COMMENT ON “AESTHETIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL SEARCHES OF STANISLAV SHUMYTSKYI'S WORK IN THE CULTURAL-HISTORICAL PROCESS OF THE 60S OF THE 20TH CENTURY”

Dragan Vuchetych[1]

Commented Article: KRYVENCHUK M. V. Aesthetic and philosophical searches of Stanislav Shumytskyi's work in the cultural-historical process of the 60s of the 20th century. Trans/Form/Ação: Unesp Journal of Philosophy, vol. 47, n. 2, “Feminine perspectives in philosophical thought”, e0240011, 2024.

In the context of the literary dynamics of the 20th century, two distinct generations of artists - the "twenties" and the "sixties" - played a decisive role. They fought desperately against the institutional constraints of formal realism, embarking on intellectual quests to carve out innovative methodologies, shape individual worldviews and develop their microcosm of human experience. That time was marked by intense spiritual searches, radical changes of paradigms, rethinking and unrestrained revival of various artistic directions. The "Twenties" reflect the generation of authors and poets active in the 1920s and symbolize an era of active literary experimentation. This period contributed to the emergence of new literary schools and movements that reflected the radical socio-political transformations of that time. "Sixties" refers to a group of art originators of the 1960s, which arose during the so-called "thaw" of the Soviet regime, the partial rehabilitation of several representatives of the "Executed Renaissance" and the condemnation of Stalinism.

Stanislav Shumytskyi (1937-1974) is a little-studied personality in Ukrainian literature of the 1960s. As a poet and journalist from Kharkiv, his life was outstanding for the number of published books. He published the trilogy Signs of Loyalty (1963), Forty Heartbeats (1966), Heroes come in Song (1971), as well as the collection Autumn Opens the Horizon, which included 43 new poems but was not published until his death. S. Shumytskyi was one of the authors who did not limit himself to one genre or direction but assumed a wider role in the cultural space. His work conveyed significant and profound ideas that to, this day. encourage introspection and evoke emotional responses. His works, although they complement the wider panorama of Ukrainian poetry of the 1960s, remain little known to the modern reader. Thus, the presented research is aim at studying S. Shumytskyi’s artistic evolution and his aesthetic and philosophical searches in the cultural and historical context of the 1960s. According to Kryvenchuk (2019), S. Shumytskyi made a significant contribution to the development of Ukrainian syncretism of realistic and romantic genres, deepened genre modifications with elements of modernism, folklore and postmodernism, and also developed the Ukrainian avant-garde thanks to elegiac elements of a philosophical and psychological nature. And, thereby, he continued intermedia and genealogical traditions.

To study the aesthetic and philosophical views of S. Shumytskyi's work in the context of the cultural and historical period of the 1960s, the researcher analyzed his creative output, focusing on three collections of poetic works: Signs of Loyalty, Forty Heartbeats and Heroes Come in Song. The analysis shows that the main themes of the poet's images, in the first collection Signs of Loyalty, are people, work, love and friendship. The lyrical hero of this collection has numerous heroic traits, such as ideological devotion, purity of thoughts and nobility of actions. Stanislav Shumytskyi drew a person’s psychological portrait, paying attention to his emotional sphere and talking about his fate in life. The poems of this collection clearly express Stanislav Vasyliovych’s unique creative style, as well as compliance with the norms of that time. In addition, in the collection Signs of Loyalty, the poet shows a desire to convey the subtlest nuances of mood, the emergence of new aesthetic qualities and deep emotional experiences related to a lonely romantic hero’s sensual sphere. The poet refuses declarative statements and focuses his deep thoughts on the evolution of human views and the search for the meaning of life. His thoughts are permeated with anxiety for his contemporaries’s fate and their future. One of the most valuable features of Stanislav Shumytskyi's poetry, in this collection, is the study of important problems of human relations, their unrestrainedness, greatness and philosophy of new life.

The second collection of poems Forty Heartbeats is the result of the author's long poetic and philosophical work. It impresses with its uncompromising and highly praised poetic narrative about loyalty to the native land and its high ideals. Compared to the author's first collection, where the main features were bright and pure sadness, subtle lyricism, and direct expression of admiration and joy, the second collection is marked by a new feature of the poet's creativity, which consists in his desire for brevity, philosophical thinking and clarity. In the poems of the second collection, there are author’s exclusively personal experiences, mostly related to the separation from the beloved, which makes one think about human suffering and its causes, about the sources of wisdom of the human soul, about loyalty and betrayal, courage and cowardice.

The collection Heroes Come in Song is the result of five years of hard work by the author. The poems of the third collection are dedicated to the ordinary workers’ dedication and honoring. Comparing this collection with the previous ones, one can notice the dryness and the presence of insufficiently understood facts, which contribute to the stereotypical depiction of images devoid of individuality and prevent the disclosure of the heroes’ inner world. However, it is worth noting S. Shumytskyi’s bold experiments, who, being a lyricist by his poetic nature, decided to experiment in the collection Heroes Come in Song, seeking to fill the story with an artistic and journalistic genre. He sought to fill the narrative artistic and journalistic genre of the essay with life facts and events about the hard work of his contemporaries with complex rhythmic pattern of verlibre, i.e. free verse. He created essays that contained life facts and events about his contemporaries’ hard work with a complex rhythmic pattern of vertebrae, that is, free verse, the lines of which had different lengths and different numbers of arbitrarily placed accents.

Within the framework of this scientific article, a study of individual poems belonging to the first and second groups of Stanislav Shumytskyi's work was carried out to reveal their aesthetic and philosophical searches in the context of the cultural and historical process of the 60s of the 20th centuries. The article pays special attention to the poetry "Snow", where S. Shumytskyi is presented as a subtle lyricist. The main idea of the work is an unbreakable faith in the almighty power of love. Poetry is characterized by an expressionistic style and the perception of the lyrical "I" is permeated with fantasy and romance of a philosophical nature. The poem uses vivid personifications of the surrounding environment, for example, the night comes to life thanks to the transformation of the moon, misty outlines and stars. The poet also tries to capture instant impressions and convey even the smallest nuances of mood. It is worth noting that the selection of S. Shumytskyi's works to be presented in this article for the international community was made appropriately and adequately by the scientist. In addition, fragments of these works were successfully translated. Another example from the second collection is the lyrical poetry "Two" by S. Shumytskyi. This poetry has an interesting history of creation. At the end of the 1950s, E. Volgon worked as a typist in the newspaper Leninska Zmena and was expecting a child’s birth out of wedlock, but she did not have her own home. At that time, Stanislav Vasyliovych got a new apartment and, aware of this woman’s suffering and difficult fate, decided to transfer his home to her.

The general conclusions of the analysis of the first group of poems by S. Shumytskyi are the detection of deep sincerity, heightened emotionality and excitement in these works. The poet reveals active mood changes that correspond to socio-historical conditions for understanding the meaning of human existence. S. Shumytsky’s spiritual and aesthetic experiences are aimed at creating a new spiritual reality based on the eternal principles of ethical harmony and beauty. In this group of lyric poems, the features of the poet's creative personality, such as existential lyricism, investigative psychology, courage in statements and philosophizing, and accuracy and conciseness of language, are visible.

The analysis of the second group of S. Shumytskyi's poems reveals their basis on ethical-philosophical and philosophical-aesthetic principles, which reflect the poet's artistic world, artistic concepts, worldview, thoughts and experiences. Especially noticeable, in this group of works, is S. Shumytskyi’s "philosophy of the heart", his great love for people, which found expression in the search for the reasons and roots of human courage, human understanding, the desire for freedom and loyalty to high moral ideals. Most of the poems of this group have a multifaceted character. They raise important issues of humanism and morality. They also use conditional and associative figurative thinking. The language is saturated with rhythmic and intonational new formations.

The conducted research testifies to the deep aesthetic and philosophical searches in the S. Shumytskyi’s work in the 60s of the 20th centuries, which were well founded and reflected the main trends and conditions of the poet's life. Subtle psychologism, lyricism and deep philosophizing determined the artist’s aesthetic and philosophical searches. The poet often preferred the unconscious, and his consciousness was manifested through emotional stress. The broad thematic spectrum of S. Shumytskyi's work covered from the everyday to the eternal, from the permitted to the forbidden. Studies of the human soul were dominant, and his poems expressed uncompromising ethics, where goodness, truth and beauty always prevailed. This is my commentary on Kryvenchuk (2024).

REFERENCES

KRYVENCHUK, V. M. Creativity of Stanislav Shumytskyi in the context of the Ukrainian sixties. Sumy: Sumy State University, 2019.

KRYVENCHUK M. V. Aesthetic and philosophical searches of Stanislav Shumytskyi's work in the cultural-historical process of the 60s of the 20th century. Trans/Form/Ação: Unesp Journal of Philosophy, vol. 47, n. 2, “Feminine perspectives in philosophical thought”, e0240011, 2024.

Received: 04/08/2023

Approved: 10/08/2023

Published: 22/10/2023

[1] Free International University of Moldova, Chisinau 2012 – Moldova. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0006-9727-7496. E-mail: prof_vuchetych@outlook.com.

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