Four decades of modernist revolution: creating a new subjectivity in Ukrainian poetry, 1900–1940

Alessandro Achilli

2021-01-01

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Abstract

This article examines the development of lyrical subjectivity in Ukrainian poetry of the first half of the twentieth century. On the basis of examples taken from the works of Petro Karmans´kyi, Dmytro Zahul, Maksym Ryl´s´kyi, Mykhailo Drai-Khmara, Pavlo Fylypovych, Oleksa Vlyz´ko, Mykhail´ Semenko, Volodymyr Svidzins´kyi, Bohdan Ihor Antonych, and Ievhen Pluzhnyk, as well as brief discussions of other authors active in the same period, I show how the passage from a weak and homogeneous subjectivity of early modernist poetry of the 1900s to the complex and well-rounded subject of high modernism accompanies the establishment of a modernist sensibility in Ukrainian literature. The focus on individuality typical of subject-centered modernist poetry contributes to the stabilization of a concept of literature as cultivated entertainment not explicitly committed to a political goal. Entering a dialogue with previous studies, this article also aims to contribute to a general rethinking of the modernist paradigm in Ukrainian literature, discussing its temporal scope, its specificities in the global context, and the place of modernist poetics in the cultural landscape of the first half of the century in Ukraine and beyond.