If really “without school and inheritors”?

Abstract

The paper analyzes the return of Bohdan Ihor Antonych’s name to the literature after several decades of suppression and prohibition by the Soviet totalitarian regime. The author also focuses on the interpretation of the poet’s work in Ukrainian and foreign literary studies.
 The researcher points out the following historical and cultural factors: partial liberalization of the communist regime in the Soviet Union; high appreciation of Antonych’s work by leading poets and literary critics in Ukraine and the Ukrainian diaspora; translations of works into foreign languages, in particular, Slavic ones; the influence of the poet’s work on the generations of the 1960s—1980s.
 Special attention is paid to the cooperation of American scholars and translators Watson Kirkconnell and Constantine H. Andrysyshen in translating the Ukrainian poet’s texts into English.
 The researcher traces the changes in views on Antonych’s poetry: the claims that he was a talented poet who did not have time to fully realize his talent due to his early death were eventually substituted by recognition of his poetry’s kinship with the works of Western European modernist poets such as R. M. Rilke, T. S. Eliot, F. G. Lorca, Cz. Miłosz.
 The paper also highlights the discussion on the stylistic dominant of Antonych’s poetry and focuses on the elements of different literary movements, namely futurism, imagism, and surrealism. It is emphasized that the poet was not only interested in the issues of style but also shaped the different styles of the time with his special features. He characterized impressionism as the relation of color to light, pointed out the idea of movement in futurism, focused on the geometric outlines of real objects in cubism, appreciated pure harmony of geometric patterns in suprematism. Moreover, Antonych’s poetry was related to creating myths, based on the tradition of the national folklore worldview.