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. 358-368.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17721/psk.2019.35.358-368

Tarnashinska L.

UKRAINIAN LITERARY EMIGRATION:

MODELS OF „ABSENT PRESENCE” IN MATERNAL WRITING

Abstract. The article focuses on various aspects and peculiarities of Ukrainian literary emigration – from the need to surround other people’s space with the whole complex of psychological, socio-cultural, creative problems – to the re-accentu- ation of the notions of motherland / stranger, center / periphery, etc. In this context, various individual views on the notion of a homeland as a territory and a homeland as a spiritual, metaphysical substance are considered.

It is noted that under the conditions of a closed system of totalitarianism, this was perhaps the only opportunity to perceive the intellectual, philosophical, artistic-style impulses of the world not only through the mediation of Russian and Polish translation, but also directly within other cultures. Writers outside Ukraine produced other models of world perception – hence the explanation of a broad map of scattering of Ukrainian emigrants. The emigre writers integrated into a strange world, the world of the Other is not as Alien, where, accordingly, there is a dominant, “central” or dominant culture and culture marginal, peripheral, brought from other ethnic territories and communities. On the one hand, they got the freedom of creativity, and on the other hand, they were limited by harsh conditions of survival (most of them had to work for a long time on different jobs). Open to change, they were guided by the guideline to maintain a certain balance between their / stranger to balance the images of their homeland / stranger. The received “gift of freedom” tried to convey creativity, “liberating” itself from traditional aesthetics, instead seeking the new, “unburied aesthetics”.

Different models of “absent presence” of diasporic writers in mainland Ukrainian literature (B. Boychuk, B. Rubchak, I. Koshelevets, Emma Andievskaya, Vera Vovk, Anna-Galya Gorbach, Martha and Ostap Tarnavsky, etc.) are analyzed in the article. Some of them tried to legalize their presence in the Ukrainian socio-cultural space still far from gaining independence from Ukraine; others have proven active in the Ukrainian cultural environment since the 1990’s.

The author stresses the need to study the holistic image of Ukrainian literature, including the study of mentality, psychological peculiarities of emigration writers.

Key words: emigration, diaspora, homeland / stranger, model, “no presence”, metaphysical homeland.

Information about author: Tarnashinska Lyudmyla, Doctor of Philology, professor, leading researcher, Department of Ukrainian literature of the twentieth century and the modern literary process, Taras Shevchenko Institute of Literature of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.