Abstract
The article discusses the literary-critical and national political activity of the outstanding Ukrainian poet and states figure Yevhen Malaniuk, using a corpus of his literary-critical essays. The author analyzes the oeuvre of diasporic writers in comparison with that of indigenous Ukrainian poets and prosaists who lived under the yoke of ideological prejudices and persecutions of the Soviet era, a symbiosis of “socialist realism” with stillborn “modernism”. Yearning for their homeland, Ukrainian diasporic writers created images of Ukraine the Vision, Ukraine the Dream, Ukraine the Goal, and an ideological political myth of a nation state. Yevhen Malaniuk fulfilled this philosophical and political objective brilliantly. His mythological thinking generated the concept of Ukraine the Hellas as a phenomenon of global importance. From his perspective, only by the glorious heroics of patriots and passionaries is it possible to foster national awareness. However, even with titans such as Taras Shevchenko, Bohdan Khmelnytskyi, Ivan Mazepa, and Symon Petliura, Ukrainian society was nevertheless unable to grasp such heroic endeavors adequately. Outstanding Ukrainian cultural activists never succeeded in viewing reality from a critical perspective. The poet debunks Russian colonialism and castigates Russian pro-imperial literature, the “split” Hohol, the chauvinistic propaganda of Russian culture. Yevhen Malaniuk’s oeuvre is seen as occupying a unique role in our literature
Highlights
A special cohort of Ukrainian writers of the early-to-mid 20th century, who are regarded as creators of the Ukrainian literary modernist diaspora, constituted the backbone of Ukrainian culture since their stoicism eliminated the possibility of the Ukrainian nation bowing under the intolerable yoke of adversity
The consolidating vitalistic literary myth of a future Ukraine created by this cohort of writers is a unique, albeit non-accidental, phenomenon
Ukrainian indigenous literature was a priori incapable of such a surge, not in the least because it was lacking in literary masters
Summary
A special cohort of Ukrainian writers of the early-to-mid 20th century (first and foremost Yevhen Malaniuk, Oleh Olzhych, Ulas Samchuk, Todos Osmachka, Ivan Bahrianyi, Vasyl Barka), who are regarded as creators of the Ukrainian literary modernist diaspora, constituted the backbone of Ukrainian culture since their stoicism eliminated the possibility of the Ukrainian nation bowing under the intolerable yoke of adversity. The consolidating vitalistic literary myth of a future Ukraine created by this cohort of writers is a unique, albeit non-accidental, phenomenon. Ukrainian indigenous literature was a priori incapable of such a surge, not in the least because it was lacking in literary masters. The pen of indigenous Ukrainian masters (such as the fearless novella writer Mykola Khvylovyi; the unique author of Soniachni Klarnety (Clarinets of the Sun) Pavlo Tychyna; the phenomenal pioneer of the Ukrainian poetic cinema Oleksandr Dovzhenko, whose ideas were implemented by Serhii Paradzhanov in as late as the 60s; 70 Olha Slonovska the erudite writer Pavlo Zahrebelnyi) was much sharper, more virtuosic and precise than that of all the above-mentioned diasporic writers. The main reason was a monstrous symbiosis of “socialist realism” with “stillborn” modernism, which was formed because the latter was killed in embryo by Soviet literary criticism with the help of numerous bans, threats, warnings, censorship
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