Reception of Lesya Ukrainka's Work in Jozef Lobodowski's Essay Discourse

Abstract

Abstract. The article analyzes the literary and critical heritage of the Polish poet, prose writer, translator Jozef Lobodowsky, dedicated to the creative heritage of Lesya Ukrainka. Attention is focused mainly on an essay written back in 1938 to the 25th anniversary of her death. The essay presents the attitude of J. Lobodowsky to the personality of the Ukrainian writer. The Polish researcher examines the artist's work against the background of the era, set new tasks for Ukrainian writers - the withdrawal of literature from the networks of provincialism to the European arena. It was Lesya Ukrainka, according to                J. Lobodowsky, who brought Ukraine closer to Europe, including with a whole range of original themes and motives that are rich in her work. The Polish researcher actualizes the main concepts that make up the core of Lesia Ukrainka's artistic world, among which he emphasizes the motive of nostalgia, the motive of national treason. We believe that J. Lobodowsky tends to a national-existential interpretation of the work of the Ukrainian writer.

The purpose of research is to analyze the reception of Lesya Ukrainka's creativity in the literary-critical essay of the Polish researcher Jozef Lobodowsky and to define his work in the Lesya Ukrainka's discourse.

Results of research. J. Lobodowsky enriched Lesya Ukrainka's discourse with interesting observations based on value paradigms, thanks to which the Ukrainian author managed to create a unique artistic world. The Polish researcher was able to see in the person of Lesya Ukrainka and her work a type of new Ukrainian man, thirsty for freedom, capable of self-sacrifice for the sake of a great idea. It is significant that it was in the artistic visions of the Ukrainian writer J. Lobodowsky that he found those values that were close to him.

Lobodowsky's reflections on the artistic world of Lesya Ukrainka are not just an attempt to evaluate her work. Rather, it is an attempt to promote the name of the Ukrainian author and her creative work in Polish society. The significance of J. Lobodowsky's work on Lesya Ukrainka's work lies in the fact that the researcher, unlike Soviet literary critics, was not biased, which allowed him to actualize such problematic nodes of the writer's work that Ukrainian literary-critical thought could not consider under Soviet censorship. Therefore, for a long time Lesya Ukrainka in mainland Soviet Ukraine was a singer of dawn lights, a revolutionary (almost Bolshevik), and her work reached readers in a dosed form, without topics irritating to the vigilant censor. Let us recall at least the banned dramatic poem "Boyarynya", about which                             J. Lobodovsky wrote in 1938 and which "returned" to the Ukrainian reader in the 90s of the twentieth century after the restoration of Ukrainian independence.

As we can see, J. Lobodowsky's national-existential interpretation of Lesya Ukrainka's work prevails. And this is quite natural, because the Polish researcher is close to the Ukrainian problems he was concerned with, trying to intellectually influence the understanding between the two peoples and eliminate the stereotypes about the provinciality of Ukrainian literature that prevailed in Polish society.

Of course, one can find common ground in the ideological views of both poets, in the wandering plots inherent in their poetic work, in understanding the importance of translations of works of world literature, which led to the emergence of many interpretations. However, these many kinships highlight the circumstance that unites Lesya Ukrainka and J. Lobodowsky: they contributed to Ukraine's entry into the European cultural paradigm. Ukrainian writer - in the early twentieth century and Polish artist - three decades later, in the prewar decade. Since J. Lobodowsky translated Lesya Ukrainka's poetry, we see the prospect of further research in a detailed analysis of his poetic interpretation of the works of the Ukrainian author.