Taras evenko (18141861) is the central figure in modern Ukrainian literature, but despite the enormous attention that has been devoted to his person, his work, and his role in Ukrainian history and the Ukrainian national renascence, the core of the evenko phenomenonthe symbolic nature of his poetryhas received little systematic analysis.
As this book argues, myth serves as the underlying code and model of evenkos poetic universe. Examining the structures and paradigms of evenkos mythical thought provides answers for various crucial and heretofore intractable questions, such as those concerning the relation of his Ukrainian poetry to his Russian prose, his sense of a transcendent curse and guilt in the Ukrainian past and present, the interrelation of his revolutionist fervor with his apparent providentialism, or of the tension between the nativism and the universalism of his poetry.
Moreover, it is through the structures of his mythical thought that we can understand evenkos prophecy, in effect, his millenarian vision. In this framework, too, the author focuses on the religious tenor of evenkos poetry, in which he is both expiator and carrier of the Word, and, finally, on the receptionindeed the cult of evenko among generations of Ukrainians.
