THE SLAVIC STAGE OF LITERARY SCHOLARSHIP BY LUKA LUTSIV: CHRONOLOGY, GEOGRAPHY, RECEPTION

Abstract

The article is the first to propose distinguishing the Slavic stage from 1921–1937 in the interwar period of the life of Luka Lutsiv (1895–1984). Until now, literary studies have been concerned with the literary and ideological identity of L. Lutsiv in the 20–30s of the twentieth century as a Vistnykian, Dontsovian, and it has been occasionally noted that the scholar also tended to an ethical, “Catholic” approach in his research methodology. Luca Lutsiv also presented himself as a knight of the “Red Viburnum”, that is, a representative of the military generation of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen, and interpreted his own scientific activity as a way of fighting Bolshevism, and in general as a new round of his own national liberation struggle. Such national and existential attitudes of Luka Lutsiv determined the way of thinking and analytics in his Slavic studies. From this perspective, the author systematises the relevant biographical facts and literary heritage marked by a distinct Slavic trend in the study of the Taras Shevchenko phenomenon. Here, ideologically and methodologically, Luka Lutsiv is in solidarity and consonant with the scientific research of Jan Mahal and Stepan Smal-Stotsky. It is concluded that in the studies “T. Shevchenko in Slavic Literatures”, “August Harambasic and Taras Shevchenko”, which culminate the stage of life’s work of Luka Lutsiv, the force field of the broad creative contactology of Taras Shevchenko’s poetry with the Slavic cultural world is outlined – from translation, intertextual interaction to historical and literary studies. The article focuses on the reception of the creative phenomenon of Taras Shevchenko as a poet of national existence of the Ukrainian people and an artist of world scale. L. Lutsiv emphasises the relevance of the Shevchenko phenomenon for Western and Southern Slavs, especially at the stage of liberation struggles or the construction of a national liberation paradigm. For the Belarusian world, Shevchenko’s life’s work was an inspiration for poetic and ideological development. The researcher thus emphasises the concept of Slavic cultural unity without Russian imperial ideological and political dominance and the significant contribution of Slavic national cultures to Shevchenko studies.