Ukrainian literature

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The Ukrainian literature comprises those literary works written in Ukrainian language are written.

Prehistory: Old East Slavic literature until the 18th century on the soil of today's Ukraine

As early as the 11th century, chronicles and heroic epics such as the Igor song , which can be compared with the Nibelungenlied , were written in the area of ​​the Kievan Rus . Essentially, however, it was only after the fall of the Kiev Empire in the 13th century that separate literatures in Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian emerged. With the " Gospel of Peresopnycja " (1556–1561) a popular translation of the Bible in Ukrainian-Belarusian dialect was created.

In the 17th century in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , besides Polish and Lithuanian, Belarusian-Ukrainian was used as the lingua franca in the south, but the cultural and political elite became Polonized. The schools were run by ecclesiastical lay fraternities, which promoted popular education more than the Orthodox priests had done. With the cultural (re-) rise of Kiev, a Ukrainian baroque literature emerged that was tied to the court and the Catholic Church, namely the Jesuit scholasticism. The most important representative was the philosopher and poet Grigory Skovoroda . At the end of the 17th century, this influence was pushed back again by Church Slavonic. The literature of that time comprised mainly theological-propagandistic treatises. There was no fixed language standard.

Tsar Peter the Great and his successors bound eastern Ukraine and its aristocratic elite more closely to Russia and suppressed the use of the Ukrainian language, while western Ukraine was annexed by Austria in 1793.

19th century - Ukrainian romanticism and realism

With the development of a purely Ukrainian written language (in contrast to the Church Slavonic written up to then and the non-specifically Ukrainian Ruthenian ), an independent Ukrainian literature emerged comparatively late. The pioneer was the theater director, mystic, freemason, player and drinker Ivan Kotljarewskyj with his work Aeneid ( Enejida ) 1798 , a popular travesty based on the classical work of Virgil in the Cossack milieu . Hryhorij Kwitka-Osnovyanenko (1778–1843) wrote idyllic stories about rural life. German Romanticism also began to be interested in the Ukrainian language and the history of the Cossacks: In 1845 a volume of Ukrainian folk songs was translated into German by Friedrich Bodenstedt .

Taras Shevchenko (self-portrait 1843)

The poet Taras Shevchenko , who was born as Fronbauer and is widely revered as the most important historical and literary figure in the Ukraine, made a significant contribution to the further development of the written language. Poems such as Legacy ( Sapowit ) from his collection of poems Kobsar , published in 1840 , are still deeply anchored in the consciousness of all generations and social classes. Next to Shevchenko, the “crystallization point” (literature brock house) of Ukrainian national romanticism , which was directed against both tsarism and the Polish nobility, there are poets such as Amwrossij Metlynskyj , Nikolai Kostomarow , Markijan Schaschkewytsch and also in German in the 19th century Language-writing poet Jurij Fedkowytsch .

Ivan Franko (1886)

The subjects of the realistic trend in literature that began in the mid-19th century were serfdom, servitude and the oppression of small farmers. In 1863 the circulation of Ukrainian printed matter in the Russian Empire was partially banned. After a further tightening of the ban on Ukrainian (now only referred to as "Little Russian") literature on the soil of the entire Tsarist Empire in 1876, from which Shevchenko also suffered as a former member of the persecuted Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius , and because of the After strict censorship, cultural life was concentrated on the territory of Austria-Hungary, which at that time included western Ukraine ( Lemberg , Galicia and the Carpathian Mountains ). The Austrian administration promoted the Ruthenian education system. The most important poets and writers of this period include the neo-romantic-impressionist poet and playwright Lesja Ukrajinka and the poet and playwright Iwan Franko . Also to be mentioned are the poet, prose writer and translator Ossyp Makowej , who described the life of the Galician peasants, as well as the wife Iwan Frankos, Olha Kobyljanska from Bukovina , who wrote first in German, later in Ukrainian, and the village life as well as the emancipation efforts of the Women portrayed.

Ivan Karpenko-Karyj (around 1882)

Since there were also conflicts between intellectuals and the dominant Polish landed gentry in western Ukraine, the cossack traveling theater with realistic and satirical plays became a foster home for the Ukrainian language in Russia. Authors were u. a. Iwan Karpenko-Karyj (actually Iwan Karpowytsch Tobilewytsch), Marko Kropywnyzkyj , who founded the first Ukrainian touring theater in 1882, and Mykola Sadowskyj , who organized the first permanent theater with a permanent ensemble in Kiev in 1898. Other writers emigrated to St. Petersburg and Moscow .

In southern Ukraine, which was part of the tsarist empire, Volodymyr Vynnytschenko wrote naturalistic stories from the life of the rural proletariat, then described the turn of the younger generation towards the socialist movement and wrote dramas. Imprisoned several times under tsarism, he tried to help build the new Ukrainian republic as a staunch socialist, but went into exile in Paris as early as 1920.

20th century

After 1918

After the First World War , western Ukraine, annexed by Poland, was quickly Polonized . Ukrainian literature could only develop here for a short time. Lively literary activities organized in socialist poet groups (the symbolism related, but short-lived magazine Mytusa the editor Vasyl Bobynskyj and Roman Kuptschynskyj ( Роман Григорович Купчинський ; 1894-1976) and also founded by Bobynskyj 1927 magazine Wikna ) and Ukrainian in Catholic Organized groups of poets (around the magazine Nowi Schlachy ). Bobynskyj emigrated to the Soviet Union in 1930 and was liquidated there.

The literature in central and eastern Ukraine, on the other hand, was shaped by the Soviet era, its opportunities and limitations after the establishment of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. Here, since 1923, the Ukrainian language has been promoted again as part of the Korenisazija policy ( Ukrainization ). A literary public arose; many authors based themselves on Western European models, such as Dmytro Sahul on symbolism . Volodymyr Swidsinskyj , Pawlo Tichyna and Yevhen Pluschnyk should be mentioned as poets of the 1920s and 30s . Mykola Kulisch emerged as a playwright; he devoted himself to the needs of the rural population. The Berezil Expressionist Theater was founded in Kharkov and also performed its plays, which had to contend with censorship from the start. The playwright and narrator Mosche Altman was born in western Ukraine, lived temporarily in Romania and went to the Soviet Union in 1941, but wrote in Yiddish and later in Russian.

In the early 1930s - the time of collectivization of agriculture and the famine - numerous Ukrainian intellectuals, including about 300 writers, fell victim to Stalin's persecution ( Rosstriljane widrodschennja ). The works of Mykola Kulisch and other authors have been criticized as nationalistic and are only partially preserved; he was shot in 1937. The Ukrainian Writers' Union was liquidated in favor of the All-Soviet Union. A loyal representative of Ukrainian-Soviet literature was Petro Pantsch . A number of authors from eastern Ukraine went into exile in the USA and post-war Germany.

After 1945

The next generation, who had grown up under Stalin, dealt with the war issue. This included the two-time Stalin Prize winner Oles Honchar , whose texts were widely circulated and often translated. Representations of the social present had to struggle with censorship, for example the film director Oleksandr Dowschenko when describing the decline of the Ukrainian village.

In the thaw under Khrushchev in the late 1950s, Ukrainian literature revived and dealt increasingly with the historical and mythical past of Ukraine. Important authors of this phase were Ivan Switlychnyj and Ivan Dzjuba ; Lina Kostenko , Mykola Winhranowskyj , Wasyl Stus and Iwan Dratsch emerged as poets .

Literary production has stagnated under Brezhnev since the mid-1960s . The generation of poets from the stagnant 70s under Brezhnev, including the so-called Kiev School and Ihor Kalynez and Hryhorij Tschubaj from Lviv, were considered “without a chance” .

After 1980

Since around 1980, Ukrainian literature has been able to pick up on the 1920s and 1930s. Since 1989, numerous authors who had been discriminated against for their use of the Ukrainian language or persecuted for political reasons have been rehabilitated, including Volodymyr Vynnychenko. Poets such as Wassyl Herassymjuk , Ihor Rymaruk , Oksana Sabuschko and Iwan Malkowytsch (* 1965) ( The White Stone 1984) became known as lyricists in the 1980s . The Ukrainian poetry of emigrated poets played a special role. Mykhajlo Orest and Ihor Kaczurowskyj represented neoclassicism , a trend that is also known as the “Ukrainian Parnassus ” and is characterized by adherence to the traditional, classical norms of poetry. They have incorporated many modern European trends in their works, which is also evident in the work of the surrealist Emma Andijewska .

present

In the post-Soviet phase, Ukrainian literature flourished again. Since the mid-1990s, the use of the Russian language in education and in the media has been reduced in the course of the Ukrainization policy, which also had negative consequences for the media presence of Russian-speaking authors. Jurij Andruchowytsch was one of the intellectual leaders of the Orange Revolution .

Ukrainian contemporary dramas play a comparatively minor role on most programs. The Ukrainian-language farces by Oleksandr Bejderman should be mentioned here .

Among the most important contemporary authors in Ukraine are Maria Matios , born in 1959 , whose novels have also been translated into German, as well as the novelist, essayist and poet Serhij Schadan (* 1974), Andrij Ljubka (* 1987), who feels particularly connected to Carpathian Ukraine , and Tanja Maljartschuk (* 1983), who now lives in Vienna.

The most important cultural prize in Ukraine is the Taras Shevchenko Prize , which has been awarded since 1962 .

Book market

The Lviv Book Forum is currently the largest book fair in Ukraine in September. For most of the visitors to the Lviv Book Fair, German books are still unaffordable, but recently they are more contemporary.

Book sales are still working very poorly overall. The bookstore chain Bukwa (The Letter) has opened 22 large bookstores across Ukraine and plans to continue expanding. For a long time, competition from the strong Russian market was noticeable in one's own country. Many books in Ukrainian are still only published with state funding. The publishers' association has around 350 publishers who regularly publish books. In 2004, 14,970 new publications were registered, the total circulation was 52.8 million copies. Outside of the very lucrative school book business, however, the average circulation of a title is 300 copies. Despite all the difficulties, the Ukrainian pavilion at the Frankfurt Book Fair is also growing, and Ukrainian authors have their say in the Forum Dialog at this fair. In 2012, the Ukraine was also the focus of the Leipzig Book Fair .

Ukrainian contemporary literature in German translation

In the novel "Twelve Rings" everything runs quite logically and melancholy on the first level, a lonely hero pursues his longings and dies like a character by Joseph Roth. At the same time, a whole cultural group is embedded in this heroic body, which speaks to the Ukrainians of the present, seeks to promote their identity and at the same time wants to keep them away from Moscow phobias and Western cultural kitsch. In the remote Carpathian culture, strange myths are warmed up, the railway goes to the end of the world once a day like in a fairy tale, a fish from the Danube will swim up the stream and change the country, the twelve rings of love become a violent and exhausting happiness.

The underground artist Stanislaw Perfecki is on his way to an international symposium on the “post-carnival madness of the world” in Venice, in the meantime stuck in the bohemian Munich, falls in love with a woman who spied on him and may have fallen out of the window of his hotel on the Canal Grande overturned. A postmodern game with quotes from Rabelais to Mikhail Bulgakov .

Behind the ambience of a remote Galician Habsburg town around 1900, “The Paper Boy” shows a lot of political facets. The acute rule is officially limited to maneuvers and speeches, the religions seem to be omnipresent and have their branches in every side street, for women it is only possible to marry well or to “boteln service”. Under the magical shell, the novel turns out to be a seething cauldron for illusions of all kinds.

  • Ljubko Deresch : The Adoration of the Lizard Or How To Destroy Angels . Novel. A. d. Ukrain. by Maria Weissenböck. [Orig .: Pokloninnja jascirci. Jak nyscyty anheliv, Lviv 2004]. Frankfurt / M .: Suhrkamp 2006. (= es 2480). ISBN 978-3-518-12480-2 .

A few young people get lost in the vastness of the Carpathian Mountains and drown themselves in the small town of Midni Buky. The heat becomes almost unbearable, it is intensified by pop music that seeps out of all pores and cassette recorders. The Moscow people represent an enemy, they have not only ruined the country with their communism, but are now ruining it again with the neo-capitalist hammer.

The emergency room is on the one hand the place where people are delivered in a coma, on the other hand it is a special state of perception. Film tears, characters from Hollywood strips, declarations of love on the scraper of a degenerate bar, particles of exams at the university that seeped away, exam anxiety and hangovers are topics of the poems, their semantics are strangely curled up, the so-called meaning can only be deciphered indirectly.

The novel about “sweet Darina” is set in the remote Bukovina, which once waited in vain for instructions from Vienna in the Habsburg monarchy when the monarchy had long since collapsed. This area is often referred to as gentle and cute, but it also means headstrong. Darina is also called the sweetness because of her peculiarity and her isolated nature.

Midnight Blossom perhaps tells the essence of Ukraine in a magically brutal form. Even in the deepest depths of the forest there is no hiding place, because someone is constantly marching through the country, which in old Slavic means "land on the border".

  • Taras Prochasko : A couple of stories can be made out of this . A. d. Ukrain. by Maria Weissenböck. (Orig .: Z c'oho mozna zrobyty kil'ka opowidan ', Lviv 2005). Frankfurt / M .: Suhrkamp 2009. (= es 2578). ISBN 978-3-518-12578-6 .

Relatives appear in the story, get into the shredder of contemporary history, and die. Friends make art, are betrayed and disappear. In the newspaper there is something about a trouble spot somewhere in the world, there is already a connection to Ukraine and a few people are blessing the temporal again.

The land is rolled up in three historical arenas. The TV journalist Daryna reports on all sorts of officious events in the country. Her approach to the subject is quite erotic when she delves into the image of the former partisan Helzja, about which she will make a documentary. Finally, the artist Wlada also comes into play, who suffers a fatal traffic accident, whereupon her cycle of secrets disappears. Journalism, resistance struggle and art are three facets of how society could be turned inside out.

  • Serhij Schadan (Zhadan): Depeche Mode . Novel. A. d. Ukrain. by Juri Durkot and Sabine Stöhr. [Orig .: Depes Mod, Charkiw 2004]. Frankfurt / M .: Suhrkamp 2007. (= es 2494). ISBN 978-3-518-12494-9 .

The plot begins with the stepfather shot himself by one of the heroes. But since the stepson has disappeared, the troupe is looking for their fellow students for the funeral, but ends up in a disused factory, where they steal the bust of Molotov. Finally, the protagonists, completely stoned, join the live discussion at a music station, which is about the band Depeche Mode.

The first-person narrator Hermann tries to catch up with the present, if not the future, through an advertising company. What he finds in application zones, products, markets and, above all, buyers is depressing, however. His advertising activity seems to be limited to bridging the gap between the bleak past and the reduced present.

  • Serhiy Schadan (Zhadan): Mesopotamia . (Novel). A. d. Ukrain. by Claudia Dathe, Juri Durkot and Sabine Stöhr. [Orig .: "Mesopotamija", Charkiw 2014]. Berlin: Suhrkamp 2015. ISBN 978-3-518-42504-6 .

Ukrainian “heroic deeds” are told in almost lyrical sequences. The city of Kharkiv in Mesopotamia appears, shortened to ellipses and spun with dream threads: “Much too high / your fingers reach / to capture the emptiness.” - Behind these remains of poetry costume one almost forgets the chaos in a suggested Mesopotamia.

Chrystyna and Solomija are music teachers in Lemberg, they have tried everything to get through life, and in between they have even become lovers. At the first attempt, only Chrystyna succeeds in getting a visa to Berlin, her friend has to wait. Traveling in peripheral regions is a bureaucratic adventure, but the West seems almost logical, if not golden.

  • Jurij Vynnichuk : In the shadow of the poppy blossom . Novel. A. d. Ukrain. by Alexander Kratochvil. [Orig .: Tango Smerti, 2012]. Innsbruck-Vienna: Haymon 2014. ISBN 978-3-7099-7145-1 .

A moving story about friendship, ideals and the backbone in the face of the greatest cruelty, which shows that shadow always also causes light.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Tschižewskij, Horbatsch 1996, p. 394.
  2. ↑ Tschižewskij, Horbatsch 1996, p. 394.
  3. ↑ A.-H. Horbatsch: Foreword to A Well for Thirsty People , 1970, p. 7.
  4. ↑ Horbatsch, p. 15.
  5. ↑ Iwan-Franko-Theater Kiev on www.goethe.de
  6. ↑ Lara Kobilke, Ukrainian Literature , Literature Journal ( Memento of the original from July 14, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.literaturjournal.com
  7. ↑ Tschižewskij, Horbatsch 1996, p. 397.
  8. ^ 'Ukrainization' of Ukrainian radio , Neue Zürcher Zeitung, April 23, 2004, online: [1]

See also

literature

  • Elisabeth Kottmeier (ed.): Vine of rebirth. Modern Ukrainian poetry. Kessler, Mannheim 1957.
  • Dimitrij Tschižewskij, Anna-Halja Horbatsch: The Ukrainian literature. In: Kindler's new literary lexicon. Vol. 20. Munich 1996, pp. 393-399.
  • A fountain for the thirsty and other Ukrainian stories. Edited by Anna-Halja Horbatsch. Erdmann publishing house. Tubingen 1970.
  • Hand me the stone lute. Ukrainian poetry of the 20th century . Brodina Verlag, 1996. ISBN 3-931180-05-0
  • Second attempt. Ukrainian literature today . Edited by Karin Warter and Alois Woldan. Verlag Karl Stutz, Passau 2004. ISBN 3-88849-094-4
  • Ukraine Reader: Literary Forays through Ukraine . Edited by Evelyn Scheer. Trescher Verlag, 2006. ISBN 978-3-89794-097-0
  • Vodka for the goalkeeper. 11 football stories from Ukraine . edition.fotoTAPETA, 2012. ISBN 978-3-940524-16-4
  • Juri Andruchowytsch: Angels and Demons , Edition Suhrkamp 2513, Frankfurt 2007 (with essays, inter alia, on Ukrainian literature)

Web links