The most widely read Russian writer Ljudmila Ulická is known in the Czech Republic for her civil attitudes: for the past 15 years, she has organized demonstrations in Russia against growing authoritarianism and the concentration of too much power in the hands of President Vladimir Putin. But she also always said that as an author she feels free – she writes what she wants, publishes it with a publishing house that is close to her, and has a constant, diverse audience.
The 80-year-old author lost this position last March. After condemning the Russian attack on Ukraine, Lyudmila Ulická had to go to Berlin for personal safety. Photos of their books, which are covered with black tape in Russia and are not allowed to be displayed in shop windows, were circulated on social networks. Some district libraries have already removed the works of the most popular Russian writer from their holdings. In this situation, her prose Jákobův žebrík, translated by Alena Machoninová and published by the Paseka publishing house, is now reaching Czech readers.
Ulická often says that she loves short stories and likes to write them – it was with this genre that she established herself in the prestigious Soviet literary magazines Ogoněk and Novyj mir in the late 1980s. In 1996, she received her first award, even outside of Russia, for the book Soněčka and other short stories: it was the French Médicis award. He still adores stories. According to her, however, the material often swells until it becomes a six-hundred-page book. In this way, in 1996, one of her first novels, Medea and her children, was created, which pays tribute to Crimea and its original inhabitants, the Crimean Tatars and Greeks. And Jákob’s Ladder, now published in Czech, is a short story that has grown to 600 pages.
It appeared in Russia eight years ago, placed third in the prestigious Big Book poll and won the readers’ prize. It presents a personal statement, as it grows out of family correspondence, memories and archives. The basis even has a documentary character – part of the text is based on the letters of Jakov Ulický, the author’s grandfather, whose fictional ego is called Jákob Osecký.
One part of the correspondence begins in 1911, when Osecký meets his future wife Maria. The second storyline unfolds from 1943, when their granddaughter, the future scenographer Nora, is born. Coincidentally, Ljudmila Ulická was born at the same time, which is why Nora bears several autobiographical features. Like the writer, for example, she has a son who goes to America and starts a different life there.
The novel’s tension is based on the gradual approach and unraveling of the consequences of a family event – in 1933, Marie Osecká gets divorced from her lifelong love, Jákob Osecký, and then refuses to meet him until her death. Ljudmila Ulická’s grandmother did exactly that. The decision had its reasons and consequences, and it is around them that the basic questions of the text revolve – was it her meanness, weakness, or, on the contrary, principledness and brave sincerity towards Jacob? And how did she influence the next generation?
Cover of the novel Jacob’s Ladder. | Photo: Paseka publishing house
Family sagas and relationship issues are the main theme in almost all of Ulická’s novels, which is probably why the author appeals to such a wide range of readers. However, it would be a shame to leave aside other levels of the novel. The beginning about the relationship between two young people, namely Jákob and Maria Oseckých, in Kyiv at the beginning of the 20th century is extremely interesting. Ulická describes well the daily life of Jewish families of that time – one wealthy and the other very poor. We experience a pogrom against the Jewish population, we put ourselves in the situation of Jewish students at Kiev universities during the time of Tsarist Russia, we watch the introduction of quotas for Jews to access education, or even in the army.
The literary and musical works that the author mentions represent the unifying element and the exceptionally elaborate layer of the book. They intertwine throughout the 20th century and again and again appeal to people of different generations and life experiences. Even though Jacob’s Ladder is about relationships in the family and between generations, in this respect the author gives art a life-giving function – it connects people in search of reality, truth, true life.
The connection between family members is the dominant motive here. Ulicka, who studied biology and worked in a research institute of genetics until she was fired for political reasons under communism, is interested in this area. The topic of DNA excites her so much that she lets an entire character grow in Jacob’s Ladder from considerations of evolution. She leads long monologues about our individual “I” connected to ancient and recent ancestors through DNA.
Ulická masters the craft. The text reads so well that the reader does not even notice how many hundreds of pages he has already covered. The author has structured the novel well, she maintains tension by alternating time planes. However, he does not deny the tendency towards the enlightening type of literature. Her heroes sometimes seem a little flat, perhaps because the writer tries to portray their main features and then immediately continues the story. With the emphasis on the power of humanism, she perhaps did not balance the character of Jákob Osecky, who is given a huge space, but uses it mainly for monologues about the meaning of art, the need for beauty and moral ideals. Here Ulická slips into moralistic, strongly didactic passages.
Even so, the message of Jacob’s Ladder is quite clear: no matter how much we close our eyes to something from the past, it still affects our present more than we are willing to admit. If we generalize this conclusion like Ljudmila Ulická, we will understand why her books bother the current Russian regime so much.
Book
Ljudmila Ulická: Jacob’s Ladder
(Translated by Alena Machoninová)
Publishing house Paseka 2023, 568 pages, 531 crowns.
