Sociocommunicative Practice of Yuriy Fedkovych as a Dialogue of Cultures

Abstract

The history of Yuriy Fedkovych is represented not so much in a global sense as in an existential one – considering that every individual we communicate with represents a new distinct culture. Initially, the specific system of the writer’s connections with his closest environment, especially his father, A. Hordynsky de Fedkovych, is examined, indicating the validity of purely ethnic peculiarities of Bukovynian Hutsuls’ communication in the discussed situation and the “textual”, dialogic openness of Y. Fedkovych’s literary and public activities to Others. Then, various forms of the artist’s relationships with Others are distinguished. These are primarily relationships of unity, dialogic communication, subordinated to high democratic-cultural goals and connected with literature and creative practice. This refers to contacts with his sister Mariia, selected representatives of creative intelligentsia (R. Rothkähl, E.-R. Neibauer, A. Kobyliansky and K. Horbal, E. Maroshani, D. Taniachkevych, M. Drahomanov, S. Smal-Stotsky). In relationships with peasants and fellow soldiers, Y. Fedkovych similarly demonstrated not an authoritarian, imperative, but a subject-to-subject style of communication and received high humanistic values in return. However, sometimes these dialogues, due to the utilitarian human nature of some Others, were unable to develop into a full-fledged dialogue of cultures. The circumstances of Y. Fedkovych’s complicated communication with the native intelligentsia and himself in the second half of his life (from the mid-1860s) are examined, which was a reaction to lower forms of relationships between communicants – pseudo-dialogical, even utilitarian, but not complete. Then, conversations with books compensated for the deficit of human attention, which was a form of genuine dialogue of cultures. It is concluded that Y. Fedkovych’s limited communication with contemporaries largely prompted him to communicate with them and all Others through his creative work. The writer possessed a high level of culturological thinking, effectively received and transmitted values of native and foreign cultures, thus he can be considered perhaps the brightest carrier of his ethnic community’s cultural code into the broadest cultural context.