties, the writer of the twenty-first century was born as a prose writer through adaptation to the diverse "post-" trends.
Фотаздамак са старонкі аўтара ў Фэйсбуку
"Breakthrough in the Museum" is both postmodern and postromantic simultaneously.Bacharevič's style is aptly associated with the so-called magical realism. However, not everyone who uses this term can accurately explain what it means. Compared to classical Latin American magical realism, "Breakthrough..." is perhaps thematically close but not stylistically similar. The essence of South American dictatorships is too similar to the Belarusian one. However, the rich and exotic prose of Marquez, Asturias, Carpentier is too flowery compared to the harsh realities of Belarus.
Calling "Breakthrough in the Museum" classical realism would be impossible. Indeed, agree that each of us, starting from 2020, has at least once rubbed our eyes and asked: isn't this a dream? A terrifying, nightmarish dream that can hardly be described by the means of ordinary prose.
"Breakthrough in the Museum" offers to relive the events of 2020 through a series of vivid, sharp, and painful images and situations. The author immediately sets accents—his vision of events from the very beginning is sharply defined and lacks intrigue—but he offers his own, psychological, point of view.
Sunday marches, police vans driving old and young people straight into a barn, almost like in Ales Adamovich's works, unarmed people lying on the floor of a library to avoid being seen from the windows, as if in a ghetto...
Vae victis. Woe to the vanquished. At first glance, "Breakthrough in the Museum" is an emotional chronicle of the lost Belarusian revolution. Alherd Bacharevič consistently and gradually describes all the elements of a grand picture, which together form the tragedy of the dictatorship of a European nation trapped in a snare. One might think, how does Belarusian horror compare to the Ukrainian one? But the Belarusian horror is terrifying because it resides inside, and only its external aspects complement it.
Bacharevič also talks about the external, of course. But for him, the most important question, apparently, is how did it happen, how did it come to be that the inhabitants of one country suddenly divided into two unequal parts. Were we like this from the beginning?
The writer subjects his characters to a radical test of humanity and inhumanity. The scale of "Breakthrough..." is increased by the number of characters, heroes, and anti-heroes. The author tried to describe the year 2020 through the eyes of active individuals from different barricades. And he managed to show two worlds simultaneously, which by definition cannot coexist.
The main conflict of Alherd Bacharevičs book is cultural, civilizational. The world on the author's side is a normal world of human feelings, ordinary family relationships, cozy apartments, and natural desires. It is opposed by a world of uneducated, insecure, alien and alienated people, both in blood and in spirit. The latter are characterized by fear, jealousy, foolishness, illiteracy. And the most terrible thing is indifference, the main Belarusian disease. Indifference to amateur paintings and potato pancakes, to life, to people around. The gallery of Belarusian images is radically divided by the writer into two parts, where among human faces, inhuman vile creatures appear.
"Breakthrough in the Museum" honestly portrays the differences between people from the first world and those from the second world. People from the first world sincerely love each other, write books, possess the talent for transformation, and study art. On the other hand, people from the second world enjoy tormenting others, belong to a foreign, non-European culture, have physical flaws like prominent beards in visible places, and psychological flaws such as underdeveloped sexual constitutions.
The author deals with these latter characters in a postmodernist and harsh manner, actively using grotesque to describe their characteristic traits. Moreover, satire is a very powerful weapon for Alherd Bacharevič as a writer. It helps to eliminate unnecessary pretense, while cynicism naturally arises in describing the events of 2020. What "Breakthrough in the Museum" lacks is precisely pretense and cynicism—two eternal diseases of contemporary Belarusian literature.
"Breakthrough in the Museum" even with its title shows the Belarusian conflict of "2020" as a conflict of cultures. A conflict between educated and uneducated, between natives and newcomers, between complete and, in various senses, underdeveloped individuals, between Europeans and steppe barbarians, between civilization and savagery. The national trait is not a priority here—one of the leaders of the special forces, who breaks into arresting the Magician in a section named after him, is referred to by his nickname or as an Asian or Caucasian, but his subordinates have typical Belarusian names.
After reading this profound text, it is tempting to divide people based on some fundamental cultural traits. This approach, apparently, is the most controversial aspect of the work because the events of 2020 forced people of all ages, education levels, and ethnic backgrounds to hit the streets. In the harvest of 2020, protesters included even those who had never been to a museum in their lives—those in the eighth grade of a comprehensive school, as well as supporters of rigid patriarchy with the strongest aversion to the phrase "gender equality." The division, apparently, occurred and is occurring based on some other principle.
"Breakthrough..." demonstrates a kind of absolute evil, but the reasons for its manifestation in society—aren't they the greatest mystery from the beginning of time? And, apparently, the book by Alherd Bacharevič is not meant to provide an answer to this but only to present the facts to the reader. The writer raises questions that seemed never to arise in the lives of the well-governed, comfortable 21st-century dwellers of a society steeped in consumerism and hedonism, which almost never encountered such a phenomenon as systemic, widespread violence from the state in its life.
The most ambiguous parts of Alherd Bacharevič's book are two following stories. Their characters are very well deciphered because they are described in a very vivid and insightful way.
The first story is about the chief editor of one of the most well-known Belarusian resources, with whom the writer had a personal conflict in the past and who was repressed during the events of 2020. Unfortunately, this section appears to be a personal vendetta, an untimely attempt to resolve the situation on his own terms.
The second story is about a writer under the pseudonym "Nadzeya Radzivil," an author of Belarusian historical prose resembling Karatkevich, a conformist of a higher level, a model of a famous conformist personality. In her persona, the author confronts those colleagues in the literary guild who attempt to conform, trample, and endure, disregarding repressed relatives and a good understanding of the situation.
Both sections are highly controversial from a moral standpoint. From another perspective, Alhierd Bacharevič seems to be attacking his own to make others afraid. It is not without reason that he calls for boundary-breaking honesty in the preface, primarily the absence of self-censorship. And it should be noted that such openness adds to the merits of his book.
Moreover, the greatest disappointment from the book is that almost all characters in "A Truss in the Museum" remain atomized masses, the very Belarusians who Belarus—Belarusians. However, here, the reader's criticisms should be directed towards themselves rather than the author of the work, who has already faced and continues to face much criticism.
It is very difficult to narrate a story like ours, the Belarusian one, using the methods of serious artistic research, especially when it is not yet complete. Many new emotions have been layered onto those from 2020. Alhierd Bacharevič's text saw the light three years after the described events. But it is not about the past—it is about the present. Questions that seem to hang in the air.
As for what will happen to the characters in the book, it is no longer the responsibility of the author of the text. Whether they will "Meet the People, Geese, Swans" with them—an anti-utopia from the most impressive part of Alhierd Bacharevič's novel "Dogs of Europe," or something else entirely—depends on the readers of "A Truss in the Museum," those for whom this book was written.
A German philosopher once wondered if poetry can exist after Auschwitz. Belarusian literature after 2020 is forced to answer the question of whether Belarusian literature can exist at all. Alhierd Bacharevič's "A Truss in the Museum" provides a profound response to this question.
