In my contribution, I analyze texts by Mykola Zerov, Mychajl’ Semenko, and Mykola Chvyl’ovyj, three leading Ukrainian writers of the 1910s and 1920s, that thematize Ukrainian literature of the first years of the twentieth century, criticizing its alleged backwardness and lack of artistic quality. With their rejection of recent tradition, Zerov, Semenko, and Chvyl’ovyj were pursuing an ambitious program of cultural renewal aimed at elevating Ukrainian poetry and prose to the same level as classical and contemporary European literature. A recurrent name in their poems and pieces of criticism is that of Mykola Voronyj, a key figure of early-twentieth-century Ukrainian culture, whose controversial reception sheds light on the extent to which Zerov and Semenko were eager to radically renew Ukrainian literature after its first modernization attempts, which they deemed unsatisfying.
University of Cagliari, Italy - ORCID: 0000-0001-5856-8414
Chapter Title
Rethinking Tradition, Rejecting the Past: Ukrainian Poetry of the 1910s and 1920s in the Search for Europe
Authors
Alessandro Achilli
Language
English
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0238-1.10
Peer Reviewed
Publication Year
2023
Copyright Information
© 2023 Author(s)
Content License
Metadata License
Book Title
The Reception of East Slavic Literatures in the West and the East
Editors
Shin’ichi Murata, Stefano Aloe
Peer Reviewed
Number of Pages
326
Publication Year
2023
Copyright Information
© 2023 Author(s)
Content License
Metadata License
Publisher Name
Firenze University Press
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0238-1
ISBN Print
979-12-215-0237-4
eISBN (pdf)
979-12-215-0238-1
eISBN (epub)
979-12-215-0239-8
Series Title
Biblioteca di Studi Slavistici
Series ISSN
2612-7687
Series E-ISSN
2612-7679