BOOK FUND OF THE DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN UKRAINIAN STUDIES OF THE VNLU AS A SOURCE FOR STUDYING THE HISTORY OF MODERN UKRAINIAN LITERATURE (IHOR KOSTETSKY AND OLEKSANDRA CHERNENKO ABOUT VASYL STEFANYK)

Abstract

The basis for the study is the book fund of the Department of Foreign Ukrainian Studies of the VNLU, which has become an important information resource for source studies of works by scientists of the Ukrainian diaspora. It gives an opportunity to explore the history and evolution of creative interpretations of Vasyl Stefanyk’s cultural heritage.
The article examines the “Stefanykiana” of the Ukrainians abroad, which puts the writer’s legacy in the global context. The works of I. Kostetsky, O. Chernenko, and M. Stekh present V. Stefanyk’s work for the first time against the background of processes that took place in European cultural and art life at the turn of the century, during the prime era of modernism. Stefanyk’s work was discovered by the Poles W. Moraczewski and S. Przybyszewski, who introduced him to their artistic environment and began to translate, print and promote his works. The chief theorist of modernism S. Przybyszewski considered him as a genius and put V. Stefanyk’s name next to the most prominent writers of Europe. The Polish critic H. Hescheles considered his work as more interesting than the work of the Nobel Laureate W. Reymont.
However, the reception of Stefanyk’s works by the Ukrainian Galician community was adverse. There were objective and subjective processes of Stefanyk’s rejection from his native Ukrainian environment with its “folk” and “enlightenment” canon (i.e. the writer was to serve the people, write for the people, as well as awaken and develop the people). Stefanyk was an expressionist and a world-class writer who managed to get to the heart of things and phenomena, and portray life and people in a style inherent in European and world writers. The conflict with Ukrainian environment forced him to stop writing. He did not write for 15 years. As a result, the opportunity to bring his own people and literature to the international cultural space and to establish them in world culture was lost. I. Kostetsky believes that the fact that Stefanyk was unable to actualize himself under the pressure of his native Galician environment is one of the most burdensome points of the Ukrainian collective guilt.