Spectres, simulacres, saxifrages et sopilky: Lessia Oukraïnka comme revenante dans les discours engagés du XIXe siècle ukrainien
Spectres, Simulacra, Saxifrages and Sopilky: Lesya Ukrainka as a Revenant in 21st-Century Ukrainian Committed Discourses

Summary/Abstract: This article aims to show what the “afterlife” of the playwright, poet, letter writer and translator Lesya Ukrainka (1871–1913, born Larysa Kosach, later married to Klyment Kvitka) is like in post-1991 Ukraine. To do this, we first look at how certain artists linked to the anti-Russian/anti-Russophile demonstrations of the 2000s and 2010s have turned her into an icon of the revolution, alongside other writers whose opinions were not exactly the same as hers. We then see how a politician like Yulia Tymoshenko modelled her physical appearance on that of Ukrainka. Thirdly, we recall how the contemporary feminist writer Oksana Zabuzhko analyses and criticises the reception of Ukrainka, pointing out that it is not primarily as the author of her works, but rather as a martyr to tuberculosis who gave all her strength to her struggles that she survived. Finally, we ask ourselves to what extent the events intended to promote her work in an institutional or even academic framework have begun (or not) to create, in the face of these spectres forcibly committed, and which sometimes resemble simulacra, an image of Ukrainka more faithful to the one that haunts her own texts. Several figures of revenance therefore emerge from this journey through the discourses, images and practices that invoke Ukrainka in 21st-century Ukraine: the common grave of literary memory, where ideas merge as bones do in an ossuary; the imaginary of reincarnation of values; the layering of spectres or simulacra born of manipulative discourse which stand between our era and Ukrainka as she is portrayed by her own texts; but also, in accordance with Ukrainka’s work itself, a Persephonian reemergence, not in the sense of a haunting, but of the resilience of life symbolised by the saxifrage; and the permanence of the indestructible little voice of Ukraine symbolised by the flute called the sopilka.

• Details
• Contents