On the approaches to an adequate historiography

Abstract

The article is devoted to clarifying the essential features of the historiography of Ukrainian literature, which arose on the basis of stories, acquired the meaning of their integration, and comprehended the regularity of historical thinking. To this purpose, an analytical review of the formation and development of the history of Ukrainian literature is made — from the literary and critical publications of Osyp Bodianskyi, Mykola Kostomarov and others, gradual structuring through trial and error in the publications of Mykola Petrov, Omelian Ohonovskyi, who resorted either to ideological and stylistic eclecticism or to prioritisation of the biobibliographical method, raised the question of the essence of the history of literature (Ivan Franko). Serhii Yefremov’s «Istoriia ukrainskoho pysmenstva (History of Ukrainian Literature)» became the first fundamental author’s history with a consistent chromatic series, with the concept of the primacy of ideas over the figurative system, and a sociological understanding of the role of literature. The article traces the evolution of scientific thought from extra-artistic engagement to an immanent understanding of literature as an art, starting with the history of Mykhailo Hrushevsky, corresponding to the provisions of Oleksandr Potebnia’s psycholinguistics and Volodymyr Peretz’s philological school. Such a view, conditioned by literary realities, was emphasised by Mykola Zerov, substantiated by Mykola Hnatyshak, and universalised by Dmytro Chyzhevsky. They presented a new type of history of Ukrainian literature with distinct features of historiosophy. Mykola Hnatyshak and Dmytro Chyzhevsky integrated it into the concept of a wave-like binary literary process, proposed a periodisation adequate to the changing genre and style searches based on the principle of «simple» (idea) to «complex» (metaphor) and, on the contrary, consonant with the European cultural world, and identified (Dmytro Chyzhevsky) the baroque psychotype dominant in the Ukrainian mentality. Each of the author’s stories presents a certain angle of view on the dynamics of literary life, and requires comparison in order to reveal a common understanding of the problem, which is important for historiographical studies, at the intersection of their segments on the principle of overlapping hermeneutical circles. In contrast to previous concepts, the author of the article proposes a history not of biographies or extra-artistic factors, but of literary texts in their immanent characteristics, contexts, chronological coordinates, using the technique of close reading, in the guideline of overcoming the time- spatial distance between the text (author) and the recipient (historiographer).