How Terribly the Plow of History Plows...

Abstract

In the poetry of the prominent Ukrainian writer Lina Kostenko, the category of “historical memory” is conceptualized in ontological and philosophical dimensions: her philosophical discourses on history and the nation are built on this foundation. By “trying on” eternity (with the manifest: “I am floating into life from eternity”), she comes to philosophical self-awareness and artistic reflection of history, with vivid and convincing motifs / collisions / concepts / plots / images. In her epic poems, she measures human existence throughout epochs through the triad of the dominants of humanity / nation / family, giving each of them nation-building meanings. Her time is always anthropological, with an expressive psychological “face”, heavy with tragedy and endowed with a potential for the future. Her lyrical pieces have the same temporal tint. Through an inte- gral conceptual sphere, in which the category of time remains fundamental (dramatic poems and ballads Skifska Odisseia [Scythian Odyssey], Marusia Churai, Berestechko, Duma pro brativ neazovskykh [A duma on brothers other than the Azov ones], Snih u Florentsii [Snow in Florence], and a number of poems), Lina Kostenko tries to embrace the temporal and anthropological paradigm of man-history-man with her artistic imagination, where the problems of individual and national identity are given primary importance. In this context of the historically conditioned formation of national and national-cultural identity, she unfolds her own idea of a person’s home within history, especially national history, while professing the principle of “simultaneity of non-simultaneities” (R. Kozellek) of a series of past events. The author examines certain “semantic circles” of the writer’s narrative, discovering new semantic historio- sophical projections that in Kostenko’s works eventually form a coherent, verified anthropocentric conceptual model of the decisive role of the individual in the historical progress of the nation, showing, with the help of artistic and figurative means, how she creates the historical and psychological canvas of past events / collisions / interpretations that set the direction for the future. At the same time, the author emphasizes that the poet always upholds the position of the artist’s ultimate accountability in the face of national history.