Dialogue of the forever living (diary entries of Oleksandr Dovzhenko and Yevhen Sverstiuk in the context of the 20th – 21st centuries)

Abstract

In the proposed philosophical-Ukrainian studies, and therefore – literary studies as an integral part of Ukrainian studies, the study examines the understanding of the deep beginnings of the tragic history of Ukraine and Ukrainianism. The constant principles of the spiritual-intellectual and all-time-essential Resistance defined by him in the totalitarian realities of the 1930s–50s, which were unprecedentedly cruel to Ukrainians, are outlined. The phenomenon of O. Dovzhenko as a visible confirmation of such Ukrainian spiritual-intellectual and material Resistance is undeniable. Philosophical and Ukrainian studies and reflections of Ye. Sverstiuk, in which the phenomenon of O. Dovzhenko’s resistance to the foreign Ukrainian identity of the reality of Moscow-communist totalitarianism is thoroughly and uncommittedly studied, is a visible testimony of this. In the same way, Dovzhenko’s memories-visions-reflections, which are studied in this studio, are prognostic-perspective for Ukraine and Ukrainianness. Dovzhenko’s diary visions – «dreams» often not only stated the Ukrainian realities of the occupation-imperial context, but also worldview and artistically preceded the works of world-famous creators of dystopias such as George Orwell with the dystopia novel «1984» written in 1949. Dovzhenko’s «Dream», recorded in a diary entry dated August 16, 1945, is not only a direct reference to Shevchenko’s classic poem «Dream», in which the axiological philosophy of «dreams and dreams» was manifested on a large scale long before Z. Freud, but is dystopian in by its nature. The phenomenon of Dovzhenko as a transcendental artist-thinker who overcomes the borders and transience of eras can be traced in the proposed studio in view of his perspective worldview and worldview. Ye. Sverstiuk’s ideas, revealed in his diary entries published in 2018 under the telling title «Eternal Longing for the Real», not only comprehensively update O. Dovzhenko worldview and poetic universals, but also excavate their meaning in the still-unexplored expanse of Ukrainian studies. The dialogue between O. Dovzhenko and Ye. Sverstiuk continues, and the contextually determined remarks in this dialogue are, at first glance, unexpected statements from the memoirs of the Ukrainian state-builder, historian, minister of foreign affairs of the Hetmanate era, D. Doroshenko, and, quite unexpectedly, a letter from a friend of A. Tolstoy, the author of the novel «Peter the First» by A. Radin, dated 1933, in which he testifies that only participation in the productions of the then half-repressed Ukrainian director Les Kurbas in Moscow theaters can save the theatrical life of Russia. This cultural context is also a powerful and still unexplained universe of continued dialogue between the eternally living. But also in this dialogue of the eternally living Poets – artists-thinkers of the 20th century – V. Svidzinskyi and V. Symonenko participate. Their conceptual visions are immanently consonant with the comprehensive Ukrainian-centric and Ukrainian-scientific creative semiospheres of O. Dovzhenko and Ye. Sverstiuk.