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DOI: https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2022.54.06.25
How to Cite:
Bondarchuk, J., Dvorianchykova, S., Vyshnevska, M., Kugai, K., & Dovhopol, H. (2022). Ukrainian literature in the English-
speaking environment. Amazonia Investiga, 11(54), 264-272. https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2022.54.06.25
Ukrainian literature in the English-speaking environment
УКРАЇНСЬКА ЛІТЕРАТУРА В АНГЛОМОВНОМУ СЕРЕДОВИЩІ
Received: May 3, 2022 Accepted: June 6, 2022
Written by:
Julia Bondarchuk102
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4851-8701
Svitlana Dvorianchykova103
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8854-2933
Maryna Vyshnevska104
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1536-9102
Kseniia Kugai105
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9838-904X
Halyna Dovhopol106
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6167-766X
Abstract
The article highlights literary models of
perception of Ukrainian national literature by the
English-speaking cultural community in general
and literature as its phenomenon in particular.
The principle of interaction between both
literatures is subject to the concept of receptive
communication. The contacts of English literary
material and Ukrainian one with respect to each
other are characterized by asymmetry, but there
is also a mutual oncoming movement. A look at
Ukrainian literature in the British Empire is
marked by such concepts as exoticism,
stereotypes, peripheral territory, national
characteristics, post-colonial world,
globalization, interpretation. A full-fledged
parity dialogue between the two literatures,
which develop on the Slavic and Anglo-Saxon
traditions, respectively, has not yet taken place at
the moment, but has the potential for successful
development and presence in the European
cultural landscape in the medium and long term.
The article emphasizes that Anglophones read,
perceive and comprehend Ukrainian literature
differently compared to Ukrainian readers. Thus,
one of the long-term goals facing Ukrainian
102
Ph.D. (in Philology), Associate Professor, Head of the Department of Philology and Translation, Institute of Law and Modern
Technologies, Kyiv National University of Technologies and Design, Ukraine.
103
Ph.D. (in Philology), Associate Professor, Associate Professor at the Department of Philology and Translation, Institute of Law
and Modern Technologies, Kyiv National University of Technologies and Design, Ukraine.
104
Associate Professor at the Department of Philology and Translation, Institute of Law and Modern Technologies, Kyiv National
University of Technologies and Design, Ukraine.
105
Associate Professor at the Department of Philology and Translation, Institute of Law and Modern Technologies, Kyiv National
University of Technologies and Design, Ukraine.
106
Associate Professor at the Department of Philology and Translation, Institute of Law and Modern Technologies, Kyiv National
University of Technologies and Design, Ukraine.
Bondarchuk, J., Dvorianchykova, S., Vyshnevska, M., Kugai, K., & Dovhopol, H. / Volume 11 - Issue 54: 264-272 / June, 2022
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writers, cultural critics and literary critics is the
development of aesthetic and semantic
intentions, as well as the consistent and
meaningful transmission of the ideas of national
and state building.
Keywords: postcolonial literature, general
models of perception, Ukrainian literature and
culture, English-speaking world, dialogic
relations.
Introduction
The general models of perception of any one
national literature by any other national
literature, as well as the individual components
and mechanisms of these models that ensure their
viability and functioning, are not particularly
diverse. Certain fragmentary-situational,
chronologically “linked” schemes as elements of
a lower level than models that could be applied
only to one and not to a number of phenomena,
of course, exist, but the components which are
similar in the vast majority of cases are not
missing. Two completely identical receptive
models do not exist, and obviously cannot by
definition, but typologically close varieties,
according to our observations, play a much more
important role in the overall picture of the
phenomenon in question.
If we look at the phenomenon of reception at the
most general level, it should be noted that the
reception can be of two types. In some cases, it
takes the form of a counter-process (the first
literature – into the second, the second – into the
first), in other cases – a form of mostly
unidirectional process (the first – into the second
in large quantities, with significant consequences
for the literature that perceives; in the first, in a
small amount, without special consequences for
the receiving partner). However, regardless of
which type the reception will be assigned to in
each case, it should be borne in mind that the
process of perception of one national literature by
another creates an idea not only of the literature
that is perceived by others, but also to some
extent characterizes the literature that is
perceived.
The reception of Ukrainian literature in England
and in the English-speaking cultural world
probably belongs to the second type: there is
much more literary material from them to us than
from us to them, in addition, the nature of
interpretation and the assimilation of the material
that comes from them to us, Ukrainians, is
marked by much greater attention, respect,
effectiveness in terms of inclusion in the national
literary process than the interpretation and
assimilation of our literary material in them. The
process of acquaintance, on the one hand, of
Ukrainian literature and culture with English, on
the other hand, of English literature with
Ukrainian, can undoubtedly be considered a
movement in two directions, albeit asymmetrical,
but a mutual action. However, this interaction is
of a specific type, the counter-flows of material
in it are markedly different in volume and,
moreover, differ from each other in quality, as
well as, and this is very significant in
consequences.
Literature Review
The reception of Ukrainian literature and culture,
in particular ancient literature and folklore, in the
English-speaking world was considered,
described, analysed, studied from different
angles, in different contexts, by different
researchers. To understand the peculiarities of
the reception of Ukrainian literature in the
English-speaking cultural area is fundamentally
important, as well as to understand the previous
attitudes, based on which the formation and
fixation of ideas about Ukraine are in the
consciousness of English and Anglophones.
Interest for Ukraine, Ukrainians, their spiritual
culture, folklore, literature arises in the English-
speaking world, and year after year is growing
step by step during the penetration of the British
Empire into. As contacts between the United
Kingdom and Western Europe in general and
their Eastern European neighbours intensify,
diversify, and become more meaningful, the
interest in question, without losing its original
ethnographic basis, intensifies markedly. Its
discoveries, however, for a long time remain
mostly a natural reaction of Anglophone subjects
to new realities, both for themselves and their
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environment, not devoid of exotic taste and do
not go beyond “national a priori” (Gachev,
2008). The desire for the exotic was the main
stimulus for attracting European attention to
Ukraine, it was exactly the thing that initially
determined the direction of this attention.
The transition to a new stage which took place in
the 1860s and 1880s was also most directly
connected with the perception of the Ukrainian
national space, on the one hand, as one that did
not belong to the “spatial history” of Europe and,
on the other hand, as exotic, as close as possible
to the “mysterious East” and perceived as a
cultural stereotype of the “African (or Indian)
mentality”. It bears a clear imprint of an a priori
desire to go to a “foreign monastery” with “its
own statute” and is carried out in line with the
outbreak of European interest in Europe’s new
interest in new “Americans”, “Africans”,
“Indians” much closer than real America, Africa
and India. That is, in fact, one of the varieties of
the phenomenon, which Said (1994) rightly
describes as “Western vision of the non-Western
world” (p. 20) with all possible consequences
and connotations inherent for it.
According to a number of researchers, the
English literature of the XIX century made little
attempt to argue with the notions of
“subordinate” or “lower” peoples and cultures
common in the socio-political discourse of the
time. There could be no question of any “cultural
balance of power” (Geertz, 2000) between “one’s
own” as “higher” and “a foreign one” – “lower”.
With the help of such writers as T. Carlyle,
J. Ruskin, C. Dickens, W. Thackeray, etc., he
expressed such views on the colonial expansion
of Great Britain, the relationship between the
inhabitants of the metropolis and colonies. The
understanding of Ukraine as another exotic land
on the periphery of the world, the attitude of
English speakers who showed interest in it,
recording it in the form of various content and
form of records and comments, was determined
by features that stemmed from Eurocentric
approach of the model characteristic for that era
relationships between the modern Western
European metropolis as a recognized “centre of
the world” and its remote territories, deprived of
its own identity and history.
The key to the perception of Ukraine and
Ukrainian culture was the same approach, which
one author describes as follows: “Being British
or French in the 1860s, you would see and
perceive India and North Africa as something
familiar and distant, but never as something
separated and sovereign” (Said, 1994, p. 438).
The peculiarity of Ukraine, as a rule, was hidden
in the fact that it was perceived as something
distant, not very familiar and, moreover, quite
isolated.
Exoticism was interpreted as exhaustive and self-
sufficient, one that does not require any additions
and clarifications. The view of Ukrainians based
on it did not presuppose that they had a separate
identity as subjects marked by exotics, nor did it
even suggest the very possibility of something
like this. There are no attempts to think about the
life style of Ukrainians as European, to
understand Ukrainian culture as a phenomenon
of European type, to see in it at least the
embryonic state of the discursive way of
constructing national cultural values, which has a
decisive influence on the nation and nation-
building processes.
Methodology
The notion that the postcolonial theory aimed at
understanding the imperial-colonial component
of modernity and related various reflections and
developed at the time as one of the additional
tools for analysing the artistic culture of countries
from the former colonial possessions of
European states (mainly the British Empire and
France), can be applied to the Ukrainian material,
each year gaining more and more supporters both
in Ukraine and abroad. This, we think, is
explained, on the one hand, by a rethinking of the
expansion and deepening of this theory itself, on
the other hand, – the emergence and
establishment of fundamentally different
approaches to Ukrainian history, especially in the
part due to the presence of Ukrainian lands in the
USSR. Both objective and subjective factors
influence this process. Among the first, there is a
significant number of postcolonial impulses and
models demonstrated by Ukrainian literature in
particular and the literature of the post-Soviet
space in general. The second should include the
formation of a constellation of specialists of
different scientific generations, who for one
reason or another became interested in the
problems of postcolonial studies.
In Ukrainian literary studies and, more broadly,
in social sciences, postcolonial discourse –
ideological, methodological, scientific, cultural –
has declared itself in full force in the late 1980s
and early 1990s and is now gaining momentum.
If we take the science of literature, the
“mainstream” of domestic postcolonial
interpretive practice or, at least, practice related
to elements of the postcolonial approach and
postcolonial methods, was formed in the works
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of Hundorova (2013), Syvokin (1984),
Pavlyshyn (2013), Zborovska (2006), Riabchuk
(2011). Their general review against the
background of European and world experience is
given, in particular, by Yurchuk (2013). The
authors focus their attention, firstly, on the fact
that all Ukrainian texts written in the stream of
postcolonial theory, which saw the light of day in
the 1990s, belong to scholars who were directly
affected by the “imperial era” of Ukrainian
existence, secondly, on the fact that the repeated
and variable use of the term “postcolonialism”
has not yet given rise to postcolonial studies in
the field of domestic literary criticism. Currently,
there are isolated attempts to comprehend the
Ukrainian colonial heritage and postcolonial
perspective. In our opinion, we can agree with
the restrained assessment of the first domestic
postcolonial studies. There are hardly enough
grounds to claim that the postcolonial discourse
in the domestic humanities and literature is
already well understood, but there are obviously
no reasons to deny its presence and gradually
update the arguments.
Results and Discussion
The history of Ukrainian literature, understood in
the postcolonial spirit, differs significantly from
the history of the former “classical” colonies, far
from Europe and the European cultural and
civilizational space, both geographically and
mentally. The “colonial boomerang” in Arndt’s
understanding of the transfer of colonial
practices of coercion and violence from the
colonies back to the metropolis, where they
originate, may not be too topical for Ukrainian
material. But to talk about something like
“colonial scissors”, when, on the one hand, there
is a regular literary process on supposedly
independent, equal to other principles, and on the
other – contrary to all declarations, forced and
forcible selection of names and texts, their
censorship, adjustment to the criteria set by the
dogma – in connection with it is not only possible
but also appropriate, constructive, promising.
One of the areas where the application of the
basic postulates of postcolonial theory can
provide a tangible positive result is, we think, the
field of reception of Ukrainian literature in the
national cultural environment of Britain as a
former “empire of empire” whose historical
experience also in the English-speaking world in
general.
The specificity of the perception of Ukrainian
literature in the Anglophone environment is, in
particular, that it is not always interpreted here as
national, often falling under the stereotypical
definition as one of the “hybrid” literature, i.e.
such which has a special perception of both their
past and present, and in a specific way is included
in the global system of literary relations and in
world literature. An analysis of the factual
material provides sufficient evidence to suggest
that Ukrainian literature, in order to occupy a
more prominent place in the English-speaking
environment than it currently occupies, must
change from a national to a “hybrid” composed
of several ingredients, and hence, denationalized,
certainly losing a significant, if not the main, part
of the national specificity. That is, the component
that defines its special identity, national identity,
making it Ukrainian literature with all the
corresponding consequences that follow.
The significance and importance of the analysis
of the relationship between Ukrainian literature,
its perception in England, Great Britain, the
United States and postcolonial criticism is due to
the non-affirmative or negative answer to the
question of whether Ukraine was a colony during
its historical development can be applied to the
Anglo-Ukrainian relations, at least in cultural
discourse, the model that determines the
relationship, on the one hand, the metropolis-
centre, on the other, the colony-periphery.
The concept of “postcolonial literature”, like the
term itself, appeared in Europe in the 1960s,
spread to the “oldest” continent and beyond in
the 1980s and 1990s, and began to be used with
markedly increased intensity already in 2000–
2010. Some researchers attribute this fact to
globalization, which at the beginning of the XXI
century is becoming not only a global
phenomenon, but a dominant feature of world
development, including cultural. The Oxford
Dictionary of Literary Terms defines
“postcolonial literature” as: “a term that covers a
very wide range of works from countries that
were once colonized or dependent on European
countries” (Baldick, 2015).
According to most of the scientific community,
both in Ukraine and abroad, postcolonial studies
gained final recognition and approval after the
publication of Said’s famous monograph
Orientalism (1977). Based on the concept of
discourse proposed by Foucault (1970), the
author showed in a wealth of factual material
how, with which tools and means, the West
artificially constructs the Orient Image instead of
creating it according to the original.
According to Said (1977), the Orient Image in the
reception-perception of the West is the result of
two different discourses: orientalist and
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postcolonial. Each of them turns out to be a
construct, each of them deforms the real Image,
which should be considered to correspond to the
real state of affairs to the greatest extent, but does
so in its own way, not in the same way as the
other. In the mid-1980s, Said had a turning point:
the position of cultural nationalism of the Third
World gave way in his conception to a globalist
position, which, in particular, implies the
rejection of nationalism, national borders,
nations as such. There are a number of important
consequences from this turning point, which can
hardly be considered a coincidence or the result
of a situational coincidence. The first and most
important of them points to the emergence of a
new self-identification of the subject and a
renewed identity, on the basis of which a new
concept of national literature is formed,
maximally adapted to the globalized world and
global literary environment. The essence of this
concept is a new combination of two basic
elements of literary creativity: aesthetic and
ideological – in rethinking the relationship
between them, which is interpreted as optimal
and desirable, and, finally, a new attitude to the
literary canon of the West as such and the canon
which is exported on behalf of the West to
literary systems and environments of the “Third
World”.
For the perception of Ukrainian literature in
England, the views and approaches in question
are of great importance, although they, of course,
cannot be transferred to the background of
Ukrainian-English literary contacts and relations
unconditionally and directly. Preliminary idea of
one or another example of Ukrainian red writing,
one or another figure, one or another work is
formed in the English and English-speaking
cultural environment mainly on the basis of the
“ideological and political” reading and
understanding, which is denied, at least at the
level of theory and declarations (Said, 1994,
p. 79). This preliminary idea has a significant
impact on the selection of material for inclusion
in the reception process, as well as on the further
interpretation of this material, which is carried
out according to a predetermined, based on the
principle of “own” – “foreign”, “higher” –
“lower” model.
If we accept the logic of the postcolonial
worldview and the postcolonial method as an
interpretive strategy, as Hundorova (2013), for
example, does in her famous book Transit
Culture, and the relations between former
metropolises and former colonies, we must admit
that literary contacts and the relationship
between such literatures as English and
Ukrainian is almost doomed to exist in an
asymmetric format with a clear presence of an
element of inequality, which is reflected in the
spontaneous recognition and a priori tacit
agreement of all stakeholders to distinguish and
divide partner literatures on those that belong to
the literature of the “center” and those that are
among the literature of the “periphery”. Thus, the
relationship between the two national literatures
appears not just in another, but in a qualitatively
new light: no longer as a relationship not between
individual, self-sufficient phenomena, because of
the national identity of each isolated from others,
which are also closed in and due to bar defined
as a factor of national origin, and as between the
components of one common – world or, in
modern language, global literature, appropriately
structured and hierarchically organized.
Extrapolating the above provisions, in particular
those concerning the concept of intercultural
dialogue, its nature, specificity and features, the
historical situation in the field of Ukrainian-
English cultural and literary contacts, as well as
the links of Ukrainian literature and culture with
the literature and cultures of the English-
speaking cultural area, it should be noted that a
full dialogue between English and / or other
English-language literature and literature in the
Ukrainian state at the moment remains, in our
opinion, a matter of the future. Having
successfully passed the initial stage, the
Ukrainian-English cultural dialogue settled on
the next – middle stage, gradually accumulating
the potential to move to the final stage, but not
yet having enough and quality of this potential to
make such a transition.
The conclusion according to which the
relationship between Ukrainian and English
literature in general and the perception of
Ukrainian literature in England and the English-
speaking cultural area in particular should be
considered in terms of primarily dialogic
relations between partners, currently seems
controversial. The fact of cultural and literary
exchange in its certain forms and volumes is
indisputable, but whether this exchange can be
considered a real, full-fledged dialogue is, in our
opinion, a question that needs further analysis.
The statement that the dialogue has already been
established seems to outline a certain
perspective, but it is not entirely relevant and
sufficient to characterize and describe the current
state of affairs. At the same time, there are hardly
any serious grounds to deny that the dialogic
characteristic is an integral part of both Ukrainian
and English literature and culture, and due to this
circumstance, the possibility of forming dialogic
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relations between them should be considered as
objectively determined and quite real, not only in
the long run, but in the medium or even short
term.
If we look at the problem of Ukrainian-English
dialogue and reception of Ukrainian literature in
the English-speaking cultural area from the point
of view of the convergent-divergent approach
developed by American Kincaid (1979),
according to whom any national culture and
literature is an open information system that is
constantly evolving and is updated and within
which there are two opposite directions of each
of them, but approximately equal given the
intensity of each of them principles:
“convergence” and “divergence” – it will be
possible to state a certain advantage of the second
principle on the first. Convergence reflects the
degree of coincidence or consonance of the
system of values and worldviews of different
cultures. Divergence is the degree of difference
between them. Recently, we presented the results
of our research on effective means of developing
intercultural communicative competence in
general and in the conditions of training
philologists in particular (Dvorianchykova,
Bondarchuk, Syniavska & Kugai, 2022).
To understand the nature, character, peculiarities
of Ukrainian-English literary relations in general
and the reception of Ukrainian literature in
England and the English-speaking cultural area
in particular, in our opinion, it is necessary to
have a clear understanding that the place and role
of English and Ukrainian literature on the literary
map of the world, as well as in the structure of
world literature are different. Equally important
is the understanding of the fundamental fact that
the British and Anglophones face a number of
objectively determined difficulties and obstacles
based on the affiliation of two literatures and
cultures – Ukrainian and English – to different
civilizational systems and different civilizational
and cultural traditions: the first of them to the
European, Slavic in its Eastern Christian,
Orthodox, version (Ukraine), the second – to the
Anglo-Saxon (Great Britain). As a result, despite
the considerable amount of common and similar
features and elements, i.e. all that forms a
platform for contacts, in many ways different
from each other both the cornerstones of literary
creativity as a component of national cultural
activity and the basic features of their – literary
creativity and cultural activity – the subject is
revealed. All this together has a significant
impact on the receptive discourse in which
Ukrainian and English literature act as partners.
In this context, in our opinion, such an aspect of
the problem as the unequal role of English and
Ukrainian literatures in the formation of world
literature and the different places that each of
them occupies in this literature cannot be
overlooked. The problem of the place of modern
Ukrainian literature on the world literary scene in
recent times with a regularity that could only be
envied, attracts the attention of experts. The issue
directly related to it was, for example,
highlighted as the focus of a roundtable
discussion organized by BBC-Ukraine as part of
the 20th Publishers’ Forum in Lviv (2event,
2013). The range of answers was surprisingly
large, the number and content of the proposals
were impressive.
In Ukraine in the XIX and, even more clearly, in
the XX century, especially in the second half,
hardly anyone could consider himself a cultured,
educated man, if he had never heard of England,
English literature and culture, did not know at
least something about one of the outstanding,
world-famous Englishmen – scientists,
philosophers, writers and others. In England, the
situation was different. Here, knowledge about
Ukraine and Ukrainians in no way influenced the
assessment of the degree of culture or,
conversely, uncultured, educated or uneducated.
They did not and could not influence, by and
large, given a number of circumstances. The
following example is illustrative in this respect.
In the autumn of 2013, two English theatre critics
discussed the novelties of the theatre season on
one of the authoritative English television
channels. Among other things, we talked about
the opera Boris Godunov by Modest Mussorgsky
in the words of Alexander Pushkin, which was
staged in one of London’s theatres by the famous
English theatre director Graham Vick. The
discussion acquired a specific, clearly defined,
clearly and consistently expressed
“Anglocentric” form, in which the English
material, the English motive, after all, anything
English in all conditions and circumstances is
interpreted and presented as the primary, most
important, key, while everything that is not, has
a priori derivative, secondary value. Critics did
not mention music at all, immediately moving on
to the libretto. All that was said about him was
that the plot “written off” by Shakespeare from
the tragedy Macbeth, reducing the whole
conversation, in fact, to the discovery in the
culture of “barbarians” of something that they –
“barbarians” – borrowed from the British
(Yefimenko, 2021).
Perception by one national literature (in our case
– English) of another national literature (in our
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case – Ukrainian) implies the integrity of the idea
of the latter, which is formed within the first, or
the integrity of the image of the second literature
in the first. In our opinion, it is premature to
speak about the integrity of the perception of
Ukrainian literature and culture by English
literature and culture and, in general, in the
English-speaking cultural area.
The exoticism of Ukraine and the Ukrainian
national and cultural space in the eyes of the
British was interpreted as exhaustive and self-
sufficient, one that does not require any additions
and clarifications. The view of Ukrainians based
on it did not presuppose that they had a separate
identity as subjects marked by exotics, nor did it
even suggest the very possibility of something
like this. There are no attempts to think about the
life style of Ukrainians as European, to
understand Ukrainian culture as a phenomenon
of European type, to see in it at least the
embryonic state of the discursive way of
constructing national cultural values which has a
decisive influence on the nation and nation-
building processes, – in the English world at that
time was not observed.
From the point of view of readiness for exoticism
and focus on it, the Ukrainian Cossacks, of
course, attracted special attention of Europe and
Europeans. The Cossacks are one of the
brightest, unique realities of Ukrainian life,
which had no analogues either in the Anglophone
or in the Western European world in general. The
fascination with the Cossacks at that time had a
tradition in Europe, it was perceived as
something completely natural, based on what
really took place in real life. Collective and
individual images of the Cossacks were already
known in world literature. Cossacks in Europe
were considered a symbol of military strength
and victory, as warriors capable of defeating
even the Turks, who caused fear in Europeans. In
1569, the Kingdom of Poland inherited the
Cossacks together with Ukraine from Lithuania,
which relied on them to protect its southern
border from the Crimean Khanate, – explains the
situation, although looking at it from a slightly
different angle, Snyder (2003). Poland found out
that the Cossacks were of great military
importance not only for defence but also for
attack. For a time, the Cossacks filled this niche,
demonstrating their value in the wars with
Sweden in 1610–1602 and the Ottoman Empire
in 1621. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
gained its greatest fame when its Polish and
Lithuanian knights fought side by side with the
Ukrainian Cossacks (p. 143).
Increasingly intensive and effective inclusion of
Ukrainian ethnic territories in the process of
formation of national early modernity, and later
– the beginning of the formation of modern
Ukraine on the perception of Ukrainian literature
in the English-speaking world had almost no
effect. The view of it and all that is connected
with it remained stable, based on the
understanding of it as an archaic world,
hopelessly frozen in the stage of prehistoric
social development. This view did not change
much when the first manifestations of the
Ukrainian national spirit and Ukrainian
patriotism began to appear on the Left Bank in
1820–1830, or when “in the middle of the XIX
century to the left-bank defensive patriotism was
added a romantic sense of guilt of some right-
bank landowners, which led to the formation of a
populist movement in Kyiv with elements of
national character” (Zorivchak, 1993, p. 153-
154), nor when, thanks to Taras Shevchenko’s
poems, the Ukrainian idea received a response
not only in ethnic Ukrainian lands, but also in
other parts of the world.
The first steps on the way of acquaintance of the
British and other representatives of the
Anglophone world with the Ukrainian spiritual
culture were, as it is known, made before the
appearance of Taras Shevchenko and regardless
of his figure (Snyder, 2003, p. 151-154), but it is
with the work of Kobzar a new era in the history
of the reception of Ukrainian literature in the
English-speaking cultural environment. The
reception remained exclusively a reception, an
acquaintance, without turning into an
interpretation of the poet’s own works, as well as
the problems of his place and role in Ukrainian
literature, as well as in the formation of a new
Ukrainian national identity. Taras Shevchenko’s
understanding in the English-speaking
environment was simplified. Kobzar’s role as a
Ukrainian national genius, whose achievements
“paved the way for modern Ukrainian politics,
where culture was theoretically and practically
combined with the peasantry” (Snyder, 2003,
p. 154), as well as a world-class artist and
thinker, remained for the entire Anglophone
cultural area not only incomprehensible, but also,
in fact, unknown, indecomposable.
Zorivchak’s (2010) conclusion is full of
optimism and positive pathos that “now wider
readers of the English-speaking world are
accustomed to perceive T. Shevchenko’s work as
an artistic embodiment of the historical memory
of the Ukrainian people, as one of the brightest
pages in world literature” (p. 120) – is perceived
in this regard, of course, with understanding and
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commitment, but gives the impression of
exaggeration, dictated by non-scientific factors,
looks desperate (and quite natural) attempt to
idealize the situation, pretending to be real.
To some extent, generalizing the system of
assessments and ideas accumulated in domestic
Shevchenko studies in the past, Dziuba (2008)
notes: for the present omnipresence, omniscience
and omniknowledge has always been and will
always be far away. “Shevchenko as a great and
eternally living phenomenon is inexhaustible,
infinite and uninterrupted” (p. 5). Such Taras
Shevchenko was not known in Great Britain or in
the English-speaking world in general, and the
very possibility of searching for interpretations
of his work in this direction was not even
suspected. We, Ukrainians, as Dziuba (2008)
rightly writes, “appreciate the spiritual and
aesthetic richness of his creative world, admire
the ideological avant-garde … and other precious
qualities associated in our consciousness with his
name” (p. 5). Whereas for the British and
Anglophones these features of Shevchenko’s
figure and creativity, or at least a significant part
of them are irrelevant.
However, we think there are reasons to agree
with Hnatiuk (2005), when she claims that
“Drago Yanchar’s words about the identity of his
people, which was claimed “culture and
literature” due to “lack of real historical and
political forces”, can be applied to the Ukrainian
situation” (p. 39). And to further support her
decision to start a list of Ukrainian examples that
should serve as an illustration for this conclusion,
namely from the poetry of Taras Shevchenko.
According to the tradition, which began with the
first steps of the penetration of Ukrainian
literature and culture into the English-speaking
cultural area, the interpretation lagged behind the
reception. There was nothing unusual or
extraordinary during the reception process.
Virtually everything that happened took turns
depending on the way in which objective and
subjective factors were formed at one time or
another. The subjective factor usually prevailed.
At some point, representatives of the Ukrainian
diaspora in the United States, Canada, and the
United Kingdom began to play a leading role,
which left a certain imprint on the whole process
of perception of Ukraine, Ukrainian literature,
and culture.
In the general flow of reception of Ukrainian
literature in the English language and cultural
area, the focus is not only on perception but also
on full-fledged assimilation, i.e. the actual
interpretive component, appears in the second
half of the XX century under the influence of the
desire to include Ukraine in the renewed picture
of Europe, which began to take shape under the
influence of changes and shifts that took place in
the twentieth century. Another feature of
acquaintance of English-speaking readers with
Ukraine and Ukrainian literature is that the image
of Ukraine was not so much formed through
acquaintance with beautiful literature, as it was
mainly introduced, so to speak, from outside,
from history, politics, international “mythology”
and others.
The nature of the evolution of the image of
Ukrainian literature in the English-speaking
world, stages and steps of this process is clearly
seen in the example of how the development of
English Shevchenko’s work developed and
changed, as well as understanding it and its
significance for Ukrainian culture and nation.
From the point of view of understanding the
nature and peculiarities of the reception of
Ukrainian literature in general, the reception of
Taras Shevchenko in the English-speaking
cultural area is indicative. Later, it became an
interpretation without or outside the reception,
one of the brightest examples of which is
Grabowich’s monograph The poet as mythmaker
(1982), published in English in the USA in 1982
and published in Ukraine in Ukrainian translation
in 1991.
Conclusions
The English and Anglophones in general read
and understand Ukrainian literature, perceive and
comprehend it differently and not as Ukrainians
know it. And, perhaps, not in the way that
Ukrainians would like, given their desire to once
and for all take a deserved and suffering place
among other nations and peoples of a united
Europe.
If we try to look at the problem of reception and
interpretation of Ukrainian literature in England
and in the English-speaking environment in
terms of not only quantitative but also qualitative
criteria, we will obviously notice the fact that the
deep meaning of Ukrainian literature in its
historical development as a holistic and
consistent metanarrative (superscript), which
would unite the whole literary process in the
unity of its semantic and formal, aesthetic and
conceptual (ideological) diachronic and
synchronous intentions, revealing, among other
things, its highest as actually artistic, and the
nation- and state-building goal – remains so far
undisclosed to the British and Anglophones.
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