The image of Grinchenko in the journalism of the MUR

Abstract

Borys Grinchenko's creativity was evaluated differently during the 20th century. In the USSR, official science praised him, and then forbade recollection of him. The period of the 1940s is important from this perspective, since it is possible to see how Grinchenko was evaluated by emigrants at the time of the official ban. The Ukrainian artistic movement (1945–1948, MUR) was a powerful surge in the activity of artists-emigrants.By the end of the 1920s, historians of Ukrainian literature (I. Franko, S. Yefremov, O. Barvinskyi) placed Grinchenko in the context of the “Eighties” generation. There he was given the prominent place of “the first professional writer on Ukraine”. The main principle of constructing such stories was the generation theory. Therefore, the researchers observed that Grinchenko was close to the “Seventies”, but placed him in another generation.MUR was not a monolithic entity. There have always been discussions and different groups in it. However, the analysis conducted shows that the participants of the movement highly appreciated the inheritance of Grinchenko. They gave his work an important place in the educational movement. Yu. Shevelov and V. Petrov clearly denied the inability of Grinchenko’s poetry to develop in the direction of modernism.The main historical and literary principle in the 1940s is the stylistic. Therefore, the participants of the MUR consider Grinchenko not as a representative of the generation, but as the bearer of certain style dominants. According to their estimates, the achievements of European realistic prose of the 19th century embodied in Grinchenko's prose. In the journalistic statements of representatives of various groups of the MUR, he appears as a marker of the end of the pre-modern period of Ukrainian literature.The article presents the strokes for the portrait of Borys Grinchenko in Ukrainian literary criticism. Such a portrait should be written, taking into account all stages of the formation of his image during the 20th century.