Marija Djačenko, "Time to open the windows and clear the air" 2

Interview by Jurga Tumasonytė
www.kamane.lt, 2016-08-17
Marija Djačenko. Photo from the personal archive

In brief: I remember Marija Djačenko from a time when many knew her as the young writer who had published a collection of short stories You Agree (Sutinki, 2005) while still studying in high school. Later on Marija left for England and appeared again in the literary context after 8 years when she published a book of short stories Full of Grace (Malonės pilnoji). A new literary project initiated by Marija came to life recently: charlesmethugo.com; it has become a pretext to start a conversation about memories, Europe, books and ideas.

Author has lived in London for about 10 years. I wanted to know how Marija sees the city. According to her London gives the freedom to think, be yourself and a freedom to live. "Of course, one can argue that if you are in harmony with yourself then you cannot be anyone else. However, I know only a few people who are not impacted by their environment. Personally, I always subconsciously try to merge with environment. And London does not care. I admire its strong character, despite changing and having so many different cultures it never loses its identity."

I was wondering whether Marija participated in England's literary life. Author says, "To me literature is a printed text per se. And it does not matter whether it's an ad in the window or M. Coetzee's Disgrace. I always had this dreadful feeling that I will never belong to this so-called literary community that reads serious books and can quote Pushkin. Sometimes we meet with friends who like writing, we share our views, discuss a book we read, invent a project and that is enough."

I wanted to ask why the author was so fascinated with Bukowski. Marija Djačenko answers, "Am I? His novel Post Office was this "wow" moment for me when I realized that things can be done differently. After the Post Office I read his Tales of Ordinary Madness and that book had a really similar effect, maybe because I read it in English. Charles Bukowski was an open and a relatively free man, at least in his thinking."

I mentioned Bukowski, because recently author has set up a literary webpage Charles met Hugo. Marija Djačenko explains, "Charles met Hugo, as in Charles Bukowski met Hugo Boss is a shameless ambition to combine two disparate things - writers' personalities and commerce. I noticed that in the West some writers are comparable to music of film stars: their faces are often on the covers of the magazines, people write about them, they are heard and seen; their books are read and they live well. I do not want to throw stones into the Lithuanian Writers' Association's garden but they should really open some windows up and clear the air, just like many Lithuanian cultural institutions."


Read comments
Write your comment
*
*