Author: VK
Yesterday the 12th Forum of Young Writers from Russia, the CIS and abroad was opened in Moscow.
According to Sergey Filatov, President of the Fund for Social and Economic Programs, chairman of the Union of Writers of Moscow, the forum is not only for Russian writers, it also includes people from abroad who write in Russian and need help: “This year we have 550 applications from 67 regions and 16 foreign countries. These countries include Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, three big groups of participants. 140 applications out of 550 came from these countries. Therefore we decided to organize in these republics special seminars or, as we call it, literary festivals. We already help it in Belarus and Ukraine and right after the forum we head to Kazakhstan to hold a festival there. In early December a similar festival will take place in Armenia. Many young people there write in Russian and they need the literary help of the specialists.
We received 662 works in prose, poetry, literary criticism, drama, translations and children's literature. I was surprised by the number of high grades this year. The coordinates were the same, so we had 5 grades. The first one is "definitely invite", second is "invite". Third is "invite in the second round". The fourth is "do not invite", fifth is "never invite".
185 people had the highest grades, 142 good grades, 90 "do not invite", 128 "invite in the second round" and 5 "never invite". The latter number constantly decreases. In the first years there were more people who were either completely talentless, but not that many, or those who used literary procedures to express their biological preferences. It was disgusting to read. There was no literature, they were just being rude and naughty. There is less and less literature like this and it is gradually transforming into a normal stream of classical literature, in which the spiritual component plays an important role.
We will have 98 men and 84 women.
We chose 182 people from 58 Russian regions and 14 foreign countries. 200 people were from Moscow. In all 12 forums we had 1130 young writers or, if we consider the multiple participation, 1949 from 78 Russian regions and 23 foreign countries, including 9 CIS countries. So we had 200 from Moscow, 67 from St. Petersburg, 25 from the Sverdlovsk region, 24 from Tatarstan, 20 from Bashkiria, 48 from the North Caucasian republics, 19 from Belarus, 15 from Kazakhstan, 25 from Ukraine.
We pay special attention to children's literature and therefore every year, apart from the Forum of young writers, we organize a seminar for those who write for children in the museums of our literary classics. This year it was in Konstantinovo, in the house of Sergei Yesenin. In past years it was held in the museums of Nekrasov, Tolstoy and other classic writers.
We pay special attention to the North Caucasus, because you cannot really hear there the voice of intelligentsia - it is mostly politicians and military who speak. And we want the intelligentsia to talk, because through literature, through those people who write, there is a chance to think of and see the perception of the recent processes and events through young writers. I need to say that the strongest Caucasian group comes from Chechnya. Maybe it is because Chechnya has been the center of a war, maybe because of some other reasons. The second strong group comes from Dagestan, other republics are weaker. But they all need help and I think it comes at the right time, because in some Caucasian republics people have started forgetting the Russian language. Yet, I need to mention that they have acute discussions about which language to use for writing - Russian or their national ones. The group we are working with writes in Russian, but many among them already think of writing in their national language, because, as they say, it provides a greater possibility to depict the density and spectrum of Caucasian life, the culture and history of the region. This discussion is going on. It is going on not only in our republics, but also in Armenia, in Azerbaijan in other republics where the Russian language used to be the leading one and where current writers are starting to look at western languages.
If we come back to the grades that our participants receive - they are high, but there are still a lot of comments by critics. These comments mean that we have to help them in time, because these comments concern language, plot and literary construction, that can be developed in communication with our masters - and we have master-classes by famous writers and editors, and our participants appreciate this. Despite their high grades, they still need support and serious help”.
It is difficult to call the participants of the forum writers, they are still students, they are trying their pen, according to Irina Barmetova, Editor-in-Chief of journal "October": “There are many short stories about childhood – of course, because they are very young and their main brightest impression that has already been felt is childhood and its contact with the adult world in their consciousness. But it is interesting to read not only for them but for us as well, because we immediately learn their perception of life. Many people write their diaries. This is also a feature of our time, because it is connected to the internet, with short posts in Livejournal or elsewhere. This short form of diary posts through which they give a slice of their city life is also present. Many works come from Chechnya. The war topic does not go away, and not only from their stories. These are the people who were emotionally wounded by what happened, and they cannot recover. But there are interesting tendencies - indeed they want to write in the Chechen language, they want to develop their own literature, but we really do not have the translators, and this is a problem that will arise at one point. We do not have proper literary translators, and if these young people go into their Chechen literature, they will be closed for us, and there will be nobody to translate them, because we need literary translation. Literary translation is the donor's blood of another writer to recreate a literary piece in another language.
It seems to me that the journal "Friendship of Peoples" understands this well, but it can't cope with it and it should be solved not only by the Ministry of Culture but the president, because the country is multi-lingual, but there are no literary translators. We face a future in which we will stop understanding each other. Therefore there is a danger in going into their own language. They all, writers from Chechnya or Ingushetia, want to go to the international arena to show themselves there in their national language. But there is no bridge, although it is very important. These are the problems that we are facing. I think that this forum can help us develop literary translators. The Literary Institute can't cope with it, they would rather translate from Italian. While here we need to create a completely new structure and prepare personnel for inter-republic communication”, - Barmetova says.
“We cannot make mistakes and lose somebody who is really gifted, stimulate him - this is also very important. Iwork at a journal and I see how motivating it is for a young person to see that his work provokes interest, is published, etc.”, Alexander Ebanoidze, Editor-in Chief of the journal "Friendship of Peoples", says. “Every new encounter with this young, talented, new author is very joyful, I would say it refreshes you. They all are different, I mean, stylistically, professionally…
The large-scale problems are more important, because literature suddenly appeared to be on the side of public life. To formulate it generally, I think that vectors of culture and the market economy aim in opposite directions. It is impossible to change it by some professional methods”.
