Oriental trails of Liudmyla Staryts'ka-Chernyakhivs'ka

Abstract

During the first two decades of the 20th century, Ukraine was part of the pan- European and world cultural space, as evidenced by the main literary events of that time. After the 1930s, this process was disrupted due to the repression of the intelligentsia and was not resumed for many years. In 1913, Rabindranath Tagore became the first non-European Nobel laureate in literature, and the first translations of his works were made into various European languages, which paved the way for the development of Indology as a branch of Oriental studies. Liudmyla Staryts'ka-Chernyakhivs'ka was actively involved in this literary process. The article analyzes Liudmyla Staryts'ka-Chernyakhivs'ka's review of the book of the first translations of Rabindranath Tagore's lyric poems into Ukrainian by Yury Syriy (Tyshchenko) "Sadovnyk" ("The Gardener") in 1918, after the book was published. The analysis of this review was carried out for the first time from the point of view of literary criticism. Comparing with two other reviews of the same book made at that time, Liudmyla Staryts'ka-Chernyakhivs'ka's review revealed her high professionalism, deep knowledge of the science and art of poetry translation and her brilliant literary criticism. The article also discusses the merits of the review from three aspects or perspectives – linguistic, historical and development of oriental studies, which are of great importance for the development of the art of translation, for the study of Tagoreana or Tagore's legacy in Ukraine. Despite the negative assessment and harsh criticism from Liudmyla Staryts'ka-Chernyakhivs'ka, the translation is historical and the review also is historical, because it analyzes Tagore's first translations and is a contribution to the development of one of the direction of Oriental studies.