Maik (Mykhailo) Hervasiiovych Yohansen or Mike Johansen (Ukrainian: 袦邪泄泻 袚械褉胁邪褋褨泄芯胁懈褔 袡芯谐邪薪褋械薪; pseudonyms Villi Vetselius [Willy Wetzelius] and M. Kramar; 16 October 1895, Kharkiv, Ukraine 鈥� 27 October 1937, Kyiv, Ukraine) 鈥� was a Ukrainian poet, prose writer, dramatist, translator, critic and linguist.
Not a book for everyone, but Maik Yohansen would not have wanted it to be like that anyway.
"Dr. Leonardo鈥檚 Journey to Sloboda Switzerland with his Future Lover, the Beautiful Alcesta" is probably one of those books that one encounters only once in a lifetime. Part of the "Executed Renaissance" (a group of Ukrainian writers, poets and artists who were central to the revival of the Ukrainian national culture/spirit in the 1920s and early 1930s and of whom the vast were executed during the Stalinist terror for being just that) Yohansen's writing is characterized by a clear break from the traditional pastoral Ukrainian literature and imbued with a vast quantity of hyperbole, humor and absurdism.
Despite the title, the true protagonist of this novel is the landscape. With its praises sung in the most poetic of ways. (Beautifully translated in this Dutch version by Tobias Wals) Hailing the glistening river surfaces, the fluttering of bee-eaters or the sound of a salt packet getting torn apart in an aromatic pinewood hut. The rich and almost philosophical descriptions of the landscape of the Kharkiv region proves to be the perfect host for an array of surrealist personalities who constantly appear out of nowhere and change into different people.
The only thing filling me with a slight tinge of sadness was the realization that Yohansens life was cut way too short, robbing the world from his creative brilliance.
All in all "Dr. Leonardo鈥檚 Journey to Sloboda Switzerland with his Future Lover, the Beautiful Alcesta" is a true gem that stands out in the crown jewel which is called Ukrainian literature. The general revival and international discovery of this crown jewel will hopefully bring many more translations of Yohansens works and inspire many authors for generations to come.
This could be a travel romance book, but Maik Yohansen will shatter all your expectations. He is a master of whimsical prose, so he will do it very skillfully, but he will even wittily comment on his moves, as an author. All the characters here perform their functions for the sake of a single goal 鈥� to tell and depict to you all the beauty of the landscape of Sloboda Switzerland.
This is a novel that mocks the tradition of the era of romanticism and at the same time socialist realism, which has not produced anything interesting in literature for decades.
This novel is a vivid example of European avant-garde literature of the beginning of the 20th century. But maybe Yohansen was a little ahead of his time. His style has something of the irony of Kurt Vonnegut and other postmodernists, and there is also something of the nonconformism of Boris Vian. And you will also see here many allusions to literary genres and works of such writers as Miguel de Cervantes or Mykola Gogol.