Pisarz poza ojczyzną: sylwetka Jurija Szewelowa

Abstract

In the second half of the 1940s, Ukrainian literature outside of Soviet Ukraine experienced an unusually intensive period of development in the Displaced Person’s camps in western Germany and Austria. Thrown together from various regions of Ukraine, writers managed to develop an amazing literary activity. A key role in this period was played by one of the most important Ukrainian émigré scholar, literary critic and essayist – Yuryii Shevelov (born on 17 December 1908 in Kharkiv, died 12 April 2002 in New York.) Having emigrated to Germany in 1944, he taught at the Ukrainian Free University in Münich (1946–9) and obtained a doctorate there (1949). He was also a vice-president of the MUR literary association (1945–8) and edited a monthly journal Arka. Shevelov is the author of some 500 articles, reviews, and books on Slavic philology and linguistics and the history of literature. He was one of the organizers of émigré literary life in Germany after the Second World War. In the postwar period Yurii Shevelov (pseud: Yu. Sherekh) has been the most infl uential literary critic within the Ukrainian émigré community in the West. In his articles in the journal Arka (1947–8) he formulated the principles of a ‘national-organic style’ and stimulated a lively discussion that continued for some time. Another émigré critic, Volodymyr Derzhavyn, produced articles that combined the Neoclassicist and modernist approaches. They both began a discussion that contributed to a revival of postwar Ukrainian literature. The principal intellectual discord between them was an understanding of what “national” means and what kind of tradition should serve as a “source of revival” for Ukrainian culture in exile. His numerous articles in the fi eld of literature and literary criticism were collected in Ne dlia ditei (Not for Children, 1964), Druha cherha: literatura, teatr, ideolohiï (The Second Round: Literature, Theater, Ideologies, 1978), and Tretia storozha (The Third Watch, 1991). Most of these essays were reprinted in Kharkiv in 1998 in a two-volume edition Porohy i zaporizhzhia (The Rapids and zaporizhzhia).