MODERNISM IN UKRAINIAN SHORT PROSE OF THE LATE 19TH-EARLY 20TH CENTURY: VASYL STEFANYK, MARKO CHEREMSHYNA

Abstract

In this article, the author discusses the specificities of modernism development in Ukrainian literature of the late 19^th-early 20th century on the example of Ukrainian short prose. Modern approaches to creative quests in literature are characteristic of writers of Dnieper Ukraine, which was part of the Russian Empire, and people of letters from Galicia, which was under Austria-Hungary. As a short-story writer who had been growing in the literary milieu of Kraków, Vasyl Stefanyk gravitated towards the expressionist style of storytelling. In contrast, Marko Cheremshyna was an impressionist who had absorbed the tendencies of Viennese modernism in his short prose, having enriched it with a Hutsul flavor.

Back in the 1920s, Mykola Zerov wrote about the distinguishing features of the two writers, despite their external similarity, whose literary ideas in the interpretation of Galician short prose did not continue in our science of the 20^th - early 21^st centuries. The individual quests of Vasyl Stefanyk and Marko Cheremshyna were vivid evidence of the modernization of Ukrainian literature, which at the turn of the 19^th century became part of European modernity.