Information on the thesis

Based on the material of the literary-critical, philosophical, political and journalistic
essays of the thinker of all periods of his creativity, for the first time the literary heritage
was analyzed as a definite national-philosophical and semantic integrity, as a national-
existential phenomenon in the history of Ukrainian literary criticism of the 20th century.
The most important hermeneutical and methodological ideas of D. Dontsov (national
centrism, idealism, voluntarism, heroism) were clarified and interpreted; the national and
philosophical specificity of Dontsov’s understanding of the creativity of I. Kotlyarevsky,
N. Gogol, T. Shevchenko, I. Franko, Lesya Ukrainka, V. Stefanik, M. Cheremshina,
N. Khvylevy, O. Teligi, as well as other representatives of ancient and classical literature,
narodniks, modernists, vestnikovites, Soviet writers, was examined; the artistic-axiological
paradigm of the thinker and the historical and literary concepts clarified by him have been
interpreted in the work.
D. Dontsov is primarily a political philosopher, and therefore nationalist
hermeneutics becomes for him the main way of understanding cultural, including literary
phenomena and patterns that directly affect the political life of the nation. The debatable
experience of D. Dontsov is based on essential principles: national centrism, idealism,
voluntarism, heroism. Attention is focused on the fact that D. Dontsov’s creative activity in
the ontological and existential understanding is deeply rooted in the life of the nation, is
based on nationalism as a form of culture, has an expressive national-creative character, is
aimed at affirmation of the national identity on the basis of the Ukrainian idea and under
colonizing pressure finds its interpretative expression in the interpretation of literary texts
as a spiritual-worldview system of values of a writer.
Western neo-romanticism is regarded as a national-modern literary trend, firmly
entrenched in the knightly, and simultaneously heroic, mystical, artistic tradition of ancient
literature, in the works of T. Shevchenko and Lesya Ukrainka. Its philosophical and
aesthetic basis is the nationalist world view, the heroic, courageous philosophy of tragic
optimism, the philosophy of life as a struggle. The main features of neo-romanticism were:
national centrism, subjectivity, voluntarism, heroism, activism, dynamism, religiosity,
idealism, occidentalism, irrationalism, belligerence, freedom-loving, bigotry, nobility
(perfection) of style and so on.
Key words: Dmitry Dontsov, essayism, national philosophy, hermeneutics,
visnykivstvo, nationalism, national centrism, interpretation, meaning, aesthetics,
voluntarism, idealism, heroism, neoromanticism, modernism.