Yuri Andrukhovych: biography, creativity

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:45

Yuriy Andrukhovych is a well-known Ukrainian writer, poet, translator of literary texts, essayist. Born in 1960 in Ivano-Frankivsk, whose former name was Stanislav. The writer's hometown became the starting point for the work of several prominent authors and artists, who were characterized by the most striking features of Ukrainian postmodernism. This phenomenon was later called the "Stanislav phenomenon".

Education and career

Yuri Andrukhovych, whose biography as an author began in Ivano-Frankivsk, as part of the poetic group "Boo-Ba-Boo" (Burlesque - Balagan - Buffoonade), chooses the city of Lviv for higher education. He enters the Institute of Polygraphy, the Department of Literary Editing and Journalism, which he graduated in 1982.

In 1991, Yuri Andrukhovych graduated from the Higher Literary Courses at the Literary Institute. Gorky in Moscow. In 1994 he defended his Ph. D. thesis on the work of Bogdan-Igor Antonych, a Ukrainian poet of the 20th century banned in the USSR. The topic of his doctoral dissertation was the work of Americanbeat poets.

Initiator of the establishment of the Association of Ukrainian Writers. She has been published many times in popular Ukrainian literary magazines. Yuri Andrukhovych, whose works have been translated and published in many European countries, is actively translating literature from English, German, Polish and Russian into his native Ukrainian.

Community activities

Born in Ivano-Frankivsk, Andrukhovych could hardly belong culturally to any tradition other than Ukrainian. At the end of the 80s. he becomes an active member of the democratic organization "Rukh" ("Movement"), which promoted the independence of the Ukrainian SSR. The novel "Moskoviada" expresses the rejection of everything connected with the collapse of the USSR and the successor country.

Yury Andrukhovych, whose photos over the years increasingly demonstrate his resemblance to a typical Ukrainian Cossack, is a sincere patriot of his homeland and an active successor to its cultural tradition. But in his personal views, there are still purely individual notes that do not allow thoughtlessly labeling him. Andrukhovych's convictions can be characterized as a whole as cosmopolitan. If there are anti-Russian manifestations in his works, then they are directed rather at the state with its offspring than at culture, language and people.

Creative path

Andrukhovych's first collection "Sky and Squares" was published in 1985. It was poetry that led the reader into the world of student freedom, hooliganism and carnival moods. The collection included twothe main motifs that are successfully reflected in the title. "Sky" symbolized natural philosophy, nature with its eternal cycle, and "squares" - urbanism. The poems of the young Andrukhovych could go into some pathos, but they were devoid of hackneyed metaphors and clichéd images.

In 1989, the collections “Seredmistya” (“Center of the City”) and the story “To the left, where the heart is” saw the light of day. In the 1990s, the writer prefers the genre of the novel: in 1992, the sensational "Moskoviada" was published, in 1996 - "Perversion". One of Andrukhovych's last works - "The Lexicon of Intimate Cities" - tells about the moments of his life, hidden in the most diverse senses of the word.

The Russian capital in the writer's work

The years of living in the capital of Russia became the period of life when "Moskoviada" was written. Yuri Andrukhovych publishes a novel, referred to by some critics as "Small Apocalypse", in 1993. The work describes one, seemingly endless, day in the life of a certain Otto von F. This young man, a student, leads a wild, disorderly life, constantly consumes alcohol and enters into promiscuity with women. The purpose of his life from the work is not clear. Most likely it is missing. The institution that Otto visits is described as the threshold of the underworld, and Beelzebub is on guard at the entrance to it. Moscow is presented in the novel as hell, where the main character ended up for his many sins.

After going through all sorts of circles and wanderings in this "hell", Otto got intoa gloomy labyrinth, from which he could only get out by killing himself. A suicide committed in a parallel world brings him back to reality. The labyrinth as an image of the rotten Soviet empire conveys the painful and depressing mood of the 90s in the narrative. The hero flees from Moscow, leaving for his native Ukraine.

Genre specifics

Andrukhovych's works are a vivid example of Ukrainian postmodernism. He is called a classic of modern Ukrainian literature. To receive such a title while still alive is a great achievement. What makes him so loved and respected by the reading public?

Starting as a poet and publishing several collections of poetry, he favored prose and the genre of the novel. Much in his work echoes the classics of world literature, for example, the wanderings of the hero in Perversion reminded of Homer's Iliad, the plot and meaning of Muscovyade are consonant with the novel Moscow-Petushki by Venedikt Erofeev. In Andrukhovych's works, reality is closely intertwined with fiction, fantasy and illusion. Mythological responses and biblical parallels are in close proximity to life and social realities.

Andrukhovych imitates and uniquely quotes different literary styles - baroque, burlesque, magical realism, mannerism, at certain moments his novels acquire shades of confession, thriller and satire. The writer is inclined to play with his reader and his imagination, introducing him to the very center of phantasmagorictransformations. Reading his works leaves a persistent, characteristic of postmodernism, feeling of the absurdity of the modern world, seasoned with the writer's subtle and caustic irony.

Working with theater

Rich creative material and topical issues do not leave directors indifferent. Andrukhovych's works are actively staged on many Ukrainian and foreign stages. Since 2007, the writer has collaborated with the Young Theater (Kyiv), where he played one of the main roles in the play based on his own work - "Perversions". Subsequently, his "Moskoviada" was staged there.

The talent of the writer is recognized by foreign artists. Düsseldorf Drama Theater ordered Andrukhovych original texts for productions. Based on the novel "The Twelve Hoops", the Polish Dance Theater staged the play Carpe Diem in 2011, which was a great success.