Ukrainian Artists Channel War Rage into Creative Resistance and Requiem

For Ukraine's artists, making sense of rage is a necessity: it can be both requiem and resistance | Charlotte Higgins

Literature shows us how anger can inspire but also consume us: I see it in Homer’s epics, and in the furious creativity of contemporary Ukrainian writers Twice, I have heard Ukrainians perform Verdi’s Requiem. Once in Lviv, last Maundy Thursday, and once last month, under the great dome of St Paul’s Cathedral in London. In St Paul’s, performed by the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra with the Philharmonia Chorus, the great Dies irae – “day of anger” – unfurled in an operatic gale of fury, reverbera...

By Charlotte Higgins