ABSTRACT
In Ukraine as elsewhere, the passing of the Soviet era caused many writers to lose their cultural bearings. As the writing community realized that the production of apologias for the politico-social status quo was not required in a new situation where high culture was not monopolized by the state, nor funded by it, many of its members fell silent. The most powerful poet, Vasyl Stus, had died in the Gulag, and no poetic voice of equal strength was in evidence. The most accomplished and independent novelist, Valerii Shevchuk, had reached the apogee of his aesthetic power in the final moments when Aesopian language had still had a social function. The passing of political unfreedom deprived him of the context in which, through allegory and understatement, he had achieved masterpieces of subversive expression. Several writers signaled their break with Soviet tradition by exploring new themes and testing untried formal and stylistic techniques, but also by proclaiming their affinity with nontraditional cultural paradigms and contexts. One such context was “Europe”—more precisely, the complex of contemporary thought and high culture that originated in Western Europe and was perceived to hold sway in the non-Soviet parts of the world.
