Between poetology and nation building: complex identities in Ukrainian underground poetry of the 1960s–1980s

Abstrakt

In this essay, I analyse how identities are constructed in Ukrainian underground poetry of the late Soviet period. On the basis of selected poems by Mykhailo Hryhoriv and Vasyl’ Stus, I explore the complex dynamics between the explicit commitment to fostering national identity that is often regarded as a standard duty of Ukrainian writers and the pursuit of a transnational, purely literary identity as part of a wider embrace of the modernist imagination.