M. RYLSKY IN THE INTELLECTUAL COMPREHENSION OF YE. MALANIUK

Abstract

The article outlines Yevhen Malaniuk’s vision of Maksym Rylsky’s personality and work, deformed by the lack of national self-identity. Malaniuk’s essays are an inexhaustible source of comprehension of the achievements and failures of the Ukrainian art of words. Maksym Rylsky in the reception of Yevhen Malaniuk, presented in his essays, notebooks, and diaries, appears in all the complexity of personal and aesthetic manifestations. It is proved that the literary critic quite objectively determines the dominants of the artistic world and the poet’s artistic potential. Ye. Malaniuk refers to M. Rylsky as an artist with a pronounced Apollonian beginning, and for this reason he pinned his hopes on him to form the foundations of high literature of the national renaissance. However, the critic faces the problem of the mystery of M. Rylsky’s creative figure as an artist who matured early as a master but did not reach the peak of his spiritual potential. Along with the influence of the totalitarian machine, which is capable of emasculating any signs of the artist’s personal and nation-building energy, the author shows Yevhen Malaniuk’s immersion in the poet’s psychological world and his efforts to create his psychological portrait. Despite the brilliant talent and high literary ability due to immersion in European literature, knowledge of languages, and the perfect artistic taste of the neoclassicist, the literary critic notes the loss of artistic result due to the lack of national self-identification of the artist, the underdevelopment of “national emotion”. Moreover, Ye. Malaniuk comes to the conclusion about the interconnection of the integrity of the poet’s national identity and his artistic self-realization, which can become not only the subject of many scientific studies, but also a methodological constant, a prism for evaluating any writer in postcolonial studies.