Antynomia, apoteoza, adaptacja. O wzajemnych relacjach miasto – wieś w literaturze ukraińskiej

Opposition city/ country (other versions of antinomic relations – centre/ outskirts (neighbourhood), foreign/ familiar, distant/ close etc.), where the city is viewed as a hotbed of shattered dreams and people’s hopes, and the country as the oasis of calmness and a mainstay of historic traditions – is an important motive of classic Ukrainian literature. Leaving canonical peasant literature for peasants (Ukrainian: cелеписність) and unquestionable turn to the urban subject matter in the Ukrainian literature were observed in 1920s, initially in the poetry of futurists and neoclassicists and later in the intellectual prose of the representatives of “Executed Renaissance”. In the latest postmodernist Ukrainian literature the classic spatial opposition city/ country is subject to a new evaluation. The postmodernist writers not only traditionally contrast city with country, but also, or even above all – the city of the past with the modern city, Ukrainian city with the city of the west. Thus, antinomy, apotheosis, adaptation – even today coexist in the complex relations city/country, but with the main stress moved from the apotheosis of the country to the search of living space and continuous attempts to adapt in the modern urban agglomeration.