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The article analyses the “Psalms of David” by Taras Shevchenko in the context of the psalm-reception’s tradition in Ukrainian literature. Also special attention is devoted to the interpretations of the psalms by Vladimir Monomach, Hryhorij Skovoroda, Marcian Shashkevich, Ivan Franko and others.
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The article deals with the mainstream issues of contemporary Franko Studies, one of the most important fields of Ukrainian Literary Studies. The contemporary Franko Studies includes different discourses (political, sociological, linguistic, and literary), each of which reflects the topical problems of Ukrainian Studies in a widest sense. Many controversial topics (starting with Franko’s meeting/non-meeting with Theodor Herzl in Vienna, Franko’s article “A Poet of Betrayal” and on to Franko’s attitude towards Ukrainian and European modernism) receive nowadays a different interpretation, which is not exhaustive but, on the contrary, initiating the study of another problem. The author also comments on the literary terminology used within the Franko Studies.
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The article focuses on Biblical motifs in the works of Ivan Bahrianyi (Gethsemane, 1950) and Ihor Kosteckyi (Saint day, 1963). Both authors belong to the movement of intellectual prose in Ukrainian literature. The concept of biblical references in their novels is briefly presented. An analysis of their prose works proves that references to Biblical metatext are closely linked to the historical events of the 1930s and 1940s (Stalinist terror, World Wars, emigration waves, etc.).
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The study of folklore onyms has a history lasting over a century and a half. Among linguistic disciplines they are the object of study of at least linguistic folklore studies, ethnolinguistics and onomastics. However, scholars from other fields do not always realise the distinctiveness of the object of study in each of them. The aim of the article is to describe the main tasks of onomastic studies in folklore. The object of study in folklore onomastics, unlike in other sciences, has to be typological regularities of organization, structuring and existence of the system of proper names in oral folk¬lore as an organic, specific part of national onym system and its ability to provide evidence about main tendencies and regularities of development and functioning of national system of naming.
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The poetics of Lina Kostenko, the outstanding modern poetess, the bright representative of the Ukrainian 1960s, is considered. The notion of truth in her poetic discourse as an identity for national constants is in the spotlight as the writer unfolds her position through a triad of dominants: humanity / nation / family, which determined the struggle of this literary generation against the totalitarian system, colonial dependence and human unification by official authorities’ patterns. The author traces the correlation of the concept of truth with the concepts of ideal, truth, justice, conscience, dignity / honour, harmony, goodness, sincerity / infallibility, experience. It is emphasized that by developing her own idea of the human home within history, Lina Kostenko defends the position of the artist’s national responsibility for this history. Therefore, in this context, the problem of the artist and power is also studied. The emphasis is placed on the poetics of irony, which acts as a certain mindset in Lina Kostenko’s artistic and aesthetic world, a way of self-defense and opposition to the world disharmony.
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Aside from 58 novels by Vasyl Tkachuk collected by his daughter, Olga Hoffman, from four published anthologies (Сині чічки, 1935; Золоті дзвінки, 1936; Зимова мельодія, 1938; Весна, 1940) and released by her in a single tome named Сині чічки (2013), twelve works by this forgotten novelist remain entirely unknown to most readers. In-depth analysis confirms that most of them don’t deviate in quality when compared to the works published in Tkachuk’s lifetime, in the aforementioned four anthologies. The novels may be traditional, sometimes even stereotypical in their themes, but at the same time, can surprise the reader when it comes to poetics and stylistics. Despite being conventional stories about village life set in the 1920s and 1930s (according to the 1930s critic Mykhailo Rudnytskyi, these were “humble rural pictures, touching to the core with their simplicity and primitivism”), the rich spectrum of stylistic and linguistic devices present there resulted in them being true gems of Ukrainian literature. Without a doubt, it can be said that these works maintain a form of continuity and thematic-stylistic unity with the anthologized legacy of Vasyl Tkachuk.
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The article is devoted to an analysis of the works of women writers from Central Ukraine during the 1920s and 1930s from the point of view of their cultural identification in the new Soviet reality. Currently, most of these women authors are unexplored and exist outside the literary canon. Feminist, cultural and sociological studies provide the theoretical framework for the article. The aim of the research is to find out how women’s literature from that time was positioned in the cultural and political space and the literary hierarchy. We distinguish three groups of women writers based on a study of their aesthetic basis and ideological beliefs, – Ukrainian writers, Proletarian writers, and Soviet writers. The first group was characterized by an appeal to modernist aesthetics and national issues. The work of the second group was inspired by proletarian aesthetics, themes of revolutionary struggle and women’s experience of various social groups. The work of the third group was based on the method of socialist realism, the theme of building a new Soviet reality, and the search for the place and role of women in the historical context.
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The article presents research on a very important problem, which has become extremely widespread in Ukrainian society and culture during the last years. It is a revision of memory as a constructive element of the contemporary Ukrainian national consciousness. The research is based on Serhij Osoka’s book Три лини для Марії (Three Tench for Mariia). The different stories included in the book are connected by the same strategy – rethinking the hero’s life experience, mostly that of his childhood. The main value of such a literary strategy is that the writer presents the personal memories of his hero against the background of collective memory. The last one shaped by the stories of people who have disappeared without a trace in the background of history.
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The article examines the features of depicting migration in modern Ukrainian literature. Serhiy Zhadan’s short stories from the collection Big Mac and Other Stories and Volodymyr Rafeenko’s novel Mondergrin are the object of the analysis. The theoretical model of migration discourse research is described. The main aspects of such research are highlighted, for example, the typology of the character as Alien/Other; identity crisis and the formation of a multi-layered complex identity through assimilation/differentiation; plot models of moving/escaping/losing “one’s own” or mastering “another’s space”; traumatic experience and search for “their” community. Based on the structural model of the story of exile (relocation, migration), the plots of internal and external movement in modern Ukrainian literature are analyzed. It is proved that the plots of external and internal movement in the prose of Serhiy Zhadan and Volodymyr Rafeenko reproduce the crisis of the character’s identity. These are plot collisions in which border/border situations are embodied, in which “one’s own” and “another’s” describe the relationship between man and the spatial image of the world, a new semiotic model of reality in which the migrant found himself.
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The article considers the basic principles of the development of a literary fairy tale in the epoch of Ukrainian romanticism. With the help of genetic, comparative, typological methods, and methods of analysis and synthesis, it is proved that Eugene Hrebinka’s fairy-tale prose is an original and innovative phenomenon in 19th-century Ukrainian literature, the artistic specificity of which consists in the synthesis of signs of magic story and lyricism, moral-didactic principles and folklore. The specificities of the problems and poetics of such stories by this author as The Terrible Beast, The Moon and the Sun, Stepmother and Young Lady are analyzed. It is determined that the fairy-tale works of Eugene Hrebinka are a holistic artistic unity, built on a common plot model, and on realizing the same type of artistic conflict, which is manifested in the clash of positive and negative characters.
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The article is based on refuting the thesis of Russian propaganda about Ukraine as an “artificial formation”, an “experimental” “creature of the Soviet era” (according to Vladimir Putin); it is on these theses that the Putin regime bases its encroachments on Ukrainian sovereignty. An unexpected assistant of Eastern propaganda is the methodology of Western constructivists, who present modern national identities as a “cultural construct”, “imagined communities” (Benedict Anderson), claiming that nationalism “makes up nations where they do not yet exist” (according to Ernest Gellner), and artificially “invents tradition” (Eric Hobsbawm and Tirence Ranger) and so on. Such views stem from an understanding of modern secularization and modernity in general as alternatives to medieval theocentrism, when in fact it was a search for the living presence of God in man and society; “Palingenesian” legitimation of nation-building; evangelization of democracy; sacralization of “freedom, equality, brotherhood” at the turn of the Middle Ages and modern history. The author of this article defends this thesis, resorting to the poetry of Taras Shevchenko and the program document of the Cyril and Methodius Brotherhood “Law of God (Genesis of the Ukrainian People)” – the first manifestation of modern Ukrainianness, which is aware of its own identity.
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The article outlines the main stages of the fate of the Ukrainian writer, translator and public figure Valeria O’Connor-Vilinska and the path of her novel „In Emigration” to the reader. The research on the Consul General’s wife as the author of a novel about Ukrainian diplomats is a part of the Women’s Face of Ukrainian Diplomacy project. It was initiated by the Scientific Society for the History of Diplomacy and International Relations in 2021 to mark the 30th anniversary of the restoration of state independence of Ukraine. Being published 75 years after the author’s death the literary work drew readers’ attention to little-known events in diplomatic history. At the same time the work contained consonant assessments of the painful problems of young diplomacy expressed in the memoirs of contemporaries. It is noted that the peculiarity of the novel is that it was based on the true history of the Ukrainian Consulate General in Zurich, her own life experience of the Consul General’s wife as a direct participant in the events.
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The article is dealing with peculiarities of the Ukrainian sonnet text during the period of almost three centuries. The accent is being given to the basic moments of poem creation in the works of the most prominent representatives of the Ukrainian literature, starting from the 30s of the 19th century till nowadays. The author shows a wide range of representations of classic sonnet poem, including different structure and meaning factors and approaches to the conception of canonic sonnet text. At the same time great attention is paid to numerous changes in poetic organization of the sonnet on different levels, to innovative attempts of poets to add the element of individual innovations to the sonnet, relying both on the experience of the poets of the previous epochs and on their own experience.
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The article deals with the topic of feminism in Ukr ainian literature in the period of the frontier. This is one of the leading themes of Ukrainian literature. For women the XIX century was a turning point. At first they manifested themselves in literary activity, later – in the fields of science, art, social, economic, political life of society. For the first time in U krainian literature Olga Kobylyanska raises the topic of emancipation of women from middle social strata. The issue of the women’s movement as a social phenomenon has attracted and continues to attract attention of many researchers. In Ukraine, as in other European countries, it became widespread in the second half of the XIX century. The initiators of the women’s movement advocated the need to give women equal rights with men in professional, social and political life.
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The article analyzes the issue of Disease in the literature and culture of Ukraine and the post-Soviet countries, edited by M. Zambrzycka, both in terms of theoretical content and exemplification of specific phenomena based on examples taken mainly from Ukrainian literature and culture, with one exception from Russian literature.
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The review is dev oted to the analysis of the monograph „Літературний образ дитинства в часи кризи ХХ–ХХІ ст.”, edyted by K. Jakubowska-Krawczyk, Warsaw 2021.
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The review is devoted to the analysis of the textbook: Marta Zambrzycka, Olena Novikova, Svitlana Romaniuk, Katarzyna Jakubowska-Krawczyk, Ukrainian culture for everyday life [Українська культура на щодень], part I, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München 2021; part II, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München 2022
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In recent years, we have witnessed crises in the world (financial, health, military) that announce new relationships, new redistribution of forces and new values. Will there be a twist? Is this something completely new for us or is it just a repetition of something that happened before? Hamvas is great Hungarian thinker who tries to answer many burning questions about Europe and the world by understanding the world. One of the topics to which he pays significant attention is the crisis. He approaches the problem in detail by analyzing the literature on crisis, crisis and catharsis, modern man and the crisis, man’s relationship with the inherited “great” culture, even tries to consider it from an astrological point of view in the essay “Aquarius”. Although his observations and thoughts date from the beginning of the 20th century, that is, the First and Second World Wars, they are still relevant today. Studying the literature on the crisis through the works of many thinkers, philosophers, theologians, writers he is making conclusions that are quite current and applicable even today. Béla Hamvas has a precise line of thinking, without a definition that is logically deduced, his thoughts overflow the reader through the feelings, but at the same time it is sufficiently precise to be understandable to the modern man.
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The paper analyzes the problem of women’s presence in the intertextual space of Ukrainian literature in the 1920s. As the object of the study, we take the works of writers who participated in the literary life of Soviet Ukraine. In the first part of the study, the peculiarities of the intertextual representation of the works of women writers in the male writer’s works are highlighted. In the second part, it is clarified how women writers appeal to the works of representatives of their gender. In the “male” segment of the intertextual space of the 1920s, various types of intertextemes borrowed from the works of 218 writers were marked: here we have only 8 women to mention: Lesia Ukrainka, Marko Vovchok, Maria Zahirnia, Sappho, Harriet Beecher Stowe, George Sand, Mihri Hatun, and Anna Akhmatova. It was found that male authors appeal to the works of women writers in the following situations: 1) when it comes to life spheres recognized as purely feminine, in particular, love (George Sand, Sappho, and Mihri Hatun); 2) if the works of women writers have gained significant resonance and are associated in the reader’s mind with an important social problem (Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe); 3) when the work of a female writer is included in the literary canon (Marko Vovchok and Lesia Ukrainka); 4) under the influence of literary fashion (Anna Akhmatova); 5) the choice of intertextemes is also influenced by the writers’ personal reading preferences (Maria Zahirnia). The most common types of intertextual interaction are allusions and reminiscences related to the literary reputation of a certain author, specifics of her creative work reception. There were also two epigraphs noted (from the works of Lesia Ukrainka and Mihri Hatun) and two examples of hyperintertextuality (artistic transformation of the works of Lesia Ukrainka and Sappho).
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Ukraine’s Many Faces: Land, People, and Culture Revisited. Edited by Olena Palko and Manuel Ferez Gil. Bielefeld: transcript, 2023. 399 pp. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839466643
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