This book is an attempt to rethink the biography of Lesia Ukrainka, in which illness and creativity, Ukraine and "foreigner", politics and literature, classics and modernity, and love and death are intertwined.
Illness and writing. The birth of creativity from the trauma experienced at the bedside of the terminally ill Merzhynskyi. Spiritual and intellectual closeness to Drahomanov. Relations with Kobylianska as a metaphor for women's culture. Fatum of artistic madness, which she knew in moments of creative elevation. Travels in Europe and sanatorium tourism. The status of "otherness" as the recognition of a "new woman" and a "foreigner" in the homeland. "Own" through the prism of historical and cultural exoticism. All this enabled Larysa Kosach-Kvitka to follow her own path and become a prophetess of the emerging 20th century.
In the last year of her life, Lesia Ukrainka confessed to her mother: "...only a woman can write Mavka's story." But the truth is that all her works could have been written only by a woman who lived and created myth Todesverachtung, that is, in contempt of death.
About the author:
Tamara Hundorova is a Ukrainian literary critic and cultural expert. Doctor of philological sciences, professor, head of the Department of Theory of Literature of the T. H. Shevchenko Institute of Literature of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, corresponding member of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. The author of the iconic books "Femina melancholica. Gender and Culture in the gender utopia of Olha Kobylianska", "Post-Chornobyl Library. Ukrainian Literary Postmodernism", "Franko and/or Kameniar", "Kitsch and Literature. Travesties", "Transit culture. Symptoms of post-colonial trauma", etc. Her works were printed in Australia, the USA, Canada, Japan, Germany, Poland, the Czech Republic, China, Sweden, and other countries. Interned at Columbia University, Harvard, Toronto, Sapporo, and Monash University (Australia). Taught in the USA, Canada, and Germany.
