Respondent

Shvets Alla Ivanivna

Theme

The Life Path of Nataliia Kobrynska in generational, world view and creative dimensions.

Defence Date

08.11.2018

Annotation

This is the first comprehensive intellectual biography of Nataliya Kobrynska in
Ukrainian literary criticism which presents different aspects of her lifeworld – psycho-
logical, sociocultural, worldview, generational and creative. Such a multidimensional
biography appears as alternative to the canonic genre of literary portrait, which has now
been modified significantly because of the tendency to comprehend an artist through
different aspects and individual creative characteristics.
On the basis of archive materials (letters, memories, autobiographical texts) first
introduced into scientific discourse, the mental image of writer has been reconstructed,
her exact date of birth and death have been established and previously unknown epi-
sodes of her life have been highlighted, i.e. family relations, misunderstandings with the
Radical party, Halychyna criticism, extensive Jewish contacts, characteristics of the two
versions of will, giving up on motherhood, social and spatial limitations of Bolekhiv,
the Lviv failure of 1904–1907, wartime drama, literary marginalism during the second
creative period, infatuation with spiritualism and occultism, the circumstances of life
during elderly age.
For the first time the individuality of N. Kobrynska has been characterized through
the prism of psychological state and mental constitution, namely gerontological prob-
lems. The onthological symbols of epitaph, «My heart does not ache anymore», which
N. Kobrynska made a will to put on her gravestone, have been decoded.
The personality of writer has been analyzed from the standpoint of generational
identity, set against Halychyna and Dnieper Ukraine local history, and within the con-
text of significant relations with leading representatives of different generations
(I. Franko, M. Pavlyk, O. Kobylyanska, M. Drahomanov, M. Hrushevskyi, P. Kulish and his wife). We have singled out factors of successful generational integration of the
writer into Halychyna environment of mid 1880s and mid 1890s, i.e. close creative ties
with I. Franko and M. Pavlyk, literary debut in «Zorya» journal (1884), the establish-
ment of Society of Ruthenian Women in Stanislav (1884), the publication of «First
Wreath» women’s almanac (1887), the idea of women’s movement, identification with
the radical party, positivist world view, literary competence and European literature.
The thesis also discusses the reasons for generational crisis experienced by
N. Kobrynska starting from mid 1890s caused by her disconnection from her own gen-
eration – hidden conflict with Franko and the Radical party, male criticism of the female
publications of author, misunderstandings with women on the grounds of feminist ideas,
aesthetic differences with literary critics and young writers, the hard choice of optimal
biographic topos (Bolekhiv versus Lviv, Halychyna versus Dnieper Ukraine).
The thesis analyses world view constants of N. Kobrynska – feminism, Euro-
peanism and nationalism – and also traces the spiritual evolution of the writer’s think-
ing – from religious eccentrism, positivist influence and identifying with socialist ideas,
getting temporarily close to programme ideas of the Ukrainian radicals to nation-centric
and statehood shaping ideals. At elderly age, under the influence of war events,
N. Kobrynska adhered to the values of Christianity and universal humanism.
The thesis provides the first stereometric analysis of all the prose works written
by N. Kobrynska, little known writings in particular, marked by modernist aesthetics.
The prose by N. Kobrynska became an expression of the complicated dialogue with the
world, a highlight and interpretation of social problems, female psychology, mystic ex-
perience, anthropocentric and existential problems in particular, theodicy issues, realisa-
tion of one’s own being and axiological senses through autonarrative, antimilitary mo-
tives. The paper provides a complex study of the aesthetic and stylistic evolution, top-
ics, poetics and imagery of her creative works (character creation, landscape descrip-
tion, mythopetics and chronotope). Artistic prose of the writer has been analyzed ac-
cording to genre (story, short story, psychogram, poetry in prose, sketch, fairy-tale,
study) and topic-theme groups. The background story, genesis, in particular autobio-
graphic, has been provided for such works as «For a Piece of Bread», «In a Vortex»,
«Soul», «Hands», «Eyes», «Du bist die Ruh». Intertextual parallels have been estab-
lished for «Jewish Child», «Khmarnytsia», «Liebesahnung».
Creativity of N. Kobrynska cannot be defined by a predominant stylistic trend so
any periodization or classification according to different criteria is rather conventional.
In this respect, the writer’s prose is worth studying within the framework of ideological
and aesthetic, stylistic and worldview evolution, which lead the author’s thinking from
realism to modernism in their various stylistic expressions – symbolism, impressionism,
surrealism.
Keywords: literary generation, prosopography, identity, feminism, intellectual
world view, Europeanism, nationalism, creative prose, realism, positivism, modern-
ism, mythologism, spiritualism autonarrative, poetics, genealogy, eidology, stylistic
evolution.

Contact Information

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Autosummary File