Looking to the Past to Forge a Future: Lyuba Yakimchuk and the Legacy of the Executed Renaissance

• In Event: Contemporary Ukrainian Literature: The Frontiers of Freedom

Abstract

Lyuba Yakimchuk revives historically familiar literary and linguistic techniques to tether her artistic work to the Ukrainian canon and place herself confidently in a long line of Ukrainian cultural production. This paper traces the line between Yakimchuk’s poetry and screenwriting and the Ukrainian Futurists, Mykhail Semenko in particular. In her work after 2014 which marks the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War, Yakimchuk often refers to the Executed Renaissance to further contextualize Russia’s long-standing imperial practices towards Ukraine and to articulate the Ukrainians’ fight as an act of political and cultural liberation.

Author

• Jemma Paek, Harvard U