Rage as Both Requiem and Resistance: How Ukrainian Artists Transform Wartime Fury into Creative Power
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/profile/charlottehiggins. "For Ukraine’s artists, making sense of rage is a necessity: it can be both requiem and resistance | Charlotte Higgins | The Guardian." September 4, 2026. www.theguardian.com
The Gist
The author argues that the intense anger Ukrainian artists feel because of the war isn't just a destructive emotion—it can actually fuel powerful art and acts of resistance, much like anger fueled the ancient hero Achilles in Homer's Iliad. She shows through interviews and examples that Ukrainian writers turn their rage into books, poems, and performances that serve as both mourning for the dead and defiance against the invasion.
Conclusion
For Ukrainian artists and writers, the intense rage produced by war and atrocity is not merely destructive but can be channeled into generative creative and resistant action—functioning simultaneously as mourning (requiem) and defiance (resistance).
Premises
- Homer's Iliad demonstrates a literary precedent in which rage (Achilles') serves as the generative fuel that drives epic narrative and meaning-making, showing that rage can be a productive creative force rather than purely destructive.
- Performances of Verdi's Requiem, especially the 'Dies irae' (day of anger), performed by Ukrainian musicians channel collective grief and fury into a powerful shared artistic and cathartic experience.
- Contemporary Ukrainian writers such as Oleksandr Mykhed, Iryna Shuvalova, and Sasha Dovzhyk explicitly describe personal rage as the source of energy and impetus behind their wartime writing.
- Mykhed distinguishes rage from hatred, arguing that rage 'gives you words' and enables action, while hatred is chaotic and unproductive—supporting the idea that rage, properly directed, is generative.
- Audre Lorde's writing on anger shows that rage, when disciplined and channeled rather than suppressed, becomes 'loaded with information and energy' and can fuel meaningful action.
- As Ukrainian rage fades due to war fatigue, its absence is felt as a loss of power and creative impetus, suggesting that rage had been integral to both resistance and artistic production.
Assumptions
- Emotional experiences from vastly different historical and cultural contexts (ancient Greek epic, Christian liturgical music, contemporary war literature) can be meaningfully compared and used to illuminate one another.
- Rage, though dangerous and potentially consuming, can be 'tamed' or directed toward constructive ends without inevitably leading to destructive consequences.
- Artistic creation is a legitimate and effective outlet for processing extreme collective trauma and anger.
- The testimonies of a small number of Ukrainian writers and artists are representative of a broader collective experience of wartime rage.
- The author's personal literary interpretation constitutes a valid framework for understanding a complex political and psychological phenomenon.