Polish Studies of Kyiv: works of International scientific conference, Kyiv, 23-25 of May, 2018. / chief editor R. Radyshevskyi. – vol. XXXV. – Kyiv: Talkom, 2019. – P. 349-357.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17721/psk.2019.35.349-357

Sukhomlynov O.

EMIGRANTS “MEMORY STORIES” OF ROMUALD WERNIK

Abstract. Nostalgic discourse is an important feature of the Polish boundary and emigration literature of the twentieth century. This is a large-scale and widespread trend. She is an appeal to memories and nostalgic poetics. We can talk about a certain discourse of the past memoirism, which is understood as a norm and strategy used in the creation of text or expression-statement. The basis of creative interpretation in this case are cultural and social models, which become the norm, point of reference, the basis of the text or statement, which have certain genre features. The tragic experience of social and political events of the twentieth century: the loss of small homelands and the breakdown of ties with the broad concept of “ideological homeland”, caused the emergence of a new type of literature, full of poetics of memoirs. “Memory-nostalgia” becomes one of the main thematic and artistic components of the literature of the frontier, illustrating the emergence of nostalgic discourse, a certain norm and strategy for the creation of literary texts that have specific features and are found in poetry, prose or essay in the ethno-cultural model of literature polish-ukrainian frontier.

Memoirs – this is a subjective understanding of certain historical events or biographies of a particular historical figure, carried out by the writer in an artistic form with the use of his true documents of his time, a deep correlation of his own spiritual experience with the inner world of his heroes.

Nostalgia is a type of vulnerability that appears today in the literature more often than any other, and is a specific form of perception of reality and the way of world perception. Today, the “literature of exiles” often refers to the theme “lost paradise of childhood”, people are tired of their youth and the place where the artist’s socialization took place. This is the essence of the nostalgic worldview. There is awareness of the irretrievability of the past, but it does not cause negative feelings, only generates a sweet pain of memories.

In this context, an interesting example of nostalgic prose is the works of Romuald Wernik, an emigrant, writer from the Polish-Ukrainian borderland, historian of art, political publicist.

Key words: “works of memory”, emigration literature, boundaries of cultures, models of memory, antinomy, cultural interference.

Information about author: Sykhomlynov Oleksii, doctor of philology, profesor, head of the Union of Polish scientists of Berdiansk, department of Romance-Germanic Philology, Ukrainian-Polish high school

“Central European University”.