Demchenko Tamara, Ivanytska Svitlana

“The Day of the Angel of Love”: Natalia Romanovych-Tkachenko and Lyubov Yanovska (Life fates and communication in the age of global transformations)

Section: Women’s (auto)biographies in scientific studies and social communications

Abstract: Drawing on the achievements of “women’s history”, contemporary biography, and literary studies, the authors of the article aim to trace the intersections of fates, the process of communication and mutual assistance of two outstanding Ukrainian women writers who represented different generations in literature in the first third of the twentieth century, Lyubov Yanovska (1861-1933) and Natalia Romanovych-Tkachenko (1884-1933). Research methodology. The article is based on the methodological principles of systematicity, historicism, anthropology, and interdisciplinarity. Specific historical methods (historical and genetic, historical and chronological, comparative, and biographical methods) and methods of historical source study were used. The source base includes diaries, memoirs, letters, autobiography, collections of works of art, archival documents from the Institute of Manuscript of the V. I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine, and modern literary studies. The novelty of the research is that the life stories of L. Yanovska and N. Romanovych-Tkachenko reveal the traditions of communication and mutual assistance among the Ukrainian intelligentsia of the early twentieth century in the context of everyday life in Kyiv in the late 1920s, outline the specific features of women’s communication, worldview values, and the spiritual essence of the Ukrainian person, and prove their ability to withstand the challenges of fate and insurmountable circumstances. The appendix contains an archaeographic publication of L. Yanovska’s letter from 1928. Conclusions. The life trajectories and a specific episode from the lives of two writers and their families, which are described in detail, testify to the life-affirming power of good, its superiority over evil, and the presence of forces in the Ukrainian cultural and literary environment that were able to resist it. It has been proven that these were women’s solidarity, mercy, kindness, and sincerity in their attitude toward others. This “weapon” seemed too ephemeral against the Bolshevik onslaught. But in the long run, they lost: The Angel of Love won.

Keywords: Lyubov Yanovska, Natalia Romanovych-Tkachenko, biography, “women’s history”, communication, survival strategies, everyday life.

  Full-text PDF    https://doi.org/10.15407/ub.25.343     Citation

• Demchenko Tamara (Member of National Union of Local Historians of Ukraine, Honored Education Worker of Ukraine, Ukraine, Chernihiv, [email protected]) ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9308-6170
• Ivanytska Svitlana (Sumy State Pedagogical University named after A. S. Makarenko, Ukraine, Sumy, [email protected])

Cite:
Demchenko Tamara (2024). “The Day of the Angel of Love”: Natalia Romanovych-Tkachenko and Lyubov Yanovska (Life fates and communication in the age of global transformations). Biographistica Ukrainica, (25) 343-358. (In Ukrainan). https://doi.org/10.15407/ub.25.343

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