A new book has been published Cold Day and Warm Evening, the Belarusian writer, the employee of the National Library of Belarus, Mrs Taisa Supranovich.
The collection includes 3 novels and 5 stories, some of which were previously published in the magazines Polymya and Maladosts. This event could not go unnoticed, since the author is perhaps the only writer in the Zvyazda Publishing House for an adult audience, the publication of which in 2017 is fully funded by the state.
You probably remember the provocative German slogan that defined the role of women in Germany – Kinder, Küche, Kirche (children, kitchen, church). This expression is attributed to Kaiser Wilhelm II and contrasted with the male three K - Kaiser, Krieg, Kanonen (emperor, war, guns). But gender is gradually ceasing to be fate: women overcome the boundaries defined by society, and try their hand at various activities. Literature was no exception.
I’m not afraid to say that women's prose has grown nowadays to serious literature, it has risen to a qualitatively new level and, of course, deserves the attention of readers. In their works, women talk about themselves, their problems, spiritual ups and downs, doubts and losses, philosophical and moral searches. However, they still say about love, the vicissitudes of the relationship between a man and a woman, meetings and partings, joy and sadness.
Mrs Taisa Supranovich is no exception. Her characters are ordinary people whose life for certain reasons changes significantly. Few of her heroes have been happy throughout their lives, but nevertheless they all find the most convenient way of living in this world, which allows them to realize the pros and cons of their own fate in a new way.
As Mr Aleksey Ragulya, PhD in Philology, Cultural Studies, Professor of Ethnology and Art of BSUCI, notes in the preface to the book Cold Day and Warm Evening, “the soil from which Taisia Supranovich’s“ mental tree breaks out" is the experience of the life of the Belarusian spirit - those people in the Neman area of Novogrudok, surrounded by which the writer’s childhood and youth passed.
Let me remind you that the future writer was born in 1956 in the village of Chereshlya, Novogrudok district, in a family of teachers. After graduating from the Minsk Institute of Culture for 25 years, she has been the Head of the Children's Library in Novogrudok. In 2005, she moved to Minsk, where she worked at the Ministry of Education, the Belarusian State University of Culture and Arts, and now at the National Library of Belarus. Mrs Taisa Supranovich (Gurko) - Leading Bibliographer of the National Library, the member of the Union of Writers of Belarus. The author of three books: Men and Women, Mothers Vow, Cold Day and Warm Evening. In addition, she published a lot in Belarusian-language newspapers and magazines of the republican level.
I addressed Mrs Taisa Supranovich a natural question, about how, is a book born, to whom the author is oriented.
– I write first of all for adults, and I think that my audience is educated people who know the history of the Fatherland well and worry about it. By the way, besides Belarus, reviews come to me from Ukraine, Russia (up to Siberia), even England.
The stories seem to be simple, but what a great job is behind them! How do women write usually? Lyric, sentimental, paying much attention to the description of nature, for example, intertwining leaf fall with the extinction of feelings. On the other hand, I am a woman of action both in life and creativity. I convey my energy through an increase in the plot, a brightly outlined storyline of each of the heroes. So I avoid moralizing because I really do not like to read morality. There are only my thoughts, and each reader is already free to draw conclusions.
Today, according to Mr Alexei Ragul: “Taisia Supranovich in modern literature is perhaps the only author who has the lot to introduce into the literature modern modifications of the antisocial type, previously embodied in the images of Masheki and Bushmar.” And he adds: “Taisiya Supranovich’s prose shows how the rampant rampage and degeneration are growing in the atmosphere of official officialism. In Soviet society, administrative career was the only way to get out of the social pit and crawl at least to the middle floors of the party-caste hierarchy. Advancing along this vertical was accompanied not only by the loss of one’s native language but also a sense of kinship with loved ones. On the upper floors, my soul was also an extra burden. The regulator was a cold careerist calculation”.
How does the writer herself explain her creative find?
– I'm generally a curious person, - Taisia Supranovich admits. - For a long time working as the Head of the library, I met a lot of people, heard a lot of life stories, saw happy and unhappy marriages, family relationships, various situations that heroes find themselves in everyday life. And I was convinced that no one would come up with better than life itself. Therefore, I could only take the ready-made, “living” human character with all its actions, predictable reactions and transfer it to an artwork. And it is not my fault that they appear so cruel, ruthless and inexorable, covering the amputation of the soul with a social shell.
... When one reads women's prose, you involuntarily wait for a happy love, a handsome prince, a boundless sea of joyful experiences and the obligatory "they lived happily ever after ...". However, a somewhat opposite picture is observed in the novels and stories of the writer.
Mrs Taisa Supranovich:
- In my entire life, I have seen many women's destinies, and not every one of them was happy. So why should I create happiness where it was almost none? Do you know this expression - "or good, or nothing"? So, in it, there is also a continuation - "or the truth." So I’m telling the truth: Belarusian women are pulling a heavy life cart, bending, but not breaking. No matter how many blows fate inflicts on them, they continue to live and believe, and hope, and love again. If my heroines fall into the tight grip, they do not bow their heads obediently, do not bend, but work calmly and hard, raise children, in general, they still live with dignity.
But, as the author, Deus ex machine, I still strive for a happy end, this is generally my attitude. You know, you can relish describing the horror, cruelty (for example, the death of a person), and people are as if trying on themselves these circumstances in which the heroes found themselves, will personally experience all the negative. But the question arises - how can the author himself get out of this darkness and lead the reader along? How to go to a life-affirming attitude? This is not to say that it is much easier to describe horrors than, for example, to make people laugh. And I regret my reader, that's why I write happy endings.
In conclusion, I would like to bring the reasonable conclusion of Mr Alexei Ragulya: “The pictures of modern life in the prose of Mrs Taisiya Supranovich are saturated with deep reflection and purity of emotional experience, sometimes bitter, but always life-affirming. Following the traditions of the Belarusian classical prose, the writer opens up new layers of vitality in the soul of the Belarusian ethnic group. Her works define the vector of humanity in the difficult conditions of our time”.
In a word, faith in a person, in one's humanity - this is the warmth that will warm on any cold day!
The article by Mrs Elena Deshko, Leading Librarian of the Internet Portal Maintenance Department of the National Library of Belarus.
