LITERARY WORK OF THE UKRAINIAN GALICIAN LAWYERS AT THE END OF THE XIX – BEGINNING OF THE XX CENTURY

Abstract

Summary. The purpose of the article is to analyse literary heritage of the Ukrainian lawyers who dealt with literature, to present an overview of its sense and essence with their professional work as a background. The paper aims at disclosing different genres of their literary activity, as well as their creative authenticity. The paper sheds light on the personalities whose literary works were long forgotten due to the Soviet propaganda of the former era. The methodology of the research relies on the historic and objective principles. It includes the historical, historical-comparative, biographical, behavioural, and contrastive methods. The scientific novelty of the paper is revealed by the need to determine and systemize the role and place of the lawyers-writers in the cultural life of Galicia at the turn of two centuries, to understand peculiarities of their professional and creative work and to comprehend their perception of national ideas with their further embodiment in literature. Conclusions. The turn of the XIX–XX centuries introduced a new socio-professional stratum to the public arena of Western lands which were under the Austro-Hungarian Empire rule, and this stratum consisted of the Ukrainian lawyers. Not only its representatives, particularly lawyers, acted as legal defenders of national and civil rights of their compatriots in the local courts, they also took leading positions in the Ukrainian political and public life of Eastern Galicia, and fought for the rights of Ukrainians in both the Austrian Parliament and the Diet of Galicia and Lodomeria. Besides their professional, political and social activity, a significant part of Galician lawyers (as all representatives of the legal professions were called back then) became famous because of their cultural and creative activities which were not a part of their working routine but part-time activities or hobbies. A lot of them took to creative writing as a means of expressing their ideas, and they works appeared in various genres of literature: scientific, journalistic, fiction (poetics, prose, etc.), representing their worldview and beliefs. The list of the well-known literary figures of that time includes such people as an ethnographer and folklorist M. Buchynsky, writers L. Martovych, I. Semanyuk, A. Tchaikovsky, poets M. Kichura and M. Kozoris, a publicist and one of the first Ukrainian futurists A. Kos, literary critics and editors V. Levitsky and M. Mochulsky and others. In fact, literary work was a complementary component of their way of life, a way of self-expression, as their main activity was legal work. Their literary work was an important component of life, a way of self-expression, which complemented their main legal work in a way. Their literary works depicted bitter reality of that time and hard life of fellow stateless people. Yet, they also served to show the best features of Ukrainians in literature.