Which authors are more prone to lean to tragedy? Which ones want to dig as deep as possible into the human soul until they find something dark there? And which of them bring sunshine and wit to literature? Is it Russians or Ukrainians? And how does a gogolesque laughter through tears come about? This will also be the topic of the discussion about the relationship between Ukrainian and Russian culture in the time of war, about the attitudes of the people of other countries towards Russian and Ukrainian literature and its present work. Patrik Garaj, Daily N's culture reporter, will discuss the topic with our guest, Russian scholar and translator, Valerij Kupka, and with you. The interview and informal discussion will be accompanied by reading from the book by Ukrainian author Yuri Andrukhovych, translated into Slovak by Valerij Kupka.
Valerij Kupka is a Slovak poet, translator and Russianist. He was born in Ukraine. In 1978 his family moved back to Slovakia. Until 2022, he was an associate professor of Literary Studies at the University of Prešov, where his main fields of research were the Russian literature of 19th and 20th century, Russian children's literature, Russian visual arts and film.
Patrik Garaj studied German, Philosophy and Literary Studies at the University of Prešov and at the University of Konstanz where he also received his PhD. In 2006 he started working for the Trend magazine. First as a web editor, later as editor-in-chief of Trend.sk and a deputy editor-in- chief of Trend. He has been working at Daily N since February 2018 as an editor and reporter. He mainly focuses on the areas of culture - literature, architecture and music. He also publishes a regular newsletter named High 5ive
