Heroism versus Sanctity: to the Problem of Mythologism in the Reception of Literary Criticism of Lesya Ukrainka’s Life and Creative Work

Abstract

Over more than a century of literary reception of creative figure of Lesya Ukrainka the poetess was called incommensurable definitions-apposition like “the patient puny girl” and in the same time “lonely man in the whole Ukraine”, “the daughter of Prometheus”, “poetess – prophetess”, “Ukrainian Sibilla”, “the woman – heresiarch”, others. A list of the metaphorical meanings certifies the mythologizing process of her literary life and creative way where most clearly the hagiographic and heroic tendencies revealed itself.

In view of the above trends, our article is devoted to historiographic examination of the literary works, in which formation, transformation, and postmodern deconstruction “agiographic” and “heroic” myths of literary life and creative way of Lesya Ukrainka observe. We find out historical and cultural reasons and biographical reasons of the research mythmaking, which consist in biographical circumstances on the one hand (confrontation of creative and social activity to the physical illness, which are caused by the disease of loneliness, an introversion, the idealism, the psychological habit of an internal dialogues), on the other hand – in the conscious creative guidance of the poetess to mythmaking (sublime imagery, pathos, intensifying feelings in the text and overcoming the skepticism).

So, the range of the mythmaking literary toposis systematically unites, the repeatability underlines in different generations of researchers supplementing the current deconstruction copyright and research myths for modern Ukrainian literature and caused the mithmaking trends in the art of Lesya Ukrainka.