«Anti-popular» view of Hrytsko Hryhorenko on ukrainian peasantry from Naddnipryanshchyna region

Анотація

Introduction. The outlook of European intelligentsia represented by litterateurs, artists, researchers, has shifted dramatically at the turn of the ХІХ–ХХ centuries. Naturally, these circumstances caused certain rethinking of the understanding of the phenomenon of the Ukrainian peasantry by the intellectuals of Naddnipryanshchyna region who started to pay their attention intensively to this issue no later than during romanticism period.

One of those who tried to see people differently and partly change the previous view was Hrytsko Hryhorenko, a female representative of intelligentsia. By then, she belonged to a new generation of writers and presented such literature trends as realism with the elements of impressionism (modernism).

Purpose. The main idea of the author`s research was determined by exploration of H. Hryhorenko`s thoughts on peasant subject despite the fact that there are many memoir works and children`s fiction that also belong to her. While analyzing points of view of this extraordinary personality, ideas of Hrygorenko`s contemporaries, the members of research studio of her legacy were also taken into account – among them are S. Rusova, T. Hrabenko, A. Huliak and others. Such complex approach will allow creating comprehensive and detailed analysis of the subject declared above.

Results. It is worth to admit that researchers of Hrytsko Hryhorenko`s works repeatedly emphasized on the finding of absolutely new author`s concepts of the Ukrainian peasantry of Naddnipryanshchyna. Quite often they called them as «anti-popular». Hryhorenko described «our villagers» in an unusual way, different from what it was accepted at the time of romanticism psychology. As a personality who worked at the turn of centuries, she did not renounce to describe imperfections and even crimes of peasants, showing «free of corvee» life.

Conclusion. In this article you will find analysis of such works of H. Hryhorenko as «Khivrya sharp-tongued», «She is competent», «Migrants (From home to home)», «Marriage proposal», «Old-young»), a representation of the new author`s interpretation of the Ukrainian peasantry of Naddnipryanshchyna, her new attitude towards rural people, often quite critical, sometimes indeed anti-popular, but in no way anti-national. Works of Hryhorenko contained the original vision of the state of affairs on the threshold and during revolutionary events of 1905, they testified new tendencies within the intellectuals’ views on village life, that soon will disappear under the rule of bolshevist policy.