THE UZHHOROD PERIOD AS THE PINNACLE OF DMYTRO KREMIN’S CREATIVITY

Abstract

The paper explores the early (Uzhhorod) period of Dmytro Kremin’s (1953–2019) creative work. He was a prominent Ukrainian poet of the second half of the 20th and early 21st century, a laureate of Taras Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine (2019). In particular, the study deals with the 1974 self-publishing collection of four poems-symphonies and the ‘documentary poem’ “Gerstein’s Memorandum”, which were printed in full and reached a wider readership only in the 2021 edition of the poet’s works. The formal-semantic characteristics of the poetic texts synthesize elements of many avant-garde and modernist artistic trends, such as expressionism, symbolism, neo-baroque, neorealism, imagism, etc. The dominant among them is the poetics of surrealism. Poems-symphonies constructed as an associative combination of poetic visions, bizarre images, motifs, and more, serve as exemplars of non-referential lyrics. The poet spontaneously changes the emotional tempo of narration, combining verses with varying syllable counts, verlibre, syllabic-tonic and tonic poems, and even incorporating prose poems. Additionally, he creates unique rhymes and rhyming schemes, etc. The use of all these techniques led to accusations of ‘incomprehensibility’ against D. Kremin, resulting in a limited circle of enthusiasts who appreciate his lyrical and lyre-epic works. In the early works of Dmytro Kremin, there were no dissident motifs or harsh criticism of the system. Nevertheless, the pathos, mood of the poems, their content and form went beyond commonly accepted norms and testified to complete freedom of creativity. For this reason, the poet faced persecution and left Uzhhorod. He became estranged from his circle of friends and deprived of opportunities to thoroughly fulfil his literary pursuits.
 Based on the analysis and the opinions of the poet’s contemporaries, the author of the paper claims that the Uzhhorod period is the pinnacle achievement of D. Kremin’s creative work. This conclusion is corroborated by self-evaluations of the poet himself.