“They lead a reclusive lifestyle, speak Belarusian.” Uladzimir Arlou spoke about his new book and recalled how neighbors wrote denunciations about him

A creative meeting with writer and historian Uladzimir Arlou took place in Warsaw on February 19. The evening began with a conversation about Uladzimir Karatkevich — a man who “opened a window to another history” — and continued with personal stories about literary dreams and denunciations for the Belarusian language.

At the Belarusian store Vyraj, before the meeting began, the owner treated guests to Polesian tea with the herbal blend “Shlyakhta” and, pouring boiling water, joked: “The smell is like a bathhouse.” People slowly gathered, embracing acquaintances. In the hall were writers Zmitser Dzyadzenka and Valiantsina Aksak, and historian Ales Smalianchuk.

Arlou began the meeting with a poem that opens his book “Ferry across the English Channel” — an ironic “Attempt at a Completed Biography,” which includes Polotsk, Saint Sophia Cathedral, Prince Usiaslau the Sorcerer, and even a future spelling mistake on a tombstone. The self-presentation was like a literary myth, where personal history intertwines with national history.

Arlou recalled his childhood. As a child, he dreamed of being a diver because on the Dzvina they “rested a lot and worked little.” Then he wanted to be a pathologist — because his neighbor, a pathologist, “smelled pleasantly of perfume,” and it seemed his job was to produce perfumes. He dreamed of a career as a Soviet spy, but during Komsomol entry interviews, when asked about his favorite book, he replied: “Dunno on the Moon” — and “left with nothing.”

Against the will of his parents, who wanted their son to be a military doctor, he enrolled in the history faculty of BSU. He later admitted: he was grateful to the faculty “not for the knowledge received about Belarusian history, but for the understanding that precisely this knowledge was not given to us there.”

“We were taught that Belarusians had no state of their own until 1917, we were taught myths about the Old Russian ethnicity… But to our great fortune, we got our hands on the works of Uladzimir Karatkevich, which opened a window to a completely different history. Not the one where there were no heroes whose portraits one would want to hang above their bed.”

It was Karatkevich who supported the young author after the devastating criticism of his short story “Good Day, My Wild Rose” at a seminar for young writers. One of the masters — Yan Skryhan — accused the characters of “debauchery,” and the text circulated with even greater interest. Offended, Arlou found Karatkevich's address and sent him the manuscript.

“He replied quickly — in neat, very legible handwriting. There were many compliments. He wrote: 'Lilies close their flowers at night, but your characters look at constellations of yellow water lilies… Check it, he said, they probably close too. But I already knew from personal experience that they don't.'”

This support was crucial for Arlou — and it is symbolic that he later dedicated part of his texts to Karatkevich's memory.

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The writer recalled how, after the release of his first book, he resigned from the newspaper; how two years later, he and his wife were targeted with an attempt to “fabricate” a criminal case, accusing them of illegal abortions, and a line in a neighbor's denunciation read: “They lead a reclusive lifestyle, speak Belarusian.” In 1997, he was dismissed from the “Mastatskaya Litaratura” publishing house “for publishing historical and other questionable literature.”

The writer simply calls his current existential state: “On the Road.”

Arlou confessed that ideas for writing books can come from anywhere — from an unusual dream, from a phone call when the other end “is excitedly silent,” or even from a fleeting scent of women's perfume. He named “Her Majesty's Lover” as a particularly dear book, whose first stories he wrote after Karatkevich's death.

He also announced that he is preparing the second part of “Names of Freedom” — a book that already collects over 400 fates.

“And, of course, among the new heroes will be our very dear contemporaries — Ales Pushkin, Vitold Ashurak, Raman Tsimberau…”

At the end of the meeting, the writer read his essay “Independence Is,” written in 1990 — a text that still resonates today.

“Independence is when, from birth to death, you feel like your own person on your own land. I believe that someday it will be so. Because otherwise, it's simply not worth living.”

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