Motronivka Farm of the Bilozersky-Kulishes` Family in the cultural space of Ukraine in the 19 -21st centuries

Abstract

The article examines the Kulish “farm philosophy” as a complex synthesis of Rousseau`s ideas, romantic aesthetics, populist ideology and Christian views. “Farm philosophy” is ambiguously related to the life of the writer on his own farm in the 1850s. The reality of everyday life and relations with the serfs are, on the one hand, in contradiction with the provisions of his “farm philosophy”, on the other hand, they are the practical experience on which the writer developed these ideas. The ideas of the Kulish “farm philosophy” are not only a religious and philosophical substantiation of the positive meaning of the farm in the history of the Ukrainian people, its language and literature, but also a kind of historiosophical program for the development of the Ukrainian nation. This philosophy at the last stage of the poet’s work became the basis for his poetry. Thus, in the collection “Farm Poetry”(1882) the themes of “farm philosophy” are linked with the poet’s own biography and become the basis of his lyrical works. And after Kulish’s death, another collection of his unfinished poems “Farmers’ unburnt”(1902) was published, which testifies to the importance of farm philosophy themes for the author’s creative evolution. The tragic history of the Motronivka farm, which the writer himself renamed Gannina Pustyn in honor of his wife, has become an indicative page in the history of Ukraine in the 20-th and 21^st centuries, with successive periods of prosperity and decline in its cultural life.