Yuri Andrukhovych Research Articles

THE TRANSLATOR’S SENSIBILITY IN MAKING SENSE OUT OF TEXTS

The role of a translator in rendering literary texts is often underestimated, yet it is crucial in reshaping the essence of the original work into a new linguistic and cultural context. This article delves into the intricate realm of the translator’s sensibility, emphasizing the translator’s pivotal position as not merely a conduit but as a co-author, a collaborator in the recreation of the source text in the target language. This collaborative effort demands a profound understanding of both the source and target cultures, as well as a keen sensitivity to nuances of language and expression. Central to this discussion is the notion of the translator’s visibility, a concept illuminated by Lawrence Venuti’s seminal work on translation theory. While traditional views often advocate for the translator’s invisibility, this article challenges that perspective, arguing for a recognition of the translator’s creative agency and presence in the translated text. Examining translations of iconic works such as Mykola Hohol’s "Taras Bulba" and J.K. Rowling’s "Harry Potter," alongside the author’s own experiences in selecting and translating texts, provides a rich tapestry of insights into the complexities of the translation process. Through the lens of these diverse works, including poetry by Lina Kostenko, Yuri Andrukhovych’s novel "Perverzion," and Hryhoriy Kvitka-Osnovyanko’s "The Witch of Konotop," the article elucidates the intricate interplay between the translator's personal sensibilities and the demands of the text. foregrounding the translator's role as a co-creator, this article invites a reevaluation of the translation process, recognizing it not as a mere act of linguistic conversion, but as a dynamic and creative endeavor shaped by the unique sensibilities and artistic vision of the translator. In doing so, it sheds light on the transformative power of translation in bridging cultures and enriching literary landscapes

THE ORIGINS OF THE CINEMATIC NATURE OF THE UKRAINIAN POSTMODERN NOVEL

The article is devoted to the search for the origins of cinematicity as one of the components of the postmodern novel’s poetics. Intermediality is recognised as one of the mechanisms of genre originality of the postmodern novel, and the influence of cinema and cinematic poetics is the most powerful. The cinematic perception of reality is identified as characteristic of Ukrainian postmodernists. The article puts forward a hypothesis about the rootedness of the experimental nature of the postmodern novel as one of the important aspects of poetics in the plane of futurism aesthetics. The author reviews the aspects of cinema’s influence on the futurist novel. The techniques borrowed from film poetics and used in Ukrainian postmodern novelism are singled out and compared with similar techniques used in futurist novelism. The object of the analysis is the novels “Arche” by L. Deresch and “Depesh Mod” by S. Zhadan. On the basis of the novels “The Censor of Dreams” by Yuriy Vynnychuk, “Mesopotamia” by S. Zhadan, and “Perversia” by Yuri Andrukhovych, the mechanisms of literary adaptation of cinematic techniques and methods are traced. The author examines such aspects of cinematic poetics as screenwriting, editing, use of titles, images of light and illumination, colours and their combinations, use of interior and portrait descriptions, artistic detail and frame thinking

The Secret by Yuri Andrukhovych: An autobiographical novel in the form of an interview

The Secret by Yuri Andrukhovych: An autobiographical novel in the form of an interview

Digital poetics of contemporary Ukrainian literature: specifics of the QR code

In recent years, due to the constant need for quick access to virtual reality, the QR code has become one of the most important digital technologies. Today, it is actively used in various spheres of human activity, for example, the distribution of advertising or the creation of artistic works, including fiction books by Ukrainian authors. As a result, we can observe changes in the structure of classical literary genres and in the text itself. Thus, the relevance of the study lies in the need to comprehend the QR code as a new phenomenon in contemporary Ukrainian literature in the context of digimodernist poetics. This study aims to analyze the possibilities of using QR codes in contemporary Ukrainian literature and determine what materials they are used to access in prose and poetry. The object of the study is the collection of poems “Artery” by Dmytro Lazutkin, the novels “Radio Night” by Yuri Andrukhovych, “Footprints on the Road” by Valerii Markus (Ananiev), and “Mozart 2.0” by Dorje Batuu. The subject of the study is QR codes placed in these works. The study uses comparative, intermedial, and structuralist methods of analysis. The results of the study show that the validity of using a QR code depends on its location in the printed text, as well as on what information can be obtained by scanning it. A QR code can be printed on the front cover of a book (“Mozart 2.0” by D. Batuu), on the back cover of a book (“Radio Night” by Yu. Andrukhovych) or inside the book next to the text fragment to which it refers (“Mozart 2.0” by D. Batuu), on a page with an illustration next to a poem (“Artery” by D. Lazutkin), or as a link at the bottom of the page (“Footprints on the Road” by V. Markus). Usually, the information encoded in a QR code contains a link to a page on the Internet with additional visual, audio, or textual materials posted on it. The novelty of the research results lies in the identification of the main functions of additional materials that can be accessed after scanning a QR code in a literary work: interactive, illustrative, informative and plot-forming. Further research prospects may be related, in particular, to the analysis of the QR code as a new phenomenon in printed dramatic works, since this article has considered only prose and poetry.

Love in Defiance of Pain: Ukrainian Stories by Ali Kinsella

Reviewed by: Love in Defiance of Pain: Ukrainian Stories by Ali Kinsella Irene Zabytko Love in Defiance of Pain: Ukrainian Stories Ed. Ali Kinsella, Zenia Tompkins & Ross Ufberg Trans. Various. Dallas. Deep Vellum. 2022. 328 pages. WELL BEFORE THE current Russian invasion provided a global spotlight on Ukraine, contemporary Ukrainian writers were forging their own literary territories that autonomously identify them and their country. Love in Defiance of Pain: Ukrainian Stories handsomely showcases many of the best Ukrainian writers (in English translations) with stories that are not about the current war but nevertheless exhibit Ukrainians confronting universal themes of life and death, love and betrayal, war and peace. This is a fiction anthology, but the sixteen writers in the collection are also well-known poets, essayists, filmmakers, activists, and now soldiers. Among them is filmmaker and writer Oleg Sentsov, who was originally imprisoned by the Russians for speaking out against Crimea’s annexation in 2014 and is currently in the Ukrainian army. His story, “Grandma,” is a deft character analysis of a poor, burdensome husk of an older woman whom nobody likes, least of all her family—a sad narrative that is often true of the babysi (grandmothers). Stanislav Aseyev was kidnapped and imprisoned in Donetsk in 2014. His moving war story “The Bell” is about a returning soldier haunted by the sound of a bell that he needs to confront. Olena Stiazhkina’s novel excerpt features a man rescuing the unclaimed body of his lover’s husband during the earlier Russian occupation in eastern Ukraine. Certainly, love is another major theme. Oksana Zabuzhko and Natalka Sniadanko both write about girlhood crushes and ultimate betrayals. Whimsy underscores love in fables by Kateryna Kalytko and Sophia Andrukhovych, while Artem Chapeye’s “The Ukraine” (published recently in the New Yorker) is a poignant reminiscence of a couple’s last travels together. Ukrainians in other countries find themselves in Vasyl Makhno’s “Brooklyn, Forty-Second Street,” about a fake green-card marriage, and Tanja Maljartschuk’s “Frogs in the Sea,” in which an undocumented Ukrainian befriends a dementia-stricken woman in Germany. Humor is a welcome counterbalance in stories like Sashko Ushkalov’s “Panda,” about the narrator’s reincarnation as a panda; Yuri Andrukhovych’s treatise on a sixteenth-century scoundrel; and Serhiy Zhadan’s send-up of inept businessmen establishing the first gay bar in Ukraine. Stories by Kateryna Babkina, Oksana Lutsyshyna, and Taras Prokhasko round out this outstanding and significant collection of Ukrainian fiction. Proceeds from the sale of this collection will be donated to humanitarian efforts in Ukraine. Irene Zabytko Orlando, Florida Copyright © 2022 World Literature Today

Ukraine's Quest for Identity: Embracing Cultural Hybridity in Literary Imagination, 1911–2011

Ukraine's Quest for Identity: Embracing Cultural Hybridity in Literary Imagination, 1911–2011

АНАЛІТИЧНИЙ ОГЛЯД СУЧАСНОЇ УКРАЇНСЬКОЇ ЛІТЕРАТУРИ

The article gives a brief analytical overview of modern Ukrainian literature; presents the literary career of several bright, in our opinion, artists, who represent different geographical regions of Ukraine and also different generations of writers. The author of the article made an attempt to analyze the literary works by Lina Kostenko (the first prose novel, The Notes of a Ukrainian Madman, 2011), by Yuri Andrukhovych (collection of essays “Here was buried Fantomas”, 2015), by Lys Volodymyr (novel-chronicle “Jacob’s century”, 2010 and “Solo for Solomiya”, 2013),·by Yuri Vynnychuk (novel “Tango of death”, 2012), by Irene Rozdobudko (“LSD. Lyceum of obedient wives”, 2013), by Maria Matios (novels “Hardly ever otherwise”, 2007), by Yevgeniya Kononenko (novel “Imitation”, 2001), by Jana Dubinyanska (novels “The ghosts’ wives”, 2003). Emphasis is placed on the importance of studying these works in secondary and higher educational institutions of Ukraine, as they present existential issues relevant to our time, and, what is very important, show the true history of Ukraine, hidden for decades. The works depict the realities of Ukrainian life since Austro- Hungarian times to the totalitarian regime of the USSR, in particular , the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power station, its consequences and reaction of the Soviet government to this tragedy, the Cold War between America and the USSR and more. The originality of life and worldview of Ukrainians in Galicia (Yu. Vynnychuk), Polissya (V. Lys), Bukovyna (M. Matios) is illustrated. The modern issues in the works of Yu. Andrukhovych and Lina Kostenko, that is, problems of education, culture (music, books, cinema, radio, television), politics and economics, universal values and temporary fashion and the need to rethink them in today’s context are revealed. Now we can state that the works of modern Ukrainian literature presented in the article reproduce the main realities of the Ukrainian society in their historical context: they try to formulate the questions correctly and encourage seeking answers for these questions. In our article, we did not claim to make a full coverage of the research topic, because we are well aware of its scale. However, choosing the subject of our study to analyze the creative work of contemporary authors, we aim at proving the need to promote the texts of contemporary Ukrainian authors among young people to involve them in discussing important issues of our time and to make them be aware of responsibility for their own destiny, their people and humanity. We hope that the literary works by the proposed authors can be of interest to a wide range of readers not only in Ukraine, but also abroad.

Don Kichoci, Podziemni i Rewizjoniści. Postawy środkowoeuropejskich pisarzy wobec wolności

The article uses comparative methodology and juxtaposes the attitudes of Polish, Czech and, to a lesser extent, Ukrainian authors towards freedom obtained after 1989. The author distinguishes three main attitudes, calling them “Don Quixotes”, “Undergrounders” and “Revisionists”. The first type is related to retrotopic thinking and means attempts to mystify reality in order to counteract the degradation of the writer’s role in society. Don Quixotes try to fight the rules of the new postcommunistic time, emphasizing their role in the idealized past. The writers associated with the underground during the communism, such as Yuri Andrukhovych, Jáchym Topol, Petr Placák or Tomasz Jastrun, react differently: they are sensitive to attempts of political misusing of the works of culture. The younger generation of authors, called in this text “Revisionists”, born most often after the collapse of totalitarianism, tries to revise the social discourse and historical myths and express all what has been so far unspoken and “rotting”. This formation includes, among others, Radka Denemarková, Kateřina Tučková, Magdalena Platzová or Stanislav Biler.

Contra Instrumentalism: A Translation Polemic

Contra Instrumentalism: A Translation Polemic

Bruno Schulz – Hidden and Obvious – in Yuri Andrukhovych’s Texts (on the example of the poetic Cinnamon project)

The article investigates connections between the poetic prose of Bruno Schulz and the poetic Cinnamon cycle of Yuri Andrukhovych, a contemporary writer and poet, implemented by the au-thor in 2008–2011 as a musical and poetical project in conjunction with the musical „Karbido” band (Wroclaw). It is a lyrical and epic cycle consisting of ten parts: two essays from the book, My Europe (2001, co-authored with Andrzej Stasiuk) and selected poems from Andrukhovych’s poetic collection, Exotic Birds and Plants (translated into Polish by Jacek Podsiadło, 2007). The cycle has a secondary origin: it is a poetic integrity that arose as a result of the intentionally outlined-by--the-poet search for those texts (written before) in his own oeuvre, which built a new, regenerated integrity Bruno Schulz became a pretext and foundation for. Schulz is not present in the cycle directly, obviously – he is hidden there, metonymic and signifi ed by Andrukhovych (according to the termi-nology of Roland Barthes where the signifi ed is secret, deep and needs to be searched). By creating Cinnamon, Andrukhovych is reborn from the author-creator to the author-reader/author-interpreter so the original author’s intention-birth becomes an intention-search which is also used by the author of the given article while reading Schulz’s poetic codes encrypted in the texts of the cycle.

УКРАЇНСЬКО-ПОЛЬСЬКИЙ ДІАЛОГ ЛІТЕРАТУР ЯК СПОСІБ ПОДОЛАННЯ ЦИВІЛІЗАЦІЙНОЇ КРИЗИ

In the article on the broad background of Ukrainian and Polish literatures of the twentieth century the problem of the crisis of modern culture and the need for dialogue have been clarified. The greatest philosophers Oswald Spengler, Arthur Schopenhaur, Friedrich Nietzsche, Mykola Berdyaev, Albert Camus, Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, Herbert Marcuse, and others wrote about the crisis of culture and the destructive role of the human-machine connection in it. Modernism, in particular, the Young Poland Group, came out of distrust of the cult of reason. The article deals with the works of modernists at the reception of Lesya Ukrainka and Ivan Franko, analyzes the manifestations, programs and discussions of Young Poland, and shows its impact on the Young Muse group in Lviv. The apologetics of the “machine age” in the literature is related to the work of Italian (Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Corado Govoni, Ardengo Soffici, Giovanni Panini, etc.), Russian (Igor Severianin, Vadim Shershenevich, Vladimir Mayakovskiy, Velemyr Khlebnikov, Vasiliy Kamenskih, David Burliuk) ), Ukrainian (Mikhail Semenko, Geo Shkurupiy, Oleksa Slysarenko, Dmytro Buzko, Leonid Skrypnyk), and Polish (Bruno Jasensky, Stanislav Mladozhenets, Titus Chizhevsky, August Zamoisky, Stanislav Ignacy Vitkevich, Leon Khvistek, Anatol Stern) futurists. Constructivism developed in parallel to the “industrial age”: in Ukraine - Valerian Polishchuk, Leonid Chernov-Maloshenko, Raisa Troyanker, Mike Jogansen; in Poland - Vladislav Stzeminski, Katarzyna Kobro-Stzeminska, Meczyslaw Schuka, Jan Golus, Meczyslaw Schulz and others. Symptoms of the crisis of culture and disintegration of social communication are noticeable in surrealism, neo-romanticism, expressionism, existentialism, theater of the absurd and more. The First, and later the Second World Wars, questioned the belief in the identity of European cultures. Extremely rapid development of communication tools and communication media has opened the prospects for a dialogue of literatures. It is not about their unification, which is reduced to the functioning of the product on the market. Culture is a large polyphonic space. It can distinguish the “voices” of different cultural figures, whose significance does not depend on either age or nationality. The article emphasizes that the dialogue of literatures offers the exchange of cultural values between peoples, as well as the spiritual rapprochement of large and small cultural regions, which have their unique features. As Edward Kaspersky rightly points out, dialogue is not only a matter of humanitarian contacts of the great cultures, but also of the way in which an individual takes part in their spiritual world. The dialogue of literatures helps to organically borrow the best from the treasury of neighbors (i.e., recent editions in Poland of works by Taras Shevchenko, Ivan Franko, Lesya Ukrainka, Mykhailo Kotsyubynsky, Yuri Andrukhovych, Oksana Zabuzhko; editions in Ukraine of books by Stanislav Trembetsky, Lev Venglinskiy, Tomash Padura, Yaroslav Ivashkevich, Leopold Staff, Boleslaw Lesmian, and others - in the series “Library of Polish Literature”), prompts the reader to rethink “foreign” literature. Today, the principle of dialogue of literatures is a real opportunity to overcome the deep contradictions of the civilization crisis and to overcome the environmental catastrophe and the nuclear threat. The dialogue of literatures is able to preserve cultural differences in all their richness and diversity and to establish mutual understanding and cultural contacts between peoples.

Dokąd uciec? Myśl niemożliwa i absurdalna…

The paper is an attempt at a personal polemic with the title of the conference “Leaving Drogobych,” organized in November 2019 at the University of Gdańsk as one of the events during Schulz Days. The author agrees that the study of those elements of Schulz’s biography which are not related to his hometown is interesting and rewarding, but remembers that he did not feel comfortable out of Drogobych and, as he himself and his friends often admitted, avoided long trips to any other places. That, however, did not necessarily mean that Schulz was just an “average provincial teacher” who suffered from many phobias, but rather an outsider whose perception of physical space was unusual – unknown and uninviting, it was frequently considered by the writer as a genuine and immediate danger. On the other hand though, no actual journeys affected Schulz’s unique metaphysics of place and the metaphors he chose to use to evoke it. Drogobych was for him a metaphysical place, almost as the only one – or perhaps indeed the only one – that stimulated his metaphorical vocabulary, imagination, and fiction. It is an axiom that Schulz remained and still remains in Drogobych. He never left it, and this is good because otherwise many of those who keep looking for him, including two outstanding Ukrainian poets: Yuri Andrukhovych and Serhiy Zhadan, would have never found him there. The founders of the International Schulz Festival and the “Second Autumn” Festival have also contributed to Schulz’s continuous presence in his hometown.

Motyw choroby i dysfunkcji w powieści Marii Matios Słodka Darusia

The text concerns the subject of the disease in Ukrainian literature based on the novel by Maria Matios Sweet Darusia. The novel was published in 2003, has received many awards and is one of the most famous Ukrainian novels of the last decades. Many Ukrainian literary scholars have written about this novel, including Sofi a Filonenko, Jaroslaw Holoborodko, Nila Zborowska and Tamara Hundorowa. Maria Matios analyzes in Sweet Darusia an illness as a metaphor for social and cultural phenomena. In the fi rst part of my paper, I analyse the metaphor of a disease and dysfunction in Ukrainian literature. The second part of the text is about a disease as a consequence of the traumatic experience of the heroine, in which Maria Matios illustrates the problems of memory of the Ukrainian nation. Diseases, dysfunctions, and pathological states are quite popular motifs in the Ukrainian prose of the independence period. They appear, among others, in the texts of Yuri Andrukhovych, Stepan Procuik, Oksana Zabuzko, Yuri Gudz, and Yuri Izdryk. All mentioned authors combine a state of disease with the mental, political and economic condition of post-Soviet society. In Ukrainian prose, the disease is a posttraumatic symptom, manifested in both the individual plan – in the hero’s body and psyche – and also with a broader, over-individual dimension, allowing to diagnose the condition of post-totalitarian space residents. In the novel Sweet Darusia, physical suff ering and illness of the main character is an image of a historical trauma experienced by totalitarian society. The illness in this novel is the starting point for self-refl ection and the stimulus to construct new identifi cation, basing on what is individual, human, intimate but often painful and difficult to accept.

ХУДОЖНЄ ОСМИСЛЕННЯ ДОСВІДУ ВІЙНИ В СУЧАСНІЙ УКРАЇНСЬКІЙ ПРОЗІ (НА МАТЕРІАЛІ ТВОРІВ ВАСИЛЯ ШКЛЯРА ТА ЮРІЯ АНДРУХОВИЧА)

The author examines strategies for representing the traumatic experience of the Second World War in the texts of Vasyl Shkliar and Yurii Andrukhovych. In particular, the novels of writers comprehend the complex pages of the Ukrainian nationalist underground activity. The researcher stresses that Vasyl Shkliar and Yuri Andrukhovych refuse the traditional model of victimization of the Ukrainian past and idealization of the UPA, creating instead a polyphonic picture, in which lines of heroic and criminal intersect.

Puleri, Marco Narrazioni ibride post-sovietiche: Per una letteratura ucraina di lingua russa (review)

Slavonic and East European Review, 96, 3, 2018 Reviews Puleri, Marco. Narrazioni ibride post-sovietiche: Per una letteratura ucraina di lingua russa. Premio ricerca ‘Città di Firenze’, 53. Firenze University Press, Firenze, 2016. 257 pp. Bibliography. Index. €12.90 (paperback). The language question has been central to Ukrainian politics and their perception abroad for several years, at least from the 2012 highly contested ‘On the Principles of the State Language Policy’ law, which aimed at granting Russian and other minority languages the official status of ‘regional languages’. Discussions on the place of Russian, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian and other languages spoken in Ukraine in the context of the strengthening and normalization of Ukrainian after centuries of limitations and several waves of Russification are a constant in the political landscape of contemporary Ukraine, including the debate around the latest education reform, harshly criticized by Ukraine’s neighbours in both the east and west of the country. Marco Puleri’s Italian-language monograph represents an important reminder of how clashes on issues of language policy may tend to obliterate intricate and fascinating multi-language configurations at the level of cultural production and reception. Puleri’s book can be seen as both an important contribution towards a flexible re-evaluation of the cultural sphere of the postSovietspace ,onethatdoesnotfallintothetrapofapplyingrigidbinaryschemes to complex situations, and a compelling study of present-day Ukrainian literature and culture. The object of Puleri’s work is contemporary Russianlanguage Ukrainian literature, including both prose and poetry, although with a clear focus on the former. The author does not intend to provide his readers with a systematic inventory of the several Ukrainian authors who use or have used the Russian language as a medium for artistic expression in today’s Ukraine or of their works, but to present a set of methodological tools to analyse and understand the nature and functioning of a ‘minor literature’ in a hybrid cultural context. Puleri openly recognizes his embracing of Deleuze and Guattari’s paradigm, which he successfully applies to contemporary Ukraine. His book is thus to be seen as both a crucial instrument for a more thorough understanding of contemporary Ukrainian literature and as a model for the study of multilingual literary environments. The first chapter of Puleri’s volume, titled ‘Shifting Identities: Identity Dynamics in the Post-Soviet Context’, is dedicated to a discussion and reevaluation of such widespread yet ambivalent and controversial concepts as ‘post-colonial’ and ‘post-Communist’ in the Ukrainian context. The author, drawing on the work of several scholars from both the anglophone and the post-Soviet world, analyses the Ukrainian tendency to give a binary reading of its much more variegated cultural landscape as a consequence of the historical SEER, 96, 3, JULY 2018 542 traumas of Ukraine, pleading for the acceptance of fluid frontiers over rigid borders (see A. J. Rieber, ‘Changing Concepts and Constructions of Frontiers: A Comparative Historical Approach’, Ab Imperio, 1, 2003, pp. 23–46) in the characterization of cultural negotiations in contemporary Ukraine. The second chapter, ‘Literature, Language and Identity: Moving Frontiers’, pursues the author’s reflection on the applicability of mobile frontiers to the nexus of literature, language and identity in post-Soviet Ukraine through a historical excursus from imperial times to the present day. Puleri analyses Gogol´’s reception in the context of the epistemological choice between exclusive and inclusiveculturalidentitiesandmakeshiswaytothecontemporaryagethrough theexperienceoftheSovietperiodfromthepointofviewofUkrainiancomplex linguistic and political landscape. The third chapter, titled ‘Textual Mappings: Heterogeneity and Polyphony in Post-Soviet Ukrainian Literature’, offers a comprehensive survey of contemporary Ukrainian literature, with special attention to Yuri Andrukhovych and Serhii Zhadan, probably the two most influential authors of post-Soviet (Ukrainian-language) Ukrainian literature. The fourth chapter, ‘Ukraiins’kyi/Rosiis’komovnyi/Rosiis’kyi. Defining New Interpretational Windows’, provides the reader with various insights on the complexity of cultural positioning in contemporary Ukrainian culture that are meant to help them understand the relationship between language, tradition and cultural belonging. This is obtained through a challenging reconstruction of the most widespread attitudes concerning the role of language for the definition of the boundaries of national culture among foremost writers and critics in contemporary Ukraine. The last part of the chapter is dedicated to a fascinating discussion of the role of...

Konceptualizacja wrażeń słuchowych w języku polskim

Precedent phenomena in the poetic language world byYuri Andrukhovych: functional and typological peculiaritiesThe article deals with a detailed review and analysis of the peculiarities of precedent phenomena in the poetic work of Yuri Andrukhovych.The author concludes that in his poetry Yuri Andrukhovych has actively used precedent phe­nomena with different typological characteristics: on the precedentity level there are represented socio-precedent units, nationally precedent and universally precedent ones; on the verbalization form there are shown names anthroponyms, goronyms, oikonyms, urbanonyms, hydronyms, oro­nyms, theonyms, geortonyms, ekklesionyms, cosmonyms, statements, a text, and a situation; units of literary, biblical, mythological, folklore, historical and philosophical origin; on the basis of trans­formality there are found some examples which have not been modified while introduced into the poetry text, as well as those that function as modified variants obtained by structural and semantic truncation, addition, structural and graphic, and actually semantic modification; on the basis of attribution / non-tribution there are found units with attribution and without it, which constitute the majority of the analyzed examples. The mentioned precedent phenomena in the poetic texts by Yuri Andrukhovych perform the following functions: informative-signal, nominative, organizational and compositional, ludic, forecasting, characterizing and metaphoricizing ones. The foregoing gives grounds to assert that the analyzed precedent phenomena presented in the poetic works are their organic component, and represented as an active text-forming and stylistic unit.

The Empire Writes Back—Writing Back to the Empire

The article offers a comparison between the representations of the former ussr in contemporary Ukrainian literature from Galicia and from the eastern part of Ukraine. In the main it focuses on the writers Yuri Andrukhovych, Serhiy Zhadan, and Lyubko Deresh. In Andrukhovych’s novels and essays, the former Habsburg monarchy is represented as a positive, liberal counterpart to Soviet collectivism and uniformity; Zhadan, in his poetry, depicts the cultural situation in Eastern Ukraine as a kind of a post-Soviet void; Deresh, finally, in his successful pop novels denies any further relevance of Soviet heritage in Galicia.

Gdzie opada żelazna kurtyna? Granice i mit Europy Środkowej we współczesnej eseistyce i historiografii europejskiej

Where the Iron Curtain fell? Borders and the myth of Central Europe in contemporary essays and European historiography
 The present paper discusses the key writer’s views of the Central Europe, referring to the problem of the symbolic divisions of Europe in opinion journalism and essays. It presents three main ways (cultural, political and social) of constructing the borders of Central Europe, and thus of Europe’s eastern border. The author focuses primarily on those publications in which the authors propose a redefinition of borders in Central Europe. She refers, amongst others, to the texts of Milan Kundera, Chantal Delsol, Alain Finkielkraut, Simona Škrabec, Vittorio Strada, Andrzej Stasiuk, and Yuri Andrukhovych. She also describe and deconstructs the myth of “unique geographical location which shaping the identity of Central Europe”, emerging from the texts of the writers mentioned above.

The features of urban text in the collection of essays “Here was buried Fantomas” by Yuri Andrukhovych

The features of urban text in the collection of essays “Here was buried Fantomas” by Yuri Andrukhovych

Imagine an Albanian Joyce: An Interview with Yuri Andrukhovych

Ukrainian poet, novelist, essayist, translator, and “patriarch of Bu-Ba-Bu” Yuri Andrukhovych shares his perspectives on contemporary European, Russian, and Ukrainian cultures and politics, and on the current situation of writers working in minor languages in this part of the world. East Central Europe, for him, is the ever-shifting terrain of struggle over and for Europeanness and, at the same time, a place where ruins are still uncertain and thus full of creative potentiality. Andrukhovych’s own influences, which include Franz Kafka, magical realism, and the Polish O’Harists—itself a movement influenced by the New York School—trace an uncommon path of world-literary circulation.