Philosophy of Overcoming as a Constant of Creative Thinking of Lesia Ukrainka

Abstract

The article explores the philosophy of overcoming in the Lesia Ukrainka’s creative work. This constant of the author’s artistic thinking is consistent with the meaning of “existentialist humanism” according to Sartre, who postulates the existence of man in the world, not introversion. The key to understanding the Lesia Ukrainka’s philosophy of overcoming is the poetry “Contra spem spero!” The artistic reception of the author of the myth of Sisyphus agrees with her understanding of Camus, however, unlike the French philosopher, Lesia Ukrainka sees the meaning of life in the movement to goal, creativity. Another cornerstone of Lesia Ukrainka’s philosophy of overcoming is a resistance to national enslavement and spiritual slavery. The writer dedicates a num-ber of dramatic poems on biblical and mythological themes to this topic, in which the existential mode of national enslavement is projected onto the realities of the author’s day. Lesia Ukrainka reflects the overcoming the “existential vacuum” (Frankl) by heroes, their acquisition of harmony with world through death in her dramas “The Noble Woman [boiarynia]”, “The Forest Song [lisova pisnia]”, and “The Blue Rose [blakytna troianda]”. Studying the philosophy of overcoming in the Lesia Ukrainka’s artistic reception ascertains once again that her creative work, philosophic discourse assonant, on one hand, with the Western European thought of the late 19th – early 20th centuries, and, on the other hand, an original phenomenon in the Ukrainian literature of the outlined period due to projection of individual existence of the poetess.