The thesis is an attempt to comprehensively study the creative legacy of Mykhailo Rudnytskyi from a number of perspectives such as literary, historical and literary, critical, theoretical, publishing, and organizational. The study focuses on Mykhailo Rudnytskyi’s works of the interwar period, because it was then that he published his most interesting and valuable works and turned into one of the leading literary figures of the time.
Rudnytskyi’s literary legacy is seen as a manifestation of cultural Eurocentrism — a focus on the culture of Western Europe. For him, it was a key worldview and aesthetic principle. In the thesis, the concept of Eurocentrism is interpreted as a phenomenon of cultural and psychological nature consistent with the concept of cultural liberalism. In the Ukrainian literary milieu of the interwar period, M. Rudnytskyi was a leader of the critical-literary trend that his contemporaries described as liberal (under this name it entered the history of literature). It is within this trend that the literary activities of S. Hordynskyi, Y. Kosach, and others were developing. The ideas upheld by the representatives of literary liberalism attracted more resistance than support from the interwar cultural milieu in Galicia.
The thesis for the first time examines the troubled relations of M. Rudnytskyi with the Shevchenko Scientific Society, involving his harsh and mostly undeserved criticism of the materials published in the “Zapysky Naukovoho tovarystva imeni Shevchenka” (Notes of the Shevchenko Scientific Society) from the standpoint of Eurocentrism.
M. Rudnytskyi’s peculiar attitude to the humanities is one of the reasons behind his long-term confrontation with the Philological Section of the Shevchenko Scientific Society. Rudnytskyi believed that literary studies could not be considered on a par with sciences, because they involve a significant share of subjectivity, do not resort to facts and accurate data, and do not rely on experiments. Instead, he thought of literary criticism as equivalent to artistic creativity.
The thesis traces a complex transformation of the researcher’s attitude to the – from complete rejection to active participation in its activities. Mykhailo Rudnytskyi’s contribution to the work of the Taras Shevchenko Scientific Society turned out to be interesting, unique, and in a way necessary for both the researcher and the Society.
The paper elaborates on M. Rudnytskyi’s theoretical literary ideas explained mainly in his book “Between the Idea and Form” (1932), in particular, on the superiority of the idea over form in literary works, non-partisanship and internationality as a necessary condition for creativity, and a focus on European achievements. The key criterion in M. Rudnytskyi’s literary-critical approaches was the aesthetic one. He found style the most important aspect and the basis for creativity. By style Rudnytskyi meant knowledge of European cultural traditions, having a way with words, the richness of language, and the way of presentation. He was adamantly opposed to the utilitarian or “instructional” function of criticism, which, in his opinion, clearly narrowed the necessary information and worldview range.
The paper analyzes M. Rudnytskyi’s literary-critical activities in the interwar cultural process, represented mainly by polemical articles and reviews. The thesis elaborates on the reverberations of the critic’s literary contributions in the interwar period and in contemporary research, analyzes the reception of his critical speeches and reviews in the cultural milieu of Galicia in the interwar period, as well as responses of the authors of the reviewed works to M. Rudnytskyi’s criticism.
The literary-critical reception of M. Rudnytskyi’s creative legacy in the interwar period was based on the ideological stance of readers, critics, and opponents of the author. By studying this reception, we develop a new perspective for the study of cultural, historical, and ideological panorama of Galicia society of that time.
