Ukrainian library by the river
Lesya Ukrayinka, Taras Shevchenko, Mychyl Semenko
Talk and reading with Claudia Dathe, Anna Siedykh and Florian L. Arnold
It reads: Gunther Nickles (Ulm Theatre)
The »Ukrainian Library« (Wallstein Verlag) presents central classics of Ukrainian literature of the 19th and 20th centuries and promotes their international perception. Some of the texts are being republished in German, but in a modern translation, while others are being presented to German readers for the first time.
In his works Shevchenko The film makes the repression of the Russian Empire and the resistance of the Ukrainian people in the 19th century tangible and sings of the longing for personal and national freedom.
Lesja Ukrajinka's book „By the Sea“, written in a forbidden language at the beginning of the 20th century, can be experienced as a pearl of European modernism and feminist literature from a post-colonial perspective.
Semenko symbolises the awakening of Ukrainian culture in the 1920s - driven by a radical desire for renewal and a belief in the power of art, but brought to an abrupt end by Stalin's totalitarian rule in the 1930s.
Claudia Dathe, translator and editor, and author Florian L. Arnold will talk about the universal and specific values of these books; poet Anna Siedykh, who comes from Kyiv, will shed light on their influence on young writers.
