Arkadii Liubchenko: The Discourse of Ethics and Aesthetics

Abstract

The image (myth) of the author, like that of the Christian God, is triune, harmoniously composed of the text-biography-external image of the writer, where the author’s image (photo, sculptor, painted portrait) is a tertiary component of the myth. However, according to the laws of alchemy and metaphysics, it must function like the positive and negative in physics or acid and base in chemistry. Sometimes the author’s biography is more intriguing than the text itself, while at other times, it is dull (bureaucratic), uninteresting (or even entirely unknown, as in the case of the mythical author of “The Tale of Ihor's Campaign”). Yet, in literary history, a significant work remains associated with an anonymous author (the “no-name” category of writers). In other instances, there is a harmonious combination: both the text and the life-story are noteworthy. This is especially true in the context of Romanticism, where the poet’s biography simultaneously becomes a heroic epic, as seen in the lives of Lord Byron, Arthur Rimbaud, or Taras Shevchenko.

A society that idealizes or idolizes informants, even without knowing or believing that these (or other) writers could ever be such, is doomed to spiritual and physical degradation (even to self-destruction) according to universal laws of the birth and transformation of energies in the Universe, which are not yet studied by science and may not even be comprehensible to human reason.

In this context, the interesting, important, and valuable text-meta-text-subtext-life-text of Arkadii Liubchenko is notable. Encyclopaedias define him as a Ukrainian Soviet writer, literary critic, secretary of VAPLITE (Free Academy of Proletarian Literature), author of novel in short stories (“Vertep”), short stories (“Winter”), novellas (“Via Dolorosa”), plays, and reviews published in both Soviet and Nazi journals. He participated in the fight for Ukrainian statehood, served in the Ukrainian People’s Republic army, collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II, and his creative ethics were so immoral that the aesthetics of his texts were alchemically neutralized by them.