On the History of False Theses in Shevchenko Studies: the Case of Ostap Hrytsai
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The paper examines the Shevchenko studies of Ostap Hrytsai. While his translations of Shevchenko’s works into German attracted the attention of researchers, his articles and Shevchenko motifs in his poem “The Escape of Oleksa Perkhun” have not received similar feedback. The two early papers by the literary scholar address Shevchenko’s romanticism and the features of his ballads, and it is worth analyzing them in the context of the now generally accepted conclusion about the romantic nature of Shevchenko’s poetry. Scholars didn’t mention these works primarily due to their inaccessibility (the paper “Shevchenko as a teacher” is even absent from Hrytsai’s bibliography) and also because of their undeveloped language and terminology. Hrytsai implicitly addressed theses and doubts circulating in the literary environment. In particular, he argued that the Ukrainian poet was far from romanticism due to the vagueness of his fantastic details, the dominance of the ordinary elements in the poems, and the weak visual component in the ballads. The paper aims to show which works served as a basis for Hrytsai and how the researcher’s false theses—even without mentioning his name—catalyzed a conclusion about the romanticism of Shevchenko’s poetry and the romantic nature of his ballads. Hrytsai’s theses are considered in the context of works by P. Fylypovych, D. Chyzhevskyi, and M. Kotsiubynska on Shevchenko’s romanticism, as well as those by M. Hnatyshak, M. Kotsiubynska, H. Nudha, and M. Bondar, focusing on the features of Shevchenko’s ballads. Attention is drawn to the current complex understanding of Shevchenko’s romanticism. Modern scholars associate it with historicism and mythologism, as D. Nalyvaiko did, or consider romantic historicism in connection with metahistory and mythologism, as demonstrated in Ye. Nakhlik’s approach. The facts indicate that the thesis about the romantic nature of Shevchenko’s work did not emerge all at once but was shaped over time through discussion.
Source: Академічний журнал Слово і Час
Author: Roksana Kharchuk
Institution: Shevchenko Institute of Literature
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4409630189