CHAPTER ELEVEN

LESYA UKRAINKA

The age of realism gradually gave way to neo-romanticism. After a period of time in which literature was bound within the strict limits of a photographic reproduction of nature and of social life, the authors gradually came to demand the liberty of expressing their thoughts in their own way and of choosing such subjects as they desired. There came a renewed emphasis on poetry and a higher technical skill in its production. New devices in metrics and in rhythm were introduced and there appeared authors with the proper talents to master the new devices.

Nowhere was this more true than in Russia. The eighties had been a time of discouragement to the Russian intelligentsia but toward the middle of that decade, some of the writers against the opposition of most of the liberal elements demanded for themselves the same liberties that were being claimed in other countries. There came a broadening of themes and an endeavor to get outside the narrow range of contemporary subjects that had preoccupied the literature for forty years.

The same influences were working on Ukrainian literature, although the authors who had never bowed the knee to that peculiar type of Russian liberalism which had discounted the Ukrainian right to exist did not have to pass through all the phases of pessimism that their conquerors