European Influence in Ukrainian Modernist Prose

Abstract

The notion of an important European influence on Ukrainian modernist literature is a fixed postulate among literary scholars. Modernism, it would appear, is the Europeanization of Ukrainian literature after the cloistered provinciality of the realist era. The erosion of populist ideology and the gradual attenuation of realist canons were accompanied by new ideas, techniques, and perspectives from western Europe. Indeed, the changes were in part a result of this European influence. However, this notion exists at the cost of an injustice to the facts. It is my purpose here to examine some of the specific elements of this European influence1 in a few examples of Ukrainian modernist prose. The difference between Ukrainian realist prose and its modernist continuation cannot be explained by the sheer presence or absence of influences from western Europe. Ukrainian realist prose of the late nineteenth century is traditionally viewed from a nativist perspective. Such a view is justified in a thematic and political context, but it is not appropriate in evaluating the historical and aesthetic peculiarities of the prose from this period. Lacking folkloric antecedents, the realist novel in Ukraine was spared the self-centered immutability that weighed down Ukrainian poetry in the post-Shevchenko period. The novels of Ivan Nechui Levyts'kyi, Panas Myrnyi, and Ivan Franko are certainly not wildly innovative, but they often show a dependency on European sources, particularly in their subjects. Panas Mymyi often focuses on the moral slide from righteousness to criminality. Poviia (The Prostitute), his novel about a village girl who becomes a prostitute, was likely influenced by Zola's Nana. Myrnyi's approach to and treatment of this subject are very different from Zola's, but the similarity of subjects underscores the parallels in cultural climate. Ivan Franko' s novels are more clearly indebted to Emile Zola. Boa Constrictor and Boryslav smiieVsia (Boryslav is Laughing) derive elements