“With a Magnifying Glass of a Literary Detective” (The problem of identifying clandestine texts)

Abstract

The article “Contemporary Ukrainian Poetry” by Oleh Olzhych has been given the status of an authoritative source in domestic literary criticism in recent decades, in particular, in the study of the genesis of emigrant poetry of 1920-1930 and in general on the interpretation of the state of national literature in eastern and western countries, which in the interwar period were respectively under the rule of Russia and Poland. Only the “textual coincidences, general concept and intonation” of the article and Olzhych’s related texts were taken as the basis of identification. Such a technique contains elements of pre-programming of the final result and can lead to erroneous conclusions in identifying the author of the publication. It draws attention to the analogies of text construction, subject matter, lexical and stylistic coincidences, etc., but distracts from what is the main in the objective establishment of the publication of a particular person - the (internal) content of the text. The example of Olzhych’s attitude to the process of development of national literature in the interwar period and especially to the work of his father (Oleksandr Oles) shows that he can’t be the author of a politically quite controversial article “Contemporary Ukrainian Poetry”.