Emma Andievska is a contemporary Ukrainian poetess, writer and artist. Most of her work is done in a surreal style. She is a member of the Ukrainian PEN Club and a member of the National Union of Writers of Ukraine.
"The Science of the Earth" (1975; "Coffee House" (1983); "Temptations of St. Anthony" (1985); "Vigils" (1987) "Architectural Ensembles" (1988)).
Prose: "Journey" (short stories, 1955); "Tigers" and "Jalapita" (1962); Herostrati (1970); "A Novel about a Good Man" (1973); "A novel about human destiny (1982).
An unusual view of life, at the same time true, grows out of reality itself - good and evil, and colorful. Good must prevail, and we see this in her works. Get acquainted with them, and you will see for yourself.
The artist has exhibited in many countries around the world. The audience first saw her watercolors in Munich in 1956, then in New York in 1989, Emma illustrated her collections "Architectural Ensembles" and "Signs".
Literary works of our compatriot are presented in many collections of prose and poetry. The main ones are:
Poetry: "Poetry" (1951); "Birth of an Idol" (1958); "Fish and Size" (1961); "Corners of the Abyss" (1962); "The First" (1964); "Bazaar" and "Songs without lyrics" (1968);
Emma Andievska's painting skills are unusual. In the annotation to her exhibition, which took place in the spring of 1994 in Kyiv, at the Ukrainian House. such an assessment of her work was given from the German newspaper "Süddeutsche Zeitung;" "Emma Andievska is not only known in the West as an artist with the gift of original creative thinking, her painting is communicative, trusting to people.
Emma Andievska's organic world is attractive. It is also surreal, it synthesizes the experience of European painting: the power of expressionists, the poetry of Chagall. Those paintings are intuitive. Bright open colors, color - the energy-creating stream of her work.
In such a tense situation, the prose writer portrays his heroes, who have to make a choice: to return home or become emigrants. They love Ukraine, but they cannot return to it. For both children and adults, sincere love for the homeland is the only goal. life and joy. It becomes a means of testing the value of a person in critical situations. An excerpt from the proposed novel shows a bizarre journey of one of the characters of Steck Stupalka to hell. In this unusual situation, the human soul, the values of his life are known. In hell, Stetsko does good, thanks to which he escapes. Think, in what this good is expressed? Aren't the real facts of the past Soviet reality traced in fictional and seemingly bizarre scenes on Kyiv's Khreshchatyk?
"The Novel of a Good Man" takes the reader to Germany in the early postwar years, to the camps of displaced persons, or rather to the camp awaiting the decision of the repatriation commission, which includes representatives of the USSR, hundreds of Ukrainians abandoned by World War II outside their homeland. Recently, the Nazis mocked them in concentration camps, now these people are waiting for suffering from "their" Enkavedists, who crept into the commission and seek to send as many campers as possible to the massacre in the Soviet Union.
So try to find in the poems contained in this book, a combination of incompatible, try to penetrate into the circle of the world she created and feel the warmth of the restless heart of our countrywoman.
No less difficult to understand and perceive are the prose works of Emma Andievskaya, in particular "The Novel of a Good Man", in which reality is combined with bizarre episodes, myths, legends. Biblical stories, pictures of Hell and the Last Judgment are rethought here. At the same time, it is a complete work in which the author unconditionally stands on the side of Good. And evil is immediately recognizable here, no matter what clothes it is.
As we can see from these characteristics, Andievskaya's poetic word is unusual, not the kind we are all used to reading in program works. But we should not be afraid of the variety of complex and obscure words of critics - We must read Emma's word. But first, get to know how she sees it: "I'm interested in writing to an audience like myself," the poet admitted in an interview with Literary Ukraine. But a person must first get used to everything. What is new in the world of the poet, in general, the creative personality of Pi, is eventually perceived by the general public. And this takes time, because people do not like the new ..
- Nobody dictates to me what and how to write, it's only me who decides what my world is, and I order in this world. But I'm not as orderly as I'm trying to snatch the already meaningless nonsense from that unspeakable non-existence. And this, in fact, is the purpose of poetry.
Here is the opinion of a literary critic: "The work of the poet from God can not be grasped immediately and completely, it is a process of constant discovery and feeling of the word born of him. Especially the work of such a complex poet as Emma Andievska, who invites the reader to accept the rules of her poetic "game": try to go beyond standardized everyday life, reincarnate, look around the original "laws" of her worldview, which, synthesizing Ukrainian folk magic and Western modernism, makes a breakthrough in fantastic dimensions. The aesthetic basis of her work is surrealism, unexpected, ambiguous associations appeal to the emotional sphere, to her imagination, abstract images are concretized, often take on baroque forms, they are synthetically complex, illogical. The poetess uses these means to reproduce reality as fully as possible,
E. Andievska did not set out to continue the realistic traditions according to which reality was reflected in the forms of reality itself. The interpretation of Andievska's poems testifies to the departure from traditions. Yes, one of them, T. Wozniak, writes:
"Andievska's poetry for the Ukrainian language is creative (one that creates new words - note OV). Therefore, I would not limit her poetry to "transmitting the states of the soul", "reflecting reality" - and no matter how the author interprets her texts, her poetry lives outside of her since she finished the work - something distinguishes her from the long a number of poetic texts. First of all, it is not an outburst, but its organics. By breaking the logic of being, she is, in fact, trying to break out of it. "
Emma Andievska first lived in Germany, later in France, and then in America. She later returned to Germany and lives there in Munich. She is the author of poetry books, as well as collections of prose works (stories, novels). Our compatriot is known in the Western world as an artist.
Emma Andievska is one of the most famous poets of the Ukrainian diaspora. Her debut in the early 1950s was unusual, when the first collection of poems appeared. At that time.
Critics have placed the poetess at the level of early Tychyna and Arthur Rimbaud (French poet), noting the unity of poetic style with the paintings with which she illustrates her books.
"My mother took us children by the hand and on the eve of the Soviet occupation of Kyiv (it was the end of 1943), she went to the West. My mother was not sure that we would not be exterminated - my father had been killed shortly before. Viya was not a party member, he was a chemist-inventor, so, by the way, he was removed so that his inventions would not go to the Germans. My mother is a teacher-biologist, from the Ukrainian Cossack family, but Russified. So my mother begged the German soldier for a moment and he allowed us to leave Kyiv in the last German echelon with horses. And so we slowly got to the West, lived, studied… »