Between aesthetics and ideology: comparative studies of stefanykiana in press of writer’s lifetime

Abstract

The article focuses on the two vectors of the reception of Vasyl Stefanyk’s legacy — i. e. the aesthetic and the sociological ones — in the reports published in periodicals during the writer’s lifetime. In our opinion, the article “Old and New in Modern Ukrainian Literature” (1904) by Sofia Rusova pub¬lished in Literaturno-Naukovyi Vistnyk (Literary Scientific Herald) as translated into Ukrainian by Ivan Franko including his commentary served as a kind of a (conditional) starting point. It contrasts V. Stefanyk as a “poet of the contemporary dire plight of the people in Galicia” with his ability to convey characters’ mentality and create a powerful emotional background. The paper traces the further development of these two vectors in the 1920s and 1930s. Artistic criteria were closely related to the political situation: in the periodicals of Western Ukraine and the diaspora, the aesthetic approach usually prevailed; whereas the periodicals of Soviet Ukraine focused on the social aspects. The authors of reviews pointed to the individual artistic sense, art background, familiarity with the way of life and mentality of peasants, sensitivity to human suffering and the utter tragedy in the works by V. Ste¬fanyk. Reviewers also severely criticized interference in the language and censorship of the writer’s short stories in Soviet publications, in particular in 1924. A number of publications are comparative in nature. The authors of literary-critical articles and reviews include Ostap Hrytsay, Bohdan Lepky, Vaclav Morachevsky, Klym Polishchuk, Petko Todorov, Ivan Trush, Lesya Uk¬rainka, and others.