More Subjectivity, More Frankness: Portraits in Ukrainian Autobiographical Texts Stored in Archives

Abstract

This article is dedicated to the study of the peculiarities of literary portraiture in the hitherto unpublished autobiographical texts of Ukrainian writers of the twentieth century, which are stored in the Department of Manuscripts and Textology of the Taras Shevchenko Institute of Literature of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Kyiv, Ukraine). Under study are the diaries of Varvara Cherednychenko and Mykhailo Ivchenko. These works contain numerous portrait sketches of Ukrainian and foreign writers of the time, as well as of relatives, friends, colleagues and casual acquaintances of the autobiographers. The peculiarities of literary portraiture in the diaries of Cherednychekno and Ivchenko largely depended on the chosen genre of the autobiographical work and the individual style of the autobiographer. Cherednychenko turned out to be a master of frank, detailed and literary portraits. She wrote literary portraits of almost all the people with whom she met. By contrast, Ivchenko created mostly laconic deconcentrated literary portraits of people he knew personally.