The Difficulty of Bidding Farewell/Asking for Forgiveness: Mykola Khvylovyi’s Case

Abstract

The article attempts to use the philosophical deconstruction of Jacques Derrida’s memory as a revolutionary renewal of the structure and meaning of farewell/forgiveness to analyse the case of Mykola Khvylovyi’s. Khvylovy was a supporter of Friedrich Nietzsche, a “deconstructor before deconstruction” (Avtonomov). The relation of his works and the unpublished letters to Lubov Umantseva reveals many ways of the manifestation of life experience as an impossible farewell — an analogy of life after the father’s death not only according to German überleben, fortleben, erleben, but also rethinking of thoughts, not only their repetition but also complication. Focusing on the emptiness and ruptures as the “wounds of truth”, the author of this article analyses the paradoxes of the absence of a scene of forgiveness, as well as the lack of a farewell which, consequently, shattered the value of memories.