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Seminar 3 Ukrainian Literature: Major Personalities (1) : Eneida
Seminar 3 Ukrainian Literature: Major Personalities (1) : Eneida
Seminar 3 Ukrainian Literature: Major Personalities (1) : Eneida
Seminar 4
UKRAINIAN LITERATURE: MAJOR PERSONALITIES (2)
Ukrainian realism, which began with Marko Vovchok (Narodni
opovidannia, 1857; “Tales of the People”), was long confined to populist
themes and the portrayal of village life. Realist poetry developed with the work
of Stepan Rudanskyi and Leonid Hlibov. The novelist Ivan Nechui-Levytskyi’s
work ranged from the portrayal of village life in Kaidasheva simia (1879; “The
Kaydash Family”) to that of the Ukrainian intelligentsia in Khmary (1908; “The
Clouds”). Panas Myrnyi was the major representative of Ukrainian realism. His
depiction of social injustice and the birth of social protest in Khiba revut voly,
yak yasla povni? (1880; “Do the Oxen Low When the Manger Is Full?”) had a
new psychological dimension. Ivan Franko’s naturalistic novels chronicling
contemporary Galician society and his long narrative poems Moisei (“Moses”),
Panski zharty (“Nobleman’s Jests”), and Ivan Vyshenskyi mark the height of
his literary achievement.
The modernism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries is seen in the
poetic dramas and dialogues of one of the finest Ukrainian poets, Lesia
Ukrainka, and in the prose of such writers as Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi and Vasyl
Stefanyk. In the first three decades of the 20th century, Ukrainian literature
experienced a renaissance characterized by a variety of literary movements.
Realism, with a distinctly decadent strain, was the most notable characteristic
of Volodymyr Vynnychenko’s prose, while Pavlo Tychyna was the leading
Symbolist poet. Neoclassicism produced the poet Mykola Zerov, and Futurism
was initiated by Mykhailo Semenko.
After the Russian Revolution, during a period of relative freedom granted
by the Bolsheviks between 1917 and 1932, a host of other talented writers
emerged, including the short-story writer and critic Mykola Khvylovyi, who at
first extolled the revolution but became increasingly critical of Soviet policies
before his death. But in 1932 the Communist Party began enforcing Socialist
Realism as the required literary style. The Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s great
purges of 1933-38 decimated the ranks of Ukrainian writers, many of whom
were imprisoned or executed or who fled into exile.
The post-Stalinist period saw the emergence of a new generation that
rejected Socialist Realism, but repressive measures taken in the 1970s
silenced many of these authors or else turned them back to Socialist Realism.
Ukraine’s attainment of independence in 1991 opened up unprecedented
opportunities for indigenous literary expression, but the Soviet suppression of
so much Ukrainian talent in prior decades left the task largely to the younger
generation.