“Foreign Woman, Do Not Look!” Spring in Egypt and Lesja Ukrajinka’s Confrontation with Orientalism
Journal: Studi Slavistici
Year: 2022

Lesja Ukrajinka, profoundly aware of the subalternity of her position as a Ukrainian writer and intellectual in a Russian imperial context, was sensitive to analogous predicaments endured by others similarly marginalised. The cycle of lyrical poems Spring in Egypt, composed in 1910 during her first sojourn in Egypt, expresses solidarity with colonially oppressed Egyptians. Yet most of these poems also articulate an Orientalist confidence in the capacity of a foreign observer to comprehend Egypt