Suchergebnisse

Review of:
Volodymyr Yavorivsky. The Chornobyl Madonna. Translated from the Ukrainian by Yuri Tkacz, Bayda Books, 2016. 192 pp. Paper.
Valeriy Shevchuk. Breath of Evil: Novellas Written by the Goatherd Ivan Shevchuk and Fashioned for Literary Use by His Great-Grandnephew. Translated from the Ukrainian by Yuri Tkacz, foreword by Marko R. Stech, Bayda Books, 2016. 246 pp. Paper.

Empirical research into political sentiments gives force to the proposition that, in the context of the 2013–14 Euromaidan and subsequent war, Ukrainian national identity, for most of its history predominantly ethno-cultural, has undergone changes justifying its qualification as 'civic'. In this article I discuss the ethno-cultural orientation, conventional during the 19th and 20th centuries, of Ukrainian literary history, a scholarly genre that has a tradition of promoting the cause of Ukrainian nation-building; I identify contemporary examples of discourses in the literary sphere – literary works themselves, literary anthologies and the public statements and debates of writers – that embody or applaud civic identities akin to those in evidence on the Euromaidan; and I reflect upon the values, inclusive and multicultural, that a Ukrainian national literary history rhetorically in harmony with post-Euromaidan sentiment would evince.

<strong>Alexander Kratochvil. <em>Aufbruch und Rückkehr: Ukrainische und tschechische Prosa im Zeichen der Postmoderne</em>.</strong> [Venturing Forth and Coming Back: Ukrainian and Czech Prose in the Context of Postmodernity.] Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos, 2013. 311 pp. Bibliography. Index. Paper.

Liberalized cultural discussion in the Soviet Union after the Twenty-seventh Party Congress in 1985 was concerned in part with the nature of a literature that would be appropriate to the new ideals of openness and restructuring. In Ukraine, as elsewhere, the debate brought forth a list of imperatives that, without challenging the socialist realist principle that literature must serve overarching social and political goals, amounted to a formula for a new kind of literary engagement. Literature must "boldly intrude into contemporary reality," it must defend the historical, cultural, linguistic, and ecological heritage and must unmask the crimes and abuses of the past and present. It must no longer be bland and inoffensive and must not avoid controversial issues or praise the status quo as a matter of course.