In Spring 2022, I was teaching university introductory and intermediate writing courses, and on 24 February 2022 Russia invaded Ukraine. I wondered if I had been teaching my war class instead, how would have my students reacted? How would I have acknowledged the “Special Military Operation”?
Of course, I allowed my writing students to voice their outrage with Putin; however, what nagged me, even undermined me was the fatalism and helplessness we all felt in the classroom. What will happen by the end of the week? Would Ukraine survive? Would my in-laws in Poland become Putin’s next targets? Is this the beginning of World War III?
I always tried to de-romanticize the illusions of war in my war classes, but suddenly, for many reasons—the real threat of Putin employing Russia’s nuclear arsenal—reading literature became sadly and unexpectedly underwhelming.
In Fall 2022, I was teaching my war classes. Determined to address the Russo-Ukrainian War, I collected Ukrainian poets writing about the war which began in 2014. The poems were heartbreaking, dramatizing the destruction and death of Ukrainian cities. Reading these kinds of poems is never easy, and students quickly silence themselves rather than say what the poems are making them feel.
There are some students who are courageous, allowing themselves to be moved to speak, and they are eloquent. Even after reading the most devastating narratives of Ukrainains losing family or their entire village, my students were unsure if they had the right to comment. Did we reach the limits of empathy?
No. The students were empathetic; however, reading a poem about loss sometimes, even a well-written one, becomes too abstract (or too real), perhaps too personal (or too detached), making the reader inadvertently feel disconnected from someone else’s pain. I wondered if the Ukrainian poems I assigned were unintentionally having this effect.
Testing this theory, we all watched the first ten minutes of PBS Frontline’s 25 October 2022 episode: PUTIN’S ATTACK ON UKRAINE: Documenting War Crimes. In this documentary, Ukrainian survivors spoke of death similarly as those Ukrainian poets; however, something dramatically was different. The students witnessed these testimonies of pain in real time. Ukrainians were crying as they spoke. Unlike when they read the Ukrainian poetry on war, while watching this documentary the students didn’t have to imagine Ukrainians in pain; the students watched them cry, and heard them cry.
After these emotional ten minutes, the classroom’s atmosphere felt like the viewing room in a funeral home. No one could say anything; their thirty seconds of silence felt like an eternity. Students fidgeted. “What’s the point of saying ‘I’m sorry for your loss’ or ‘That’s terrible’,” a student wondered aloud. “What can I do for them from here?” another student mused. With minutes remaining before the class ended, I felt obligated to say something.
“Maybe the documentary was more impactful than the poetry because we now are visual media consumers. Maybe it was more poignant because the woman who lost her sister and niece and nephew did what we censor ourselves from doing: she cried. She mourned in front of us,” I reflected.
“I agree, Professor, but how do you cope with this,” a student pondered. “Experience of losing a daughter and son… losing a dear friend. The experiences of visiting Auschwitz and Katyn. Other places. Experience with teaching and writing about this material.”