SURREALIST TENDENCIES IN UKRAINIAN INTERWAR LITERATURE

Abstract

This article examines the presence and specific character of surrealist aesthetics in Ukrainian literature of the 1920s–30s. The study addresses the problem of how surrealist features can be identified in a cultural context where no formally organized surrealist movement emerged and where writers did not explicitly associate themselves with surrealism. The aim of the article is to demonstrate that surrealist aesthetics in Ukrainian interwar literature functioned not as a coherent movement, but as a set of partially realized aesthetic strategies shaped by specific cultural and historical conditions. The research combines comparative literary analysis with elements of stylistic and semantic examination, focusing on mechanisms of image construction such as semantic dissonance, category violation, and synesthetic associations. The analysis is based on selected works of Ukrainian authors, particularly Bohdan-Ihor Antonych and Yurii Yanovsky. The results show that Ukrainian interwar literature exhibits a consistent, though non-dominant, convergence with surrealist poetics at the level of technique. At the same time, these features remain embedded in other artistic frameworks and are often motivated by psychological, cultural, or narrative factors. The absence of an institutionalized surrealist movement is explained by a combination of internal factors, including the orientation toward national identity and artistic individualism, and external factors, such as political repression, the destruction of the cultural elite, and the imposition of socialist realism. The novelty of the study lies in the reinterpretation of Ukrainian surrealist phenomena as structurally grounded but historically constrained forms of aesthetic expression, which contribute to a more differentiated understanding of European modernism.