Stumme und sprechende Spiegel in der unabhängigen Lyrik der spätsowjetischen Ukraine

Alessandro Achilli

2025-01-01

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Abstract

In this essay, I analyze mirror images in the independent poetry of late Soviet Ukraine. On the basis of selected examples from the work of such poets as Ihor Kalynecʹ, Vasylʹ Stus, and Stanislav Vyšensʹkyj, I explore the different uses of mirrors in neomodernist Ukrainian poetry, paying particular a ention to their role in shaping a poem’s clarity or obscurity. In some poems mirrors are used as images endowed with a symbolic meaning, in others the ambiguity of the mirror, and even more so of several mirrors – their being able to function as instruments of both representation and concealment –, may foster semantic difficulty.