Speaking up for the dumb:Writing down Galician townscape prior and after of Habsburg collapseOl’a Kotska, MA Program in Cultural Studies, Ukraine)

Concept of identity

– though it is already examined under the different viewpoints and utilized for different aims, we examine it also from a historical aspect in dual consideration.

First, collective identity is formed due to discourse in concrete historical situation, and under certain circumstances undergoes a detailed transformation

Secondly, writing about history, we explain the past in order to understand nowadays

Therefore observing the changes of identity enables us to better understand not so much “where we are coming from” or “where we are going to”, but more “who we are becoming”

We will consider the «phenomenon of a province» in the context of co-operation of

centre and periphery

We are talking about the division of functions between a province and center in formation of

Galician culture,

and also about specifics of thinking, predetermined by certain emphasis on regional problems.

Galicia:

Metropolis – Vienna;

Local centre – Lviv;

Network of small cities;

Galicia was a province in relation to Western Europe, but it was structured in its own scopes: had a center and countryside: little towns, remote villages.

“In small cities of Galicia a man feels differently than somewhere in Eastern Europe. There he grows into a comfort, satisfied by a mug of beer in the morning and a cup of cafe in the evening”

On the contrary a small town in Galicia is uncomfortable. It converts a resident into a mystery. It induces to develop curiosity.

Erratic behavior of the European cities hurries into the small towns of Galicia. It is motion without a visible purpose and on mystery

reason

LVIV

Pomorzhany

Boryslav

Carpathian mountains

Represented by different nations, varicolored and always unexpected, poor and rich Galicia included in the text almost without proof-reading. And, at the end, becomes a text. The mental landscape of Galician

space enters into a dialog of Austro-Hungarian texts.

Such Galicia, although predefining the reality, is a phenomenon which exists timeless, a space which overcomes

language

Province of Galicia is literary labeled territory.

J. Rot, Sacher-Mazoch, B.Shulc, G. Trakl line up the image of locality, they “narrative” history of life of the crown edge, and simultaneously present a province in the intellectual environment of monarchy.

Writers mediated talk on behalf of Galician.

Josef Roth (1894-1939)

“Galicia is lonely, forgotten by the world, but not isolated; it is deported, but not parted; there is more culture in it, than it is possible to assume from its narrow sewage systems”

“In the former Eastern Galicia, nowadays Poland, very much far from the single

railroad which connects Peremishl' and Brody, lies a village of Lopatyn, about which I am going to tell a whimsical

story”

Lopatyn is not so much different from Brody. There takes place a complex process of transformation, which consists of such moments: 1) an attempt of idealization of the home town Brody;

2) implantation of idealized Brody into the literary picture;

3) removal of the features that do not fit into the picture of an ideal city;

4) delegation of these repressed features to an autonomous imaginary literary land

“ My strongest impression – wrote J. Roth in one of his letters, - where war and crash of my Motherland – the only, I have: Austro-Hungarian monarchy”.

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (1863-1895)

Sacher-Mazoh wonders around the country and listens to different stories. People which he meets are indeed burdened by stories, long, well built stories, and when suddenly comes Sacher-Mazoh, they begin to tell, or hold for him ready made manuscripts; because Sacher-Mazoh is the chosen confessor of the whole district of Kolomia”.

Texts of Sacher-Mazoh, as literary “transformers”, build literary texture of Galicia. The “mental landscape” of Galicia becomes a natal place of alternatives of the East and the West, North and South.Eastern world, as a soul, is incomprehensible and mysterious, with primitive passions and senses of humans not yet constrained by conventions and rules.

“On this boundless plain, where it seems that earth and sky touch each other and compete for a greatness and nobleness, a man preserved a feeling of endlessness and eternity.

Although it makes him to realize his insignificance, but at the same time brings him up above this small world, to the stars, which appear to him nearer, than in the glimmered cities of the West... Tsisar is far, God is closer”.

Georg Trakl (1887 – 1914)

GrodekAt evening the autumn woodlands ringWith deadly weapons. Over the golden plainsAnd lakes of blue, the sunMore darkly rolls. The night surroundsWarriors dying and the wild lamentOf their fragmented mouths.Yet silently there gather in the willow combeRed clouds inhabited by an angry god,Shed blood, and the chill of the moon.All roads lead to black decay.Under golden branching of the night and starsA sister's shadow sways through the still groveTo greet the heroes' spirits, the bloodied heads.And softly in the reeds Autumn's dark flutes resound.O prouder mourning! - You brazen altars,The spirit's hot flame is fed now by a tremendous pain:The grandsons, unborn

Trakl creates pure compositions of autonomous metaphors. Each metaphor has a more-or-less definite emotional tonality and combines with the other metaphors in a incoherent sequence of images. Yet each poem has an inner coherence, not the coherence of logical thought, but of a musical composition. The metaphoric image acts somewhat like a note in a musical score indicating that a cerain tone or chord is to be played."

The tone and progression is often dreamlike, but the imagery is more likely found in a nightmare: decay, death, twilight, nature (in decay), religious symbolism. The verses are bleak but with a certain warmth, somber with a hint of transcendence.

Bruno Shulc (1892-1942)

Phantasmagorias of “Idolatry book” of B.Shulc are unwrapping out mostly on a background architecture of a “middle size provincial city”.

At the end of the ХІХth century appears a publication of a new type “A Village and a small town”, that propagandized treasures of provincial architecture. Professional, sharp perception of architecture by Bruno Shul'ts well passes provincial character of his home town which held him in the strong vises right to his end.

Feeling of Drogobitch city structure is a personal distinction both of plastic, and literary works of Bruno Shulc.

“I am again at home, locked in the small and safe circle of Drogobych horizon. I started teaching, autumn is outside and asters flower everywhere. I advise you to drive out to the province, even to Versailles. You don’t have to see the palace, but the town is delightful...”