KYIV – When Ivan Malkovych, the renowned poet and book publisher, took the podium to accept this year’s Taras Shevchenko National Prize for literature, he passionately exalted the Ukrainian language and voiced disapproval for how the award’s namesake is portrayed in society.
The selection committee for the nation’s most prestigious state award in the arts had asked him to give a five-minute speech for his prize-winning poetry collection “A Plantain with New Poems” (Podorozhnyk z Novymy Virshamy).
Mr. Malkovych, 55, instead spoke twice as long, and very quickly at that, on March 9.
He first lamented that school curriculums still portray Mr. Shevchenko as a “serf and peasant poet-martyr.”
Instead, the founder of the A-BA-BA-HA-LA-MA-HA publishing house called the bard “modern and contemporary… because the real meanings of Shevchenko in many of his works sound like heavy, hard rock, and not syrupy pop music.”
The Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast native then called for a law that will predominantly replace Russian with the Ukrainian language in media, including television and radio, and on advertisements by introducing quotas.
Noting that “language is the most significant marker of national self-identity,” Mr. Malkovych invoked the 19th century Irish nationalist Thomas Davis by saying that “a nation should defend its language more than its territory…”
He added, “if there’ll be Ukrainian language here, then we’ll have order; and if not, then we’ll have an eternal Putin [a reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin], no matter what he may be called.”
Another historical reference was to Winston Churchill. Mr. Malkovych cited an unconfirmed incident during World War II when someone asked to cut arts funding to help the war effort and the British prime minister allegedly replied, “Then what are we fighting for?” [It is verifiably true, however, that Churchill supported the arts. He is known to have stated: “The arts are essential to any complete national life. The state owes it to itself to sustain and encourage them…”]
In reality, Ukraine’s soldiers fighting in the Donbas against Russian aggression, including those who speak Russian, are also fighting for the “identity of Ukrainian, and Russia doesn’t want to allow this,” he told The Ukrainian Weekly in his downtown office on March 15.
His books – over a half a million of which were sold last year – have done much to promote the Ukrainian language, which was forbidden or limited in various forms and dozens of times by foreign rulers since the 17th century.
So, by 1992, when he established A-BA-BA-HA-LA-MA-HA – named after a phrase used by writer Ivan Franko for children learning to read phrases – there were no quality alphabet books around for his growing son to read.
Only Soviet, Russian-language books were available. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian-language Veselka publishing house based in Kyiv was in financial trouble, so “on a train trip it struck me to publish an alphabet book that would start with ‘angel’ for the letter ‘A,’” he said.
Asked why he chose such a long, difficult-to-pronounce name for his business, Mr. Malkovych said he never treated publishing as one.
“It was never about selling books for money, but investing money for the sake of books… I never sacrificed on quality… [back in 1992] I knew I had to make the best book that I could with the text, design and printing,” he said.
Courtesy of A-BA-BA-HA-LA-MA-HA
The front cover of the first book published by A-BA-BA-HA-LA-MA-HA, “The Ukrainian Alphabet.” Released in 1992, it offered a short poem to go with each letter of the Ukrainian alphabet.
A-BA-BA-HA-LA-MA-HA invokes a “grin… the name induces joy,” he commented.
That playful humor extends to the “recommended” age group – “from 2 to 102 years” for the literature he publishes – which started off as being exclusively children’s books.
The firm’s reputation for high-quality Ukrainian-language books quickly grew to publishing such stalwarts as Lina Kostenko, Yuri Andrukhovych, and Serhiy Zhadan. The latter two are who Mr. Malkovych said deserved the Shevchenko Prize this year more than him.
“I never strove for the prize… I declined the nomination three times before since 2006… take Zhadan – a new Shevchenko Prize selection committee member – he, today, is perhaps, the most relevant poet,” Mr. Malkovych said.
A few business figures do interest the publisher, however.
Sales rose by 54 percentage points in 2014-2016, he said, to over a half a million books last year. So has the firm’s repertoire over the years. The works of over 100 authors have been published. Rights to the publishing house’s books have been acquired in 21 countries, including China and Russia. Known for top-notch translations and illustrations, first by Volodymyr Kharchenko and currently by Vladyslav Yerko, the firm brought J. K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” book series to thousands of Ukrainian enthusiasts. Ukrainian children’s stories, some penned by Mr. Malkovych and translated by former First Lady Kateryna Yushchenko, like “Honey for Mommy,” have been printed in English.
And last year, the publishing house was the first to translate the 2016 “Anthology of Poetry by Young Americans” into Ukrainian.
Yet, books of Russian origin account for about 70 percent of the nation’s book market, according to a Verkhovna Rada explanatory note on a bill regarding literary content. Russia’s market share is shrinking in dollar terms, though.
Whereas Ukraine imported $33 million worth of Russian books in 2012, according to Deputy Prime Minister Vyacheslav Kyrylenko, only $2 million worth came in for the first eight months of 2016.
Before entering the business world, Mr. Malkovych was an established writer whose career rose quickly.
His first poetry collection was published when he was 23, and the next year, 1986, he was accepted to the Union of Writers of Ukraine.
Ms. Kostenko, a legendary Ukrainian novelist and poet, once described his work as the “most delicate violin of Ukrainian poetry.”
Indeed, before studying philology at Kyiv’s Taras Shevchenko University, Mr. Malkovych learned how to play the violin at the Ivano-Frankivsk Music Academy.
“It [violin playing] was very difficult, especially in childhood, when you scrape-scrape on that little fiddle with fish-like strings and all they do is squeak… It is unnatural,” he said.
But once his child started learning to read, Mr. Malkovych borrowed $1,500 from his son’s godfather that he repaid 15 days earlier than the five-month term after the 36-page “Ukrainian Alphabet” took off.
Now, he gives money away. Mr. Malkovych said he’ll donate the $8,900 Shevchenko prize money to children whose parents were killed in the Russian-instigated war in the Donbas.
His first illustrator, Mr. Kharchenko, has been fighting in the east for the last 18 months and promised to help him find needy recipients.
“I would like to personally donate the money so that I’m assured it will go directly to the children. This is important to me,” Mr. Malkovych said.
The other three Shevchenko Prize recipients for 2017 were: Stepan Koval (cinema), Mykola Malyshko (art) and Bohdan Frolyak (music).