Mykhailo Kotsyubynskii: from the secret of the agave to the mystery of personality

Abstract

The proposed research is devoted to a detailed coverage of the interpenetrated life and creative paths of the outstanding artistic talent, the sun-shining personality and the patriotically indestructible individuality of Mykhailo Mykhailovych Kotsyubynskii (1864 – 1913), recognized in Ukraine and abroad. This worthy man of the national spirit and unique literary works belongs, according to Ivan Franko’s definition, to the “new generation of Ukrainian writers,” whose works are imbued with refined and painfully truthful psychologism, complete microscopic study of mental states, the most delicate internal movements of thought, excitement, dreams, desires and always more or less existentially dramatic experiences of the heroes of their canonical works of art. At the same time, it is convincingly argued that among the cohort of modern Ukrainian prose writers of the late nineteenth – early twentieth centuries (I. Franko, O. Kobylyanska, P. Myrnyi, V. Stefanyk, G. Khotkevych, etc.) Kotsyubynskyi is distinguished by exquisite, and both internal (thought-speech, moral-ethical) and external (speech, text) aesthetics of his essays, novels, short stories, in which selected artistic means and techniques do not only describe an all-possible structural-dynamic palette of existentialization of personal psychospiritual, but also natural objects endowed with a wide mosaic of form manifestations of subjective: the mystery of the agave (“it blooms to die, and dies to bloom”); apple blossom, among which the anarchy of the wax child’s body reigns; children’s eyes of cornflowers, sparkling with tenderness and truthfulness; lark song, flowing into the blue ocean of the sky, piercing with joy a soul tortured by routine etc. Therefore, it would seem that well-known representatives of the plant and animal worlds in the prosaic works of the talented native word’s master, being full of sacred mystery, come to life, are animated, and filled with harmonized subjectivity. The difficult life path of the writer, as it is illustrated by the continuity of covital events, forced to draw strength from Ukrainian nature – from the heart of native land and from the reference patterns (primarily personal) of ethno-national culture and, despite material shortages, clerical work, illness and police supervision, to blossom with a generous talent of world scale – the color of true artistically exquisite beauty. In the end, it is factually substantiated that the creative path made by Mykhailo Kotsyubynskyi in the format of a great deed-feat fully conquered the life path both in artistic content and in cultural consequences. And confirmation of this is that premature death (“that hissing of the waiting death”) turned into the immortality of his works for ever for all mankind.