Lesya Ukrainka in postcolonial-feminist optics O. Zabuzhko

Abstract

The subject of the research is the image of Lesya Ukrainka in the cultural postcolonial work of O. Zabuzhko "Notre Dame d'Ukraine: Ukrainka in the conflict of mythologies". The author of the book interprets the way Lesya Ukrainka is perceived in the national culture, analyzes current and offers alternative resources of Ukrainka's biography, radically reviewing the role of illness in her life and emphasizing the need to distinguish between creativity and biography.

Zabuzhko considers the main cultural message of Lesya Ukrainka the love myth introduced into Ukrainian culture both by her life and her work, while tracing the theme of sacrificial love in a number of dramas: "Possessed", "Rufin and Priscilla", "Forest Song", etc.

According to the researcher, the Ukrainka's concept of love is not included in the orthodox Christian doctrine, but is based on the tradition of Gnostic "female" heresies.

Gnosticism as a tradition of spiritual dissidence, according to O. Zabuzhko, nourished European culture, and consequently Ukrainian culture. Therefore, postulating Ukrainka's Gnosticism, the researcher affirms its Europeanness, without repeating the thesis about the world-historical theme of her drama.

Zabuzhko derives the spiritual genealogy of its Ukrainianness, its historiosophy, as well as Gnosticism, intellectual and spiritual searches, from M. Drahomanov.

On the other hand, O. Zabuzhko returns Lesya Ukrainka to the context of the lost nobility and chivalry of Ukraine, and therefore again by definition returns her to European culture. O. Zabuzhko recognizes the writer as the perfect embodiment of the knightly world, both in life and in her work, analyzing the dramas "Kamineny hospodar" and "Boyarynia"; recreates the psychological portrait of this Ukrainian noble intelligentsia – the Kosachiv circle.