“COUNTRY BORDERING WITH GOD”: CHANGES IN RILKE’S AWARENESS UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF THE JOURNEYS TO UKRAINE

Abstract

The article clarifies the problem of the East Slavic world influence on the awareness of the famous Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke as a result of the journeys he made in 1899 and 1900 around Russia and Ukraine. Acquaintance with ancient Russian culture, with works of famous Ukrainian and Russian writers, poets, artists, with Ukrainian history influenced the poet’s outlook. Kobzar by Taras Shevchenko was very important for Rilke. The impressions gained during the travels around Ukraine caused a radical break in the poet’s work and changed his outlook. Was proved that, while trying to find Rilke’s place among the schools, currents, trends of the late nineteenth – early twentieth centuries, researchers of his work “attribute him to the symbolists, the neo-romantics, the impressionists or the expressionists. The truth is that living and creating in a turbulent (in terms of artistic search) time at the turn of the century, Rilke is a unique artist.