AENEAS, THE CULTURAL FATHER AND SPIRIT IN VIRGIL, DANTE AND KOTLIAREV’SKY

Abstract

The purpose of this comparative analysis of the three poets separated by time, languages, ethnicity and history is to defi ne their shared European cultural identity and continental belonging. The paper underscores Europeannes of Virgil, the Mantua, Dante, the Florentine, and Kotlliarevs’ky from Poltava whose common roots take them in the Graeco-Roman antiquity. Aeneas, the legendary Homeric character, happens to be their common cultural and poetic foundation, the “spiritual father.” The pagan Graeco-Roman past is the source of inspiration for the late Roman Virgil of Etruscan descent, Dante, the Renaissance bard, and Kotliarevs’ky, the citizen of the Russian Empire of Ukrainian origin, and they all are products of “mingling and mixing” who share European common cultural identity. If Virgil links the Etruscan and Greek past in late Rome, or Dante echoes the Latin past during the Renaissance, Kotliarevs’ky, detached from the Renaissance Europe, manages to fi nd his kinship with Virgil and Dante via the Graeco-Roman antiquity. All the three poets ponder over cultural destinies of various people, over life and death, survival of some cultures and death of others. Acknowledging the youthfulness of his ethnic history, Kotliarevs’ky does not bemoan it, neither does he look for the impossible or non-existing roots. He has a philosophical gaze at history, celebrating reality without the traumatizing genealogical anxiety of his romantic and confused time. Instead of constructing the artifi cial cultural particularity, Kotliarevs’ky joins the continental discourse about remembering some and forgetting others, i.e. remembering Greece and Rome at the expense of Etruria, Phoenicia, Judea et al. The motif of blood and kinship, the universal preoccupation of humanity, gets the analytical poetic dissection in Virgil, Dante and Kotliarevs’ky who defi ne the meaning of Euiropeannes in mixing and mingling instead of dwelling on particularities. The Ukrainian author attaches himself to the body of European culture via antiquity. His cultural stand deviates from the Romantic ethos of glorifi ed particularity of his day, as well as from the 20th-century future neo-Romantics, for that matter and with their general unproductive preoccupation with the imagined allegedly unique and separate collective Self. The selected poetic triad under scrutiny also examines the gulf between the Religious and the Sacred. Religion is interpreted as a negation of true civility and reasonableness. Key words: antiquity, pagan(ism), secular(ism), cultural identity, collective memory, cultural property, cultural lineage, symbiosis, civilized, savage, cycle, cultural mentors.