Historiographical Aspect of Jurij Kosacz’s articles in „Biuletyn Polsko-Ukraiński”

Abstract

The Y. Kosach’s literary and critical works devoted to the problem of Ukrainian-Polish relations are analyzes in the article. Much attention is paid to the historiosophical filling of the conceptualistics of the “Ukrainian school” of Polish romantics, reactualized by the critic. Based on the analysis of articles published in the Bulletins of Polish-Ukrainian (Karol Ginch, the Forgotten Romantic of the Ukrainian School (1934), Sergei Podolinsky (1934), Timon Paduro (1934), The Third Union 1934), “To the ideology of Ukrainian clowns” (1935)), we argue that the interpretation of historical phenomena, in particular Polish-Ukrainian conflicts, in the early, nationalist period of the literary criticism of Y. Kosach is not unilateral. Having determined that the writer’s remarkable feature of his artistic and historical thinking is his essayist character, we show how subjective author’s feelings, emotions and aspirations are combined with mental understanding of history. We draw attention to the fact that this particular feature of the writer’s thinking gave him the opportunity to see the deep, historiosophical connection between historical events that were distant in time, which became the subject of his literary-critical interpretation. Illustrated by concrete examples, as Y. Kosach, having simulated the idea of the “third union” in view of the present-day historical context, has led to the search for a solution to the problem not by “fire and sword” but by word. We find out the role of Y. Kosach in refuting and dissolving the distorted both Polish and Ukrainian historiography of these problems.