Dmitry Melnikov is one of the most famous authors of war poetry in Russia. According to him, after the tragedy in the House of Trade Unions in Odessa, he realized that “a war had begun against the entire “Russian world” and him personally.” Since 2014, he has created an impressive corpus of poems about the war in Donbass, but real fame among a wide range of readers came only with the beginning of the Northern War. Over the course of his entire creative life, Melnikov has published five personal collections of poetry, and he is also one of the authors of the RT anthology “Poetry of the Russian Summer.”
— Your poem “Write me a letter later, as if I were alive,” became the most popular during the special operation and remains so to this day. What is the reason for such success, in your opinion?
— Probably, it is that it responds to the challenges that arose as a result of the start of the Northern Military District. I mean people's emotional reaction. The verse in artistic form answers the questions that people pose to themselves in one way or another. I received a lot of feedback on this poem from readers, and they all said that it expresses and reflects people’s feelings. It turns out that I gave them what they really needed. And this despite the fact that there was no special promotion of the text itself. He himself “went” by reposting on social networks.
— The text of the verse itself is quite sad, but this sadness is light. There is a lot of hope in her that everything was not in vain.
- Yes. And, probably, the final chord plays an important role: “I’m not dead, I’m sleeping.” This is important for people.
Nobody wants death, everyone is afraid of it, and the verse consoles in its final stanza. In addition, it is still about the mutual love of a man for a woman and about fidelity; this is a very personal poem.
— You published the poem just at the end of March 2022, when the battles for Mariupol were going on, and there is a corresponding line about this city. It turns out that this was a response to the events that were taking place, and not just fit well into the rhyme?
— Since the beginning of the Northern Military District, Mariupol was the first large city in which we won. And, of course, my emotional reaction was strong. Even though I was far from the line of combat contact, especially since I did not personally participate in it, I watched and read the news and reports all the time, and was completely immersed in the course of the hostilities. And this could not help but find a response. As a result, the poem turned out to be about Mariupol, and about everything at once.
“The topic affected everyone”
— You are among the authors who have written about the war since 2014, but your poems became famous only after the start of the Northern War. Why do you think?
“Then this topic did not affect people the way it affected them in 2022.” The war in Donbass was far from most people. Of course, they also went there as volunteers, but it was still a drop in the ocean. Greater Russia, I mean a statistically significant part of the people, was truly affected only with the beginning of the Northern Military District.
© From personal archive
—Are there other reasons besides this?
- Yes, sure. The war in Donbass was swept under the carpet by literary circles. It was impossible to publish poems related to Donbass in many magazines, especially Moscow ones: there was a block on this topic. And in relation to the author, in this sense, the simplest tactics of silence work best. Any mention, criticism, confrontation leads to people becoming interested in the person. One way or another, this is advertising, even if with a minus sign. Whereas you don’t waste effort on keeping quiet, but the effect is great.
With the start of the special operation, it was possible to bypass this stone due to reader interest and reach people directly via the Internet. Plus, before there was no such powerful social platform as Telegram. Of course, someone read and responded to the poems back then, in 2014, but there were few of them. The topic has touched us all now - and this wave has begun. If it weren’t for this, you could have shouted like this for another 20 years, and no one would have heard.
— Why is there such a powerful surge of interest in poetry?
— Poetry is like a rapid response squad. Poets give the fastest response possible, as far as the art form is concerned. Serious prose must “settle”; this takes years, and sometimes even decades. It’s the same with good feature films. Judging by the experience of the Great Patriotic War, many films were made 20-30 years after the war. And poetry is immediately, it is the embodiment of the spirit of the times.
Poems are aimed at the emotional response of readers. Previously, people were not so acutely faced with questions of an existential nature. This is not “where to buy cheaper” or “how to get a higher salary,” but the most important questions that stand above the vanity: about life, death, the irreversibility of what is happening, suffering, blood. The abyss that opens into war. Now people have seen it all, one way or another. Some directly became participants or witnesses, others did it indirectly, through the media.
— How did you manage to express in this poem what resonated with the majority?
— I have not been to Donbass, but I have a critical existential experience that I can apply to other events, since it is universal and suitable for any time. Everything related to life and death has and has characteristic features. I would describe it as a kind of grid from memory into which new material can be thrown.
Of course, I would not be able to write all this if I did not have my own experience of living in extreme circumstances. I wrote about the war in the 90s, about Afghanistan and Chechnya, but in scale those events cannot be compared with what is happening now. The current confrontation is obviously fundamental and global in nature.
— Nowadays there is a lot of talk about the war against the “Russian world.” What does this concept mean to you personally?
— “Russian World” is a territory of meanings expressed in Russian. Since this definition is largely metaphysical in nature, the “Russian world” naturally has no boundaries. If a person thinks with these meanings, even while in the USA, he is also part of the “Russian world”.
—And what are our main meanings today?
— Both before and now they are fundamental. Russia is Katechon (the theological concept of a historical subject, whose mission is to prevent the final triumph of evil in history, the coming of the Antichrist and delay the end of the world - RT), that is, we are all bearers of traditional meanings, in particular, love, justice, faith, hope, mercy. These unchanging meanings are fundamental to the “Russian world”, and from them comes the freedom of the Russian person.