Lesya Ukrainka and Gabriela Zapolska: Modes of Comparability of Life Paths, Artistic Worlds, and National Identities

Abstract

The paper explores the possibilities of a comparative study of the life and creative paths of Lesya Ukrainka and Gabriela Zapolska. It considers the main modes of the writers’ presence: place of birth, origin and family, nationality, upbringing and education, socio-cultural environment, worldview formation, personal life, and creative output in its full scope of self-expression. The concept of the “Volyn text” as a shared geographical and mental matrix for personal formation and creative self-realization serves as the central framework for the cultural internalization of both authors. It is from the standpoint of “frontier identity” that the biography and artistic work of these Ukrainian and Polish literary classics are most effectively examined. The article proposes a methodological framework, outlines the main directions for scholarly work by identifying the most similar and contrasting levels of interaction, and defines the principal approaches to contextualization and further research development. In this way, the reader is presented with a prospectus for a large-scale scholarly project, to be developed within the framework of comparative studies. Thus, the object of the study is the biography and creative output of Lesya Ukrainka and Gabriela Zapolska in the broad contexts of their era. The subject of the study is the formation of the cross-cultural phenomenon at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, which can be defined through the concept of the “Volyn text”.